Eastward through the little lakes, across the portages where McElroy was
carried by means of pole and blanket swung from sturdy shoulders, they
went at hurried pace, and never a man of Maren's small command but
watched the sadness of her face, that seemed to grow with the days and
to feel an aching counterpart of it within his own heart.
“Take my coat for your head, Ma'amselle,” when she rested among the
thwarts,--“Let me, Ma'amselle,” when she would do some little task.
Thus they served her from the old desire that sight of her face had ever
stirred in the breasts of men, she who had never played at the game of
love, nor knew its simplest trick.
Southward, presently, up the rivers hurrying to the great bay at the
north, and at last out upon the broad waters of Winnipeg, and never for
an hour had McElroy's wandering soul come back to his suffering body.
Day by day Maren tended him, feeding him as one feeds a helpless babe,
shielding him from the sun by her own shadow when the branches gathered
at morn withered ere noon, wetting the fair head with its waving
sunburnt hair with water dipped from overside, and praying constantly
for his life.
As they neared the southern end, where Winnipeg narrows like the neck
of a bottle, his tongue loosened from its silence and he began to babble
and talk in broken sentences, and it was all about De Courtenay and a
remorse that ate the troubled soul.
“I owe you apologies, M'sieu,--'tis a sorry plight and I alone am to
blame. And yet I have a score,--gladly would I take my will of you for
that one fault,--another time,--another place. Still have I no right,
save as one man who,--But I have a plan,--one may escape,--listen--when
I grapple with this guard, do you make for the river--with all speed--My
God! My God! M'sieu! Why did you not run?” And so he muttered and
sighed, and Maren bent above with wide eyes.
Something there was between these two, some enmity that followed even
into the land of shadows and yet held them gentlemen through it all,
offering and rejecting some chance of escape. A weary, weary tangle.
Again he would fancy himself back in De Seviere and always there was De
Courtenay with his smiling face and tantalizing beauty.
“Welcome, M'sieu, to our post! Seldom do we meet so gay a guest!”
Often the wandering words would stumble among his accounts at the
factory and he would give directions to the clerks, and then Ridgar's
name would come, only to carry him instantly to the camp of the savages
on Deer River.
“Edmonton,--friend of my heart,--alone! and you pass me without speech!
Ah,--that look! That look! I'd stake my soul--”
And once in the cool twilight of an ended day, with the tall trees above
and the river lapping below, he cried out her name,
“Maren!” and once again, “Maren!” with a world of change between the two
words.
The first plunged the girl's heart to her throat with its passion, the
second chilled her like a cool wind.
And all at once he said, after a pause, “What is it, little one?”
So passed the days of the return.
Hour by hour the bright waters of the lake spoke to the girl with voices
of regret and sadness. The blue sky above seemed to mirror the dark
face of Marc Dupre, the wind from the shores to be his low voice, each
passing shadow among the trees his slender figure returning from the
hunt for her.
Her heart was sore that Fate had willed it so, and yet, looking down
at the face of this man at her feet, she knew it had to be and that she
would do again all that she had done.
And ever before her passed the scornful face of the fair woman who had
set the little undertone to all the world.
It troubled her, and for hours together she sat in silence reasoning
it all out, while Mowbray's men dipped the shining blades and here and
there the voyageurs and Indians who wore no feathers sang snatches of
song, now a chanson of the trail and rapid, again a wordless monotony of
savage notes.
The evening camps were short spaces of blessed quietude and converse
when Sheila O'Halloran sat beside her and they talked of many
things,--chiefly the dear little Island whose green sod would soon again
receive the feet of “herself an' Terence.”
“'Tis thankful I am, me dear, to be out av this forsaken land alive
wid me hair on me head instid av on a hoop painted green wid little red
arrows on th' stretched shkin inside! 'Tis a sorry counthry an' fit f'r
no woman, but whin Terence must come on some mysterious business av th'
government,--an' niver, till this minute, accushla, do I know whut it
is,--a cryin' shame 'tis, too, wid me, his devoted wife!--I must come
along or die. Wurra! Many's th' time I thought I'd do th' thrick
here! But now are th' dangers passin' wid ivery mile,--hark to th' men
singin'! 'Tis bad business whin men do not sing at th' day's work. 'Tis
glad I am f'r safe deliverance from that counthry av nightmares wid its
outlandish name,--Athabasca,--where Terence must moon from post to post
av th' Hudson's Bay--”
“Athabasca!”
Maren's head was up and she was looking at the little woman with an
eager wistfulness.
“The Land of the Whispering Hills!”
“Thrue,--'tis th' Injun word,--but a woild, woild land f'r all that.”
“But beautiful, Madame,--oh! it is beautiful, is it not?”
“Fair,--wid high hills an' a great blue lake an' woildness!--Ah!”
But the tall leader was calling and camp was breaking for another
stretch.
And under the travelling stars of that night there awoke in the heart
of the maid of the trail something of the old love, the old longing for
that goal of her life's ambition.
She had turned aside from it, only to be taught a lesson whose scars
would stay deep in her soul so long as life lasted.
At last came an hour when the party under O'Halloran must turn to the
east, where the bottle-neck of Winnipeg split in two, going down that
well-worn way which led to Lake of the Woods, Rainy River, and at last
to the wide lakes, whose sparkling waves would waft them on to the great
outside world.
