At the end of this first year came the wonderful event in the
history of the Company's post, which had the Barren Lands at its back
door. One day a new life was born into the little cabin of Cummins and
his wife.
After this the silent, wordless worship of Jan and his people was filled
with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother. She was
one of them now, a part of their indissoluble existence--a part of it as
truly as the strange lights forever hovering over the Pole, as surely as
the countless stars that never left the night skies, as surely as the
endless forests and the deep snows! There was an added value to Cummins
now. If there was a long and dangerous mission to perform it was somehow
arranged so that he was left behind. Only Jan and one or two others knew
why his traps made the best catch of fur, for more than once he had
slipped a mink of an ermine or a fox into one of Cummins' traps, knowing
that it would mean a luxury or two for the woman and the baby. And when
Cummins left the post, sometimes for a day and sometimes longer, the
mother and her child fell as a brief heritage to those who remained. The
keenest eyes would not have discovered that this was so.
In the second year, with the beginning of trapping, fell the second and
third great events. Cummins disappeared. Then came the Englishman. For a
time the first of these two overshadowed everything else at the post.
Pages:
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192