For a moment the whole evening scene, red with the late light, was set in the mould of immobility. The two fighting men at sound of that cry following hard upon the shot stopped rigidly, still clasped in the grip of rage, the women staring wide-eyed from the wall, the Bois-Brules, the leaning eager faces of the wild Nakonkirhirinons, the figure of the girl in the foreground, all, all were stricken into stillness by that dirge-like cry. For only the fraction of a second it held, that tense waiting.
Then from nine hundred throats there shot up to the sky, turquoise and pink and calm, such a sound as all the northland knew,—the wild blood-cry of the savage.
It filled the arching aisles of the shouldering forest, rolled down the breast of the river, and echoed in the cabins of the post, and with it there broke loose the leashed wildness of the Indians. There was one vast surging around the lodge where Ridgar knelt with the figure of the chief in his arms, another where a tumbling horde fought to get to the factor and De Courtenay.
At the stockade gate Prix Laroux, swift of foot and strong as twenty men in the exigency of the moment, swept the women into his arms and rushed them within the post. Above the hideous turmoil his voice rose in carrying command,
“Into the post! Into the post,—every man inside! Man the rampart!”
It fell on ears startled into apathy by the suddenness of the tragic happening, and there was a wild confusion of white people pulling out of the mass like threads, all headed for the open gate. Swift as light those guards of the guns on the rampart sprang to place, the watcher of the portal swung the great studded gate ready for the clanging close, and, in a twinkling, so alert to peril do they become who pierce the wilderness, there were without only that howling mass of savages, De Courtenay, McElroy, and Edmonton Ridgar gazing with dimmed vision into the fast glazing eyes of the dying chief.
Only they? Standing where she had leaped at the cavalier's kiss, her eyes wide, her lips apart, was Maren Le Moyne. In the hurrying rush of frantic people she had been forgotten and she was utterly helpless.
As in a dream she saw the leaping forms close in upon the two men who fought for her, knew that those of De Seviere were pouring past her to safety, heard the boom of the great gate as it swung into place, and for her life she could move neither hand nor foot. Her body stood frozen as in those horrid dreams of night when one is conscious, yet held, in a clutch of steel.
Over the heaving heads with their waving eagle feathers she saw the head and shoulders of De Courtenay rise, tipped sidewise so that his long curls swung clear, shining in the light, and already he was bound with thongs of hide.
She saw his handsome face again sparkling with that smile that was so brilliant and that bore such infinite shades of meaning.
Now it was full of devil-may-care, as if he shrugged his shoulders at a loss at cards, and in that second it fell upon her standing in horror.
“Ah, Ma'amselle!” he called, across the surging feathers; “the tune changes! But you have my heart, and I,—I have one kiss! Adieu, my Maid of the Long Trail! The chance was worth its turning.”
Then the shining head sank into the mass and she heard no more.
She was conscious only of a giant form lurching, red-eyed and yelling, out of the turmoil, of brown hands that clutched her arms, and of another form which shot past her. For the second time in a few moments one man had reached for her and another flung himself to her rescue. She saw the Indian reel back with a red line spurting across his eyes, felt herself lifted and flung across a shoulder, and knew that the gate behind was swinging open. The next instant she slid down to her feet with her face in the buckskin shirt of Marc Dupre, who leaned shaking against the stockade wall and held her in a grip like steel, while Henri Corlier shot the bolts into place.
Huddled in white groups were the women, some of them already raising their voices in weeping, others silent with the training of the women of the wilderness. The men faced each other with lips drawn tight and breath that came swiftly. Prix Laroux, his dark eyes cool and sharp, looked swiftly over the populace as they stood, for with that first shot every man in Fort de Seviere had rushed to the gate, and in that first moment of getting breath he calculated their strength and their ability.
A leader born himself, he was looking for a leader among McElroy's men; but, with that intrepid factor himself gone and Edmonton Ridgar also, there was nowhere a man with the signs of leadership upon him.
