Back in De Seviere the gloom of the forest in bleak winter sat heavily on every cabin.
Women went about with misty eyes and men were oddly silent.
Not one of all his people who did not love the whole-hearted factor with his ready laugh, his sympathy in all the little life of the post, his unfailing justice; not one who did not strive to keep away the haunting visions of leaping flames above fagots, and all the ugly scenes that imagination, abetted by grim reality, could conjure up.
On that fateful morning when the rising sun saw the slim canoes of the Nakonkirhirinons trailing around the lower bend, Maren Le Moyne stood by the little window in the small room to the east of the Baptiste cabin and covered her face with her hands.
Great breaths lifted her breast, breaths that fluttered her open lips and could not fill the gasping lungs beneath, that sounded in the little room like tearless tearing sobs.
“Heavenly Mother!” she gasped between them; “Thou who art woman...Mary...”
But the prayer hung aborted between the shuddering sighs.... Who shall say that it is not such a cry, torn from the depths of the spirit by instinct groping for its god, which reaches swiftest the Eternal Infinite?
Until the last sound had faded into the morning, until the last little ripple had widened to the shores and died among the willows, until the screaming birds, startled from the edges of the river, had settled into quiet, she stood so, fainting in her Gethsemane. She alone of all the post had remained away from the great gate where was gathered the populace at the nearest vantage point.
Silence of the young day hung in the palisade, a silence that cut the soul with its tragic portent.
Even little Francette Moline, weeping openly, pressed close in the mass and jerked with unconscious savagery of spirit the short ears of the husky at her heels,—that Loup whom no man dared to touch save only the master his fierce spirit must needs acknowledge. It had been DesCaut by brutality. Now it was the little maid by love.
Strange cat of the woods, Francette could be as riotous in her tenderness as in her enmity.
In the bastions Dupre and Garcon and Gifford watched the scene with the grim quiet of men born in the wilderness, while at the portholes trapper and voyageur and the venturers from Grand Portage handled their guns and waited.
None knew what might happen, for these Indians were not to be judged by any standard they knew.
Henri Baptiste held the trembling Marie in his arm, while Mora and Anon and Ninette clung together in a white-faced group. A little way aside Micene Bordoux comforted a frightened woman and held a child by the hand.
Big Bard McLellan stood by a porthole, his eyes always pensive with his own sadness, gazing with grave sorrow to where McElroy swung down the slope between his captors.
Thus they watched his going, and he had been spared that sick pain had he known.
When it was over, Prix Laroux turned back to the deserted factory and stood hesitating on its step.
This was one of the crises which so commonly confronted the fur industry in the North-west.
What had he a right to do?
The simple man considered carefully. What right but the right of humanity to do the best for the many could send a servant into the seat of power?
And yet who among them all was fitted?
Not the clerks, youths from the Bay, not the traders nor the trappers.
With a daring heart the venturer from Grand Portage went in across the sill.
To a man the men of De Seviere rallied to him and council was held.
Everywhere in the trading-room, the living-room behind, were evidences of the factor and Ridgar. It seemed as if the two men had but just stepped out-were not in hostile hands drifting down the river toward an unspeakable fate.
In the midst of the grave-faced council another step sounded on the sill and once again Maren Le Moyne stood looking in at the factory door, though this time there was no eager interest on her face, only a drawn tenseness which cut to the heart of her leader like a knife.
“Come in, Maren,” he said in aching sympathy.
“Men,” she said straightly, “is there none among you who will turn a hand to save his factor?”
Over every face her eyes travelled slowly, hot and burning.
In every face she read the same thing,—a pitying wonder at the folly of her words.
“Aye,” spoke up Henri Corlier, grizzled and weathered by his years of loyal service to the Great Company, “not a man among us, Ma'amselle, but would give his life if it would serve. It would not serve.”
“And you?” her gaze shifted feverishly to Laroux; “you, Prix?”
“'Tis useless, Maren. What would you have us do?”
“Do?”
She straightened by the door, and the hand on the lintel gripped until the nails went white.
