The post was awake. It
was waiting. It was listening. It was watching.
As the woman's door opened, wide and brimful of light, a door of one
of the log houses opened, and then another, and out into the night,
like dim shadows, trod the moccasined men from the factor's office,
and stood there waiting for the word of life or death from John
Cummins. In their own fashion these men, who, without knowing it,
lived very near to the ways of God, sent mute prayers into the starry
heavens that the most beautiful thing in the world might yet be spared
to them.
It was just two summers before that this beautiful thing had come into
Cummins' life, and into the life of the post. Cummins, red-headed,
lithe as a cat, big-souled as the eternal mountain of the Crees, and
the best of the company's hunters, had brought Melisse thither as his
bride. Seventeen rough hearts had welcomed her. They had assembled
about that little cabin in which the light was shining now, speechless
in their adoration of this woman who had come among them, their caps
in their hands, their faces shining, their eyes shifting before the
glorious ones that looked at them and smiled at them as the woman
shook their hands, one by one.
Perhaps she was not strictly beautiful, as most people judge; but she
was beautiful here, four hundred miles beyond civilization.
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