Huldowget. A Story of the North Pacific Coast.

Chapter 3

Try as he would, he could not focus his mind on the problem, and his thoughts went back to the early years of his ministry, when he brought his wife, as a bride, from the East to the North Pacific Coast.

Their first home had been in one of the buildings of the old trading-post, where the privacy of their abode was continually invaded by threatening shamans in fantastic garb, beating drums, shaking rattles and blowing horns to call down destructive spirits upon them.

The smoke-filled interior of the old hall, with its leaking roof and windows covered with cotton to mitigate the intensity of the winter winds, was pictured in all its wealth of cruel detail in his memory. He recalled their first attempts to eat the dried fish and unpalatable oolichan grease, regarded by the natives as a great delicacy.

They had nearly perished when, on an errand of mercy to the bedside of one of their friends who could not altogether free himself from his old superstitious beliefs, and was gradually succumbing to the machinations of the medicine men, their blankets had been stolen. All night long they crouched over the smoking fire that burned slowly on the hearth, while outside the gale drove sleet and hail through the c****s between the logs of their dwelling. Illness followed, and it was only the providential arrival of another missionary on his way to Metlakatla that prevented the shamans from forcing their way into the building to practise their gruesome rites over them in their helplessness.

There rose before him a scene which recalled the horror with which he had viewed it in the second year of their life among the Indians. News had been brought of the killing of a party from Fort Oliver by the warriors of another tribe, sixty miles to the north. Instantly there was wild tumult in the village. The howlings of the medicine men, the wailing of the women and the bloodthirsty whoopings of the braves, the firing of muskets and the pounding of drums, made the night hideous.

Men blackened their faces with the sombre paint of war. The shamans worked themselves into a frenzy as they led the dance of death about the great fire on the beach. Then, screaming and yelping like a pack of hounds on the scent, they dashed away from the circle of light to return, dragging by the hair of her head, a terrified woman who had married into the tribe from among the people against whom they were about to make war.

Before Father David could intervene, perhaps to his own destruction, she had been beaten to death and her body had been torn limb from limb by the fiends.

He could see once more the return of the defeated warriors, and could almost hear again the grievings of the squaws as the toll of battle was recited. It was from that moment that he dated his own slow success, for he had seized upon the opportunity to denounce the medicine men who had predicted the destruction of their enemies as false prophets, and the natives had listened.

Then came the ceremonies of peace, with the exchange of goods in reparation for the losses. Their late enemies came to Fort Oliver in state to accept tribute, and a great feast was prepared for them. He had been a witness of the scattering of the swans' down over guest and host alike. His knowledge of the language was such by this time that he was able to address the gathering, and he likened the message of Holy Love that he bore to the gentle falling of the white feathers that signified eternal friendship.

There had followed no rush of converts to his teachings, but one by one, slowly and with diffidence, they had come, until after a time, such was the number that had banded together, there was less open hostility towards him and Mother, and less derision expressed of those who embraced the faith.

The medicine sect had not relinquished its efforts to combat the growing influence of the priest, and at every opportunity attempted to undo his work. Time and time again did the shamans seek to win back their waning power.

The first chapel which had been erected, a crudely constructed edifice, the medicine men destroyed by fire and sought to resurrect from its ashes their former dominion. It had been a blow to Father David and Mother, for it had been consumed before it could be consecrated by a service within its walls.

Undaunted, they immediately set to work to rebuild on a larger scale, and by example and precept succeeded, not only in holding together their little band of worshippers, but obtained additions to their congregation.

Year after year the grim fight continued, until at last, to all appearances, shamanism was dead, but this, Father David suspected, was not true. Among the older men and women who had known and feared the influences of the medicine men, there were some who still held, in secret, to their first beliefs.

He recollected the last open defiance of the shaman cult. A powerful man, one of the medicine men from Alaska, had appeared at Fort Oliver. He was almost as tall as Father David himself, and stood head and shoulders above the natives of the vicinity. He had attempted to sow seeds of dissension in the village. The priest warned him away, but the stranger replied by slapping the face of the big white doctor.

Father David turned pale. He clenched his hands, but made no effort to retaliate. Instead, he turned his head, presenting the other cheek, and the shaman, mistaking the action for one of cowardice, repeated the blow.

"Father, I have obeyed Thy command," exclaimed the missionary, and, with an unholy joy in his heart, he flew at the stranger.

With a single blow he knocked him down, and when the Indian arose he planted his great fist full on the painted face. The shaman dropped like a stunned bullock. Reaching down, Father David picked him up and, lifting him above his head, carried the inert form down to the water's edge and cast it into the sea.

The shock revived the necromancer, whose bedraggled appearance, as he struggled to his feet in the shallow water, was seized upon by the priest as an illustration of the futility and wickedness of heathenism.