“Do? Anything save sit with closed gates in safety while savages burn your factor at the stake! The Hudson's Bay brigade comes from York this very month. What easier than to meet it and get help of men and guns?”
“Nay,” said Laroux gently; “you do but dream, Maren.”
Whereat the girl turned abruptly from the doorway and went down among the cabins.
Here and there in the doorways groups of women stood together, their voices hushed and trouble in their eyes.
As Maren passed, seeing nothing to right or left, they looked in pity upon her.
The heart of this woman was drifting with the canoes,—but with which man?
“'Tis the gay Nor'wester with his golden curls,” whispered Tessa Bibye sympathetically.
“The Nor'wester? 'Tis little you know, truly, Tessa,” said the young wife of old Corlier. “What maid in her senses would look twice at yonder be-laced dandy when a man like Anders McElroy stood near?”
“Aye, an' may the Good God have mercy on our factor!” whimpered a withered old woman, wife of a trapper, making the sign of the cross; “nor hold back His mercy from the other!”
Night seemed to fall early on Fort de Seviere, waiting sadly for its healing touch on fevered hearts.
Throughout the long day a waiting hush had lain upon the post, an expectancy of ill.
Over the dark forest the stars came out on a velvet sky, and a little wind came out of the south, nightbirds called from the depths, and peace spread over the Northland like a blanket.
While the twilight lasted with its gorgeous phantasmagoria there were none of the accustomed sounds of pleasure in the post,—no fiddle squeaked by the stockade wall, no happy laughter wafted from the cabins. Even the sleepy children seemed to feel the strangeness and hushed their peevish crying.
Night and darkness and loneliness held sway, and in one heart the shadows of the world were gathered.
What was the meaning of this Life whose gift was Pain, where was the glory of existence?
By the window to the east Maren Le Moyne stood in the darkness, with her hands upon her breast and her face set after the manner of the dreamer who follows his visions in simpleness of soul.
Once again a great call was sounding from the wilderness, as that which lured her to the Whispering Hills had sounded since she could remember, once more the Long Trail beckoned, and once more she answered, simply and without fear.
She waited for the depth of night.
Long she stood at the little window, facing the east like some worshipper, even until the wheeling stars spelled the mid hour.
To Marie she gave one thought,—child-like Marie with her dependence and her loving heart. But Marie, to whom she had been all things, was safe in the care of Henri. There remained only the dream of the Whispering Hills and the illusive figure of a man,—an old man, sturdy of form and with blue eyes set in swarthy darkness.
Poignant was the pain that assailed her at that memory. Would she ever reach that shadowy country, ever fulfil the quest that was hers from the beginning? Did she not wrong that ghostly figure which seemed to gaze with reproach across the years? Her own blood called, and she turned aside to follow the way of a stranger, an alien whose kiss had brought her all sorrow.
And yet she was helpless as the water flowing to the sea. The primal quest must wait. Her being turned to this younger man as the needle to the pole, even though his words were false, his kiss a betrayal.
When the mid hour hung in silence over the wilderness a figure came out of the darkness and stood at the gate beside that watcher, Cif Bordoux, who paced its length with noiseless tread.
A strange figure it was, clad in garments that shone misty white in the shadow, whose fringes fluttered in the warm wind and whose glowing plastron glittered in the starlight.
“Cif Bordoux,” said the figure, “I would go without.”
Wondering and startled, Bordoux would have refused if he dared; but this was the leader of the Long Trail and her word had been his law for many moons, nor had he ever questioned her wisdom.
Therefore he drew the bolts and opened the gate the width of a man's body, and Maren Le Moyne slipped outside the palisade into the night.
A rifle hung in her arm and a pouch of bullets dangled at her knee.
Swiftly and silently she pushed a canoe into the water at the landing, stepped in, and with one deep dip of a paddle sent the frail craft out to midstream. She did not turn her head for a farewell glance toward the post, but set her face toward the way that led to the Pays d'en Haut and the man who journeyed thither.
