The Grizzly King by James Oliver Curwood (read aloud books TXT) 📕

on the blaze. Then she sat beside her, with her chin resting in the little brown palms of her hands, the fire lighting up a half profile of her face and painting rich colour in her deep-black hair.
For a long time there was silence, and Roscoe lay as if he were asleep. It was not an ordinary silence, the silence of a still room, or of emptiness--but a silence that throbbed and palpitated with an unheard life, a silence which was thrilling because it spoke a language which Roscoe was just beginning to understand. The fire grew redder, and the cone-shaped vacancy at the top of the tepee grew duskier, so Roscoe knew that night was falling outside. Far above he could hear the storm wailing over the top of the mountain. Redder and redder grew the birch flame that lighted up the profile of the girl's face. Once she turned, so that he caught the lustrous darkness of her eyes upon him. He could not hear the breath of the two in front of the fire. He heard no sound outside except that of the wind and the trees, and all grew as dark as it was silent in the snow-covered tepee, except in front of the fire. And then, as he lay with wide-open eyes, it seemed to Roscoe as though the stillness was broken by a sob that was scarcely more than a sigh, and he saw the girl's head droop a little lower in her hands, and fancied that a shuddering tremor ran through her slender shoulders. The fire burned low, and she reached out for more fagots. Then she rose slowly, and turned toward him. She could not see his face in the gloom, but the deep breathing which he feigned drew her to him, and through his half-closed eyes he could see her face bending over him, until one of her heavy braids slipped over her shoulder and fell upon his breast. After a moment she sat down silently beside him, and he felt her fingers brush gently through his tangled hair. Something in their light, soft touch thrilled him, and he moved his hand in the darkness until it came in contact with the big, soft braid that still lay where it had fallen across him. He was on the point of speaking, but the fingers left his hair and stroked as gentle as velvet over his storm-beaten face. She believed that he was asleep, and a warm flood of shame swept through him at the thought of his hypocrisy. The birch flared up suddenly, and he saw the glisten of her hair, the glow of her eyes, and the startled change that came into them when she saw that his own eyes were wide open, and looking up at her. Before she could move he had caught her hand, and was holding it tighter to his face--against his lips. The birch bark died as suddenly as it had flared up; he heard her breathing quickly, he saw her great eyes melt away like lustrous stars into the returning gloom, and a wild, irresistible impulse moved him. He raised his free hand to the dark head, and drew it down to him, holding it against his feverish face while he whispered Rameses's prayer of thankfulness in Cree:
"The spirits bless you forever, _Meeani_."
The nearness of her, the touch of her heavy hair, the caress of her breath stirred him still more deeply with the strange, new emotion that was born in him, and in the darkness he found and kissed a pair of lips, soft and warm.
The woman stirred before the fire. The girl drew back, her breath coming almost sobbingly. And then the thought of what he had done rushed in a flood of horror upon Roscoe. These wild people had saved his life; they had given him to eat of their last fish; they were nursing him back from the very threshold of death--and he had already repaid them by offering to the Cree maiden next to the greatest insult that could come to her people. He remembered what Rameses had told him--that the Cree girl's first kiss was her betrothal kiss; that it was the white garment of her purity, the pledge of her fealty forever. He lifted himself upon his elbow, but the girl had run to the door. Voices came from outside, and the two men reentered the tepee. He understood enough of what was said to learn that the camp had been holding council, and that two men were about to make an effort to reach the nearest post. Each tepee was to furnish these two men a bit of food to keep them alive on their terrible hazard, and the woman brought forth the half of a fish. She cut it into quarters, and with one of the pieces the elder man went out again into the night. The younger man spoke to the girl. He called her Oachi, and to Roscoe's astonishment spoke in French.
"If they do not come back, or if we do not find meat in seven days," he said, "we will die."
Roscoe made an effort to rise, and the effort sent a rush of fire into his head. He turned dizzy, and fell back with a groan. In an instant the girl was at his side--ahead of the man. Her hands were at his face, her eyes glowing again. He felt that he was falling into a deep sleep. But the eyes did not leave him. They were wonderful eyes, glorious eyes! He dreamed of them in the strange sleep that came to him, and they grew more and more beautiful, shining with a light which thrilled him even in his unconsciousness. After a time there came a black, more natural sort of night to him. He awoke from it refreshed. It was day. The tepee was filled with light, and for the first time he looked about him. He was alone. A fire burned low among the stones; over it simmered a pot. The earth floor of the tepee was covered with deer and caribou skins, and opposite him there was another bunk. He drew himself painfully to a sitting posture and found that it was his shoulder and hip that hurt him. He rose to his feet, and stood balancing himself feebly when the door to the tepee was drawn back and Oachi entered. At sight of him, standing up from his bed, she made a quick movement to draw back, but Roscoe reached out his hands with a low cry of pleasure.
