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Za darmoThe Case of Beauvais
James Oliver Curwood
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Gentlemen, you may call it madness - and perhaps it was. But strange things happen in the North, and I have often found it hard to define that word. There are so many kinds of madness, so many ways the human brain can go wrong, and often what we call madness is both reasonable and just. A little reason is good for us; more makes wise men of some, but when reason overgrows and we reach too far, something breaks, and we go insane.
But I will tell you the story. That is what you want, and you expect that I will be biased - that I will either protect a human life or destroy it. I will do neither, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted Police. My faith in you is as boundless as my faith in God. All my life in the wilderness I have looked up to you as the heart of chivalry and the soul of honor and fairness to all men. Pathfinders, men of iron, guardians of people and spaces that civilization knows but little - I have taught my forest children to honor, obey, and trust you. So I will tell you without prejudice, with the gratitude of a missioner who has lived forty years in the wilderness.
I am a Catholic. It is four hundred miles straight north by dog-sledge or snowshoe to my cabin, and this is the first time in nineteen years I have come down to the edge of the big world, which now seems little more than a dream. But up there I knew my duty lay, at the edge of the Big Barren. See! My hands are knotted like tree roots. The glare of your lights hurts my eyes. Today I walked in the middle of your street because my moccasined feet stumbled on your smooth walks. People stared, and some laughed.
Forty years I have lived in another world. You - especially you gentlemen who have patrolled the North - know what that world is. As it shapes different hands, trains different feet, and gives us different eyes, so it has bred into my forest children hearts and souls that may be a little different, and a code of right and wrong that too often has had no court of law to guide it. So judge fairly, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted Police! Understand, if you can.
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 1 / 7
# chapter_page: 1
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
Gentlemen, you may call it madness - and perhaps it was. But strange things happen in the North, and I have often found it hard to define that word. There are so many kinds of madness, so many ways the human brain can go wrong, and often what we call madness is both reasonable and just. A little reason is good for us; more makes wise men of some, but when reason overgrows and we reach too far, something breaks, and we go insane.
But I will tell you the story. That is what you want, and you expect that I will be biased - that I will either protect a human life or destroy it. I will do neither, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted Police. My faith in you is as boundless as my faith in God. All my life in the wilderness I have looked up to you as the heart of chivalry and the soul of honor and fairness to all men. Pathfinders, men of iron, guardians of people and spaces that civilization knows but little - I have taught my forest children to honor, obey, and trust you. So I will tell you without prejudice, with the gratitude of a missioner who has lived forty years in the wilderness.
I am a Catholic. It is four hundred miles straight north by dog-sledge or snowshoe to my cabin, and this is the first time in nineteen years I have come down to the edge of the big world, which now seems little more than a dream. But up there I knew my duty lay, at the edge of the Big Barren. See! My hands are knotted like tree roots. The glare of your lights hurts my eyes. Today I walked in the middle of your street because my moccasined feet stumbled on your smooth walks. People stared, and some laughed.
Forty years I have lived in another world. You - especially you gentlemen who have patrolled the North - know what that world is. As it shapes different hands, trains different feet, and gives us different eyes, so it has bred into my forest children hearts and souls that may be a little different, and a code of right and wrong that too often has had no court of law to guide it. So judge fairly, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted Police! Understand, if you can.It was a terrible winter - the winter of Le Mort Rouge. As long as men and children now living remember, my people will call it the winter of Famine and Red Death. Starvation, gentlemen - and smallpox. People died like - what shall I say? It is not easy to describe such a thing. They died in tepees. They died in shacks. They died on the trail. From late December until March I said prayers over the dead. You wonder what this has to do with my story; why it matters that the caribou migrated west in vast herds and there was no food; why it matters that famine and plague swept the unknown land and people were dying as our world went through cataclysm. My backwoods eyes see your thoughts. What has this to do with Joseph Brecht? With Andre Beauvais? Why does this little forest priest waste time? I ask permission to tell my story in my own way, because this suffering had a strange and terrible effect on many who survived until spring.
It was like a great storm sweeping through a forest of tall trees. A storm of suffering left heads bowed, shoulders bent, and minds gone. Yes - gone!
Since that winter of Le Mort Rouge, I know of eyes where laughter will never return; strong men became as little children; faces fair with youth shriveled into age - and my people call it noot' akutawin keskwawin - the cold and hungry madness. May God help Andre Beauvais!
Now I will tell the story.
