and notoriously bad-tempered. But Tannis was a beauty.
Tannis' great-grandmother had been a Cree squaw who
married a French trapper. The son of this union became
in due time the father of Auguste Dumont. Auguste
married a woman whose mother was a French half-breed
and whose father was a pure-bred Highland Scotchman.
The result of this atrocious mixture was its
justification - Tannis of the Flats - who looked as if
all the blood of all the Howards might be running in
her veins.
But, after all, the dominant current in those same
veins was from the race of plain and prairie. The
practiced eye detected it in the slender stateliness of
carriage, in the graceful, yet voluptuous, curves of
the lithe body, in the smallness and delicacy of hand
and foot, in the purple sheen on straight-falling
masses of blue-black hair, and, more than all else, in
the long, dark eye, full and soft, yet alight with a
slumbering fire. France, too, was responsible for
somewhat in Tannis. It gave her a light step in place
of the stealthy half-breed shuffle, it arched her red
upper lip into a more tremulous bow, it lent a note of
laughter to her voice and a sprightlier wit to her
tongue. As for her red-headed Scotch grandfather, he
had bequeathed her a somewhat whiter skin and ruddier
bloom than is usually found in the breeds.
Old Auguste was mightily proud of Tannis. He sent her
to school for four years in Prince Albert, bound that
his girl should have the best. A High School course and
considerable mingling in the social life of the town -
for old Auguste was a man to be conciliated by astute
politicians, since he controlled some two or three
hundred half-breed votes - sent Tannis home to the
Flats with a very thin, but very deceptive, veneer of
culture and civilization overlying the primitive
passions and ideas of her nature.
Carey saw only the beauty and the veneer. He made the
mistake of thinking that Tannis was what she seemed to
be - a fairly well-educated, up-to-date young woman
with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was
with white womankind - the pleasant amusement of an
hour or season. It was a mistake - a very big mistake.
Tannis understood something of piano playing, something
less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of
social prevarications. But she understood absolutely
nothing of flirtation. You can never get an Indian to
see the sense of Platonics.
Carey found the Flats quite tolerable after the
homecoming of Tannis. He soon fell into the habit of
dropping into the Dumont house to spend the evening,
talking with Tannis in the parlor - which apartment was
amazingly well done for a place like the Flats - Tannis
had not studied Prince Albert parlors four years for
nothing - or playing violin and piano duets with her.
When music and conversation palled, they went for long
gallops over the prairies together. Tannis rode to
perfection, and managed her bad-tempered brute of a
pony with a skill and grace that made Carey applaud
her. She was glorious on horseback.
Sometimes he grew tired of the prairies and then he and
Tannis paddled themselves over the river in Nitchie
Joe's dug-out, and landed on the old trail that struck
straight into the wooded belt of the Saskatchewan
valley, leading north to trading posts on the frontier
of civilization. There they rambled under huge pines,
hoary with the age of centuries, and Carey talked to
Tannis about England and quoted poetry to her. Tannis
liked poetry; she had studied it at school, and
understood it fairly well. But once she told Carey that
she thought it a long, round-about way of saying what
you could say just as well in about a dozen plain
words. Carey laughed. He liked to evoke those little
speeches of hers. They sounded very clever, dropping
from such arched, ripely-tinted lips.
If you had told Carey that he was playing with fire he
would have laughed at you. In the first place he was
not in the slightest degree in love with Tannis - he
merely admired and liked her. In the second place, it
never occurred to him that Tannis might be in love with
him. Why, he had never attempted any love-making with
her! And, above all, he was obsessed with that
aforesaid fatal idea that Tannis was like the women he
had associated with all his life, in reality as well as
in appearance. He did not know enough of the racial
characteristics to understand.
But, if Carey thought his relationship with Tannis was
that of friendship merely, he was the only one at the
Flats who did think so. All the half-breeds and
quarter-breeds and any-fractional breeds there believed
that he meant to marry Tannis. There would have been
nothing surprising to them in that. They did not know
that Carey's second cousin was a baronet, and they
would not have understood that it need make any
difference, if they had. They thought that rich old
Auguste's heiress, who had been to school for four
years in Prince Albert, was a catch for anybody.
Old Auguste himself shrugged his shoulders over it and
was well-pleased enough. An Englishman was a prize by
way of a husband for a half-breed girl, even if he were
only a telegraph operator. Young Paul Dumont worshipped
Carey, and the half-Scotch mother, who might have
understood, was dead. In all the Flats there were but
two people who disapproved of the match they thought an
assured thing. One of these was the little priest,
Father Gabriel. He liked Tannis, and he liked Carey;
but he shook his head dubiously when he heard the
gossip of the shacks and teepees. Religions might
mingle, but the different bloods - ah, it was not the
right thing! Tannis was a good girl, and a beautiful
one; but she was no fit mate for the fair, thorough-
bred Englishman. Father Gabriel wished fervently that
Jerome Carey might soon be transferred elsewhere. He
even went to Prince Albert and did a little wire-
pulling on his own account, but nothing came of it. He
was on the wrong side of politics.
