Another day had gone into the great back country of time, from which the
hand of God alone can pluck them and their secrets. Soft haze of blue
and gold hung over forest and stream, sweet breath of summer fondled the
high carpet of interlaced tree-tops, blew down the waters and wimpled
the bending grasses, and the wolf had sighted the caribou herd.
In a shelter of spruce within sight of the Indian smoke the lone canoe
and its people lay hidden, awaiting the coming of night.
“Now, Ma'amselle,” said Dupre earnestly, “do you remain close here with
Frith and Wilson and Alloybeau while Brilliers and McDonald go with me
to reconnoitre.”
Maren knelt beside a fallen log binding up the heavy ropes of her
hair. Before her were spread the meagre adjuncts of her toilet, in all
conscience slim enough for any masculine runner of the forest,--a dozen
little pegs hand-whittled from hard wood and polished to finest gloss by
contact with the shining braids.
She looked up at him with eyes that were unreadable to his simple
understanding.
“Remain?” she said; “and send you into my danger alone? You know me not,
M'sieu.”
Purple dusk was thick upon the underworld of lesser growth beneath the
towering woods. In its half-light the trapper saw that her face, usually
of so sad a calm, was glowing with excitement.
“Brilliers,” she said, rising and fastening the last strand, “bring me
the brown no-wak-wa berries from the pail yonder.”
She stood crushing the ripe fruit in her hands and looked into the faces
of her little band. In every countenance she read what she had read in
men's faces all of her life, the dumb longing to serve, and it lifted
her heart with tenderness.
“My men,” she said presently, “remember we are Hudson's Bays, and that
we have behind us the Great Company which punishes guilt and upholds
loyalty, and that we go to rescue a factor of the Company. Alloybeau and
McDonald go with me, flanking either side. You, Frith, take up position
a hundred yards inland to cover what retreat may happen. Wilson and
Brilliers stand at the canoe, and, M'sieus, keep hand at prow ready for
instant action. We know not what may happen. I, who am most concerned,
go first. You, Marc Dupre, go with me.”
Her voice dropped as it ever did of late when she spoke to this good
friend.
“And now we wait only for full darkness.”
“You must go, Ma'amselle?” said Alloybeau miserably. “Cannot another
make the first scouting? Send me.”
“And me!” Frith pushed softly forward. “At the last, Ma'amselle, we are
old women. We cannot let you go.”
“Cannot?” said Maren sharply. “Do Mr. Mowbray's men so soon forget his
orders? I am good as a man, M'sieus. See!”
She held up her right arm, with the fringed sleeve falling loose. The
muscle sprang up magnificently.
“Fear not for me,--and yet,--I thank you! Now we wait.”
One hour,--two,--passed and the last light crept, afraid, out of the
forest to linger a trembling moment on the waters and be drawn up to the
darkening sky.
At last the maid arose, tall and quiet, save for the excitement in her
eyes, and one by one her chosen followers stepped noiselessly after.
Silent as the wood around, the forlorn hope crept forward.
“Here, Frith,” commanded Maren, when they had reached a vantage point
of higher ground, “and here you, Alloybeau and McDonald, separate. If
during this night the good God shall deliver into our hands Mr. McElroy
and the venturer from Montreal, you will hear a panther's far-off call.
Make for the canoe, for that will mean swift flight. If, on the other
hand, aught should befall us ahead, a night-hawk will cry once. Hide and
wait. Wait one day, two, three. There is always hope. So. We go now.”
Thus they separated, that small band, as hopeless together as apart in
case of discovery, and at last Dupre followed alone, his heart heavy
within him and a grip in his throat of tears. On through the leafy
forest, parting the lacing vines, holding each branch that it might not
swish to place, they went, far from safety and the commonplace of life,
and a prescience of disaster weighed on the trapper's soul like lead.
At last it grew more than he could bear, and he reached a hand to
Maren's shoulder, a tentative hand, hesitating, as if it felt its touch
blasphemy.
“Ma'amselle,” he faltered, “forgive me! But, oh! without confession
this night I am sick to my heart's core! I lied to you back at the cove,
though with a clean conscience, for it is love,--love of a man warm and
wild that tears my soul to tatters! I love you with all love, of saint
and sinner, of Heaven and earth, and I would have you know it!”
His low voice was shaking, as was his whole slim body, and Maren felt it
in the hand on her shoulder.
“As a man, Ma'amselle, I would give my life for one touch of your lips!
As a lost monk I would kiss your garment's hem! See!”
He dropped to his knee and, catching her beaded skirt, pressed it to his
lips again and again, passionately, swept away by his French blood.
“As I live I love you as the dog loves his master! I am naught save the
dust under your feet, the thorn you brush in the forest, yet like them I
catch and cling! Forgive, Ma'amselle, and if the future is fair for you,
think sometimes in the dusk of Marc Dupre!”
“Hush!” said Maren, catching the hand at her knee, a shaking hand more
slender than her own; “hush, my friend! You break my heart anew. I know
the inmost grace of you, the glory of the love you tell, and be it of
heaven or earth, of angel or man, I would to the Good God there was yet
life enough within me to buy it with my own! I have seen naught so holy,
so worth all price, in the years of my life. It is dear to my heart as
that life itself. Dear as yourself, my more than friend.”
In all tenderness she stooped from her fair height and laid her arm
around the shoulders of the youth, drew his head against the beadwork of
McElroy's gift, and kissed him upon the lips,--once, twice, yearningly,
as a mother kisses a weakling child.
At that moment there came, borne on a waking breeze of the night, the
sound of the tom-toms, the yapping of many throats.