Since that time there had been no open parading of shamanism, but of late an insidious propaganda was being spread among the villages of the Coast, and he believed that the Nexnox dance had been inspired by a necromancer of more than ordinary cunning, who carefully concealed his identity. The thought troubled him.

CHAPTER II AN UNEXPECTED PASSENGER"This is a hell o' a country," declared the watchman at Sliam cannery, as he spat spitefully at the oily, rain-splashed swells that slopped about the piling of the wharf.

"What's the matter now, Bill?" good-naturedly queried the young man who was tinkering with the engine of the raised-deck motor-boat, looking up from his work to his guest, who was perched half in and half out of the cabin. "The lonely life gettin' you?"

"Uh huh," grunted the other, adding as he filled his pipe: "Too blasted much rain, rain, rain; too much mist an' not enough sunshine fer me. I'm sick o' it."

"Go on, Bill," chided the other. "I'm surprised, t' hear an old sourdough like you talk that way. Now, if it had been some chechako, I could savvy it, but you—why, you've been in this North country since they planted the first trees."

"Yes, I know, but this is my las' season, I'm tellin' you. I'm through, Collishaw, I'm through."

"Uh huh," agreed the other placidly, as he screwed an oil-cup down on the engine. "Uh huh, heard you say the same thing last year."

"Maybe, but this time I'm tellin' you; I'm fed up on it."

"Yep?"

"Sure thing."

"Until next winter, and then I'll find you here as handsome and as crabbed as ever," predicted the younger man.

"Th' hell you will"; and again he expectorated to emphasise his statement.

"Why don't you get married, Bill?"

"Why don't I what?"

"Get yourself a wife. There are lots of nice girls who'd be glad t' get you."

"Nuthin' doing; I ain't no squaw man—not yet," exploded Bill.

"Don't need to marry a squaw. There's heaps of pretty nice-looking half-breeds on the Coast."

"Why don't you get one yerself?" countered Bill.

"Me? Oh, I will, maybe, sometime, when I'm as old as you, but not just now. I'm not the marryin' kind."

"Uh huh!" grunted the watchman, and then, returning to his grievance "But on the square, now, ain't this a hell o' a country?"

"No, Bill, it is not"; and there was a note of seriousness in the voice of the speaker. "The North is getting me, Bill."

"How? come."

"I can't just tell you what I mean, in a way that you'd understand it. I'd have to use highbrow language to describe it, and that lingo would be out of place here, wouldn't it?"

"Kinda, I wouldn't get you at all; but all the same, tell me what you mean, 'the North's gettin' you.'"

"Well, let's see how I can explain it," answered the boatman, as he pushed his sou'wester back on his head and ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair. "I don't see just how I can get it across to you—and it should not be necessary, for if ever there was a man in the thrall of the North, it's you——"

"In the what? That sounds like a fightin' word," exclaimed the watchman belligerently.

"Keep your shirt on, Bill," grinned Collishaw. "The thrall means the service—the hold of the North. The North is cruel to its friends. It beats them and freezes them; it fights them for everything they get, and lets go its wealth like a miser. Sometimes it smiles, but mostly it frowns—but still men stay. They desert the easy ways of the cities and the comforts of civilisation to come back to the hardships and the struggles they know they will face—and they like it."

"That's highbrow stuff, but I get you all right," assented Bill, after a pause. "I get you."

"Well, when men are like that, the North has got 'em."

"Guess ye're right! Just like squaws we be—the more we're licked, the better we seem t' like it. We must be married to the damn' country.

"I mind once," went on Bill, "when I went out with quite a wad o' money—went out cursin' the country; I was sure glad t' get back again.

"Say," he added, "them people in the cities take awful chances, with their street cars and autos an' everythin'. I'd sure hate t' be shut up like they are. Believe me, I nearly smothered in those big hotels; an' the streets—they was jus' like walkin' along the bottom o' a big canyon—you know, Jack, buildin's shut you in—there ain't no room to spread yourself like. Yes, I guess ye're right—this ain't such a hell o' a country after all—but I sure do wish it'd quit rainin' fer a spell."

Suddenly out of the mist sounded the deep note of a steamer's whistle.

Bill jumped to his feet. "What the blue blazes d'yu know about that! A steamer!" he exclaimed, as he swung himself over to the loading-slip. "Say, Collishaw, better get yer boat outa th' way—an' do it quick."

Already the boat owner had his engine spinning, and as Bill cast off the headline, the launch backed slowly away from the approaching steamer, now showing a big black mass against the lighter shade of the rain mist.

At half-speed the vessel approached, taking the shape of a rusty, sea-battered, snub-nosed freighter—not one of those boats pictured in colours on attractive pamphlets advertising summer cruises, but of the class of slow-moving, storm-battling drudges of commerce that make possible the gradual development of the serried coast-line of the North Pacific.