Angels' Shoes, and Other Stories. Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

      “Nor before your old savage in the corner, hein?”

      Desmond glanced at the heap of rags in the corner.

      “Hom? What’s the matter? Think he’ll steal it? Why, there’s four of us, and even an Injun can have a corner of my shack for an hour or two to-night. I reckon,” finished Desmond, with a kind of gravity, “as my luck is making me soft. It takes a man all ways.”

      Lajeune yawned, grinned, flung up his left arm, and was instantly asleep again. He looked so young in his sleep, that Desmond was suddenly moved to draw the blanket over him. In the dim light he saw Forbes worn and grizzled, the wariness gone out of him, a defeated old man with horrible eyes. Ohlsen’s hand lay over the edge of the bunk, his huge fingers curved helplessly, like a child’s. Desmond felt inarticulately tender to the three who had toiled by his side and missed their luck. He piled wood on the stove, saying, “I must do something for the boys. They’re good boys.”

      At the freshened roar of the stove the old Indian in the corner stirred and lifted his head, groping like an old turtle in the sunlight. He had a curious effect of meaningless blurs and shadows. Eye and memory could hold nothing of his insignificance. Only under smoked and puckered lids the flickering glitter of his eyes pricked in a meaning unreadable. Desmond looked at him with the wide good nature born of his luck.

      “I ain’t going to turn ye out, Old Bones,” he said.

      The eyes steadied on him an instant, and the old shadow spoke fair English in the ghost of a voice.

      “Thanks. You give grub. I eat, I warm, I rest. Now I go.”

      “Jest as ye like. But have a drink first.” He pushed over the dregs of the whiskey bottle.

      The old man seized it; seemed to hold it to his heart. While he could get whiskey he might drink and forget; when he could get it no more, he must remember and die. He drank, Lethe and Paradise in one, and handed back the bottle.

      “How,” he said. “You good man. Once I had things to give, now nothing. Nothing but dreams.”

      “Dreams, is it, Old Bones?”

      The eyes were like cunning sparks.

      “Dreams, yes,” he said with a stealthy indrawing of breath. “You good man. I give you three dreams. See.”

      With a movement so swift the eye could hardly follow it, he caught three hot wood-coals from the ash under the stove and flung them on the floor at Desmond’s feet. He bent forward, and under his breath they woke to a moment’s flame. The strangeness of his movements held Desmond, and he also bent forward, watching. He had an instant’s impression that the coals were burning him fiercely somewhere between the eyes, that the bars of personality were breaking, that he was falling into some darkness that was the darkness of death. Before his ignorance could find words for his fear, the old Indian leaned back, the fire fled, and the spent coals were no more than rounds of empty ash, which the old man took in his hands.

      “Dreams,” he said, with something that might have been a laugh. He blew the ash like little grey feathers toward the sleeping men in the bunks. His eyes were alive, fixed on Desmond with a meaning unreadable. He thrust his face close. “You good man. You give me whiskey. I give you three dreams, little dreams—for luck.”

      Desmond was staring at the little floating feathers of wood ash. As they slowly sank and settled, he heard the door close and felt a sharp stab of cold. The old Indian had gone; Desmond could hear his footsteps dragging over the frozen crust of the snow for a little while. He got up and shook himself. The drink had died out of him; he felt himself suddenly and greatly weary of body and mind. The fire would last till morning. “Dreams—dreams, for luck!” he muttered, as he rolled into the fourth bunk. He was ready for sleep. And as he lay down and yielded to the oncoming of sleep, as a weed yields to the tide, he knew of a swift, clear, certainty that he would dream.

II

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      He opened his eyes to the pale flood of day; Lajeune was cooking pork and making coffee; Ohlsen was mending snow shoes; Forbes bent over his bunk, black against the blind square of the frozen window, feeling blindly with his hands, and snuffling a little as he spoke:

      “We’d ha’ let you sleep on, but we wanted to know what you’d be doing. Will ye stay here with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?”

      Desmond stretched, grunted, and hesitated. He felt curiously unwilling to decide. But Forbes was waiting, his yellow fingers twitching on the end of the bunk.

      “Oh, I dunno,” he said. “What’s the hurry? Well—I guess I’ll try the pass with Ohlsen.”

      “Right.” Ohlsen nodded his heavy head, for he seldom spoke. He had the physique men always associate with a kind and stupid fidelity. Desmond said of him, “Them that talks most ain’t the best at heart.” Desmond said it to himself as he rolled out of the bunk for breakfast.

      Forbes stayed in his bunk, and made little moaning animal noises while he fed. Lajeune bubbled over with quick laughter. Desmond beamed on everyone and talked of his luck. Ohlsen sat immovable, working his jaws like an ox, watching Desmond with his small, pale eyes.

      He did not speak as they drew on their furs and packed the gold; nor as they turned out of the shack, shutting the door swiftly behind them, and faced the stinging splendour of the windy winter day. The cold had lessened with the sunrise, but what cold there was the wind took and drove to the bone. The air was filled with a glittering mist of blown snow, and all the lower slopes of the hills and the climbing spruce forests were hidden. Above the poudre the mountains lifted like iron in the unpitying day, and every snowfield and glacier was crowned with a streaming feather of white against a hard turquoise sky.

      “You think we’ll get through?” asked Desmond, doubtfully.

      “Ay t’ank so.” Ohlsen was striding heavily, tirelessly, just behind his shoulder. His grey eyes, still fixed on Desmond, were like little bits of glacier ice inset above his high cheek bones.

      “We may.”

      “We may. It ain’t far.” Desmond was talkative. “This gold weighs heavy. I like the colour o’gold. Ohlsen, you got any children?”

      “Ay, got two kids.”

      “Wisht I had. Maybe I will, though—little boy ’n’ gal, with kind o’ gold hair. See here, you ever had a garden?”

      “No.”

      “I’ve me garden on me back here, hey? With them blue things that smell, and hens. You come and see me, Ohlsen, and you’ll have the best there is.”

      “T’anks. Ay like fresh eggs.”

      “So do I. And apples. Say, Ohlsen, I’m sorry this luck ain’t for you.”

      Ohlsen did not answer or slacken his heavy, stooping stride against the wind. The curved hills opened slowly, swung aside. The spruce stood up, came nearer, and closed in around them like the outposts of a waiting army. The wind roared through the trees like a flood of which the surf was snow.

      “Do you think we’ll do it?” shouted Desmond again and Ohlsen answered:

      “Ay t’ank so.”

      In a little while the trees were a dark mass beneath them, and they were out on the bare heights, fighting with the wind for every foothold. Desmond staggered under it, but Ohlsen seemed untiring, climbing very close at his shoulder. The glare of the sun seared their eyes, but they had no heat of it. In all the vast upheaval of the hills, in all the stark space of the sky, there was no warmth, no life.

      Something