Through Prix's mind this went while they stood listening to the death-wail that was beginning to rise from the tepees without.
Then he quietly took command, knowing himself to be best fitted.
“Corlier,” he said quietly, “leave the gate to Cif Bordoux. Take one man and get to the southwest bastion. You, Gifford,” turning to that young clerk who worked in the sorting-room, “man the northwest. Garcon and Dupre will take the forward two. The rest will stand ready with guns and ammunition along the four walls and at the gates. We know not what will transpire.”
As if their factor spoke, the men of De Seviere turned to obey, feeling that strange compelling which causes men to follow one man to death on the field of battle, and which is surely the gift of God.
Out of his shaking arms Marc Dupre loosed Maren, the trembling lessening as the danger passed. That sight of the defenceless girl among the Indians had shaken him like a leaf in the wind, had nerved his arms with iron, had worked in him both with strength and weakness.
Now he looked into her eyes and said never a word, for once again he saw that they were dazed and void of knowledge.
As he set her upon her own strength, she swayed. Her eyes went round the hushed groups of faces with wild searching. At last they found the face of her leader, and clung there, dark and dull.
“Prix!” she cried. “Prix! Open the gate!”
“I cannot, Maren,” he said quietly; “'twould be but madness.”
“But they are without!”
All horror was in the cry.
“They are among the Indians!”
“Aye,—and may the good God have mercy on them!”
Laroux hastily made the sign of the cross.
“We must guard the post, Maren.”
“But—” She turned her eyes slowly around from face to face and not a woman there but read her secret plain, the open script of love,—but for which man?
“But-they-will—be—” She did not finish the sentence, staring at Laroux. Once she moistened her lips.
“They will—Prix,—as I am your leader, open that gate!”
With sudden reviving the daze went out of her features and the old light came back to her eyes, the far-seeing, undaunted light that had beaconed the long way from Grand Portage. She was every inch the leader again, tall, straight against the logs, her brown arm pointing imperiously to the closed gate.
“Open, I say!”
For a moment Laroux faced her squarely, the man who had tied himself to her hand, pledged himself to forge the way to the Whispering Hills, who followed her compelling leadership as these lesser men had turned to follow his but now. Then he set his will to hers.
“I will not,” he said quietly.
With no more words she flung herself upon the gate and tore at the chains, her strong hands able as a man's. As the sight of her in peril had worked for both weakness and strength in Dupre, so had McElroy's plight affected her. That helpless moment was the one defection of her dauntless life.
Now again she was herself, reaching for the thing of the moment, and the roar outside the palisade, constantly rising in volume, in menace and savagery, brushed out of her brain every cloud of shock. Laroux caught her from behind, pinioning her arms.
“Maren,” he said quietly, “hear me. Out there are five hundred warriors wild as the heart of the Pays d'en Haut, howling over the body of their dying chief. What would be the opening of the gate but the massacre of all within? Could forty men take the factor from them? There would be but as many more scalps on their belts as there are heads within the post. See you not, Maren?”
In his iron grip the girl stood still, breathing heavily. As he ceased speaking a great sigh came from her lips, a sigh like a sob.
“Aye,” she said brokenly, “I see,—I see! Mary Mother! Let me go, Prix. I see.”
Laroux loosed her, knowing that the moment was past, and went at once about his duties of throwing the post into a state of defence.
Once more strong and quiet, Maren went to the cabin by the gate. Here Marie knelt at her bed with a crucifix grasped in her shaking hands, her face white as milk and prayers on her trembling lips.
“Maren!” she gasped, with the child's appeal to the stronger nature. “Oh, Maren, what will befall? For love of God, what will befall?”
“Hush, Marie,” answered Maren; “'tis but a tragedy of the wild. Naught will befall us of the post.”
“But those without? What is that roaring of many throats? Little Jean Bleaureau but now ran past crying that the Nakonkirhirinons were killing the factor”
“No!” Marie jumped at the word like one shot, so wild and sudden it was. “No! No! Not yet!”
