The Heart of Unaga. Cullum Ridgwell
"Don't let hers wash us, Uncle Steve," he implored.
Deep distress looked out of Steve's steady eyes. He was gazing at a wreck of beautiful womanhood lying on the bed. There was no doubt of the beauty of this mother of little Marcel. It was there in every line of the pale, hollow cheeks, in her clear, broad brow. In the great, soft grey eyes which were hot with fever as they gazed at him out of their hollow settings. Then the abundant dark hair, parted now in the centre, Indian fashion, and flooding the pillow with its masses. It was dull and lustreless, but all its beauty of texture remained.
She had summoned him at once to her sick room through An-ina. And in her greeting had briefly told him of the trouble which had befallen her.
"Maybe you'll think it queer my receiving you this way," she said, in a tired voice, "but I can't just help myself. You see, I can't move hand or foot." Then a pitiful smile crept into the wistful eyes. "It happened two weeks ago. Oh, those two weeks. I was felling saplings with An-ina in the woods out back. Maybe a woman can't do those things right. Anyway, one fell on me, and it just crushed me to the ground, and held me pinned there. I thought I was dead. But I wasn't. I was only broken. Maybe I'll die here—soon. An-ina got me clear and carried me home. And now—why, if it wasn't for my little Marcel I'd be glad—so glad to be rid of all the pain."
The note of despair, the tragedy in the brief recital were overwhelming. The full force of them smote Steve to the heart, and left him incapable of expression, beyond that which looked out of his eyes. Words would have been impossible. He realized she was on her deathbed. It required only the poor creature's obvious intense sufferings to tell him that. It was a matter of perhaps hours before little Marcel would be robbed of his second parent.
The brief daylight was pouring in through the double glass window of the room. It lit an interior which had only filled him with added wonder at these folks, and the guiding hand which inspired everything he beheld. The furnishing of the room was simple enough. But it was of the manufacture of civilization, and he could only guess at the haulage it had required to bring it to the heart of Unaga. Then there was distinct taste in the arrangement of the room. It was the taste of a woman of education and refinement, and one who must have been heart and soul with her husband, and the enterprise he was embarked upon.
An-ina had left him there to talk with the mother of those things which it was her care should not reach the ears of little Marcel.
Steve told her at once that he was a police officer, and that he was on a mission of investigation into the—he said "disappearance"—of Marcel Brand, who, he explained, was supposed to be a trader, with his partner Cyrus Allshore, somewhere in the direction north of Seal Bay in the Unaga country. He told her that he had travelled one thousand miles overland to carry out the work, and that something little short of a miracle had brought him direct to her door.
And the woman had listened to him with the eagerness of one who has suddenly realized a ray of hope in the blackness of her despair.
After his brief introduction she breathed a deep sigh and her eyes closed under the pain that racked her broken body.
"Then my message got through," she said, almost to herself. "Lupite must have reached Seal Bay." Then her eyes opened and she spoke with added effort. "I didn't dare to hope. It was all I could do," she explained. "Lupite said he'd get through or die. He was a good and faithful neche. I—I wonder what's happened him since. He's not got back, and—the others have all deserted me. There's no one here now but An-ina, and my little boy, and," she added bitterly, "What's left of me. Oh, God, will it never end! This pain. This dreadful, dreadful pain."
After a moment of troubled regard, while he watched the cold dew of agony break upon her brow, Steve ventured his reply.
"Yes. It must have got through, I guess," he said. "It must have reached the Indian Department at Ottawa. They sent it right along to the man at the Allowa Reserve where I'm stationed, and communicated with the police. That's how I received my instructions. They said your husband was supposed to be—murdered. And his partner, too."
"I put that in my letter," the woman said quickly. "I just had to. You see—" she broke off. But after a brief hesitation she went on. "But I don't know. I don't know anything that's happened really. He went away on a trip eighteen months ago, with Cy. It was to Seal Bay, with trade. He ought to have been back that fall. I haven't had a word since. I've been eighteen months here alone with An-ina, and—these Sleepers. He might have met with accident. But it's more likely murder. These Sleepers suspected. They were frightened he'd found out. You see, this stuff—this Adresol—is sacred to them. They would kill anyone who found out where they get it from."
A spasm of pain contorted her drawn face and again her eyes closed under the agony. She re-opened them at the sound of Steve's voice.
"Will you tell me, ma'm?" he said.
Steve's manner was gentle. His sympathy for this stricken creature was real and deep. She was a woman, suffering and alone in a God-forsaken land. The thought appalled him.
For some moments his invitation remained without response. The woman lay there unmoving, inert. Only was life in her hot eyes, and the trifling rise and fall of the bed covering as she breathed. Obviously she was considering. Perhaps she was wondering how much she had a right to tell this officer. She was completely without guidance. If her husband had been alive doubtless her lips would have remained sealed. But he was not there, and she knew not what had become of him. Then there was little Marcel, and she knew that when she left that bed it would be only for a cold grave on this bleak plateau of Unaga.
Steve waited with infinite patience. He felt it to be a moment for patience. Suddenly she began to talk in a rapid, feverish way.
"Yes, yes," she cried. "I must tell you now, and quickly. Maybe when you've heard it all you'll help me. There's no one else can help me. You see, it's my boy—my little boy. He's all I have in the world—now. He's the sun and light of my life. It's the thought of him alone, with only An-ina, in this terrible land that sets me well-nigh crazy. The police. I wonder. Would they look after him? Could you take him back with you when I'm dead? Do they look after poor orphans, poor little bits of life like him? Or is he too small a thing in the work they have to do? I pray God you'll take him out of this when I'm dead."
Steve strove to keep a steady tone. The appeal was heartrending.
"Don't you fret that way, ma'm," he cried earnestly. "If those things happen you reckon are going to, I'll see that no harm, I can help, comes to him. He's just a bright little ray of light, and I guess God didn't set him on this earth to leave him helpless in such a country as this."
A world of relief in the mother's eyes thanked him.
"I—I—" she began, and the man promptly broke in.
"You needn't try to thank me … " Steve's manner was gravely kind. "Maybe when you've told me things I'll be able to locate your husband. And maybe he isn't dead."
The woman's eyes denied him hopelessly.
"He's dead—sure," she said. "Whatever's happened he's—dead. Say, listen, I'd best try and tell you all from the start," she went on, with renewed energy. "It's the only way. And it's a straight story without much shame in it. My husband, Marcel Brand, is a Dane, with French blood in his veins. He's a great chemist, who learned everything the Germans could teach him. He absorbed their knowledge, but not their ways. He was a good and great man, whose whole idea of life was to care for his wife and child, and expend all his knowledge to help the world of suffering humanity. It was for that reason that seven years ago he realized all he possessed, and, taking Cy Allshore as a partner, came up here."
"To help suffering humanity?"
Incredulity found expression almost before Steve was aware of it.
"Yes, I know. It sounds crazy," the sick woman went on. "But it isn't. Nothing Marcel ever did was crazy. All his life he has been studying drugs, and his studies have taken him into all sorts of crazy corners of the world. Thibet, Siberia, Brazil, Tropical Africa, India, and now—Unaga. It was he who discovered