Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/201

Rh is bent forward to the knees. The White Chief pick up the book and pencil, and then kneel down and gaze up in the dead man’s face, all hard like stone and crusted with frost. I thought he would never stir again, he look so long. I think he was puzzle. Then he turn and say to me: ‘So quiet, so awful, Galloir!’ and got up. Well, but it was cold then, and my head seemed big and running about like a ball of air. But I light a spirit-lamp, and make some coffee, and he open the dead man’s book—it is what they call a diary—and begin to read. All at once I hear a cry, and I see him drop the book on the ground, and go to the dead man, and jerk his fist as if to strike him in the face. But he did not strike."

Galloir stopped, and lighted his pipe, and was so long silent that Medallion had to jog him into speaking. He puffed the smoke so that his face was in the cloud, and he said through it: "No, he did not strike. He get to his feet and spoke: ‘God forgive her!’ like that, and come and take up the book again, and read. He eat and drunk, and read the book again, and I know by his face that something more than cold was clamp his heart.

"‘Shall we bury him in the snow?’ I say. ‘No,’ he spoke, ‘let him sit there till the Judgmen’. This is a wonderful book, Galloir,’ he went on. ‘He was a brave man, but the rest—the rest!’—then under his breath almost: ‘She was so young—but a child.’ I not understand that. We start away soon, leaving the thing there. For four days, and then I see that the White Chief will never get back to Fort Pentecost; but he read the dead man’s book much.…"

"I cannot forget that one day. He lies down looking at the world—nothing but the waves of snow, shining