So passed out of Fort de Seviere one who was destined to be interwoven
with its fortunes.
Anders McElroy watched him go until the shadow of the great trees on the
eastern shore, long in the level sun, quenched the light on his silken
head and the men of the five canoes had taken up a song of the boats,
their voices lifting clear and fresh on the wings of the new day, until
the first canoe turned with the curve of the river above and was lost,
the second and the third, and even until the last had passed from view
and only the song came back.
Then he turned back into the gate and the tender mouth that was all
Irish above the square Scottish jaw was set tight together.
His foot touched the wickered jug and he called Jean Saville.
“Take this, Jean,” he said, “and give each of the men a cup. 'Tis a
shame to waste it.”
But for himself he had no taste for the stranger's gift of payment.
He was thinking of the red flower in Maren Le Moyne's black hair and a
vexation, past all reason held him.
But the spring was open and there was soon more to occupy his mind than
a maid and a posy and a reckless blade from Montreal.
At dusk of a day within that week a trapper brought word of a hundred
canoes on the river a day's journey up-country, laden with packs of
winter beaver, and bound for the post.
The Indians were coming down to trade.
Picturesque they were, in their fringed buckskin cunningly tanned and
beaded, their feathers and their ornaments of elk teeth and claws of the
huge, thick-coated bears. At day-dawn they came, having camped for the
night a short distance above the fort, to the letter display of their
arrival, and they swept down in a flotilla of graceful craft made of the
birch bark and light as clouds upon the water.
All was in readiness for them, for the factor had been expecting them
for a fortnight back; and, when the crackling shots of the braves
announced their coming, McElroy gave orders that the three small cannon
mounted on a half-moon of narrow breastwork to the south of the main
gate, and just before a small opening in the stockade for use in case of
attack, should be fired in salute.
These were the quiet and friendly Assiniboines, and the first of the
tribes, being the nearest, to reach the factory that year.
De Seviere was early awake and all was astir within its walls, for
this was the great time of the four seasons. Eagerly the maids and
the younger matrons flocked down to the great gate to peer out at the
gathering craft, afloat like the leaves of autumn upon the breast of the
little river,--two braves to a canoe, the gallant front of the young
men flanking and preceding that which held the leader of the expedition,
chief of the tribe, distinguished by its flag fluttering in the morning
wind upon a pole at the stern,--at the bedizened figure of the chief
himself, and lastly those canoes which held the women, the few children,
and even a dog or two.
Thus they came, those simple children of the forest and the lakes,
the open ways and the fastnesses, of the untrammelled summers, and the
snow-hindered winters, to the doors of the white man, dependent at last
upon him for the implements of life,--the gun, the trap, the knife, the
kettle, and the blanket.
Presently Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader of Fort de Seviere, came down
the main way between the cabins, passing alone between the rows of the
populace, and went forward to the lading to receive the guests.
The canoes had by this time swept swiftly and with utmost skill into two
half-moons, their points cutting to the landing; and down the reach of
water between them, slightly ruffled into little waves and sparkling
ripples by the soft wind and the deftly dipping paddles, there came the
larger craft of Quamenoka the leader.
“Welcome, my brothers!” called Ridgar, in their own tongue, for this man
had been born on the shores of Hudson Bay and knew the speech of every
tribe, from the almost extinct Nepisingues, of the Nepigon, to the
far-away Ouinebigonnolinis on the sea coast. His hair was thickly
silvered from the years he had spent in the service of the H. B. C., and
his heart was full of knowledge gathered from the four winds. Therefore,
his worth was above price and he would have been factor of a post of his
own, instead of chief trader for young Anders McElroy.
“We greet our brother,” gravely replied Quamenoka as he stepped from his
canoe, gathering his blanket around his body with a practised sweep.
Swiftly four headmen disembarked from the first four canoes of the
half-moon which closed in with scarce a paddle dip, so deft were the
braves with their slender, shining blades of white ash, and stood
behind.
Side by side, conversing in a few sentences, the trader and the chief
entered the post, followed by the headmen and proceeded to the factory,
where McElroy stood to welcome them in the open door.
They entered, to the ceremony of the pipe, the speech, and the bargain,
while those without made a great camp two hundred strong all along the
bank of the stream, beached the canoes, stacked the beaver packs, set up
the tepees of the seventeen sticks, and built the little fires without
which no camp is a camp.
In a little space the quiet shore was all a-bustle and activity reigned
where the silence of the spring morning had lain, dew-heavy.
