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When Cummins' wife passed him, she drew her skirt close to her; and there was the poise of a queen in her head, the glory of wife and womanhood, the living, breathing essence of all that was beautiful in her people's honor of the big snows. That night Mukee, the half-Cree, slunk around in the edge of the forest to see that all was well in Cummins' little home.
She came to him, and clasped one of his half-frozen hands to her bosom, and he heard her say, "God bless you forever, Jan! You have done the best you could!" The Great God was that not reward for the risking of a miserable, worthless life such as his? He went to his shack and slept long, and dreamed, sometimes of the woman, and of Cummins and Mukee, the half-Cree.
Jan had been mother, brother, and everything that was tender and sweet to her and he was gone. Mukee, whom she had loved, was gone. Williams was gone. The world was changed, terribly and suddenly, and it added years to her perspective of things.
No man learned more of him than had Cummins. Even to Mukee, his history was equally simple and short. Always he said that he came from out of the north which meant the Barren Lands; and the Barren Lands meant death. No man had ever come across them as Jan had come; and at another time, and under other circumstances, Cummins and his people would have believed him mad.
The third caribou had been twice turned upon its spit, and Mukee and his Crees paused in waiting silence, their hooked poles gripping the long bar that rested horizontally across the arms of two stout posts driven into the earth close to the fire.
The next day he left. No one heard his last words to Melisse, or witnessed his final leave-taking of her, for Cummins sympathized with the boy's grief and went out of the cabin an hour before Mukee was ready with his pack. The last that he heard was Jan's violin playing low, sweet music to the child.
With a yell Mukee and three Crees dashed toward the fire, long-hooked poles in their hands; and as the caribou carcasses were turned upon their huge spits, and their dripping fat fell sizzling into the flames, the wild chorus of men and dogs and Jan's violin rose higher, until Cummins' great voice became only a whisper in the tumult.
She did not know the part that Mukee had played in the life of the sweet woman who had once lived in this same little cabin; she knew only that he was dead; that the terrible thing had killed him and that, next to her father and Jan, she had loved him more than any one else in the world. Soon she heard a strange sound, and ran to the window. Mukee's cabin was in flames.
They flew to the thick, reddening throat of the man from civilization, and without a sound the two sank together upon the snow. The next day a messenger behind six dogs set out for Fort Churchill, with word for the company's home office that the Englishman had died in the big snow which was true. Mukee told this to Jan, for there was the bond of blood between them.
Jan knew how the Great Spirit had once appeared to Mukee, and how a white mist, like a snow-veil, had come between the half-breed's eyes and the wondrous Thing he beheld. That same veil drifted between Jan and the girl.
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