Deep and even her paddle took the sweet waters and the current shot her forward like a racer. The dark shores flowed by in a long black ribbon of soft shadow, their leaning grasses and foliage playing with the ripples in endless dip and lift. No fear was in her, scarce any thought of what she did, only an obeying of the call which simplified all things.
McElroy was in danger, and she followed him.
That was all she knew, save the mighty sorrow of his falseness which never left her day or night.
He had taught her love in that one passionate embrace in the forest, and it was for all time.
What mattered it that he had turned from her for another? That was the sorry tangle of the threads of Fate,—she had naught to do with it.
Love was born in her and it set a new law unto her being, the law of service.
Every fibre in her revolted at thought of his death. If it was to be done beneath the pitying Heaven, he should be saved. He must be helped to escape. The other was insupportable. Nothing mattered in all the world save that. Therefore she set herself, alone and fearless, to follow the tribe of the Nakonkirhirinons to the far North if need be, to hang on their flank like a wolverine, to take every chance the good God might send. Chief of these was her hope of the Hudson's Bay brigade which should be coming into the wilderness at this time of year. Somewhere she must meet them and demand their help.
There was no rebellion in her, no hope of gain in what she did. Love was of her own soul alone, since that evening by the factory when she had seen the factor bend his head and kiss the little Francette.
No more did she think of his words in the forest, no more did she dream of the wondrous glory of that first kiss.
Far apart and impersonal was McElroy now,—only she loved him with that vast idolatry which seeks naught but the good of its idol.
Even if he loved Francette he must be saved for that happiness.
Therefore she knelt in a cockleshell alone on a rushing river and sped through, a wilderness into appalling danger.
Such was the compelling power of that love which had come tardily to her.
At dawn Maren shot her craft into a little cove, opal and pearl in the pageantry of breaking light, and drawing it high on shore, went gathering little sticks for a micmac fire.
The bullet pouch held small allowance of food. She would eat and sleep for a few hours.
Deep and ghostly with white mist-wraiths was the forest, shouldering close to the living water, pierced with pine, shadowy with trembling maple, waist-high with ferns. She looked about with the old love of the wild stirring dumbly under the greater feeling that weighted her soul with iron and wondered vaguely what had come over the woods and the waters that their familiar faces were changed.
With her arms full of dead sticks she came back to the canoe,—and face to face with Marc Dupre. His canoe lay at the cove's edge and his eyes were anguished in a white face.
“Ma'amselle,” he said simply, “I came.”
No word was ready on the maid's lips. She stood and looked at him, with the little sticks in her arms, and suddenly she saw what was in his eyes, what made his lips ashen under the weathered tan.
It was the same thing that had changed for her the face of the waters and the wood. She had learned in that moment to read a man better than she had read aught in her life beside the sign of leaf and wind.
“Oh, M'sieu!” she cried out sharply; “God forbid!”
The youth came forward and took the sticks from her, dropping them on the ground and holding both her hands in a trembling clasp.
“Forbid?” he said and his voice quivered; “Ma'amselle, I love you. Though my heart is full of dread, I am at your feet. By the voice of my own soul I hear the cry of yours. We are both past help, it seems, Ma'amselle,-yet am I that stone to your foot which we pledged yonder by the stockade wall. You will let me go the long trail with you? You will give me to be your stay in this? You will let me do all a man can do to help you take the factor from the Nakonkirhirinons?”
The infinite sadness in Dupre's voice was as a wind across a harp of gold, and it struck to Maren's heart with unbearable pain.
Her eyes, looking straight into his, filled slowly with tears, and his white face danced grotesquely before her vision.
“M'sieu,” she said quite simply, “I would to God it had been given me to love you. We have ever seen eye to eye save in that wherein we should have. And I know of nothing dearer than this love you have given me. If you would risk your life and more, M'sieu, I shall count your going one of the gifts of God.”
“I cannot ask you to return, Ma'amselle,—too well do I know you,—nor to consider all you must risk for, this,—life and death and the certain slander of the settlement,—though by all the standards of manhood I should do so. The heart in me is faithful echo of your own. This trail must be travelled,—therefore we travel it together. And, oh, Ma'amselle! Think not of my love as that of a man! Rather do I adore the ground beneath your foot, worship at the shrine of your pure and gentle spirit! See!”
