Romany of the Snows, Continuation of "Pierre and His People", v4 by Parker, Gilbert, 1860-1932

"Well, I was up last fall to Fort St. Saviour. Ho, how dull was it! Macgregor, the trader there, has brains like rubber. So I said, I will go down to Fort O'Glory. I knew someone would be there--it is nearer the world. So I started away with four dogs and plenty of jerked buffalo, and so much brown brandy as Macgregor could squeeze out of his eye! Never, never were there such days--the frost shaking like steel and silver as it powdered the sunlight, the white level of snow lifting and falling, and falling and lifting, the sky so great a travel away, the air which made you cry out with pain one minute and gave you joy the next. And all so wild, so lonely! Yet I have seen hanging in those plains cities all blue and red with millions of lights showing, and voices, voices everywhere, like the singing of soft masses. After a time in that cold up there you are no longer yourself--no. You move in a dream. "Eh bien, m'sieu', there came, I thought, a dream to me one evening--well, perhaps one afternoon, for the days are short--so short, the sun just coming over a little bend of sky, and sinking down like a big orange ball. I come out of a tumble of little hills, and there over on the plains I saw a sight! Ragged hills of ice were thrown up, as if they'd been heaved out by the breaking earth, jutting here and there like wedges--like the teeth of a world. Alors, on one crag, shaped as an anvil, I saw what struck me like a blow, and I felt the blood shoot out of my heart and leave it dry. I was for a minute like a pump with no water in its throat to work the piston and fetch the stream up. I got sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and ice I saw a big white bear, one such as you shall see within the Arctic Circle, his long nose fetching out towards that bleeding sun in the sky, his white coat shining. But that was not the thing--there was another. At the feet of the bear was a body, and one clawed foot was on that body--of a man. So clear was the air, the red sun shining on the face as it was turned towards me, that I wonder I did not at once know whose it was. You cannot think, m'sieu', what that was like--no. But all at once I remembered the Chant of the Scarlet Hunter. I spoke it quick, and the blood came creeping back in here." He tapped his chest with his slight forefinger.

"What was the chant?" asked the governor, who had scarce stirred a muscle since the tale began. Pierre made a little gesture of deprecation. "Ah, it is perhaps a thing of foolishness, as you may think--"

"No, no. I have heard and seen in my day," urged the governor.

"So? Good. Yes, I remember, you told me years ago, m'sieu'. . . .