Here, because of his elemental simplicity, he took to himself a native wife, and, by reason of the connubial7 bliss8 that followed, he escaped the unrest and vain longings9 that curse the days of more fastidious men, spoil their work, and conquer them in the end. He lived contentedly10, was at single purposes with the business he was set there to do, and achieved a brilliant record in the service of the Company. About this time his wife died, was claimed by her people, and buried with savage11 circumstance in a tin trunk in the top of a tree.
Two sons she had borne him, and when the Company promoted him, he journeyed with them still deeper into the vastness of the North-West Territory to a place called Sin Rock, where he took charge of a new post in a more important fur field. Here he spent several lonely and depressing months, eminently12 disgusted with the unprepossessing appearance of the Indian maidens14, and greatly worried by his growing sons who stood in need of a mother’s care. Then his eyes chanced upon Lit-lit.
“Lit-lit—well, she is Lit-lit,” was the fashion in which he despairingly described her to his chief clerk, Alexander McLean.
McLean was too fresh from his Scottish upbringing—“not dry behind the ears yet,” John Fox put it—to take to the marriage customs of the country. Nevertheless he was not averse15 to the Factor’s imperilling his own immortal17 soul, and, especially, feeling an ominous18 attraction himself for Lit-lit, he was sombrely content to clinch19 his own soul’s safety by seeing her married to the Factor.
Nor is it to be wondered that McLean’s austere20 Scotch21 soul stood in danger of being thawed22 in the sunshine of Lit-lit’s eyes. She was pretty, and slender, and willowy; without the massive face and temperamental stolidity23 of the average squaw. “Lit-lit,” so called from her fashion, even as a child, of being fluttery, of darting24 about from place to place like a butterfly, of being inconsequent and merry, and of laughing as lightly as she darted25 and danced about.
Lit-lit was the daughter of Snettishane, a prominent chief in the tribe, by a half-breed mother, and to him the Factor fared casually26 one summer day to open negotiations27 of marriage. He sat with the chief in the smoke of a mosquito smudge before his lodge28, and together they talked about everything under the sun, or, at least, everything that in the Northland is under the sun, with the sole exception of marriage. John Fox had come particularly to talk of marriage; Snettishane knew it, and John Fox knew he knew it, wherefore the subject was religiously avoided. This is alleged29 to be Indian subtlety30. In reality it is transparent31 simplicity.
The hours slipped by, and Fox and Snettishane smoked interminable pipes, looking each other in the eyes with a guilelessness superbly histrionic. In the mid-afternoon McLean and his brother clerk, McTavish, strolled past, innocently uninterested, on their way to the river. When they strolled back again an hour later, Fox and Snettishane had attained32 to a ceremonious discussion of the condition and quality of the gunpowder33 and bacon which the Company was offering in trade. Meanwhile Lit-lit, divining the Factor’s errand, had crept in under the rear wall of the lodge, and through the front flap was peeping out at the two logomachists by the mosquito smudge. She was flushed and happy-eyed, proud that no less a man than the Factor (who stood next to God in the Northland hierarchy) had singled her out, femininely curious to see at close range what manner of man he was. Sunglare on the ice, camp smoke, and weather beat had burned his face to a copper-brown, so that her father was as fair as he, while she was fairer. She was remotely glad of this, and more immediately glad that he was large and strong, though his great black beard half frightened her, it was so strange.
Being very young, she was unversed in the ways of men. Seventeen times she had seen the sun travel south and lose itself beyond the sky-line, and seventeen times she had seen it travel back again and ride the sky day and night till there was no night at all. And through these years she had been cherished jealously by Snettishane, who stood between her and all suitors, listening disdainfully to the young hunters as they bid for her hand, and turning them away as though she were beyond price. Snettishane was mercenary. Lit-lit was to him an investment. She represented so much capital, from which he expected to receive, not a certain definite interest, but an incalculable interest.
And having thus been reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as tribal34 conditions would permit, it was with a great and maidenly35 anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come for her, at the husband who was to teach her all that was yet unlearned of life, at the masterful being whose word was to be her law, and who was to mete36 and bound her actions and comportment for the rest of her days.