Even in the stress of the moment Marie stared open-mouthed at her sister.
“Holy Mother! It is love,—that cry! You love the factor!”
“Hush!” whispered Maren, dry-lipped.
The roar from the river bank had sharpened itself into one point of utterance which pierced the calm heavens in a mingling of native speech, French and broken English from Nakonkirhirinon and halfbreed, and, worse than both, dissolute “white Indian,” and its burden was,
“A skin for a skin!”
After that tense moment of hush following the shot, McElroy had no distinct recollection of what occurred. He was conscious of a sickening knowledge of Negansahima with his banded brown arms stretching into the evening light, of the tepees, of the river beyond, of the face of Edmonton Ridgar, and of all these etched distinctly in that effect of sun and shade which picks out each smallest detail sometimes of a rare evening in early summer. Then the whole scene went out in a smother as an avalanche of bodies descended upon him. He could smell the heavy odour of flesh half-naked, the scent of the hidden paint, he felt arms that fought to grip him and fingers that clutched like talons. Under it all he went down in the grass of the slope, fighting with all his strength, but powerless as a gnat in a pond. Above the turmoil of cries and guttural yells, even while he felt himself crushed at the bottom of that boiling mass, he heard the light voice of De Courtenay ringing clear in his whimsical farewell to Maren Le Moyne. Then he was wrenched up through the mass, something struck him on the head with a sharp blow, a shower of stars fell like a cataract, and the sickening scents in his nostrils faded away.
When he again opened his eyes it was to behold real stars shining down from a velvet sky, to hear the river lapping gently at the landing, and the night birds calling in the forest. From the prairie beyond the fringe of woods to the east there came the yapping of the coyotes, and far to the north a wolf howled.
At first a sense of bewilderment held him. Then in a rush came back the memory of what had happened. He listened intently. Back and forth, back and forth somewhere near went a soft footstep, the swish and glide of a moccasin. He strained his eyes, which smarted terribly, into the darkness, and presently descried a tall form pacing slowly up against the skyline of his vision and back again into the shadows. A single feather slanted against the stars. A guard pacing the place of captives.
With a slight movement McElroy tried to lift a hand.
It was immovable. He tried the other. It likewise refused his will.
So with both feet when he attempted, ever so cautiously, to move them.
He was bound hand and foot, and with cruel tightness, for with that tiny slipping of his muscles there set up all through him such a tingling and aching as was almost unbearable.
His head seemed a lump of lead, glued to whatever it lay upon, and big as a buttertub.
Turning his eyes far as he could to the right, he looked long in that direction. Faintly, after a while, he picked out the straight line of the stockade top, the rising tower at the corner. The line of the wall faded out in darkness the other way, strain as he might. To the left were the ragged tops of the tepees, their two longer sticks pointing above the others.
From the sound of the river, he must be between it and the stockade gate.
Presently his numbed hearing became conscious of a sound somewhere near, a sound that had rung so ceaselessly since his waking that it had seemed the background for the lesser noise of the sentry's slipping moccasin. It was the weird, unending, unbeginning wail of the women, the death-song of the tribe mourning the passing of a chief, the voices of some four hundred squaws blending indescribably.
McElroy listened.
With consciousness of that his mind grew clearer and he began to think.
What a fool he had been!
Once more had he played like an unbalanced boy at the game of love.
What right had he to strike De Courtenay for kissing the woman whom he had won with his red flowers and his curls before the populace? That he himself had fancied for a brief space that she was his was no excuse for plunging like a boy at his rival's throat. If he had held his peace, all would be well now and the old chief would not be lying stiff and stark somewhere in the shadowed camp, the women wailing without fires.
It was no balm to his sore heart that he in his blundering wrath had wrought this fresh disaster. And his post, De Seviere, which he had won by daring service and loyalty to the H. B. C., what would become of it?
Who after him would rule on the Assiniboine?