“The gods beckon,” she said sadly; “this life and love is all awry and
we who are bound against our will must but abide the end.”
“Aye,” whispered young Dupre, from the warm depths of her shoulder, and
his voice was like gold for joy; “aye,--the end.”
He rose swiftly.
“Forgive the passion that could forget the great business of the night,”
he said, and they went forward, though Maren's fingers still rested in
his clasp.
Through the thinning wood which neared the stream presently there came a
glow and then the shine of a great fire ahead, with massed figures
that leaped and sprang, fantastic as a witch's carnival, and a roar of
frightful voices.
“Stay now, Ma'amselle!” begged Dupre, at last, for he had caught a sight
that shook him through and through; “stay you here in the wood while I
go forward!”
But his protest was lost on the maid. Eagerly she was pushing on, hid by
the shadows,--nearer and nearer, until suddenly she stopped and stared
upon the scene, the fingers in his clasp gripping Dupre's hand like
steel.
“God! God! God!” breathed Maren Le Moyne at the forest's edge as she
looked once more upon the face of the factor of Fort de Seviere.
Unspeakable was that scene. All reason had fled from the North savages.
What small veneer of docility had been spread over them by their three
years' dealing with the Hudson's Bays and their intercourse with the
quiet and tractable Assiniboines, had vanished. They were themselves as
nature made them, cruel to the point of art.
The work of the day was visible upon the captives tied to their stakes
on either side the fire. Half-clothed, for they had been thrown into
a lodge to recuperate for the night's festivities, they stood in
weariness, that from time to time drooped one head or the other, only to
lift again with taunt and jeer.
De Courtenay, his thin face between the curls thinner, was still facing
the mob with the smile that would not down. McElroy was as Maren had
ever known him, patient and strong, and from time to time he tossed up
the light hair falling in his eyes.
“We are none too soon,” she said tensely; “tonight it must end. Go you
around to the east, M'sieu, between the camp and the river. Look for the
lodge of the dead chief, for there will be the trader, Ridgar. Look for
him and read his face,--whether or no he will help us. I will skirt to
the north.”
“I--Ma'amselle! Stay far from their sight, for love of Heaven!”
“Sh! Go, my friend;” and Maren turned into the darkness.
“Mary Mother, now do thou befriend!” she whispered, as she felt her way
forward. With touch of tree trunk and slipping moccasin, lithe bend and
sway and turning, as sure in the forest as any savage, this Maid of the
Trail took into her hands the saving of a man. It was simple. Wit must
play the greater part, wit that invades a sleeping camp, risks its life,
and laughs at its victory. So would she work in the late hours when
revelry had worked its own undoing. Now she would learn the camp and the
safest side of it, the place of the captives and a way of escape. With
thought and eager plan she pushed from her mind the look of McElroy's
body.
She would--
In the darkness she stopped with inheld breath. Her groping foot had
touched an object, a soft object that stirred and rolled over on its
side and presently sat up. So near it was that she could feel the
movements of its garments, which fact told her it was human.
Then, without warning, a hand shot out and caught her knee in a grip of
steel. With all her strength the girl tore away, leaping backward. But a
tangle of vines snatched at her foot and she fell crashing forward with
a figure prone upon her, and in the darkness she fought silently for
life.
As in the camp of the Nakonkirhirinons the thin veneer had slipped away,
so now in the forest its heavier counterpart fell from this woman and
she turned savage as the thing with which she fought.
Of superb stature and strength, she was a match for the man, and two
pairs of hands searched for a throat, two bodies strained and struggled
for the mastery. It seemed that the noise of the conflict, the snapping
of dry dead wood, the swish and crash of leafy brush, must draw
attention from the camp, but it was too engrossed in its own mad
hilarity to heed so small a sound.
Over and over strained the strangely-met foes in silence, and presently
they struggled up, barehanded, face to face, for Maren had dropped her
rifle when she fell. As they whirled into a more open space the light
from the fire struck through the foliage and glistened on a tuft of
white hair on the swarthy temple before her.
“Hola! DesCaut!” gasped the girl.
“Oho! I win!”
For, with the sudden illumination, she forgot for a moment the present
and DesCaut; for it was the turncoat awaked from a drunken sleep
apart, who pushed swiftly forward, took the moment's advantage of her
hesitation, and pinioned her arms to her sides.
She might still have had a chance, for she was as strong as he, but that
he raised his voice in a call for help.
Thus it was that, in less time than the telling, Maren Le Moyne,
rescuer, leader of the long trail, was dragged, fast bound by a dozen
gripping hands, into the firelit space in the great circle, a captive
under the eyes of the man she had come to save.
Stumbling, jerked this way and that, one white shoulder gleaming against
the brown stain of throat and face where the doeskin garment was pulled
awry, she came into the central space before the great fire.
Every inch an Indian woman she looked, with the no-wak-wa berries
darkening her bright cheeks, her moccasins and beaded garment belted
with wampum got from the Indians by Henri, save for one thing, no Indian
woman in all the wilderness wrapped her braids around her head and
pinned them with whittled pegs. There alone had she blundered.
As the renegades loosed her and dropped away, leaving her alone in the
appalling light, for one instant she flung her hands over her face.
The quick disaster stunned her.
There was no longer hope within her for the moment. But, with the rise
of the roar of triumph, that part of her nature which joyed in the
facing of odds snatched down her hands, lifted her head, and set the old
fires sparkling in her eyes.
“White! White! White!” was the cry lifting on all sides. “A white woman
of the Settlements! Wis-kend-jac has sent the White Doe! A sign! A sign!
The Great Spirit would know the slayer of Negansahima!”
“The White Doe shall choose!”