“Merci, my friend, what extravagance is this! The savour of that pot
does fairly turn my head!”
Alfred de Courtenay settled himself gracefully in one of McElroy's
chairs and smiled across at his host with a twinkle in his laughing
eyes.
A dozen candles, lit in his honour, where three were wont to suffice,
shone mellowly in the little room, and Rette de Lancy, still comely
despite her forty years and a certain lavishness in the matter of
avoirdupois, set down in the midst of the table a steaming dish with a
cover. There were a white cloth of bleached linen and cups of blue
ware that had come with her and Jack from across seas, also a silver
coffee-urn that had been her great-grandmother's. When the factor gave
word for a meal to these two he knew well that all dignity would be
observed. As for himself, his living of every day was scant and plain as
regarded the manner of its serving.
“What is it, M'sieu, that so assails the nostrils with delicious aroma,
if I may so far forget politeness? 'Tis not beef, assuredly,--there is
too much of the scent of the wild about it.”
“Moose,” replied McElroy, and by this time the vague vexation had blown
out of his heart as all ill-feelings were wont to do, “moose, killed in
the snows and hung in the smoke of a little fire until the very heart
of the wood is in the meat. And now, M'sieu, fall to. I would I had
something better than Rette's strong coffee in which to pledge you, but,
as you see, Fort de Seviere has no cantine salope. It is not the policy
of the Great Company, as you doubtless know, to abet its trade with the
Indians by the use of liquor.”
De Courtenay looked quickly up.
“Why, I thought,--but then I have much to learn, in fact, all to learn,
since I am but raw in the wilderness.”
Like men hungry and athirst from the hardships of the trail and the
stream, the camp and the portage, the guests did justice to the savoury
viands, and at last leaned back in repletion, while Rette took off the
plates and cups; the spoons and forks, and set in their stead a huge pot
of crumbled tobacco with a tin box containing pipes.
“And now,” said the factor, smiling, “let us have talk of that world of
which I am hungering for news. You are of the fall ship's load of new
arrivals, I take it?”
“No,” said De Courtenay, “it was last spring, about this time, that I
first saw the shores of the New World. Five of my men came with me from
across seas and the rest I picked on starting into the wilderness. They
are mostly Canadians of Scottish blood. I have a fancy that the strong
blond peoples are best for the rigours of what one may find in this
country. Though,” he laughed as at some reminiscence, “I have found so
far that my two swarthy guides are worth any three of the rest.”
“You have found the way hard?”
“Mother of God! If the rest is like the first of it, I think you may
find my bones bleaching beside some portage where I have given up the
ghost. Truly do we pay for our whims of caprice, M'sieu.”
“Whims?”
“Aye, what save a whim of the moment could have induced me to undertake
so great a hardship as this winning to the Saskatchewan? What save the
love of excitement sent me to be, like yourself, the head of a lost
trading-post in this far north country?”
The merry blue eyes were full of gaiety and light.
“Truly,--and I pay.”
A whim it might be, yet there was in the spirited face of Alfred de
Courtenay that which told plainly that it would be followed to its end,
be that what it might, as faithfully as though it were a deeper thing.
For a moment a little line appeared between the straight brows of the
factor.
The word of so grave an office mentioned as a “whim,” “a caprice,” went
down hard with him. There was nowhere in the heavens above nor the earth
below so serious a thing as that same office, and he served it with his
whole heart. Therefore he could not quite understand the other. Yet he
thought in a moment of De Courtenay's newness and the frown cleared. Of
a very wide tolerance was McElroy.
“And you came, I suppose, from York Factory, down by way of God's Lake
and the house there. What is the word of Anderson who presides there? A
fine fellow,--I met him once at Churchill.”
“York Factory? God's Lake?”
De Courtenay lowered his pipe and looked through the smoke.
“Nay,” he said, “I know nothing of those places, M'sieu.”
He turned to young Ivrey.
“It might be that these locations answer to different names. Heard you
aught from the guides of these two posts?”
“We did not pass them, Sir Alfred,” answered the young man soberly.
“Then, in Heaven's name, which way have you journeyed?” asked McElroy
amazed.
