If that time in the tuneful spring was crowded full to the brim of
emotions scarce bearable to McElroy, how much more wonderful was it
to Maren Le Moyne, for the first time in her life trembling in all her
being from the touch of a man's lips?
To the outward world there was no sign of the tumult within her as she
came and went about the business of the new cabin by the stockade wall,
but in her virgin heart there stirred strange new things that filled her
calm eyes with wonder.
In the seclusion of the little room to the east she spread out on the
patchwork quilt the Indian garment and looked at it with a new meaning.
Never before in her life had she thought of a man's eyes as she thought
of McElroy's, thrilling to the very tips of her fingers at memory of the
blue fire in them, and never before had she been conscious of anything
as she was conscious of the flesh on her shoulders where his hands had
rested, her lips sealed under the warm caress of his. Verily, there was
nowhere another such man as this one who knew the longing of the wild as
did she, whose heart responded to the same call of the great wilderness.
Night and day she thought of him, and the memory of that day in the
forest glade haunted her like a golden melody newly heard.
Yet something within her held her back from his sight, kept her eyes
from that part of the small settlement where stood the factory with its
wide doorway. She could not bear to look upon him yet in the newness of
this awakening.
And McElroy, deep in the work of the trading, was eaten by a thousand
qualms and torments. All those doubts that beset lovers tore at his
heart and made of his days a nightmare.
With the cooling of his exalted intoxication what time the touch of the
girl's young body had fired him with all confidence, came a thousand
condemnations for his blundering haste, his stupid boasting of conquest.
To what depths of scorn might he not now be fallen in the mind of such
a girl as Maren Le Moyne with her calm judgment; how far might he not be
from the object of his longing!
And the fact that he could catch no sight of her, no matter how often he
stepped near the door nor how diligently he sought for a glimpse of the
shining braids and plain garment among the women at the well, but added
fuel to the fire that scorched him.
But the times were getting very busy at Fort de Seviere. Before the
Assiniboines were ready to depart back up the waterways down which they
had come, their canoes laden with the wealth of the coming season, other
flotillas were on the little waves of the river, other chiefs made their
entrance up the main way of the post, and the goods of the Hudson's Bay
Company went out in a stream as the priceless pelts came in.
“Lad,” said Edmonton Ridgar with that easy probing of the well-known
friend, “there is something eating at your mind these days. The trade
goes differently from that of last year. It is not so all-absorbing. I
fear me that the Nor'westers, with their plundering and their tales of
deportation, have entered a wedge of worry.”
“'Tis not of the Nor'westers I give a thought, Ridgar,” he smiled,
accepting the veiled raillery, “for you well know that we of the Company
are above them, though it was but yesterday that an Indian brought word
of a trapper at Isle a La Crosse being maltreated in the woods by a
couple of their sneaking cutthroats and two packs of beaver taken from
him for which they laughingly offered him in payment a bundle of mangy
skins cast out from the summer's pickings. 'Twas Peter Brins and I'll
wager that those two are marked for a long reckoning when the tables
turn. And by the same Indian I hear that the young blade from Montreal
with his light-haired brigade who stumbled upon us a while back, has
reached his post on the Saskatchewan and has taken hold with a high
hand, doing his utmost to intercept our Indians and turn the tide of
the Company's furs into the trading-rooms of the Nor'westers. I think
it will be a bootless process, for we hold our people with the hand of
surety.”
“Aye, but what of the Nakonkirhirinons, making their initial trip by
way of Rapid River and Deer Lake, coming through the country of the
Saskatchewan and held by no bond of loyalty? I see trouble ahead if this
young De Courtenay gets wind of their coming, for they will be rich in
peltry and they are a warlike tribe.”
“But they are to celebrate the Peace Dance in the lodges of the
Assiniboines. Surely they will come straight to their friends before
trusting their trade to any.”
Edmonton Ridgar shook his head.
“Hey fear nothing, these Nakonkirhirinons, and would as soon enter trade
with one as another, having come for trade, if the values were above
those at York and Churchill. I hope they swing eastward to Winipigoos
and thus miss that young hot-brain on the Saskatchewan.”
“By the way, Ridgar, Pierre Garcon says that Bois DesCaut is at Seven
Isles on the Qui Appelle with Henderson. Since telling that wanton lie
to the Nor'wester he has not had enough to show his face here. A bad lot
Bois, and one to be watched for tricks.”
“Aye, a bad lot, but salted with a prudence that savours of cowardice.
His tricks are all turncoats that slip danger like an old garment.”
But for all Ridgar's hope, at that very moment the great tribe from the
far north country, even twelve leagues beyond the Oujuragatchousibi,
was swinging down through the wilderness bound for the lodges of the
Assiniboines, burdened with a wealth of peltry to make a trader's eyes
stand out and clad in all the glory of the visiting tribes, and it was
heading straight for the country of the Saskatchewan.
Towering head-dresses swept above their moving columns, pomp and
ceremony showed in the panoply of carved spear-heads, feathered shafts,
and slung bows of the white ash which decked them on their peaceful
mission, while underneath fringed garments of buckskin, stained and
beaded with porcupine quills, were bands and stripes of war-paint. They
were ready for anything that might happen in this unknown country into
which they journeyed at the word of their friends the Assiniboines,
given at the buffalo hunt the fall before, above the Great Slave Lake.
Never before had the Nakonkirhirinons been so far in the south.
And long before they reached Deer Lake word had been brought to that new
venturer in his post on the Saskatchewan, Alfred de Courtenay, and he
was keenly alert.
About the same time a half-breed trapper came into Fort de Seviere, loud
in his lamentations, and sought McElroy.