Among those most eager who peered at the gate, and who presently
ventured forth to the better view the bustling concourse of braves and
squaws, was Maren Le Moyne, her dark eyes wide, soft lips apart, and
face all a-quiver with keen enjoyment of the scene.
These were the first she had ever seen of those Indians who came from
the west. Who knew? Perhaps those moccasined feet had trod the virgin
forest of her dreams, those sombre eyes looked upon the Whispering
Hills, those grave faces been lifted to the sweet wind that sang from
the west and whose caress she felt even now upon her cheeks.
Perhaps,--perhaps, even, some swift forest-runner among them, far on his
quest of the home of the caribou or with news of some friendly tribe,
had come upon a man, an old man rugged of frame and face, with blue eyes
like lakes in his swarthy darkness, and muscles that bespoke the forge
and hammer.
Who knew?
Maren's strongly modelled chin twitched a bit while the little flame of
tenderness that flickered ever behind the graveness of her eyes leaped
up. She longed for their speech that she might go among them and ask.
A little way along the stockade wall to the north there lay a great
rock, flat and smooth of surface, and here the girl drew apart from the
women and sat herself down thereon, hands clasping her knees and the
level sun in her eyes. Her thoughts were soon faraway on the misty trail
they had worn for themselves in the many years they had traversed the
wilderness in search of what it held, and the eyes between the narrowed
lids became blank with introspection. And as she sat thus, a little way
withdrawn from the scurrying activity of the scene, there came a step
on the soft green sod and a slim form in buckskins halted beside her.
It was young Marc Dupre, and his devil-may-care face was alert and
smiling.
“Is that seat big enough for two, Ma'amselle?” he asked impertinently,
though the heart in him was thumping a bit. This was a woman, he
recalled having thought, for whom one would fillip the face of Satan,
and he was uncertain whether or no he had made a right beginning.
Maren started and looked swiftly up at him.
“It is, M'sieu,” she said quietly, “if those two are in simple, sensible
accord. Not if one of the two coquettes.”
Over the handsome features of the youth there spread a deep red flush.
“Forgive me, Ma'amselle,” he said, “my speech was foolish as my heart.
They are both sobered.”
“Then,” said the girl, drawing aside the folds of her dress, “you may
sit beside me.”
With a sudden diffidence he sank upon the stone, this handsome boy whose
tongue was ever ready and whose heart of a light o' love had taken toll
from every maid in the settlement, and for the first time in his life he
had no sprightly word, no quip for his careless tongue.
They sat in silence, and presently he saw that her eyes were again
half-closed and the dreaming look had settled back in them. She had
forgotten his presence.
Never before in his experience had a woman sat thus unmoved beside him
when he longed to make her speak, and it stilled him with silent wonder.
He thought of the words of Pierre Garcon that day on the river bank when
this maid was new to the post, “if there is, I would not be the one to
waken it and not be found its master,” and they sent a thrill to his
inmost being.
Who would awaken her; he wondered, as he watched the cheek beside him
from the tail of his eye, a round womanly cheek, sweet and full and rich
as a damask rose with the thick lashes above shining like jet.
Obedient to her silence, he sat still while she dreamed her dream out to
its conclusion, and presently she straightened with a little breath like
a sigh, unclasped her hands from her knees and turned her glance upon
him as if she saw him for the first time.
His head whirled suddenly and he sought for some common word to cover
his rare confusion.
“See, Ma'amselle,” he said, pointing, “the well-lashed packs of the fat
winter beaver. Truly they come well laden, these Assiniboines, and
we may well thank le bon Dieu for the wealth of skins. Is it not a
heartening sight?”
The eyes of Maren Le Moyne left his face and swept swiftly down the
gentle slope to where the Indians had piled their bales of furs. At the
sight they darkened like the waters of a lake when a little wind runs
over its surface.
“A heartening sight? Nay, M'sieu,” she said, shaking her head, “I can
find no joy in it.”
“What?”
The trapper was aghast.
“No pleasure in the fruits of a fat season?”
“See the packs of marten, the dark streaks showing a bit at the edges
where the fur rounds over the dried skin. How were those pelts taken,
M'sieu?”
“How? Why, most cunningly, Ma'amselle,--in traps of the H. B. Company,
set with utmost skill, perhaps on a stump above the line of the heavy
snows, or balanced nicely at the far end of a slender pole set leaning
in the ground. The delicate hand of a seasoned player must match itself
with the forest instinct of these small creatures. The little pole holds
little snow and the scent of the bait calls the marten up, when,
snap! it is fast and waiting for the trapper and the lodge of the
Assiniboines, the women and the drying.”
