A BUCKSKIN HUNTING-SHIRT
The days of his convalescence in the camp of the Lacombies were days
fraught with mingled emotions in the heart of Bill Carmody.
Old Wa-ha-ta-na-ta treated him with cold deference, anticipating his
needs with a sagacity that was almost uncanny. She appeared hardly to
be aware of his presence, yet many times the man felt, without seeing,
the deep, burning gaze of the undimmed, black eyes.
Jacques, whom he had known in the logging-camp as Blood River Jack,
treated him with open friendliness, and as he became able to move about
the camp, taught him much of the lore of the forest, of the building of
nets and traps, the smoke-tanning of buckskin, and the taking and
drying of salmon.
During the long evenings the two sat close to the smudge of the
camp-fire and talked of many things, while the women listened.
But of the three it was the girl who most interested him. She was his
almost constant companion, silent and subtle at times, and with the
inborn subtlety of women she defied his most skilful attempts to share
her thoughts.
At other times her naive frankness and innocent brutality of expression
surprised and amused him. Baffling, revealing--she remained at all
times an enigma.
By the middle of June Bill was able to make short excursions to the
river with the aid of the crutches which Blood River Jack crudely
fashioned from young saplings.
With his increased freedom of movement his restlessness increased.
Somewhere along the river, he knew, the bird's-eye logs were banked,
awaiting the arrival of Moncrossen and Stromberg to raft them to the
railway, and he surmised that their coming would not be long delayed.
Over and over in his mind he turned schemes for outwitting the boss.
The strength was rapidly returning to his injured leg and he discarded
one crutch, using the other only to help him over the rough places.
He was in no condition to undertake a journey to the railway, and in
spite of Blood River Jack's expressed hatred of Moncrossen and
friendship for himself, he hesitated about taking the half-breed into
his confidence.
At length he could stand the suspense no longer. Each day's delay
lessened his chance of success. He decided to act--to lay the matter
before Blood River Jack and ask his cooeperation, and if he refused, to
play the game alone.
He came to this decision one afternoon while seated upon a great log
overlooking the rushing rapid. Beside him sat Jeanne, apparently deeply
engrossed in the embroidering of a buckskin hunting-shirt.
After a long silence Bill knocked the dead ashes from his pipe, and his
jaw squared as he looked out over the foaming white-water. He turned
toward the girl and encountered the intense gaze of her dark eyes.
The neglected needlework lay across her knees, the small hands were
folded, and the shining needle glinted in the sun where it had been
deftly caught into the yellow buckskin at the turning of an unfinished
scroll.
"The logs which you seek," she said quietly, "are piled upon the bank
of the river, half a mile below the rapids." The man regarded her with
a startled glance.
"What do you know about these logs--and of what I was thinking?"
She answered him with a curious, baffling smile, and, ignoring his
question, continued:
"You need help. I am but a girl and know naught of logs nor why these
logs did not go down the river with the others. But in your face as you
pondered from day to day I have read it. Is it not that you would
prevent Moncrossen from taking these logs? But you know not how to do
it, for the logs must go down the river and Moncrossen must come up the
river?"
"You are a wonder!" he exclaimed in admiration. "That's exactly what's
been bothering me." She blushed furiously under his gaze and, with
lowering eyes, continued:
"I do not know how it can be managed, but Jacques will know. You may
trust Jacques as you trust me. For we are your friends, and his hatred
of Moncrossen is a real hatred."
She raised her eyes to his.
"Do you know why Jacques hates Moncrossen, and why Wa-ha-ta-na-ta hates
all white men?" she asked. Bill shook his head and listened as the
girl, with blazing eyes, told him of the death of Pierre, and then, of
the horror of that night on Broken Knee.
At her words Bill Carmody's face darkened, and his great fists clenched
until the nails bit deep into his palms. The steel-gray eyes narrowed
to slits and, as the girl finished, he arose and gently lifted one of
the little hands between his own.
"I, too, could kill Moncrossen for _that_," he said, and the tone of
his voice was low, and soft, with a tense, even softness that sounded
in the ears of the girl more terrible than a thousand loud hurled
threats.
She looked up quickly into the face of the glinting eyes, her tiny hand
trembled in his, and a sudden flush deepened the warm color of her
neck.
"For me?" she faltered. "_Me?_" And, with a half-smothered, frightened
gasp, tore her hand free and fled swiftly into the forest.
Bill stared a long time at the place where she disappeared, and,
smiling, stooped and picked up her needlework where it had fallen at
his feet.
He examined it idly for a moment and then more closely as a puzzled
look crept into his eyes. The garment he held in his hand was never
designed for a covering for the girl's own lithe body, nor was it small
enough even for Jacques.
"She's worked on it every day for a month," he murmured, as he glanced
from the intricate embroidered design to his own shirt of ragged
flannel, and again he smiled--bitterly.
"She's a queer kid," he said softly, as he recovered his crutch; "and a
mighty good kid, too."