With all the prodigal fire of his wild French blood, the youth dropped on his knee and, catching the fringe on the buckskin garment, pressed it to his lips.
For once Maren, unused to tears, could speak no word.
She only drew him up, her grip like a man's upon his wrists, and turned to the making of the fire.
Dupre drew up his canoe and took a snared wild hen from the bow.
“I think, Ma'amselle,” said the youth when Maren awaked some hours later from a heavy sleep, during which Dupre had killed the little smoke of the fire and kept silent watch from the shore, “that we had best leave your canoe here and take mine. It is much the better craft.”
“So I see. Mine was but the first I could put my hands upon in the darkness.”
“'Tis that of old Corlier, and sadly lacking in repair. If you will steer, Ma'amselle?”
Thus set forth as forlorn a hope as ever lost itself in that vast region of hard living and daily tragedy, with the strength of the man set behind the woman's wisdom in as delicate a compliment as ever breathed itself in silken halls, and the blind courage of the dreamer urged it on..
At the forks of Red River they passed the signs of a landing.
Here had the Indians summarily sent ashore all of the Nor'westers who had been with De Courtenay and who had followed in the uncertainty of fear, not daring to desert lest they be overtaken and massacred.
All, that is, save Bois DesCaut and the lean, hawk-faced Runners of the Burnt Woods.
Thanking their gods, the North-west servants had lost no time in taking advantage of the fact that they were not wanted, leaving their Montreal master to whatever fate might befall him.
Dupre went ashore and examined the reach of land, the trampled grass, a broken bush or two.
“Ten men, I think,” he said, returning, “and all in tremendous haste. The Nor'westers escaping, I have no doubt. Would our captives were among them.”
“No such fortune, M'sieu,” said Maren calmly, “Heard you not the cry before the gate in that unhallowed scramble what time they took the factor and the venturer? 'Twas 'a skin for a skin.' There are many guards.”
The summer day dreamed by in drowsy beauty, like a woman or a rose full-blown, and Maren, who would at another time have seen each smallest detail of its perfection through the eye of love, saw only the rushing water ahead and counted time and distance.
Dupre, kneeling in the bow, his lithe brown arms bare to the shoulder, where the muscles lifted and fell like waves, was silent. Sadness sat upon him like a garment, yet lightened by a holy joy.
Odd servers of Love, these two, who knew only its pain without its pleasure, yet who were standing on the threshold of its Holy of Holies.
Of nights they sat together at the tiny fire of a few laid sticks and talked at intervals in a strange companionship.
Never again did they speak of love, nor even so much as skirt its fringes, though the young trapper read with wistful eyes its working in the woman's face. Out of her eyes had gone a certain light to be replaced by another, as if a star had passed near a smouldering world and gone on, changed by the contact, its radiance darkened by a deeper glow.
The firm cheeks, dusky as sunset, had lost something of their contour.
Like comrades, too, they shared the work and the watches, the girl standing guard with rifle and ball while Dupre snatched heavy sleep, herself dropping down like the veriest old wolf of the North on mossy bank or green grass for the rest they sternly shortened.
“'Tis near the time of the Hudson's Bay brigade, is it not, M'sieu?” she would ask sometimes. “Think you we shall meet them surely if we skirt the eastern shore of Winnipeg?”
And Dupre would always answer, “Assuredly. By the third week in July they will be at the upper bend where the river comes down from York. The Nakonkirhirinons will hold to the west, going up Nelson River and west through the chain of little lakes that lie to the south of Winnipeg, thence gaining Deer River and that Reindeer Lake which sends them forth into their unknown region beyond the Oujuragatchousibi. We, then, will make straight for the eastern shore, skirting upward to the interception of the ways, and we will surely meet the brigade.”
“And they will surely lend help, think you, to a factor of the Company in such grave plight?”
“Surely, Ma'amselle.”