For well he knew that death, and death thrice,—aye, a million times refined,—awaited so luckless a victim as he whose hand had killed the great chief. But he had not killed Negansahima. It was the gun in De Courtenay's hand. Ah, De Courtenay! Where was De Courtenay? A captive assuredly, if he was one. They had both gone down together under the foam of that angry human sea. And, if he was here, his antagonist must be somewhere near. With exquisite torture, McElroy slowly turned his head to right and left. At the second motion his face brushed something close against his shoulder. It was cloth, a rough surface corrugated and encrusted with ridges,—what but the braid on the blue coat of the Montreal gallant!
There was no start, no answering movement at his touch. The rough surface seemed strangely set and still.
He lay silent and thought a moment with strange feelings of new horror surging through him.
Was De Courtenay dead?
Or was it by chance a stone under the braided coat, a hillock where it had been thrown? That strange feeling of starkness never belonged to a human body soft with the pulse of life.
For hours McElroy lay staring into the night sky with its frosting of great northern stars, and passed again over every week, every day,—nay, almost every hour,—since that morning in early spring when she had stepped off the factory-sill to accompany little Francette to the river bank where Bois DesCaut stood facing a tall young woman against the stockade wall.
With dreary insistence his sore heart brought up each sweet memory, each thrill of joy of those warm days. He saw every flush on her open face, every droop of her eyes. Again he saw the white fire in her features that day in the forest glade when she spoke of the Land of the Whispering Hills. He pondered for the first time, lying bound and helpless among savages, of that unbending thing within her which drove her into the wilderness with such resistless force. Granted that she had loved him as he thought during that delirious short space of time, would love have been stronger than that force, or would it have been sacrificed? She was so strong, this strange girl of the long trail, so strong for all things gentle, so unmoving from the way of tenderness. Proving that came the picture of the tot on her shoulder, “dipping as the ships at sea, ma cherie,” and the look of her face transfigured. And yet home for her was “the blue sky above, the wind in the pine-tops, the sound of water lapping at the prow of a canoe.” So she had said on that last day they spoke together in happiness, passing in diffident joy to the gate to meet De Courtenay's fateful messenger.
Of all women in the vast world she was the one woman. There was never another face with that strange allurement, that baffling light of strength and tenderness.
Sore, sore, indeed, was the heart of the young factor of Fort de Seviere as he lay under the stars and listened to the death-wail in the darkened camp.
Nowhere was there a fire.
Desolation sat upon the Nakonkirhirinons.
Along toward dawn, presaged by the westward wheeling of the big stars, tom-toms began to beat throughout the maze of lodges. They beat oddly into the air, cold with the chill of the coming day.
McElroy's thoughts had left the great country of the Hudson Bay and travelled back along the winding waterways, across the lakes, and at last out on that heaving sea which bore away from his homeland. Once more he had been in the smoke of London town, had looked into the loving eyes of his mother and gripped the hand of his tradesman father. Once more he had wondered what the future held.
The sudden striking up of the tom-toms answered him.
This.
This was to be the end of his eager advance in the Company's favour, the end of that good glass of life whose red draught he had drunk with wholesome joy, the end of love that had but dawned for him to sink into aching darkness.
He sighed wearily. So poignant was his sense of loss and the pain of it that the end was a weariness rather than a new pain.
The thing that hurt was the fact that he himself had juggled the cards of fate to this sorry dealing.
The sudden rage concerning De Courtenay had spent itself. There remained only the deep anger of the man who has lost in the game of love. And yet, what right had he to cherish even this wholesome anger against his rival when the maid had chosen of her own free will? As well hold grudge to the great Power whose wisdom had given the man such marvellous beauty. As he lay in the darkness listening to the unearthly noises he worked it all out with justice.
He alone was to blame for the sorry state of things.
De Courtenay was but a man, and what man, looking upon Maren Le Moyne, could fail to love her?
Therefore, he freed his rival of all blame.
