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Updated: June 9, 2025
That Meleese loved him, that she had taken his head in her arms, and had kissed him, was the one consuming thought in Howland's brain for many minutes after she had left him bound and gagged on the snow. That she had made no effort to free him did not at first strike him as significant. He still felt the sweet, warm touch of her lips, the pressure of her arms, the smothering softness of her hair.
And yet I tell you that a man with a better soul than Pierre Thoreau never lived, though three times he has tried to kill you. Do you remember what you asked me a short time ago, M'seur if I thought that you were the John Howland who murdered the father of Meleese sixteen years ago?
"For you I would go to the end of the earth!" interrupted Howland, his pale face near to her. "But you must tell me why. I don't understand you. I don't know why those men tried to kill me in Prince Albert. I don't know why my life is in danger here. Croisset told me that my warning back there came from a girl named Meleese. I didn't understand him. I don't understand you.
If others come along that trail before dark, and run us down, I will kill you. Unless you make it possible for me to see and talk with Meleese I will kill you. Your life hangs on my success; with my failure your death is as certain as the coming of night. I am going to put a bullet through you at the slightest suspicion of treachery. Under the circumstances what do you propose to do?"
That first "case" was more terrible for John Cummins than for his wife, for it turned out to be smallpox, and for six weeks Meleese would allow him to come no nearer than the edge of the clearing' in which the pest-ridden cabin stood. First the mother, and then the boy, she nursed back to life, locking the door against the two husbands, who built themselves a shack in the edge of the forest.
After that there was a space of silence, of black chaos in which he neither reasoned nor lived, and when there came to him faintly the sound of other voices. Finally all of them were lost in one a moaning, sobbing voice that was calling his name again and again, a voice that seemed to reach to him from out of an infinity of distance, and that he knew was the voice of Meleese.
"Next to the Virgin and it may be a little better." Croisset had severed the rope about the engineer's legs, and as he raised his glowing eyes Howland reached out and put both hands on his shoulders. "And in just that way I love Meleese," he said softly. "Jean, won't you be my friend? I don't want to escape. I'm not a coward. Won't you think of what your Mariane might do, and be a friend to me?
At these times, when the "call" came to Meleese from a far cabin or tepee, John Cummins would give up the duties of his trap line to accompany her, and would pitch his tent or make him a shack close by, where he could watch over her, hunt food for the afflicted people and keep up the stack of needed firewood and water.
A hundred "Meleeses" will bear her memory in name for all who speak her name call her "Meleese," and not Melisse. The wilderness itself may never forget, as it has never forgotten beautiful Jeanne D'Arcambal, who lived and died on the shore of the great bay more than one hundred and sixty years ago.
Howland had not spoken a word, but every nerve in his body tingled strangely. "You say Meleese is there?" he questioned hesitatingly. "And he who is that man, Croisset?" Jean shrugged his shoulders and drew himself back into the bush, turning leisurely toward the old cabin. "Non, M'seur, I will not tell you that," he protested. "I have brought you to this place.
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