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 2 / 7
# chapter_page: 2
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
It was a terrible winter - the winter of Le Mort Rouge. As long as men and children now living remember, my people will call it the winter of Famine and Red Death. Starvation, gentlemen - and smallpox. People died like - what shall I say? It is not easy to describe such a thing. They died in tepees. They died in shacks. They died on the trail. From late December until March I said prayers over the dead. You wonder what this has to do with my story; why it matters that the caribou migrated west in vast herds and there was no food; why it matters that famine and plague swept the unknown land and people were dying as our world went through cataclysm. My backwoods eyes see your thoughts. What has this to do with Joseph Brecht? With Andre Beauvais? Why does this little forest priest waste time? I ask permission to tell my story in my own way, because this suffering had a strange and terrible effect on many who survived until spring.
It was like a great storm sweeping through a forest of tall trees. A storm of suffering left heads bowed, shoulders bent, and minds gone. Yes - gone!
Since that winter of Le Mort Rouge, I know of eyes where laughter will never return; strong men became as little children; faces fair with youth shriveled into age - and my people call it noot' akutawin keskwawin - the cold and hungry madness. May God help Andre Beauvais!
Now I will tell the story.It was June. The last of the melting snows had gone early, nearly a fortnight before, and the waters were free of ice when word came that Father Boget was dying at Old Fort Reliance. He was twenty years older than I, and I called him mon pere. He had been a father to me in my early years. I hastened to reach him, to hold his hand before he died if possible. And you, Sergeant McVeigh, who have spent years in the country of the Great Slave, know what a race with death from Christie Bay to Old Fort Reliance would be. Following the broken, twisted waters of the Great Slave would mean two hundred miles, while cutting straight across by smaller streams and lakes meant less than seventy. But on your maps, that seventy-mile space is blank - no streams, no waters. You know little of it. I can tell you, for I have been through it. It is a lost hell.
A vast country where berry bushes grow abundantly but bear no berries, where forests and swamps teem but hold no living creature, water without fish, air without birds, plants without flowers - a reeking, stinking country of brimstone, a hell. In your Blue Books you call it the Sulphur Country. And drawing a line from Christie Bay to Old Fort Reliance, this country lies directly between. Mon pere was dying, and time was short. I decided to venture through that Sulphur Country, and I sought a man to accompany me. I found none. To the Indian it was the land of Wetikoo, the Devil Country; to the breeds it was horror. Forty miles away was a white man I knew would go, but reaching him would cost three days. I was about to set out alone when the stranger came. He was indeed strange. He appeared at my chateau from nowhere, going nowhere, and I hardly knew whether to call him young or old. I guessed. That terrible winter had branded him.
When I asked his name, he said, "I am a wanderer, and in wandering I have lost my name. Call me M'sieu."
That was a long speech for him; his tongue was tied by horrible silence.
When I told him where I was going, described the country, and said I needed a man, he merely nodded that he would accompany me.
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 3 / 7
# chapter_page: 3
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
It was June. The last of the melting snows had gone early, nearly a fortnight before, and the waters were free of ice when word came that Father Boget was dying at Old Fort Reliance. He was twenty years older than I, and I called him mon pere. He had been a father to me in my early years. I hastened to reach him, to hold his hand before he died if possible. And you, Sergeant McVeigh, who have spent years in the country of the Great Slave, know what a race with death from Christie Bay to Old Fort Reliance would be. Following the broken, twisted waters of the Great Slave would mean two hundred miles, while cutting straight across by smaller streams and lakes meant less than seventy. But on your maps, that seventy-mile space is blank - no streams, no waters. You know little of it. I can tell you, for I have been through it. It is a lost hell.
A vast country where berry bushes grow abundantly but bear no berries, where forests and swamps teem but hold no living creature, water without fish, air without birds, plants without flowers - a reeking, stinking country of brimstone, a hell. In your Blue Books you call it the Sulphur Country. And drawing a line from Christie Bay to Old Fort Reliance, this country lies directly between. Mon pere was dying, and time was short. I decided to venture through that Sulphur Country, and I sought a man to accompany me. I found none. To the Indian it was the land of Wetikoo, the Devil Country; to the breeds it was horror. Forty miles away was a white man I knew would go, but reaching him would cost three days. I was about to set out alone when the stranger came. He was indeed strange. He appeared at my chateau from nowhere, going nowhere, and I hardly knew whether to call him young or old. I guessed. That terrible winter had branded him.
When I asked his name, he said, "I am a wanderer, and in wandering I have lost my name. Call me M'sieu."
That was a long speech for him; his tongue was tied by horrible silence.