And Maren,—oh, blameless as the winds of heaven was Maren!
What had she given him that he could construe as love?
Only a look, a blush to her cheek, the touch of a warm hand.
In his folly he had hailed himself king of her affections when perchance it was but the kindliness of her womanly heart.
And what maid could be blind to De Courtenay's sparkling grace,—compared to which he was himself a blundering yokel?
Thus in bound darkness he reasoned it all out and strove to wash away the anger from his heart.
And presently there came dawn. First a cold air blowing out of the forest, and then a deeper darkness that presently gave way to faint, shadowy light.
Here and there tall figures came looming, ghostly-fashion, out of chaos, to take slow shape and form, to resolve themselves into tapering lodges, into hunched and huddled groups.
And with light came action.
McElroy saw that around the central lodge before the gate there was a solid pack of prostrate Indians covering the ground like a cloth, and from this centre came the tom-toms and the wailing.
It was the lodge of the chief and within lay the stark body of the murdered Negansahima.
As the faint light grew, one by one the warriors rose out of the mass like smoke spirals, drawing away to disappear among the tepees. Soon there came the sound of falling poles and McElroy knew that they were striking the camp.
For what?
Why, surely, for one thing.
A chief must go to the great Hunting Ground from his own country; in his own country must his bones seek rest.
They would journey back up the long and difficult trail down which they had just come to that vague region from which they hailed.
But what of him, and of De Courtenay, if he was yet alive?
He wondered why they had been reserved.
The light came quickly and he looked eagerly around on the moving camp.
With quickness and precision the whole long village was reduced in a few minutes to rolled coverings, gathered and tied utensils, stacked packs of furs, and ranged canoes already in the water lining the shore.
He could not help a feeling of regret for this wild people, coming but few suns back with their rich peltry, their pomp, and their hopes of gain, as they prepared for the back trail, the whole tribe in deepest mourning.
Of all the tents, that one before the post gate alone stood, silent reproach to the white man's ways.
Around it still knelt a solid pack, wailing and beating the drums.
As the grey light turned whiter, he turned his stiffened neck for a glance at the thing against his shoulder.
He looked into the smiling eyes of Alfred de Courtenay.
“Bonjour, M'sieu,” whispered that ardent venturer; “you nuzzled my arm all night. Apparently we are fellows in captivity, as we have been opposed in war,—and love.”
“Aye, M'sieu,” whispered back McElroy, not relishing the turn of the sentence but passing it by; “and a sorry man am I for this state of events. I owe you my regrets,—not for what I did, mark you,—but for the way and the time and place. Had I waited and proceeded as a gentleman, we should not be in this devilish plight, nor that fine old chief a victim to our blunder.”
“Tish!” said De Courtenay lightly; “'tis all in a day's march. And, besides, I have,—memories,—to shorten the way.”
The pacing guard came back and the two men fell silent.
At that moment a stentorian call pealed above the dismantled camp, and there began a vast surge of the mass of Nakonkirhirinons toward the waiting canoes, a dragging of goods and chattels, a hurry of crying children, a scurrying of squaws. In the midst of it the flaps of the big lodge were opened and, amid redoubled wailing, a stark wedge of the length of a tall man came headforemost out, carried on the shoulders of six gigantic warriors; and walking beside it, bareheaded in the new day, was Edmonton Ridgar, his face pale and downcast. He paid no heed to the two men on the ground, though one was his factor and his friend.
The women changed their wail as the procession started for the waiting canoes, and from all the long camp there drew in a horde of savages, their eagle feathers slanting in the light, bare shoulders shining under unhidden paint, skin garments and gaudy shirts alike cast to the winds.
They surged along chanting their unearthly song, and the mass of them swept by where lay the two men.
Not a glance was given them, no taunts, no jeers with which the tribes of the North-west were wont to torment their captives.
The swish of the moccasined feet was as the sound of many waters.