“Yes. And those hundreds of beaver, M'sieu?”
Marc Dupre's eyes were shining and the red in his cheeks flushing with
pleasure.
What more to a man's liking than the exploitation of knowledge gained
first-hand in the pursuit of his life's work?
“Again the trap,” he said, “set this time at the edge of a stream where
the beaver huts peek through the ice, or lift their tops above the open
water. Neatly they are set, cunning as an Indian himself; hidden in the
soft slime at the margin if the water runs, waiting with open jaws in
the small runway above the dam where the creatures come out from the
swim. A sleek head lifting above the ripples a scrambling foot or
two,--snap! again the price of a pound and a half of powder, a tie of
tobacco. No footmark must the hunter leave, Ma'amselle, unsplashed with
water, no tainting touch of a hand ungloved on chain or stake or trap
itself. Ah! one must know the woods and the stream, the cold and the
snow and the winds.”
“You know them, M'sieu, I have no doubt,” said Maren, “for you follow
the trapping trail. And those beautiful silver fox, frosty and fine as
the sparkle of a winter morning? The heavy hides of the bear, soft and
glossy and thick as a folded blanket?”
“All the trap,--unless the latter drops through the flimsy roof of some
well-hidden dead-fall, covered with brush.”
The girl was not looking at him, her glance being still on the bustling
camp below. The fingers on her knee were laced tight together.
Now she began to speak in a low voice, deep and even.
“Aye! All you have said is true. Wealth, indeed, is in those packs, and
patience and cunning and utmost skill, defiance of the snows and the
crackling cold, long miles on snowshoes and the hardships of the trail,
the nights in the bough-tied huts, the pack galling the shoulders. But
what is all this beside that which waits the runner of the trail at
every 'set' in those many miles? Here he finds his leaning-pole. There
have been little tracks up its slim roadway, but those were covered by
the fall of three days back and the little creature who made them hangs
there at the end, three small feet beating the cold air feebly, a
tiny head squirming from side to side, two dull black eyes set at the
distorted world. He has caught his marten. It has not frozen, for the
snow was light and the forest still and thick, and three days have
passed, M'sieu. Three days! Mon Dieu! How much were those three days
worth? The trapper taps the squirming head and puts the bit of fur in
his pack-bag. On to the next. The beaver? Dead, M'sieu, thanks to the
good God, drowned in its own sweet water. The pack is heavy with small
bodies ere the Assiniboine reaches the place where he has laid his trap
for the silver fox. And what greets him here? Only a foot gnawed off in
the silence of the day and the night, and some beauty gone staggering
away to lie and suffer with starvation in the cold.”
The youth was staring at the averted face beside him, mouth open and
utter amazement on his features.
Maren went on.
“And lastly, M'sieu, far at the end of the trail,--at the outer, rim of
the circle traced by his traps,--he comes eagerly, to peep and peer for
what might have happened at the head of the little dip leading down to
the stream where the firs bend heavily under their weight of snow.
“Here he had laid his cunningest instrument, a thing of giant jaws, of
sharp ragged points, each inlocking with the other, the whole unholy
thing hung to a chain at whose other end there lay a ball of iron,
weighing, M'sieu, some eighty pounds. That was for the great shy bear,
rocking along ire his quest of berries or some tree that should ring
hollow under his scratching claws, bespeaking the hive of the wild bees.
The oiled and fur-wrapped Indian stoops down and looks along the dip.
Ah! There he sees that which brings a glint to his small eyes. No bear,
M'sieu, nor yet the trap he had left, but a thrashed and broken space
where the snow went flying in clouds and the bushes were torn from their
roots, where the very tree-trunks bore marks of the conflict and a wide
and terrible trail led wildly off to the deeper forest.
“He takes it up.
“All day he follows it. At night he camps and sleeps by his fire in
comfort. By daybreak again he is swinging along on that trail. Its word
is plain to him. At first it raged, that great shaggy creature, tall
as an ox and slow, raged and fought and broke its teeth on the strange
thing that bit to the bone with its relentless jaws, and tore along the
white silence dragging its hindering ball, that, catching on bush and
root, skinned down the flesh from the shining bone. And presently the
wild trail narrowed to undisturbed snow, with naught save two great
footprints, one after the other. With the cunning of a man, M'sieu, the
tortured animal has gathered in its arms that chain and ball, and is
walking upright. For another day and night the trapper follows this
trail of tragedy and at their end he comes upon it.