From the flats south of the Capot River, where he had wintered amid a
band of Blackfoot Indians, a rare thing for a white man, he had come
laden with rich furs from that unopened country, bound for De Seviere,
and on the banks of the Qui Appelle three men had come upon him who had
shared his lonely campfire. Rollicking fellows they were, brawny of form
and light of head, and they had carried much liquor in flasks in their
leg-straps, which liquor flowed freely amid songs and fireglow.
In the morning when he awoke late with, Mon Dieu! such a head! there
were no three men, who had vanished like dreams of the liquor, likewise
there was no well-strapped pack of fat winter beaver!
The man, a French half-breed, whimpered and cursed in impotent wrath,
and showed McElroy one of the flasks that had been in the leg-straps of
his visitors. It was covered with a fine light wicker weave, of the same
pattern as that jug which De Courtenay had left at the post gate that
morning in early spring.
“Ridgar,” said the factor, showing the thing to him, “our friend from
Montreal is taking a high hand with the country. The freedom of the wild
has gone to his head.”
Indeed it seemed as though that were true, for the tales of the reckless
doings of that post of the Nor'westers on the Saskatchewan over which
De Courtenay presided became more frequent and always they were
characterised by a wildness and folly that were only exceeded by their
daring.
The young adventurer had already made a headlong sally into the fringes
of that country which came too near his Tom-Thumb garrison, and along
which roving bands of the sullen Blackfeet trailed with a watching eye
on the white men at the forts, and returned without two of those long
curls of which he was so proud, a spear-head pinning them in the trunk
of a tree which happened to form a convenient background.
To add to the small resentment against him which began to rankle in
McElroy's heart, and which had never really left it since that evening
in De Seviere when Maren Le Moyne had passed behind the cabin of the
Savilles with some voyageur's tot on her shoulder and the handsome
gallant from Montreal had lost his manners staring, one day in this same
week a Bois-Brules came to the post gates and asked for one Maren Le
Moyne.
He stood without and stubbornly refused to give his message, and at last
McElroy himself went to the cabin of the Baptistes.
He had not seen the girl since that day in the forest, and his heart
beat to suffocation as he neared the open door and caught the sound of
her voice singing a French love song. He stopped on the step, and for
a moment his glance took in the interior: By a window to the north she
stood at a table, its wooden surface soft and white as doeskin from
water and stone, and prepared the meal for ash-cakes, her sleeves, as
usual, rolled to her shoulder and the collar of her dress open at the
throat.
To the young factor's eyes she was a sight that weakened the knees
beneath him and set him quaking with a new fear. He dared not speak and
bring her gaze upon him, the memory of his boastful words in the forest
was too poignant.
But it needed not speech. Had he but known the wonder that had lived
within her all these days he would have understood the force that
presently stopped the song on her lips, as if her soul listened
unconsciously for tangible knowledge of the presence it already felt
near, that slowed her nimble brown fingers in the pan, that presently
lifted her head and turned her face to him.
Instantly a warm flush leaped up to the dark cheeks, and McElroy felt
its answer in his own.
“Ma'amselle,” he stammered, far from that glib “Maren” of the glade,
“there is one at the gate who demands speech of you.”
The words were commonplace enough and the girl did not get their import
for the intensity of her gaze into the eyes whose blue fire had set her
first wondering and then a-thrill with these strange emotions.
“Eh, M'sieu?” she smiled, and McElroy, revived through all his being
with that smile, repeated his message.
She took her hands from the yellow meal and dusted them on a hempen
towel, and was ready to go forth beside him.
That short walk to the stockade gate was silent with the silence of
shy new joy, and once the factor glanced sidewise at the drooped lashes
above the dusky cheeks.
“Had you expected any messenger, Ma'amselle?” he asked indifferently as
they neared the portal with its fringe of peeping women and saw beyond
them the tall figure of the Bois-Brule, his lank hair banded back by a
red kerchief.
“Nay, M'sieu,” replied the girl, and went forward to stand in the gate.
The messenger from the woods asked in good French if she were Maren Le
Moyne, and being answered in the affirmative, he took from his hunting
shirt a package wrapped in broad green leaves and placed it in her
hands.
The leaves were wilted with the heat of the man's body and came easily
off in her fingers, disclosing a small square box cunningly made from
birchbark and stained after the Indian fashion in brilliant colours. A
tiny lid was fastened with a thong of braided grass.
Wonderingly she slipped the little catch and lifted the cover.
Inside upon a bed of dampened moss there lay a wee red flower, the exact
counterpart of that one which Alfred de Courtenay had fastened in her
hair that morning by the well.
McElroy, at her shoulder, looked down upon it, and instantly the warmth
in his heart cooled.
When Maren looked up it was to find his eyes fixed on the messenger
whose tall figure swung away up the river's bank toward the north
forest, and they were coolly impersonal.
She was unversed in the ways of men where a maid is concerned, this
woman of the trail and portage, and she only knew vaguely that something
had gone wrong with sight of the little flower.
She stood, holding the box in her hand, among the women craning their
necks for a glimpse of the contents, and looked in open perplexity
at McElroy until a light laugh from the fringe behind her broke the
silence.
“A gift!” cried the little Francette, her childish voice full of a
concealed delight; “a gift from the forest; and where do such trinkets
come from save the lower branch of the Saskatchewan! It savours of our
pretty man of the long gold curls! Mon Dieu! The cavalier has made good
time!”
Whereat there was a stirring at the gate, and the peeping fringe drew
back while the factor turned on his heel and strode away toward the
factory, leaving the tall girl alone at the portal, holding her gift.
There was a devilish light in the dancing eyes of Francette as she
flirted away.
But Maren Le Moyne walked slowly back to the cabin, wondering.