“No time for play,” thought McElroy; “that will come later,—when we have reached the Pays d'en Haut.”
For he knew now that he and De Courtenay were to be taken along.
The body of Negansahima was placed in the first canoe, covered with a priceless robe of six silver foxskins laced together; the six big warriors, their halfnaked bodies painted black, manned the paddles, and at the prow there stood the sad figure of Edmonton Ridgar.
At one side had drawn out old Quamenoka and his Assiniboines, their way lying to the west. They raised a chant as the first canoe circled out and headed down the stream. Behind it fell in five canoe-loads of Bois-Brules, their attachment a mystery, and the river became alive with the great flotilla.
Not until the death-boat had passed the far bend did the pacing Indian give way to a dozen naked giants, who lifted the captives with ceremony and carried them down the slope.
As he swung between his captors McElroy looked back at the closed gates of De Seviere and a sharp pain struck at his heart, a childish hurt that the post he had loved should watch his exit from the light of life with unmoved front. It seemed almost that the bastioned wall was sensate, as if the small portholes here and there were living eyes, cold and hard with indifference, nay, even a-glitter with selfishness.
But quick on the sense of hurt came the knowledge which is part of every man in the wilderness; and he knew well that every face in the little fort was drawn with the tragedy, that from those blank portholes looked human eyes, sick with the thing they could not avert, that whoever had taken charge within was only working for the safety of the greatest number, and with the thought his weakness passed.
Only one more pang assailed him.
He gave one swift thought to Maren Le Moyne. Where in Fort de Seviere was she, and what was in her heart?
Then he was swung, still bound, into the bottom of a canoe, saw De Courtenay tossed into another, felt the careless feet of Nakonkirhirinons as the paddlemen stepped in, and existence became a thing of gliding motion, the lapping of water on birchbark, and the passing of a long strip of cloud-flecked sky, pink and blue and gold with the new day.
Lulled by the rocking of the fragile craft that shot forward like a thing of life beneath the paddles dipping in perfect unison, McElroy lay its a sort of apathy for hours, watching the sliding strip of sky and the bending bodies of the Indians. He knew that the end awaited him somewhere ahead, but it was far ahead, very far, even many leagues beyond York factory, and his mind, again dropping into the dulness of his early awakening, refused to concern itself with aught save the blue sky and the sound of water lapping on birchbark. That sound was sweet to his befuddled brain, suggesting something vaguely pleasant.
Ah, yes, it was the deep voice of the maid of the long trail speaking of the streams and the waving grass of that visionary Land of the Whispering Hills.
He fell to wondering at broken intervals if she would ever reach it, to see drowsy visions of the tall form leading its band of venturers into the wilderness beyond Lac a la Croix, penetrating that country which tried the hearts of men, and with the visions came a sadness.
She would go without love, mourning her cavalier of the curls, and who would be responsible for the desolation of the heart he would fain have made happy but himself?
McElroy sighed, and the visions faded.
When he again awakened it was evening and camp had been made. Fires danced and crackled all up and down the reach of shore set like a half-moon of pearl in a sea of emerald, where the forest shouldered down to the stream, and the smell of cooking meat was poignantly sweet. Women were busy at the work of the camp, carrying wood, mending the fires, tending the kettles swung from forked sticks, and scolding the scrambling children.
Here and there a half-naked Indian stalked silently, his long feather slanting in the light, but for the most part the warriors were gathered in a silent mass a little way apart where the big tepee had been set up.
The clouds were gone from his brain, and he was keenly conscious of hunger.
He was still bound, though not so tightly, some of the thongs having been taken off entirely, and he found that he could sit up with comparative ease, though his hands were still fast behind him and his ankles tied.
There was no pacing guard this time, distance and possession making such precaution needless, for well the Nakonkirhirinons knew that none from the little post on the Assiniboine would attempt rescue in face of so great a horde as an entire tribe.
McElroy sat up and looked around.
One of the first things he encountered was the face of the cavalier, still smiling and looking very much as it had looked in the dawn.