When I told him where I was going, described the country, and said I needed a man, he merely nodded that he would accompany me.We started in a canoe, and I placed him ahead so I could study him. His hair was dark. His beard was dark. His eyes were sunken but strangely clear, and they puzzled me - always questing, always seeking, always expecting, it seemed. A man of unfathomable mystery, of unutterable tragedy, of almost inhuman silence. Was he mad? I ask you, gentlemen - was he mad? I leave the answer to you. To me he was good. When I told him what mon pere meant to me and that I wished to reach him before death, he spoke no word of hope or sympathy - but he worked until his muscles cracked. We ate together, drank together, slept side by side - like living with a sphinx that some miracle had given life.
On the second day we entered the Sulphur Country. The stench was in our nostrils that night we camped. The moon rose, seen through yellow fumes. Far behind, a wolf howled - the last sound of life. At dawn we continued. We passed through broad, low morasses where sulphurous fogs rose. In many places the water was hot; elsewhere the forests we paddled through were dense as tropics. And lifeless - still with the stillness of death for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of years. The food seemed saturated with sulphur; it seeped into our water bags; it turned us yellow. It was terrible, frightening, inconceivable. We pressed on by compass, and M'sieu showed no fear - even less than I.
Then, on the third day - in the heart of that diseased region - we made a discovery that drew a strange cry even from M'sieu's silent lips. It was the print of a naked human foot in a bar of mud.
How it came there, why it was there, why naked - those thoughts leaped into our startled minds. What man could live in such a place? Was it a man, or the footprint of some primeval ape, a monstrous survival of centuries?
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 4 / 7
# chapter_page: 4
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
We started in a canoe, and I placed him ahead so I could study him. His hair was dark. His beard was dark. His eyes were sunken but strangely clear, and they puzzled me - always questing, always seeking, always expecting, it seemed. A man of unfathomable mystery, of unutterable tragedy, of almost inhuman silence. Was he mad? I ask you, gentlemen - was he mad? I leave the answer to you. To me he was good. When I told him what mon pere meant to me and that I wished to reach him before death, he spoke no word of hope or sympathy - but he worked until his muscles cracked. We ate together, drank together, slept side by side - like living with a sphinx that some miracle had given life.
On the second day we entered the Sulphur Country. The stench was in our nostrils that night we camped. The moon rose, seen through yellow fumes. Far behind, a wolf howled - the last sound of life. At dawn we continued. We passed through broad, low morasses where sulphurous fogs rose. In many places the water was hot; elsewhere the forests we paddled through were dense as tropics. And lifeless - still with the stillness of death for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of years. The food seemed saturated with sulphur; it seeped into our water bags; it turned us yellow. It was terrible, frightening, inconceivable. We pressed on by compass, and M'sieu showed no fear - even less than I.
Then, on the third day - in the heart of that diseased region - we made a discovery that drew a strange cry even from M'sieu's silent lips. It was the print of a naked human foot in a bar of mud.
How it came there, why it was there, why naked - those thoughts leaped into our startled minds. What man could live in such a place? Was it a man, or the footprint of some primeval ape, a monstrous survival of centuries?The trail led through a steaming slough where the mud was tepid, rank with yellow reeds and thick grasses - almost flesh-like, swollen as if about to burst with some dreadful disease. Perhaps scientists can explain sulphur's effect on vegetation. It was so; the very wood we burned had sulphur. Through those reeds and grasses we found a narrow beaten path, then came to a rise of land sheltered by timber, a sort of hill in that flat world, and on its crest we saw a cabin.
A cabin - roughly built of logs, yellow with sulphur, as if painted. We went inside and found the man you know as Joseph Brecht. I did not look at M'sieu when he first rose, but I heard a great gasp behind me. I stood as if life had left me. Joseph Brecht was half naked, his feet bare. He looked like a wild man with his uncut hair - except his face was smooth. Strange that a man would shave there! But not odd, for a beard gathers sulphur. He had risen from a cot of boughs, and in the light from the open door he seemed terribly emaciated, skin tight over his cheekbones. He spoke first: "I am glad you have come. I guess I am dying. Some water, please. There is a spring back of the cabin."
He spoke sanely, but the words were scarcely out when he fell back, eyes rolling, mouth gaping, breathing in great gasps. It was a strange sickness. I will spare you details. You are anxious for the story - the tragedy. It came out in his fever and fits of sanity. He said his name was Joseph Brecht. For two years he had lived in that sulphur hell. He had accidentally found a spring of fresh water; he built his cabin; twice a year he went by canoe to the Great Slave, forty miles away, for food. But why was he there? The story came bit by bit, half in fever, half in sanity. I will tell it in my own words.
