“M'sieu,” said Marc Dupre, coming up the slope from the river, his
buckskins much tattered, showing a swift cross-country run, “I have news
of the great tribe. Like the forest leaves in fall in point of numbers
they are, and they wear a wealth of wampum and elk teeth, so much that
they are rich beyond any other tribe. Their young men are tall and heavy
of stature and wonderful in the casting of their great carven spears.
Also do they excel in the use of the bow. Warlike and suspicious,
scouting every inch of country before them, they come down by way of
Dear Lake,--and the young Nor'wester at Fort Brisac has already sent
forth his messengers to meet them.”
McElroy frowned.
Double anger swelled suddenly within him. In two ways had De Courtenay
crossed his plane at opposing angles. It was evidently war that the
adventurer wanted, the hot war of the two fur companies coupled to that
of man and man for a maid. He stood a while and thought. Then he turned
to Dupre.
“You have done well, Dupre,” he said shortly. “Get you to your cabin
and rest, for I may want your wit again. Only, on the way, send Pierre
Garqon to me.”
The young man touched his red toque, symbol of safety to all trappers
in a land where the universal law is “kill,” for no wild animal of the
woods bears a crimson head save that animal man who is the greatest
killer of all, and turned away. He was draggled and stained from a
forced march through forest and up-stream, over portage and rapid,
carrying his tiny birchbark craft on his head, snatching a short
sleep on a bed of moss, hurrying on that he might learn of the
Nakonkirhirinons travelling slowly down from that unknown land to the
far north, even many leagues beyond York factory on the shores of the
great bay.
As he went toward his own cabin he glanced swiftly at the open door of
the Baptistes. Always these days he glanced that way with a sick feeling
in the region of his heart. Who was he, Marc Dupre, trapper of the
big woods, that he should dare think so often of that woman from Grand
Portage, with her wondrous beauty and her tongue that could be like a
cold knife-blade or the petal of a lily for softness? And yet he was
conscious of a mighty change that had come over him with that day on the
flat rock by the stockade when she had talked to him of the trapping,--a
change like that which comes to one when he is so fortunate as to be in
distant Montreal and sits in the dusk of the great church there among
the saints and the incense.
There was no longer pleasure in flipping jests and love words with the
red-cheeked maids, and something had happened to the dashing spirit of
the youth. All through those long days in the forest, those short blue
nights under the velvet sky, one image had stood before him, calm,
smiling, quivering with that illusive light which held men's hearts.
Never a day that he could win forgetfulness of the face of Maren Le
Moyne, and now he glanced toward her doorway. It lay in the sunlight
without a foot upon its sill, and Marc sighed unconsciously. He was not
to see her, perhaps, to-day.
But suddenly, as he rounded a corner among the cabins, he came full
upon her, and his flippant tongue clove to the roof of his mouth without
speech.
She came toward him with a bread-pan in her hands and her eyes were cast
down. The heart in him ran to water at sight of her, and he stopped.
Once more thought of his unworthiness abased him.
Then she felt his presence and raised her eyes, and the young trapper
looked deep into them with that helplessness which draws the look of a
child. Deep he looked and long, and the woman looked back, and in that
moment there sprang into life the first thrill of that thing which was
to lead to the great crisis which she had predicted that day by the
stockade.
With it Marc Dupre found his tongue.
“Ma'amselle!” he cried sharply, “what is it? Mon Dieu! What is it?”
For the dark eyes, with their light-behind-black-marble splendour, were
quenched and dazed and all knowledge seemed stricken from them. The look
of them cut to his very soul, quick and sensitive from the working
of the great change, made ready as a wind-harp by the silent days of
dreams, the nights of visions. To him alone was the devastation within
them apparent. He stretched out a timid hand and touched her sleeve.
“What is it, Ma'amselle?” he begged abjectly. “I would heal it with my
blood!”
Extravagant, impulsive, the boy was in deadly earnest, and Maren Le
Moyne was conscious of it as simply as that she lived.
Just as simply she acknowledged to him what she would have to none other
in De Seviere, that something had fallen from a clear sky.