So the hours of day and darkness slipped by with dip of paddle and with portage, with snatched rest and fare of the wild.
In a plentiful forest and on an abundant stream Dupre was at no loss for food. Trout, sparkling and fresh from the icy water, roasted on forked sticks stuck in the ground beside a bed of coals, made fare for an epicure, and the young trapper, watching Maren as she knelt to tend them, shielding her face with her hand, thought wistfully of a cabin where the fire leaped on the hearth and where this woman passed back and forth at the tasks of home.
“'Tis too great a thing to ask of le bon Dieu,” he said in his heart; “'tis not permitted even that one dream of such joy,—'twould be heaven robbed of its glory.”
So he fished and hunted for her, as the primal man has hunted and fished for his woman since time began, tended her fires and guarded her sleep, and the wistful sadness within him grew with the passing days.
Down that northbound river the lone canoe with its two people hurried after the great flotilla, silent and determined, like a starved wolf on the flanks of a caribou herd.
Out on the breast of the great blue lake it, too, was shot by the rushing waters, lone little cockleshell, to head its prow to the eastward, where the green shore curved away, to take its infinitesimal chance of victory against all odds.
When the sun came out of the eastern forest, a golden ball in a cloud of fire, it saw the light craft already cutting the cool waters of Winnipeg. When it sank into the western woods the bobbing dot was still shooting forward.
Child of the wilderness by birth was Dupre, child of the wilderness by dream and desire was Maren, and its simple courage was inborn in both.
The Indians were a day and night ahead, hurrying by dawn and dusk to the north, that the body of the dead chief, cured like a mummy by the smoke curling from the big tepee at every stop, might have burial, the earth-bound spirit begin its journey to the shadowy hunting-grounds.
When McElroy took his last look backward at the blue lake from the northern end, Maren and Dupre were making their last camp before the Big Bend on the eastern shore.
“How soon, think you, M'sieu?” she asked that night, standing beside the little fire; “how soon will they come,—the H. B. C.'s from York?”
“To-morrow, most like, or in a few days at most.”
This evening luck had deserted his fishing, so the trapper took a rifle and went into the woods after a fool-hen. Thoughts kept him company; thoughts of love and its strangeness, of the odd decrees of Fate and the helplessness of man. How all the world had changed with its coming, this love which hail been born in an hour what time he had listened to a woman's voice beside the stockade wall, and how the very soul within him had changed also.
Where had been lightness and the recklessness of youth there was now a wistful tenderness so vast that it covered his life as the pearly mist covered the world at dawn.
Where he had taken all of joy that post and settlement, friend and foe could give, lived for naught but his sparkling pleasures, he was now possessed of a great yearning to give to this woman, this goddess of the black braids; to give, only to give to her; to give of his strength, of his overwhelming love; aye, of even his heart's blood itself as he had told her in the beginning.
He was long in finding a fat grouse this evening, and when he returned night was thick on forest and shore.
Light of tread in his moccasins, Dupre came quietly out not far from the blaze of the small fire, and stopped among the shoulder-high brush that fringed the forest.
In the glow of the fire Maren knelt before a green stake set upright in the earth, from a fork of which there hung a black iron crucifix, its ivory Christ gleaming in the light. On either side of this pitiful altar there flamed, in lieu of candles, a fagot taken from the pine.
On her knees, her hanging hands clasped and her face, raised to the Symbol, she spoke, and the deep voice was sweet with its sliding minors.
“Jesu mia,” she said softly, “forgive Thou our sins—Ours. Teach me Thy lesson,—me with pain that will not cease. For him,—Oh, Thou Lord of Heaven, comfort him living,—shrive him Thyself in dying! Let not the unspeakable happen! Send, send Thou that help without which I am helpless, and failing that, send me the strength of him who wrestled with the Angel, the wisdom of Solomon! Not for my love, O Christ, but for him, grant that I may find help to save him from death! And more,—deliver also that venturer who, but for my thoughtless words of the red flower, would be now safe on the Saskatchewan. These I implore, in mercy. And for this last I beg in humbleness of spirit complete,—Grant Thou peace to the friend whose eyes eat into my heart with pity! Peace, peace, Jesu of the Seven Scars, have mercy on him, for he is good to his foundations! I beg for him peace and forgetting of unhappy me! Reward him in some better fate, this youth of the tender heart, of the great regard! Save us, Thou Lamb Jesus—”
In the dark eyes there was a shine of tears, the lips, with their curled corners, were trembling. The face upturned in the fitful light was all tenderness. The calm brown hands clasped before her were all strength.