Like that encounter, too, De Courtenay was the first to speak in this.
“Aha, my fighter of the H. B. C.,” he laughed from his seat against a towering maple, “have your laggard wits come in from wool-gathering?”
He, too, was more comfortably bound, and McElroy noticed that there were little rubbed creases in the sleeves of the gay blue coat where the numbing bonds had cut. The sparkling spirit was as high in his handsome face as it had been that long past morning morning by the well. The factor wondered if there was in heaven or earth anything with power to dim it.
He was to see, and marvel at, the test.
“Aye,” he answered the cheerful query; “it has been a weary day, M'sieu, it would seem, with my senses drifting out and in at ragged intervals of which I have only vague impressions. How has it fared with you?”
“Much as another day. There has been plenty to see and enjoy, even from under the feet of our hasty friends of the paddles.”
“Enjoy! Holy Mother! Have you not been thinking over your sins, M'sieu?”
“Sins? I have none. Who thinks of sins while the red blood runs? Rather have I dreamed dreams of,—memories. Ah, no, M'sieu, it has not been a weary day to me, but one of swift emotions, of riots of colour in a strip of racing sky when the sun turned his palette for a gorgeous spread. The sunset was stupendous at its beginning. Now the darker greys come with so much forest.”
McElroy fell silent, biting his lip.
Sorry as he felt for the plight of his rival, the old anger was close to his heart, and it seemed that the rascal knew it and probed for a weak spot with his smiling allusions to his memories. Memories of what but of the red lips of a girl?
The young factor, too, had memories of those red lips, though they gave him only a pain so bitter as not to be borne.
Almost it forced from his heart the gentle justice he had striven so hard to keep in sight.
As he sat thinking and staring at the twilight river rippling below, a man came from the forest at the back of the camp and passed near on his way to the fires.
It was Bois DesCaut, and he did not lift his evil eyes.
The white lack on his temple gleamed with a sinister distinctness amid his black hair.
“Double foe,” thought McElroy; “I am to pay for my own words and Maren's blow.”
As the trapper passed he sidled swiftly near the Nor'wester and something dropped from a legstrap. It was a small knife, and it tumbled with seeming carelessness close to De Courtenay's knee.
“So,” thought McElroy again; “by all rights that should have been for me.”
DesCaut went on into the heart of the camp among the women, and De Courtenay began moving ever so cautiously toward the priceless bit of steel.
With that hidden in one's garments what not of hope might rise within a daring heart?
What not, indeed! Life and liberty and escape and a home-coming to a rival's very hearthstone, and more,—soft lips and arms of a woman.
The cavalier was smiling still as he edged inch by inch along the little way, his back against the maple.
“See you, M'sieu,” he whispered; “how loyal are the servants of the North-west Company?”
McElroy did not answer. Bitterness was rife within him. Even his one friend in the wilderness, Edmonton Ridgar, on whose sound heart he would have risked his soul, had passed him by without a look.
Verily, life had suddenly been stripped, as the hapless birch, of all its possessions.
He was thinking grimly of these things when a young squaw came lightly up from somewhere and stopped for a second beside De Courtenay. She looked keenly at him, and stooping, picked up the knife.
“Another turn to the wheel, M'sieu,” said that intrepid venturer; “what next?”
As if his thought had reached out among the shadows of the wood where stood the death tepee and touched its object, Edmonton Ridgar appeared among the lodges. He was bare-headed, and McElroy saw that his face was deep-lined and anxious, filled with a sadness at which he could but marvel and he passed within a stone's throw without so much as a glance at his superior.
No captive was this man, passing where he listed, but McElroy noticed the keen eyes watching his every move.
What was he among this silent tribe with their war-paint and their distrust of white men?
It was a hopeless puzzle, and the factor laid it grimly aside. Next to the closed and impregnable front of his own post what time he passed from its sight, this cold aloofness of his chief trader cut to inmost soul.