“Nay,” she said, and the deep voice was lifeless, “I am beyond help.”
Dupre's fingers slipped, trembling, around her arm.
“But I am a stone to your foot, Ma'amselle,--always remember that. When
the way becomes too hard there shall be a stone to your foot. I ask no
better fate and you have said.”
The miserable eyes were not dead to everything. At his swift words they
glowed a moment.
“Aye,--I have said, and I thank God, M'sieu, for such friendship. I am
rich, indeed.”
“Oho! Marc Dupre does better at the lovemaking than at the trapping! His
account at the factory suffers from les amours!”
A childish voice broke in upon them, and Francette's impish face peeped
round the corner of the nearest cabin.
“Let it be, Marc Dupre,” as the youth dropped his and from Maren's arm.
“Ma'amselle does not object,--a trapper or a cavalier, all are fish to
Ma'amselle's net. Mon Dieu! If all were so attractive as Ma'amselle!”
The little maid sighed in exaggerated dolour.
Dupre flashed round on his moccasined heel and reached her in a stride.
“Aha! It is you, by all the saints!” he said beneath his breath, as he
took her none too gently by the shoulder. “I know your tricks.”
Aloud he said, “Francette, children should keep from where they are not
wanted. Get you back to your mother.”
“Children, you say, M'sieu Dupre? Is eighteen so far behind twenty-two?
Grow a beard on your cheek before you give yourself the airs of a
man. And, anyway, grown men of twice eighteen have been known to love
children of that age.”
It was a dagger thrust, and it found its mark even as the girl glanced
slily at her victim. Maren's full mouth twitched and she looked dully
away to the fort gate. Dupre gave Francette an ungallant push. “Begone!”
he cried angrily; “you little cat!”
With a ringing laugh the maid danced away in the sunshine, and Dupre
faced Maren.
“It is that imp of le diable, Francette?” he asked. “What has she done
to you, Ma'amselle?”
But Maren shook her head.
“The maid is not to blame. She is but a child in spirit and what le bon
Dieu has seen fit to give her has gone to her head. That is all, save as
your quick eye has detected, M'sieu, I have received a heavy hurt.”
Suddenly, with that whimsical youthfulness of soul which glimmered at
times through her apparent strength, she looked at Dupre with a sort of
fright.
“Merci, M'sieu! For what reason does the good God let some things
befall?... But I have still a stone. Throughout I will remember that.”
In a moment she was gone, walking toward the cabin of Micene Bordoux,
and Marc Dupre went on his quest of Pierre, wondering and all a-tremble
with pity and thought of that promise.
Where Marc, with the revelation of adoration, had seen sharply, Micene
with her good sense felt vaguely that something was wrong with the
intrepid leader of the long trail.
“Maren,” she said this day, as she took the bread pan which had been
borrowed, “I fear there is something troubling you. Is there bad news
from Athabasca?”
Always there lay behind Maren's eagerness a fear, sleeping like a
hidden fawn but ever ready to quiver into life, a fear of news from
the Whispering Hills, news that should make the promise of the trail a
sudden void.
“Nay, Micene,” smiled Maren, “these latest Indians come from the south.”
“And all is well with the plans?”
The vague uneasiness was not stilled in Micene.
“All is well with the plans. There is not a year now.”
The girl looked straight in her friend's eyes without a trace of the
dazed misery which Marc Dupre had surprised in her own.
Micene smiled back, but that night she lay far into the dark hours
thinking of the subtle change in the maid of the trail. With a woman's
intuition she knew that the girl had lied, that all was not well with
her.
And one other there was of that small party of venturers housed in
the new cabins of De Seviere who knew vaguely that something had gone
wrong-Prix Laroux, the sturdy prow of that little vessel of progress of
which the girl was the beating heart, the unresting engine.
He had felt its coming even before it fell, that mighty shadow which
blotted out the heavens and the earth, for to Maren, once given, there
was no recalling the gift, and with that day in the glade she had lost
possession of her soul and body forever.