The other malcontent was Lazarre Merimee, a lazy,
besotted French half-breed, who was, after his fashion,
in love with Tannis. He could never have got her, and
he knew it - old Auguste and young Paul would have
incontinently riddled him with bullets had he ventured
near the house as a suitor, - but he hated Carey none
the less, and watched for a chance to do him an ill-
turn. There is no worse enemy in all the world than a
half-breed. Your true Indian is bad enough, but his
diluted descendant is ten times worse.
As for Tannis, she loved Carey with all her heart, and
that was all there was about it.
If Elinor Blair had never gone to Prince Albert there
is no knowing what might have happened, after all.
Carey, so powerful in propinquity, might even have
ended by learning to love Tannis and marrying her, to
his own worldly undoing. But Elinor did go to Prince
Albert, and her going ended all things for Tannis of
the Flats.
Carey met her one evening in September, when he had
ridden into town to attend a dance, leaving Paul Dumont
in charge of the telegraph office. Elinor had just
arrived in Prince Albert on a visit to Tom, to which
she had been looking forward during the five years
since he had married and moved out West from Avonlea.
As I have already said, she was very beautiful at that
time, and Carey fell in love with her at the first
moment of their meeting.
During the next three weeks he went to town nine times
and called at the Dumonts' only once. There were no
more rides and walks with Tannis. This was not
intentional neglect on his part. He had simply
forgotten all about her. The breeds surmised a lover's
quarrel, but Tannis understood. There was another woman
back there in town.
It would be quite impossible to put on paper any
adequate idea of her emotions at this stage. One night,
she followed Carey when he went to Prince Albert,
riding out of earshot, behind him on her plains pony,
but keeping him in sight. Lazarre, in a fit of
jealousy, had followed Tannis, spying on her until she
started back to the Flats. After that he watched both
Carey and Tannis incessantly, and months later had told
Tom all he had learned through his low sneaking.
Tannis trailed Carey to the Blair house, on the bluffs
above the town, and saw him tie his horse at the gate
and enter. She, too, tied her pony to a poplar, lower
down, and then crept stealthily through the willows at
the side of the house until she was close to the
windows. Through one of them she could see Carey and
Elinor. The half-breed girl crouched down in the shadow
and glared at her rival. She saw the pretty, fair-
tinted face, the fluffy coronal of golden hair, the
blue, laughing eyes of the woman whom Jerome Carey
loved, and she realized very plainly that there was
nothing left to hope for. She, Tannis of the Flats,
could never compete with that other. It was well to
After a time, she crept softly away, loosed her pony,
and lashed him mercilessly with her whip through the
streets of the town and out the long, dusty river
trail. A man turned and looked after her as she tore
past a brightly lighted store on Water Street.
"That was Tannis of the Flats," he said to a companion.
"She was in town last winter, going to school - a
beauty and a bit of the devil, like all those breed
girls. What in thunder is she riding like that for?"
One day, a fortnight later, Carey went over the river
alone for a ramble up the northern trail, and an
undisturbed dream of Elinor. When he came back Tannis
was standing at the canoe landing, under a pine tree,
in a rain of finely sifted sunlight. She was waiting
for him and she said, with any preface:
"Mr. Carey, why do you never come to see me, now?"
Carey flushed like any girl. Her tone and look made him
feel very uncomfortable. He remembered, self-
reproachfully, that he must have seemed very
neglectful, and he stammered something about having
been busy.
"Not very busy," said Tannis, with her terrible
directness. "It is not that. It is because you are
going to Prince Albert to see a white woman!"
Even in his embarrassment Carey noted that this was the
first time he had ever heard Tannis use the expression,
"a white woman," or any other that would indicate her
sense of a difference between herself and the dominant
race. He understood, at the same moment, that this girl
was not to be trifled with - that she would have the
truth out of him, first or last. But he felt
indescribably foolish.
"I suppose so," he answered lamely.
"And what about me?" asked Tannis.
When you come to think of it, this was an embarrassing
question, especially for Carey, who had believed that
Tannis understood the game, and played it for its own
sake, as he did.
"I don't understand you, Tannis," he said hurriedly.
"You have made me love you," said Tannis.
The words sound flat enough on paper. They did not
sound flat to Tom, as repeated by Lazarre, and they
sounded anything but flat to Carey, hurled at him as
they were by a woman trembling with all the passions of
her savage ancestry. Tannis had justified her criticism
of poetry. She had said her half-dozen words, instinct
with all the despair and pain and wild appeal that all
the poetry in the world had ever expressed.
They made Carey feel like a scoundrel. All at once he
realized how impossible it would be to explain matters
to Tannis, and that he would make a still bigger fool
of himself, if he tried.
"I am very sorry," he stammered, like a whipped
schoolboy.
"It is no matter," interrupted Tannis violently. "What
difference does it make about me - a half-breed girl?
We breed girls are only born to amuse the white men.
