Cummins, red-headed,
lithe as a cat, big-souled as the eternal mountain of the Crees and the
best of the Company's hunters, had brought her up as his bride. Seventeen
rough hearts had welcomed them. They had assembled about that little
cabin in which the light was shining, speechless in their adoration of
this woman who had come among them, their caps in their hands, faces
shining, eyes shifting before the glorious ones that looked at them and
smiled at them as the woman shook their hands, one by one. Perhaps she
was not beautiful, as most people judge. But she was beautiful here--four
hundred miles beyond civilization. Mukee, the half-Cree, had never seen a
white woman, for even the factor's wife was part Chippewayan, and no one
of the others went down to the edge of the southern wilderness more than
once each twelve-month or so. Her hair was brown and soft, and it shone
with a sunny glory that reached away back into their conception of things
dreamed of but never seen, her eyes were as blue as the early snowflowers
that came after the spring floods, and her voice was the sweetest sound
that had ever fallen upon their ears. So these men thought when Cummins
first brought home his wife, and the masterpiece which each had painted
in his soul and brain was never changed. Each week and month added to the
deep-toned value of that picture, as the passing of a century might add
to a Raphael or a Van Dyke.
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