He was a government man mapping the last timber lines along the edge of the Great Barren when he first met Andre Beauvais and his wife, Marie. An accident - a sprained leg - took him to their cabin. Andre was a fox-hunter, and coming home from a trip, he found Joseph Brecht helpless in deep snow and carried him to safety.
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 5 / 7
# chapter_page: 5
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
The trail led through a steaming slough where the mud was tepid, rank with yellow reeds and thick grasses - almost flesh-like, swollen as if about to burst with some dreadful disease. Perhaps scientists can explain sulphur's effect on vegetation. It was so; the very wood we burned had sulphur. Through those reeds and grasses we found a narrow beaten path, then came to a rise of land sheltered by timber, a sort of hill in that flat world, and on its crest we saw a cabin.
A cabin - roughly built of logs, yellow with sulphur, as if painted. We went inside and found the man you know as Joseph Brecht. I did not look at M'sieu when he first rose, but I heard a great gasp behind me. I stood as if life had left me. Joseph Brecht was half naked, his feet bare. He looked like a wild man with his uncut hair - except his face was smooth. Strange that a man would shave there! But not odd, for a beard gathers sulphur. He had risen from a cot of boughs, and in the light from the open door he seemed terribly emaciated, skin tight over his cheekbones. He spoke first: "I am glad you have come. I guess I am dying. Some water, please. There is a spring back of the cabin."
He spoke sanely, but the words were scarcely out when he fell back, eyes rolling, mouth gaping, breathing in great gasps. It was a strange sickness. I will spare you details. You are anxious for the story - the tragedy. It came out in his fever and fits of sanity. He said his name was Joseph Brecht. For two years he had lived in that sulphur hell. He had accidentally found a spring of fresh water; he built his cabin; twice a year he went by canoe to the Great Slave, forty miles away, for food. But why was he there? The story came bit by bit, half in fever, half in sanity. I will tell it in my own words.
He was a government man mapping the last timber lines along the edge of the Great Barren when he first met Andre Beauvais and his wife, Marie. An accident - a sprained leg - took him to their cabin. Andre was a fox-hunter, and coming home from a trip, he found Joseph Brecht helpless in deep snow and carried him to safety.Ah, gentlemen, it was the old story - old as time. In his sanity, he told us of Marie, while I hovered and M'sieu sat back in shadows. She was like a wonderful wildflower - French, a little Indian. He described her long black hair that streamed in a shining cascade to her knees and below, soft as a swan's breast; how it hung in great lustrous braids; how her limpid eyes set his soul afire; how her slim, beautiful body filled him with monstrous desire. She must have been beautiful. Her husband Andre worshipped her and the ground she trod. He trusted her absolutely. It was sublime - and Brecht told us this as he lay dying. In that trust, Andre went unsuspectingly to his trap-lines, leaving them alone for hours, sometimes days. Joseph prolonged his stay, feigning that his leg was still bad. It was a hard fight to win her, but he succeeded utterly.
Remember, he was a southern man with all his charm and eloquence; she had lived her whole life in the wilderness. She was no match for him. She surrendered. He told how he would unbind her hair and bury his face in it, living in transport, utterly given to him during Andre's absences.
Did he love her? Yes, in the brute's mad passion - but not as we might love, not as Andre loved. Whether she had heart or soul didn't matter. He was blind with insensate joy, shroud in her hair. He prolonged his stay without intending to take her. When the time came, he would leave. He feigned injury, and Andre treated him like a brother.
Need I tell you that Andre discovered them? He found them - with that wonderful hair so wrapped about them that even he was ensnared.
Andre had returned exhausted and unexpectedly. A terrible fight ensued; despite exhaustion, he would have killed Brecht had Brecht not drawn his revolver. In that moment between leveling the gun and firing, Marie found her answer - whom did she love? She sprang to her husband's breast, shielding him with a body that had been disloyal, and died with a bullet through her heart.
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 6 / 7
# chapter_page: 6
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
Ah, gentlemen, it was the old story - old as time. In his sanity, he told us of Marie, while I hovered and M'sieu sat back in shadows. She was like a wonderful wildflower - French, a little Indian. He described her long black hair that streamed in a shining cascade to her knees and below, soft as a swan's breast; how it hung in great lustrous braids; how her limpid eyes set his soul afire; how her slim, beautiful body filled him with monstrous desire. She must have been beautiful. Her husband Andre worshipped her and the ground she trod. He trusted her absolutely. It was sublime - and Brecht told us this as he lay dying. In that trust, Andre went unsuspectingly to his trap-lines, leaving them alone for hours, sometimes days. Joseph prolonged his stay, feigning that his leg was still bad. It was a hard fight to win her, but he succeeded utterly.