Dazed in all the regions of her being, enshadowed in every vista of hope
and scarce-tasted joy, she went quietly about the cabin, her mind a dark
space in which there flashed sudden, reiterated visions,--now McElroy's
blue eyes, anxious and eager as he held up the doeskin dress at the
door-sill, burning with fire and truth and passion in the glade in the
forest, again tender and diffident what time they walked together to the
gate to meet De Courtenay's messenger, and again it was that scene
at the factory steps that haunted her,--McElroy with his arms about
Francette Moline, the grey husky crouching in the twilight. Throughout
the whole sick tangle there went a twisting thread of wonder, of
striving for understanding. What was this thing which had come clutching
sweetly at her heart, which had stilled the very life in her with holy
mystery, and whose swift passing had left her benumbed within as some
old woman mumbling in the sun on a door-sill? Where was the glory of the
spring? What had come upon the face of the waters, that the light had
gone from them? What was this thing that the good God wished her to
learn, where was the lesson?
Given to reason and plain judgment of all things, the girl tried to
think out her problem, to fathom the meaning of this which had befallen
her, and to find if there was any good in it. But everywhere she looked
there was the laughing face of the factor with his sunburnt hair and his
blue eyes. The spring days were heavy as those steel-grey stretches that
pass for the days in winter.
Too dull for sharp pain, she went about in a sort of apathy.
For several days McElroy watched uneasily for her, hoping for a chance
meeting. He was anxious to speak about his boyish jealousy, to beg
forgiveness for that abrupt leaving at the gate. So close did she stay
at the cabin, however, that at last he was forced to go to her. It was
twilight again, soft, filled with the breath of the forest, vibrant with
the call of birds off in some marshy land to the south, and he found her
alone, sitting upon the step, staring into the gathering dusk, listening
to the laughter of the young married folk from the cabin next where
Marie and Henri were loudest.
A lump rose in his throat as he caught the outline of the braided head
bowed lower than he had ever seen it, saw the whole attitude of the
strong figure, every line relaxed as if in a great weariness.
“Maren,” he said, with the wonder of love in his voice, “Maren--my
maid!”
And he strode forward swiftly, stooped, and laid his hand on her
shoulder.
With a jerk the drooped head came up. She drew from his touch as if it
burned her.
“If you please, M'sieu,” she said coldly, “go away.”
McElroy sprang back.
“What? Go away! You wish that,--Ma'amselle?”
The tone more than the words drove out of him all daring of her sweet
name, took away in a flash all the personal.
“Of a surety,--go away.”
The factor stood a moment in amazed silence. Did the red flower mean so
much to her, then? Had she accepted its message? And yet he knew in his
heart that the look in her eyes, the smile on her lips had told their
own tale of awakening to his touch. What but the red flower in its
birchbark case had wrought the change?
He thought swiftly of De Courtenay's beauty, of his sparkling grace, his
braided blue coat, his wide hat, and the long golden curls sweeping his
shoulder. Truly a figure to turn a woman's head. But within him there
rose a tide of rage, blind vent of the hurt of love, that boded ill for
the dashing Nor'wester on the Saskatchewan.
Sick to the very bottom of his heart, he bowed ever so slightly to the
tense figure on the step and strode away in the shadows.
So! Thus ended his one love.
For this he had kept himself from the common lot of the factors in their
lonely posts; for this he had never looked with aught save friendly
compassion upon the maids of the settlements, the half breed girls of
the wilderness, the wild daughters of the forest.
Waiting for this one princess in his small kingdom, he had thrown
himself on the out-bearing tide of love only to be stranded on some
barren beach, to see her taken from him by some reckless courtier not
fit to touch a woman's hand!
Thus they turned apart, these two meant for each other from the
beginning, and in each love worked its will of pain.
Maren on the step stared dry-eyed into the night, uncomprehending,
unrebelling, and McElroy strode ahead, blind with sudden anguish, scarce
knowing which way his steps tended.
And, like a ghoul behind a stone, a small dark face peeped keenly from a
corner.
Francette was watching her leaven work.