That is so - is it not? Then, when they are tired of
us, they push us aside and go back to their own kind.
Oh, it is very well. But I will not forget - my father
and brother will not forget. They will make you sorry
to some purpose!"
She turned, and stalked away to her canoe. He waited
under the pines until she crossed the river; then he,
too, went miserably home. What a mess he had contrived
to make of things! Poor Tannis! How handsome she had
looked in her fury - and how much like a squaw! The
racial marks always come out plainly under the stress
of emotion, as Tom noted later.
Her threat did not disturb him. If young Paul and old
Auguste made things unpleasant for him, he thought
himself more than a match for them. It was the thought
of the suffering he had brought upon Tannis that
worried him. He had not, to be sure, been a villain;
but he had been a fool, and that is almost as bad,
under some circumstances.
The Dumonts, however, did not trouble him. After all,
Tannis' four years in Prince Albert had not been
altogether wasted. She knew that white girls did not
mix their male relatives up in a vendetta when a man
ceased calling on them - and she had nothing else to
complain of that could be put in words. After some
reflection she concluded to hold her tongue. She even
laughed when old Aug
uste asked her what was up between
her and her fellow, and said she had grown tired of
him. Old Auguste shrugged his shoulders resignedly. It
was just as well, maybe. Those English sons-in-law
sometimes gave themselves too many airs.
So Carey rode often to town and Tannis bided her time,
and plotted futile schemes of revenge, and Lazarre
Merimee scowled and got drunk - and life went on at the
Flats as usual, until the last week in October, when a
big wind and rainstorm swept over the northland.
It was a bad night. The wires were down between the
Flats and Prince Albert and all communication with the
outside world was cut off. Over at Joe Esquint's the
breeds were having a carouse in honor of Joe's
birthday. Paul Dumont had gone over, and Carey was
alone in the office, smoking lazily and dreaming of
Elinor.
Suddenly, above the plash of rain and whistle of wind,
he heard outcries in the street. Running to the door he
was met by Mrs. Joe Esquint, who grasped him
breathlessly.
"Meestair Carey - come quick! Lazarre, he kill Paul -
they fight!"
Carey, with a smothered oath, rushed across the street.
He had been afraid of something of the sort, and had
advised Paul not to go, for those half-breed carouses
almost always ended in a free fight. He burst into the
kitchen at Joe Esquint's, to find a circle of mute
spectators ranged around the room and Paul and Lazarre
in a clinch in the center. Carey was relieved to find
it was only an affair of fists. He promptly hurled
himself at the combatants and dragged Paul away, while
Mrs. Joe Esquint - Joe himself being dead-drunk in a
corner - flung her fat arms about Lazarre and held him
back.
"Stop this," said Carey sternly.
"He Had Been Afraid Of Something Of The Sort"
"Let me get at him," foamed Paul. "He insulted my
sister. He said that you - let me get at him!"
He could not writhe free from Carey's iron grip.
Lazarre, with a snarl like a wolf, sent Mrs. Joe
spinning, and rushed at Paul. Carey struck out as best
he could, and Lazarre went reeling back against the
table. It went over with a crash and the light went
out!
Mrs. Joe's shrieks might have brought the roof down. In
the confusion that ensued, two pistol shots rang out
sharply. There was a cry, a groan, a fall - then a rush
for the door. When Mrs. Joe Esquint's sister-in-law,
Marie, dashed in with another lamp, Mrs. Joe was still
shrieking, Paul Dumont was leaning sickly against the
wall with a dangling arm, and Carey lay face downward
on the floor, with blood trickling from under him.
Marie Esquint was a woman of nerve. She told Mrs. Joe
to shut up, and she turned Carey over. He was
conscious, but seemed dazed and could not help himself.
Marie put a coat under his head, told Paul to lie down
on the bench, ordered Mrs. Joe to get a bed ready, and
went for the doctor. It happened that there was a
doctor at the Flats that night - a Prince Albert man
who had been up at the Reservation, fixing up some sick
Indians, and had been stormstaid at old Auguste's on
his way back.
Marie soon returned with the doctor, old Auguste, and
Tannis. Carey was carried in and laid on Mrs. Esquint's
bed. The doctor made a brief examination, while Mrs.
Joe sat on the floor and howled at the top of her
lungs. Then he shook his head.
"Shot in the back," he said briefly.
"How long?" asked Carey, understanding.
"Perhaps till morning," answered the doctor. Mrs. Joe
gave a louder howl than ever at this, and Tannis came
and stood by the bed. The doctor, knowing that he could
do nothing for Carey, hurried into the kitchen to
attend to Paul, who had a badly shattered arm, and
Marie went with him.
Carey looked stupidly at Tannis.
"Send for her," he said.
Tannis smiled cruelly.
"There is no way. The wires are down, and there is no
man at the Flats who will go to town to-night," she
answered.
"My God, I must see her before I die," burst out Carey
pleadingly. "Where is Father Gabriel? He will go."
"The priest went to town last night and has not come