There was a scene at parting, when the warmhearted Irishwoman clung to
Maren and wept against her bosom, calling her all the hundred words for
“darling” in the Celtic and vowing to remember her always.
The fair woman, wife of a Scotchman who acted as some sort of secretary
to O'Halloran, sat apart in cold silence.
“M'sieu,” said Maren, at the last, “I have no words to thank you for
this that you have done. I but cast it into the balance of God, which
must hang heavy with your goodness.”
She had given her hand to the leader, and that impulsive son of the ould
sod kissed it gallantly.
“'Tis little we did, lass, for you and your poor lad yonder, and 'twas
in our hearts to do more. But here's luck to you both,--an early weddin'
an' sturdy sons!”
And, as the morning sun glittered on the ripples of the departing boats,
Maren stood long looking after them, a mist in her eyes and her full
lips quivering.
She looked until the gathering dimness hid the waving kerchief of the
only woman friend who had ever truly reached her heart.
Then she sat down and took up a paddle.
“Last lap, Messieurs,” she said, above the mutter of McElroy at her
feet, and they turned toward where the familiar river came rushing to
the lake.
The summer lay heavy on the land when they reached the Assiniboine.
Deep green of the forests, deep green of fern and bush and understuff,
told of the full tide of the year. Here and there a leaf trailed in the
shallows, yellow as gold in an early death.
She thought of the spring, so long past, when she had first come into
this sweet land, and it seemed like another time, another life, another
person.
This day at dusk they passed the hidden cove where she had found Marc
Dupre waiting to build her fire. The abandoned canoe still lay hidden
where he left it.
Cool blue dawn, hushed and wide-reaching, still with that stillness
which precedes the sunrise, lay over the river, when the lone canoe
rounded the lower bend and Anders McElroy, factor of Fort de Seviere,
came back to his own again.
In the prow there knelt a weary figure in a soiled and sun-bleached
garment of doeskin, its glittering plastron of bright beads broken here
and there, the ragged ends of sinews hanging as they were left by
briar and branch, and the haggard eyes went with eager swiftness to the
stockade standing in its grim invincibility facing the east.
The row of wonted canoes lay upturned upon the shelving shore at the
landing, the half-moon at the right still glowered with its puny cannon
which had spoken no word to save their master on that fateful day, and
all things looked as if but a day had passed between.
The great gate with its studded breast was closed, the bastions at the
corners were empty of watchers, for peace folded its wings above the
past.
Without sound the boat cut up to the landing, Brilliers leaped out and
steadied it to place, and Maren stepped once more upon the familiar
slope.
They lifted McElroy, swinging in his blanket, and the tread of the
moccasined feet was hollow on the planks.
Thus there passed up to the gate of De Seviere a triumphal procession
of victory, whose heart was heavy within it, and whose leader in her
tattered dress was the saddest sight of all.
She raised her hand and beat upon the gate, and a voice cried, “Who
comes?”
“Open, my brother,” she called, for the voice was that of Henri
Baptiste, whose turn at the gate it was.
There was an ejaculation, a swift rattle of chains, and the heavy portal
swung back, while the blanched face of young Henri stared into the dawn.
Maren motioned to the men and they stepped in with their burden.
“Holy Mary! Maren! Maren! Maren!” cried Henri Baptiste, and took both
her arms in a gripping clasp. He looked into her face with fear and
wonder, as if the girl had returned from the dead, while joy unspeakable
began to lighten his features.
“Sister! Holy Mary!”
And then, when the touch of her in the flesh had dispelled his first
horror, when the sight of the factor swinging grotesquely in the blanket
had taken on the sense of reality, he raised his voice in a stentorian
call.
From every door it brought the populace running, half-dressed and
startled, and in scant space a ring of faces stared upon the strangers
in stupid awe.
“Ma'amselle Le Moyne!” they whispered, fearfully.
“Mother of Heaven! The factor!”
“Our factor! Out of the hands of Death!”
“Mon Dieu! One of them! And the maid!”
And in the midst of the awed and hushed excitement that was growing with
each passing moment, there cut the voice of McElroy, babbling from the
blanket.
“Throw! Throw, Ma'amselle,--for M'sieu!”
“Hush!” said Maren; “where is Prix Laroux?”
“Here!”
The big fellow was pushing through the gathering crowd, to stand before
the weary girl with burning eyes.
“Maren!” he said simply, and could say no more.
“Take him, Prix,” she said quietly; “take him to the factory. Get Rette
de Lancy's hand above him for care, and Jack for all things else. Take
these my men, and give them all the post affords, but chiefly rest at
present. They have--”
Here there came a tumult among the listening populace, and Marie rushed
through and flung herself upon Maren and there was time for nothing
else, save that, as Maren turned with her hanging like a vice about
her throat and Henri's arm across her shoulders, there was a streak
of crimson, a flash of ornaments in the sun, but now risen above the
forest's rim, and some one threw herself upon the unconscious form of
McElroy, kissing his face and his helpless hands and weeping terribly.
It was the little Francette. At her heels the great dog, Loup, halted
and glowered at the strangers.