But, peeping through the front flap of the lodge, flushed and thrilling at the strange destiny reaching out for her, she grew disappointed as the day wore along, and the Factor and her father still talked pompously37 of matters concerning other things and not pertaining38 to marriage things at all. As the sun sank lower and lower toward the north and midnight approached, the Factor began making unmistakable preparations for departure. As he turned to stride away Lit-lit’s heart sank; but it rose again as he halted, half turning on one heel.
“Oh, by the way, Snettishane,” he said, “I want a squaw to wash for me and mend my clothes.”
Snettishane grunted40 and suggested Wanidani, who was an old woman and toothless.
“No, no,” interposed the Factor. “What I want is a wife. I’ve been kind of thinking about it, and the thought just struck me that you might know of some one that would suit.”
Snettishane looked interested, whereupon the Factor retraced41 his steps, casually and carelessly to linger and discuss this new and incidental topic.
“Kattou?” suggested Snettishane.
“She has but one eye,” objected the Factor.
“Laska?”
“Her knees be wide apart when she stands upright. Kips, your biggest dog, can leap between her knees when she stands upright.”
“Senatee?” went on the imperturbable42 Snettishane.
But John Fox feigned43 anger, crying: “What foolishness is this? Am I old, that thou shouldst mate me with old women? Am I toothless? lame44 of leg? blind of eye? Or am I poor that no bright-eyed maiden13 may look with favour upon me? Behold45! I am the Factor, both rich and great, a power in the land, whose speech makes men tremble and is obeyed!”
Snettishane was inwardly pleased, though his sphinx-like visage never relaxed. He was drawing the Factor, and making him break ground. Being a creature so elemental as to have room for but one idea at a time, Snettishane could pursue that one idea a greater distance than could John Fox. For John Fox, elemental as he was, was still complex enough to entertain several glimmering46 ideas at a time, which debarred him from pursuing the one as single-heartedly or as far as did the chief.
Snettishane calmly continued calling the roster47 of eligible48 maidens, which, name by name, as fast as uttered, were stamped ineligible49 by John Fox, with specified50 objections appended. Again he gave it up and started to return to the Fort. Snettishane watched him go, making no effort to stop him, but seeing him, in the end, stop himself.
“Come to think of it,” the Factor remarked, “we both of us forgot Lit-lit. Now I wonder if she’ll suit me?”
Snettishane met the suggestion with a mirthless face, behind the mask of which his soul grinned wide. It was a distinct victory. Had the Factor gone but one step farther, perforce Snettishane would himself have mentioned the name of Lit-lit, but—the Factor had not gone that one step farther.
The chief was non-committal concerning Lit-lit’s suitability, till he drove the white man into taking the next step in order of procedure.
“Well,” the Factor meditated51 aloud, “the only way to find out is to make a try of it.” He raised his voice. “So I will give for Lit-lit ten blankets and three pounds of tobacco which is good tobacco.”
Snettishane replied with a gesture which seemed to say that all the blankets and tobacco in all the world could not compensate52 him for the loss of Lit-lit and her manifold virtues53. When pressed by the Factor to set a price, he coolly placed it at five hundred blankets, ten guns, fifty pounds of tobacco, twenty scarlet54 cloths, ten bottles of rum, a music-box, and lastly the good-will and best offices of the Factor, with a place by his fire.
The Factor apparently55 suffered a stroke of apoplexy, which stroke was successful in reducing the blankets to two hundred and in cutting out the place by the fire—an unheard-of condition in the marriages of white men with the daughters of the soil. In the end, after three hours more of chaffering, they came to an agreement. For Lit-lit Snettishane was to receive one hundred blankets, five pounds of tobacco, three guns, and a bottle of rum, goodwill56 and best offices included, which according to John Fox, was ten blankets and a gun more than she was worth. And as he went home through the wee sma’ hours, the three-o’clock sun blazing in the due north-east, he was unpleasantly aware that Snettishane had bested him over the bargain.
Snettishane, tired and victorious57, sought his bed, and discovered Lit-lit before she could escape from the lodge.
He grunted knowingly: “Thou hast seen. Thou has heard. Wherefore it be plain to thee thy father’s very great wisdom and understanding. I have made for thee a great match. Heed58 my words and walk in the way of my words, go when I say go, come when I bid thee come, and we shall grow fat with the wealth of this big white man who is a fool according to his bigness.”
The next day no trading was done at the store. The Factor opened whisky before breakfast, to the delight of McLean and McTavish, gave his dogs double
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