“Why, by way of Lake Nipissing, across the straits below the Falls of
St. Mary, by canoe along the shores of Lake Superior, into Pigeon River,
and so on up the various streams to your own Assiniboine--from Montreal.
How else, M'sieu?”
But the factor of Fort de Seviere had risen in his place, his face gone
blank with consternation.
“From Montreal!” he cried, “but did you not answer to me as friends and
of the Company?”
“Aye,” answered De Courtenay, also rising, the gaiety fading from his
face and his eyes beginning to sparkle bodefully, “of the North-west
Company, trading from Montreal into the fur country. I am sent of my
uncle Elsworth McTavish, who is a shareholder and a most responsible
man, to take charge of the post De Brisac on the south branch of the
Saskatchewan. But I like not this sudden gravity, M'sieu. Wherein have I
offended?”
“In naught, De Courtenay,” said McElroy quite simply, “save that you are
in the heart of the country belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, as
does this fort and all therein.”
“Nom de Dieu!” cried the other, springing back and tossing up his head;
“I knew it not! How is it, then, that at midday of this day we met on
the river one who told us of this post of De Seviere, and that it
served the Montreal merchants? That we should here find hospitality and
friends?”
“Eh?” shot out McElroy sharply. “Of what like was such a person?”
“A big man, swarthy and dark, with sullen eyes, clad in garments of
tanned hides and wearing a red cap and a knife in his belt. He bore on
his left temple a pure white lock amid his black hair.”
“Bois DesCaut!” said Edmonton Ridgar; “he has been these two days gone
in his canoe.”
“A traitorous trapper, M'sieu,” said the factor, “one who has umbrage at
me for a rebuke administered some time back and hopes by this sorry
joke to win revenge. But what is done cannot be helped. We have met
as friends,--the unfortunate fact that we find ourselves rivals,--that
almost speaks the word 'foes,' I must inform you, M'sieu, since the
strife between our companies has become so sharp,--should not cause us
to forget the bread we have broken between us personally. I still offer
you a night's rest.”
But De Courtenay had drawn himself to his slender height, his hand at
his hip, where, in other times, had dangled a sword.
“Nay, M'sieu,” he said quickly, “a blunder found and unremedied
becomes two. If I ay gather my men we will sleep outside an unfriendly
fort,--and in the name of De Courtenay allow me to repay the cost of
their entertainment.”
Reckless, indeed, was this young cavalier, else he would not have made
that speech.
Anders McElroy turned white beneath his tan and his fingers tapped the
table.
“Not ungrateful am I, M'sieu, but I stick by the colours I choose. If
our companies are rivals, then we are such, and I follow my master's
lead. It is at present the North-west organisation. I am pledged in
Montreal--and--I prove faithful.”
The young man's face was fired with that spirit which ever lay so near
the surface and he looked at his whilom host with a mighty hauteur.
“I thank you for your kindness, M'sieu, but I must decline it further.
Come, Ivrey,” and turning he picked up his wide hat, bowed first to
McElroy and then to Ridgar, and strode toward the outer door. As he
passed the lintel the not insignificant form of Rette blocked his exit,
en route for a cup she had left behind. With an instant flourish the hat
in his hand swept the logs of the floor, he seized the woman's toil-hard
fingers and bore them to his lips.
“Excellent, Madame, was that meal,” he murmured, “and never to be forgot
so long as one unused to hardship faces privation. I thank you.”
Comely Rette flushed to her sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood
that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with which
she acknowledged the compliment.
And with a last flash of his blue coat Alfred de Courtenay was gone.
McElroy ran his fingers helplessly through his tousled light hair and
faced his friend.
“Now, by all the Saints!” he said with a strange mixture of regret and
relief, “what an unhappy ending!”
But at that moment he was thinking of the wondrous beauty of the man and
of the picture of Maren Le Moyne's brown arms spread wide apart with the
laughing child between, and again that little feeling of vexation crept
into his wholesome heart.
Without in the soft night the late guest was striding, a graceful
figure, hurriedly down toward the gate he had entered so short a time
ago, and his slender hand played restlessly at his hip. His heart was
seething with swift-roused emotions. So had its quick stirrings brought
him into many a scrape in his eventful life. That word of his host,
“which speaks almost of foes,” sang in his ears.