"Oachi," he cried softly. "Come in!" He spoke in French, and Oachi's face lighted up like sunlight. "I am better," he said. "I am well. I want to thank you--and the others." He made a step toward her, and the strength of his left leg gave way. He would have fallen if she had not darted to him so quickly that she made a prop for him, and her eyes looked up into his whitened face, big and frightened and filled with pain.
"Oo-ee-ee," she said in Cree, her red lips rounded as she saw him flinch, and that one word, a song in a word; came to him like a flute note.
"It hurts--a little," he said. He dropped back on his bunk, and Oachi sank upon the skins at his feet, looking up at him steadily with her wonderful, pure eyes, her mouth still rounded, little wrinkles of tense anxiety drawn in her forehead. Roscoe laughed.
For a few moments his soul was filled with a strange gladness. He reached out his hand and stroked it over her shining hair, and a radiance such as he had never seen leapt into her eyes. "You--talk--French?" he asked slowly.
She nodded.
"Then tell me this--you are hungry--starving?"
She nodded again, and made a cup of her two small hands. "No meat. This little--so much--flour--" Her throat trembled and her voice fluttered. But even as she measured out their starvation her face was looking at him joyously. And then she added, with the gladness of a child, "_Feesh_, for you," and pointed to the simmering pot.
"For _ME_!" Roscoe looked at the pot, and then back at her.
"Oachi," he said gently, "go tell your father that I am ready to talk with him. Ask him to come--now."
She looked at him for a moment as though she did not quite understand what he had said, and he repeated the words. Even as he was speaking he marvelled at the fairness of her skin, which shone with a pink flush, and at the softness and beauty of her hair. What he saw impelled him to ask, as she made to rise:
"Your father--your mother--is French. Is that so, Oachi?" The girl nodded again, with the soft little Cree throat note that meant yes. Then she slipped to her feet and ran out, and a little later there came into the tepee the man who had first loomed up in the dusky light like a god of the First People to Roscoe Cummins. His splendid face was a little more gaunt than the night before, and Roscoe knew that famine came hand in hand with him. He had seen starvation before, and he knew that it reddened the eyes and gave the lips a grayish pallor. These things, and more, he saw in Oachi's father. But Mukoki came in straight and erect, hiding his weakness under the pride of his race. Fighting down his pain Roscoe rose at sight of him and held out his hands.
"I want to thank you," he said, repeating the words he had spoken to Oachi. "You have saved my life. But I have eyes, and I can see. You gave me of your last fish. You have no meat. You have no flour. You are starving. What? I have asked you to come and tell me, so that I may know how it fares with your women and children. You will give me a council, and we will smoke." Roscoe dropped back on his bunk. He drew forth his pipe and filled it with tobacco. The Cree sat down mutely in the centre of the tepee. They smoked, passing the pipe back and forth without speaking. Once Roscoe loaded the pipe, and once the chief; and when the last puff of the last pipeful was taken the Indian reached over his hand, and Roscoe gripped it hard.
And then, while the storm still moaned far up over their heads, Roscoe Cummins listened to the old, old story of the First People--the story of starvation and of death. To him it was epic. It was terrible. But to the other it was the mere coming and going of a natural thing, of a thing that had existed for him and for his kind since life began, and he spoke of it quietly and without a gesture. There had been a camp of twenty-two, and there were now fifteen. Seven had died, four men, two women, and one child. Each day during the great storm the men had gone out on their futile search for game, and every few days one of them had failed to return. Thus four had died. The dogs were eaten. Corn and fish were gone; there remained but a little flour, and this was for the women and the children. The men had eaten nothing but bark and roots for five days. And there seemed to be no hope. It was death to stray far from the camp. That morning the two men had set out for the post, but Mukoki said calmly that they would never return. And then Roscoe spoke of Oachi, his daughter, and for the first time the iron lines of the chief's bronze face seemed to soften, and his head bent over a little, and his shoulders drooped. Not until