Remember, he was a southern man with all his charm and eloquence; she had lived her whole life in the wilderness. She was no match for him. She surrendered. He told how he would unbind her hair and bury his face in it, living in transport, utterly given to him during Andre's absences.
Did he love her? Yes, in the brute's mad passion - but not as we might love, not as Andre loved. Whether she had heart or soul didn't matter. He was blind with insensate joy, shroud in her hair. He prolonged his stay without intending to take her. When the time came, he would leave. He feigned injury, and Andre treated him like a brother.
Need I tell you that Andre discovered them? He found them - with that wonderful hair so wrapped about them that even he was ensnared.
Andre had returned exhausted and unexpectedly. A terrible fight ensued; despite exhaustion, he would have killed Brecht had Brecht not drawn his revolver. In that moment between leveling the gun and firing, Marie found her answer - whom did she love? She sprang to her husband's breast, shielding him with a body that had been disloyal, and died with a bullet through her heart.Joseph Brecht told how, in horror and fear, he fled. Andre remained with his dead, swearing vengeance. Like a hunted hare, Brecht eluded him for weeks until Andre caught up. Scorning ambush, Andre attacked openly to choke the life out slowly. In that cabin, gasping, Brecht said, "It was one or the other. He had the best of me. I drew my revolver and killed him - killed Andre Beauvais as I had killed his wife."
Here in the South, Brecht might not have been a bad man; every heart holds a devil, but we don't know a man's evil until it's roused. Mad passion for a woman had roused him.
After twice becoming a murderer, the devil slunk away, leaving a husk without heart, slinking to evade justice. You of the Mounted Police were on his trail, but you never thought to seek him in the Sulphur Hell. For two years he had lived there. When he finished his story, he sat sane on the cot.
Then M'sieu, my comrade, spoke for the first time: "Let us bring up the dunnage from the canoe, mon pere." He led the way out, and I followed. Fifty steps away he stopped: "Ah, I have forgotten something. I will overtake you."
He returned to the cabin; I went to the canoe. He did not join me. When I came back, M'sieu stood at the door - transformed. The man of horrible silence smiled; his white teeth shone; his voice was another's. He seemed ten years younger. As I set down my load, he laughed, a hand on my shoulder.
Inside, Joseph Brecht lay across the cot, head down, eyes bulging, jaws agape. He was dead - choked to death. I understood.
"He made one leetle meestake, mon pere. Andre Beauvais did not die. I am Andre Beauvais."
That is all, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted. May the law have mercy!
# book_id: global-gutenberg-story-967af6bae3e944d0a7b08f225bcf1545
# book_title: The Case of Beauvais
# chapter_id: 1-the-case-of-beauvais
# chapter_title: The Case of Beauvais
# book_page: 7 / 7
# chapter_page: 7
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose
Joseph Brecht told how, in horror and fear, he fled. Andre remained with his dead, swearing vengeance. Like a hunted hare, Brecht eluded him for weeks until Andre caught up. Scorning ambush, Andre attacked openly to choke the life out slowly. In that cabin, gasping, Brecht said, "It was one or the other. He had the best of me. I drew my revolver and killed him - killed Andre Beauvais as I had killed his wife."
Here in the South, Brecht might not have been a bad man; every heart holds a devil, but we don't know a man's evil until it's roused. Mad passion for a woman had roused him.
After twice becoming a murderer, the devil slunk away, leaving a husk without heart, slinking to evade justice. You of the Mounted Police were on his trail, but you never thought to seek him in the Sulphur Hell. For two years he had lived there. When he finished his story, he sat sane on the cot.
Then M'sieu, my comrade, spoke for the first time: "Let us bring up the dunnage from the canoe, mon pere." He led the way out, and I followed. Fifty steps away he stopped: "Ah, I have forgotten something. I will overtake you."
He returned to the cabin; I went to the canoe. He did not join me. When I came back, M'sieu stood at the door - transformed. The man of horrible silence smiled; his white teeth shone; his voice was another's. He seemed ten years younger. As I set down my load, he laughed, a hand on my shoulder.
Inside, Joseph Brecht lay across the cot, head down, eyes bulging, jaws agape. He was dead - choked to death. I understood.
"He made one leetle meestake, mon pere. Andre Beauvais did not die. I am Andre Beauvais."
That is all, gentlemen of the Royal Mounted. May the law have mercy!
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