And yet it had been given only in the spirit of enlightenment.
Behind, John Ivrey gathered up the men idling about the fire and talking
with the men of the post, where question and answer had begun to stir
uneasiness.
In a ragged, uneven line they strung out, fading into the darkness, and
presently from down the river some forty rods there rose up the columns
of their fires.
Fort de Seviere closed its gates and settled into the night with a
feeling of something gone awry.
By morning all was early astir, those within to witness the departure of
the strangers, and, those without for that same departure.
The canoes were floated, the men embarked, and all in readiness with the
first flame of the sun above the eastern forest when Alfred de Courtenay
presented himself at the gate and called for McElroy.
Gladly the factor responded, hoping somewhat to soften the awkwardness
of the situation by a godspeed, to be met by the Frenchman high-headed
and most carefully polite. A servant beside him held a wickered jug.
“With your leave, M'sieu,” said De Courtenay, “I wish to leave some
earnest of my gratefulness for what we have received at your hands.
Therefore accept with my compliments this small gift, which, as you
say you have no cantine salope, must come most happily. Once more,
farewell.”
The man set down the jug at McElroy's feet and strode toward the
landing. The master was turning more leisurely away with his uncovered
curls shining in the first level beams of morning, when he stopped and
looked past the portal within the stockade.
With a small brass kettle in her hand, Maren Le Moyne was coming down
the open way toward the well.
With a colossal coolness he forgot the presence of the factor and the
ready light began to sparkle in his blue eyes with every step of the
approaching girl. Swiftly he glanced to right and left, as if in search
of something, and meeting only the green slope of the shore, a growing
excitement flushed his face.
Suddenly he snatched from a crevice of the stockade a tiny crimson
flower which nodded, frail and fragrant, from its precarious foothold,
and sprang forward as she set her vessel on the well's stone wall.
Unsurpassed was the bow he swept her, this daring soldier of fortune,
to whose delicate nostrils the taking of chances was the breath of life,
and his smile was brilliant as the spring morning itself.
“A chance is a chance, Ma'amselle,” he said winningly, “and who would
not risk its turning? For me,--I looked upon your face but now, and
behold! I must give you something, and this was all the moment offered.”
With hand on heart he held forth the little flower.
“In memory of a passing stranger far from all beauty, wear it, I pray
you, this day in the dusk of that braid, just there above the temple.
Have I permission?”
He stepped near and lifted the crimson star, smiling down into the
astonished eyes of Maren Le Moyne, to whom no man in all her life had
ever spoken thus.
For a moment she stared at him, and her face was a field of fleeting
sensations. And then, slowly, the sparkle in his eyes lit her own, the
smile on his lips curled up the corners of her full red mouth, and the
charm of the moment, fresh and sweet as the new day, swept over her.
“A venturer,-you!” she said; “some kin we must surely be, M'sieu! 'Tis
granted.”
She rested her hands on the kettle's rim, and bent forward her head,
wrapped round and round with its heavy braids, and with fingers deft as
a woman's Alfred de Courtenay placed the flower in a shining fold.
Somewhat lengthy was the process, for the braid was tight and the green
stem very fragile, but at last it was accomplished, and Maren lifted her
face flushed and laughing.
“Thank you, M'sieu,” she said demurely; “God speed your journey.”
De Courtenay took the kettle from her, filled it himself, and when he
gave it back the smile was gone; from his face, but the light remained.
“Some day, Ma'amselle,” he said gravely, “I shall come back to Fort de
Seviere.”
The tall girl turned away with her morning's kettle of fresh water, and
the man stood by the well watching her swinging easily to its weight,
forgetful of the canoes, manned and waiting on the river's breast for
their leader, forgetful of the factor of the post, waiting in the shadow
of the wall, on whose face there sat a deeper shade.
Then he turned and ran lightly down the bank, leaped into the canoe held
ready, once more bowed, and as the little craft swept out to midstream,
he shook back his curls and lifted his face toward the country of the
Saskatchewan.