Marc Dupre, in the forest's edge, felt his breast heave with an emotion beyond control as he stood so, looking upon the scene, listening to the sliding voice. Darkness hid the wilderness, out on the face of the lake a fish leaped with a slap, and a nightbird called shrilly off to the south. With aching throat the trapper turned softly back into the woods. When he came later along the shore, with heavier step than was his wont, the fagot and the forked stake were gone, there was no black crucifix, and Maren waited by the fire, water brought from the lake in Dupre's small pail, the little sticks ready for the roasting.
“Let me have the grouse, M'sieu,” she said; “the hunt was long?”
But Dupre did not answer.
No farther did they dare venture lest they pass to the west and miss the brigade coming down from the north and entering the lake at the northeast extremity.
So they waited on the shore in anxiety of spirit, watching the bright waters with eyes that ached with the intensity of the vigil, and Dupre hunted in the forest and over the sand dunes, among the high meadows that broke the heavy woods in this region, and down along the reaches of the water.
“Farther with each day!” thought Maren to herself. “Holy Mother, send the brigade!”
And Dupre echoed the thought in sadness of soul.
“More pain for her heart in each hour's delay. Would the trial were done!”
About three of the clock on the first day of waiting there came sounds of singing and a string of canoes rounded a bend of the shore at the south.
“M'sieu!” cried Maren swiftly; “who comes?”
Dupre, tinkering at the canoe overturned on the pebbly beach, straightened and looked in the direction she indicated.
He looked long with hand to eye, and presently turned quietly.
“Nor'westers, I think, Ma'amselle. They come from Fort William to the Wilderness.”
Fort William!
Back along the trail went memory with mention of the post on the distant shore of Lake Superior. How oft had she peeped with fascinated eyes from behind her father's forge at sturdy men in buckskins who spoke with the blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she felt the old yearning for the unknown.
And this was it,—this gleaming stretch of inland sea, one man who stood by her and another who betrayed her with a kiss, yet who drew her after him as the helpless leaf, fallen to the stream, is whirled into the white destruction of the rapids.
Aye, verily, this was the unknown.
She was looking down the lake with the sun on her uncovered head, on the soft whiteness of the doeskin garment, and to young Dupre she had never seemed so near the divine, so far and unattainable.
“Ma'amselle,” he said presently, “if these newcomers speak us, heed you not what I may say. There are times in the open ways when a man must lie for the good of himself—or others.”
The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his face. It was grave and quiet.
“Assuredly,” she said after a moment's scrutiny. “Had I best hide in the bushes, M'sieu?”
“No, they have seen us.”
Sweeping forward, the brigade of the Nor'westers, for such it proved to be, headed near in a circle and the head canoe turned in to shore.
“Friend?” called a man in the prow; whom Dupre knew for a wintering partner by the name of McIntosh of none too savoury report.
“Hudson's Bay trapper, M'sieu,” he said politely, going a step nearer the water. “I wait, with Madame my wife, the coming of our brigade from York, now one day overdue.”
“Ah,—my mistake. I had thought the H. B. C.'s this fortnight gone down. As ever, they are a trifle behind.”
While he addressed Dupre his bold eyes were fastened on Maren, where she hung a dressed fish on a split prong.
“Not behind, M'sieu,” said the young man gently. “They but take the time of certainty. A Saulteur passing this way at daylight reported them as at McMillan's Landing.”
“Then your waiting is short. I am glad,—for Madame. So lone a camp must be hard for a woman.”