But these things were that life of the great North-west whose unspeakable lure thralled men's souls to the death, and he was content.
It was chance and daring and danger which drew him in the beginning to the country, love of the wild and breath of the vast reaches, something within which pushed him forward among these savage peoples, even as the same thing pushed Maren Le Moyne toward the Whispering Hills, sent De Courtenay to the Saskatchewan.
At any rate he was very hungry, and when a bent and withered crone of a squaw brought food and loosed his right hand, the young factor tossed up his head to get the falling hair out of his eyes and fell to with a relish.
“Faugh!” said De Courtenay with the first mouthful; “I wonder, M'sieu, is there nothing we can do to hasten the end? Many meals of this would equal the stake.”
Whereat the gallant smilingly tossed the meat and its birchbark platter at the woman's feet.
“If you would not prefer starvation, I would suggest that you crawl for that, M'sieu,” said McElroy gravely; but the wrinkled hag gathered it up, and left them to the night that was fast settling over the forest.
Thus began the long trail up to the waters of Churchill and beyond into that unknown region where few white men had yet penetrated, and fewer still returned.
Day followed day. Summer was upon the land, early summer, with the sweet winds stirring upon the waters, with gauze-winged creatures flitting above the shallows where willow and vine-maple fringed the edges and silver fish leaped to their undoing, with fleecy clouds floating in a sapphire sky, and birds straining their little throats in the forest.
McElroy and De Courtenay were loosed of their bonds and given paddles in the canoes, a change which was welcomed gladly.
At night a guard paced their sleeping-place and the strictest surveillance was kept over them.
Down the Assiniboine, into Red River, and across Portage la Prairie went the great flotilla, green shores winding past in an endless pageant of foliage, all hands falling to at the portages and trailing silently for many pipes, one behind the other, all laden with provisions and packs of furs, the canoes upturned and carried on heads and shoulders.
Of unfailing spirits was Alfred de Courteray.
“'Od's blood, M'sieu,” he would laugh, oddly mixing his dialect, “but this is seeing the wilderness with a vengeance! Though there is no lack of variety to speed the days, yet I would I were back in my post of Brisac on the Saskatchewan, with a keg of good-liquor on the table and my hearty voyaguers shouting their chansons outside, my clerks and traders making merry within. Eh, M'sieu, is it not a better picture?”
“For you, no doubt. For me, I had rather contemplate a prayer-book and recall my mother's teaching in these days,” answered McElroy simply.
“What it is to have sins upon one's conscience!” sighed the venturer. “Verily, it must preclude all pleasant thoughts.” And he fell to humming a gay French air.
Presently the foaming river, growing swifter as it neared the great lake, leaped and plunged into the wide surface of Winnipeg, shooting its burdens out upon the glassy breast of the lake like a spreading fan.
Here the blue sky was mirrored faithfully below with its lazy clouds, the green shores rimmed away to right and left, and the swarming canoes, with their gleaming paddles, made a picture well worth looking at.
The Nakonkirhirinons were going back to the Pays d'en Haut by another way than that by which they had come.
Hugging the western shore, the flotilla strung out into the formation of a wedge, with the canoe of the dead chief at the apex, and went on, day after day, in comparative silence.
With the passing of the sleeping green shores, the ceaseless slide of the quiet waters, a tender peace began to come into McElroy's soul.
With the gliding days he could think of Maren without the poignant pain which had been unbearable at the beginning, could linger in thought over each detail of her wondrous beauty, the clear dark eyes, sane and earnest and full of the hope of the dreamer, the full red mouth with its sweetness of curled corners, the black hair banded above the smooth brow, the rounded figure under the faded garment, the shoulders swinging with the free walk after the fashion of a man.
Verily, the wilderness held healing as well as hurt.
So followed each other the dawns and the summer noons and the marvellous twilights, with pageantry of light and colour and soft winds attuned to the songs of birds, and the two men neared the mystery of Fate.