“Beside a boulder, where the snow is pushed away there lies a round heap
of anguish, curled up, pinched nose flat on the snow and two ears laid
lop to a vanquished head. It is still breathing, though the dull eyes
open not at sound of the trapper, bold in his safety, who lifts his gun
and ends it all.
“A fine pelt,--save that the right foreleg is somewhat spoiled.
“It lies there in that pile, M'sieu, and makes for wealth,--but to me it
is no heartening sight. I have followed that trail to the deeper woods.”
The eyes of the woman were deep as wells, flickering with light, and the
dark brows frowned down the slope. She had drawn her hands tight
around her knees, so tight that each knuckle stood out white from the
surrounding tan.
The young man shut his open lips and drew in a breath that quivered.
“Ma'amselle,” he said huskily, “nowhere in the wide world is there
another woman so deep of heart, so strong in tenderness. Never before
have I seen that side of the trapping. To a man that is shut. It needs
the soul of a woman to see behind those things. And, oh, Ma'amselle!”
his voice fell low and trembling, “I have seen more,--the divinity
within your spirit. May the good God make me worthy that you may speak
so to me again. I would I might serve you,--with my life I would serve
you, Ma'amselle, for I have seen no woman like you.” He was on his feet,
this young Marc Dupre, and the hot blood was coursing fast in his veins.
The awakening was coming, though not for Maren Le Moyne.
“May the time come when I may be a stone for your foot,” he said
swiftly. “I ask no better fate.”
Maren looked up at him and a wonderful tenderness spread on her face.
“I think the time will come, M'sieu,--and, when it does, it will be
worth while. I think it would be a lifting sight to see you in some
great crisis, before some heavy test.”
“You do?” he said slowly; “you do, Ma'amselle? Then, by Heaven, it
would!”
“And some day I shall see it.”
They little knew, these two in their glowing youth, how true was that
word, nor how tragic that sight would be.
“And till then,” said this wild youth of the forest, “until then may we
be friends?” The head under the crimson cap was whirling.
“Friends?” smiled Maken, and her voice was very gentle; “assuredly,
M'sieu--I had destined you for that some time ago.”
As she turned away, her glance once more fell upon the long camp of the
Assiniboines, and Marc Dupre faded from her mind.
Not so with him, left sitting on the flat stone, the blood hot in his
face and a sudden mist before his eyes.
Her last words sang in his ears like the voice of many waters.
He did not look after her,--there was something within that held him
silent, staring at the waters of the river, now sparkling like a
stream of diamonds in the risen sun, the lightness gone from him and a
trembling loosed in his bosom.
Within the big trading-room at the factory, seats had been placed, the
chief and his headmen sat in a solemn circle, and McElroy, holding
in his two hands the long calumet, stood in the centre of the small
conclave.
Very gravely he pointed the stem, clinking with its dangling ornaments,
to east and west, to the heavens and to the earth, and then with a deft
motion swung it around his head.
“My brothers,” he said, glancing around at the solemn visages of these
his friends and people, “may the sun smile all day upon us together in
peace.”
Wherewith he smoked a moment at the carven mouthpiece and handed the
pipe to Quamenoka.
With the utmost gravity Ridgar took it from the chief, passed it to
the savage on his right, who likewise smoked and passed, it on, and
presently the ceremony was done and the visit had begun.
“My brothers are late this year at the trading,” said the factor. “For a
fortnight has the ox waited in the pen, the bread of the feast been set.
So do we love our brothers of the forest. What is the word of the west?
What tribes come in to the factory with peltry? We would hear Quamenoka
speak.”
He fell silent, sat down in his chair, and waited.
In the hush of that moment a shadow falling in the open door of the
factory caught his eye and he looked up to see the form of Maren Le
Moyne leaning against the lintel, her face filled with eagerness, her
eyes, clear as a child's and as far-seeing, fixed on the Indians. He
glanced swiftly to that tight braid just above the temple, where he had
last seen a small red flower nodding impishly, and was conscious of a
feeling of relief to find it gone.
It was irregular, the intrusion of an outsider in the ceremony of the
opening of the trade; but for his life the young factor of De Seviere
could not have said so to this girl who went fearlessly where she listed
and whose eyes held such mystery of strength and wistfulness.
Moreover, Quamenoka was speaking and the council harkened.