With the words the Nor'wester scanned the girl's face with a glance that pierced her consciousness, though her eyes were fixed on her task. Not a tinge of deeper colour came to her cheeks. There was no betrayal of the part Dupre had assigned her, and with a word of parting the canoe swung out to its place, though McIntosh's eyes clung boldly to her beauty so long as he could see her.
“Ah-h,—a close shave!” thought the trapper as he picked up a splinter and once more fell to upon the boat.
Twenty-four hours later there came out of the north the thrice blessed brigade of the H. B. C., bound down the lake to Grand Rapids, where the canoes would separate into two parties, one going up the Saskatchewan to Cumberland House, the other down to the country of the Assiniboine.
Eager as a hound for the quarry Maren stood forth beside Dupre to hail them.
Head of the brigade was Mr. Thomas Mowbray, a gentleman of fine presence and of gentle manners.
In answer to the hail from shore he came to, and presently he stood in the prow of his boat listening to an appeal that lightened his grave eyes.
“Men we must have, M'sieu,” Maren was saying passionately; “men of the Hudson's Bay. Against all odds we go of a truth, but strategy and wit accomplish much, and the Nakonkirhirinons have no thought of rescue. Besides, the farther north they get the less keen will be their vigilance. With men, M'sieu, we may retake, by strategy alone of course, the factor of Fort de Seviere. Therefore have we come across your way, In the Name of Mary, M'sieu, I beg that you refuse me not!”
She was like some young priestess as she stood in the westering light on the green-fringed shore, one hand caught in the buckskin fringe at her throat and her eyes on Mr. Mowbray's upright face.
“Upon my word, Madame—?” he said when she had finished.
“Ma'amselle, M'sieu,” she corrected simply.
“Ma'amselle,—your pardon,—upon my word, have I never seen such appalling courage! Do you not know that you go upon a quest as hopeless as death? This tribe,—I have heard a deal too much about them, and once they came to York two seasons back,—are unlike any others of the Indians of the country. Ruled by a peculiar justice which takes 'a skin for a skin'—not ten or an hundred as do the Blackfeet or the Sioux,—they yet surpass all others in the cruelty of that taking. Have you not heard tales of this surpassing cruelty, Ma'amselle?”
“Aye, we have heard. It hastens our going. M'sieu the factor awaits that cruelty in its extremest manner with the reaching of the Pays d'en Haut.”
“Mother of God!” said Mr. Mowbray wonderingly. “And yet,—I see!”
“And he is Hudson's Bay, M'sieu,” said the girl sharply; “a good factor. Would the Company not make an effort to save such, think you?”
Mr. Mowbray stood a moment, many moments, thinking with a line drawn deep between his eyes. Out on the burnished water the canoes lay idly, the red kerchiefs of the trappers making bright points of colour against the blue background.
Presently he said slowly
“What you ask is against all precedent, Ma'amselle, and I may lose my head for tampering with my orders,—but I will see what can be done.”
The brigade drew in, and when dusk fell upon the wilderness a dozen fires kept company with the lone little spiral from Dupre's camp.
Sitting upon the shingle with her hands clasped hard on her knees, Maren shook her head when the young trapper brought her the breast of a grouse, roasted brown, along with tea and pemmican from the packs of the H. B. men.
“I thank you, my friend,” she said uncertainly; “but I cannot—not now. Not until I know, M'sieu. Without many hands at the paddles how can we overtake the Nakonkirhirinons?”
Thus she sat, alone among men, staring into the fire, and it seemed as if the heart in her breast would burst with its anxiety. A woman was at all times a thing of overwhelming interest in the wilderness, and such a woman as this drew every eye in the brigade to feast upon her beauty, each according to the nature of the man, either furtively, with tentative admiration, or openly, with boldness of daring.
And presently, after the meal was over, she saw Mr. Mowbray gather his men in a group. For a few moments he spoke to them, and a ripple of words, of ejaculations and exclamations, went across the assemblage like a wave.
“Nom de Dieu! Not alone?”
“To the Pay d'en Haut,—those two?”
“A woman? Mother of God!”
Wondering eyes turned to the figure in the glow of the fire, to the brown hands hard clasped, the face with its flame-lit eyes.
“Five men and a good canoe I send with them,” said Mowbray quietly; “who goes? Know you it is a quest of death.”
“Who goes, M'sieu?” cried a French trader. “I! 'Tis worth a year of the fur trade!”
“And I!”
“And I!”
“And I!”
Once more she had made her appeal to man, man in the abstract, and once more he had come to her, this maid of dreams.
Mr. Mowbray had lost half his brigade had he not fixed on those who were the strongest among the volunteers, the best canoe-men, the best shots.
Such were these men of the wilderness, excitable, ready for any hazard, drawn by the longest odds, and to serve a woman gave the last zest to danger.
Seldom enough did a woman appeal to them in such romantic wise.
“Brilliers,—Alloybeau,—Wilson,” picked out Mr Mowbray, with a finger pointing his words; “McDonald,—Frith,—make ready the fourth canoe, Take store of pemmican and all things necessary for light travel and quick. From to-morrow you will answer to Ma'amselle. When she is through with you report to me, either at Cumberland or York, according to the time.”
And he left his men to walk over and seat himself beside Maren Le Moyne on the shingle.
It was dark of the moon and the night was thick with stars and forest sounds. Out on the lake beyond the ranged canoes at the water's edge, the fish were slapping.
“Ma'amselle,” said Mr. Mowbray gravely, “I have detailed you five men, a canoe, and stores. May God grant that they may serve your purpose.”
A long sigh escaped the girl's lips.
“And may He forever hold you in His grace, M'sieu!” she said tremulously; “and bless you at the hour of death!”
“And now, Ma'amselle,” he said gently, “tell me more of this strange adventure. How comes it that a young maid, alone but for a youthful trapper, goes to the Pays d'en Haut after a factor, of the Company? Why did this duty not fall to the men of the post?”
“They said, as you, M'sieu, but an hour back, that it was a quest of death. They love life. I love the factor.”
She made her explanation simply, in all innocence, looking gravely into the fire, and Mr. Mowbray gasped inwardly.
“I see. So Anders McElroy is your lover. A fine man, worthy of the love of such a woman, and blessed above men in its possessing if I may make so bold, Ma'amselle.”
“Nay,—you mistake.”
Maren shook her head.
“Not my lover. I but said that I love the factor He does not love me, M'sieu.”
“What? Heaven above us! What was that? Does not love you! And yet you go into the Pays d'en Haut after the North Indians? You speak in riddles.”
“Why, what plainer? Life would die in me, M'sieu, did I leave him to death by torture. I can do no less.”
Mr. Mowbray sat in silence, amazed beyond speech.
When he rose an hour later to go to his camp he laid a hand on the beaded shoulder wet with the night dew.
“Ma'amselle,” he said, “I have seen a glimpse of God through the blind eyes of a woman. May Destiny reward you.”
Thus it came that before the dawn reddened the east the camp of the brigade broke up for the start to the south and west, and one big canoe with six men waited at the shore for one woman, who held both the hands of Mr. Mowbray in her own and thanked him without words.
As the lone craft shot forth upon the steel-blue waters the leader of the Hudson's Bay brigade looked after the figure in the bow, glimmering whitely in the mists, and an unaccustomed tightness gripped his throat.
He had two daughters of his own, sheltered safe in London,—two maids as far from this woman of the wild as darkness from the light, soft, gentle creatures, and yet he wondered if either were half so gentle, so truly tender.
Ere the paddles dipped, the men in the canoes with one accord, touched off by some quick-blooded French adventurer, set up a chanson,—a beating rhythmic song of Love going into Battle,—and every throat took it up.
It flowed across the lightening face of the waters, circled around the lone canoe and the woman therein, and seemed to waft her forward with the God-speed of the wilderness.
She lifted her hand above her without turning her head, and it shone pale in the mist, an eerie beacon, and thus the boat passed from view in the greyness, though as the paddles dipped for the start the song still rung forth, beating along the shore.