THE ONE GOOD WHITE MAN
The following morning Bill parted from his friends. As he was about to
step into the canoe Jeanne appeared at the water's edge bearing the
mackinaw which he had worn when they drew him from the river.
Without meeting his glance she extended it toward him, speaking in a
low, tense voice.
"In the lining I have sewed them--the papers that fell dripping from
your pocket--and the picture. Many times I have looked upon the face of
this woman, who has caused you pain. And I have hated! Oh, how I have
hated! So that I could have torn her in pieces.
"And many times I would have burned them, that you might forget. But,
instead, I sewed them from sight in the lining of the coat--and here is
the coat."
Bill tossed the mackinaw into the bottom of the canoe.
"Thank you, Jeanne," he said. "And until we meet again, good-by!"
With a push of the paddle he shot the light canoe far out into the
current of the stream.
Bill paddled leisurely, camping early and sitting late over his
camp-fire smoking many pipefuls of tobacco. And, as he smoked, his
thoughts drifted over the events of the past year, and the people who
comprised his little world.
Appleton, who had offered him the chance to make good; whole-hearted
Fallon; devoted old Daddy Dunnigan; Stromberg, in whom was much to
admire; Creed, the craven tool of Moncrossen; the boss himself,
crooked, brutal, vicious; Blood River Jack, his friend; Wa-ha-ta-na-ta,
the sinister old squaw, who believed all white men to be bad; and
Jeanne, the beautiful, half-wild girl, within whose breast a great soul
fluttered against the restraint of her environment.
To this girl he owed his life, and he had repaid the debt by trampling
roughshod upon her heart. Bitterly he reproached himself for not seeing
how things were going. For not until the day she told him in the
clearing had he guessed that she loved him.
And yet now as he looked backward he could remember a hundred little
things that ought to have warned him--a word here, a look, a touch of
the hand--little things, insignificant in themselves, but in the light
of his present understanding, looming large as the danger signals of a
well-ordered block system--signals he had blindly disregarded, to the
wrecking of a heart. Well, he would make all amends in his power; would
look after her as best he could, and in time she would forget.
"They _all_ forget," he muttered aloud with a short, bitter laugh, as
the memory of certain staring head-lines flashed through his brain. "I
wish to God I could forget--_her!_"
But the old wound would not heal, and far into the night he sat staring
into the fire.
"It's a man's game," he murmured as he spread his blankets, "and I will
win out; but why?"
Beyond the fire came the sound of a snapping twig. The man started,
staring into the gloom, when suddenly into the soft light of the dying
embers stepped Jeanne Lacombie. He stared at her speechless.
There, in the uncertain glow, she stood, a Diana of flesh and blood,
whose open hunting-shirt fell away from her rounded throat in soft,
fringed folds. Her short skirt of heavy drilling came only to her
knees; she wore no stockings, and her tiny feet were incased in heavily
beaded moccasins.
And so she stood there in the midnight, smiling down upon the man who
gazed speechless from his blanket upon the opposite side of the dying
fire; and then she spoke:
"I have come," she said simply.
"Jeanne!" cried the man, "why have you done this thing?"
"I love you, and I will go with you."
"But, girl, don't you realize what it means? This is the third night
since I left the camp of Jacques----" The girl interrupted him with a
laugh:
"And I, too, have been gone three nights; have struck straight through
the forest, and because the river makes a great bend of many miles I
came to this place before you, and have waited for you here a night and
a day.
"And now I'm hungry. I will eat first, and then we will sleep, and
to-morrow we will start together for the land of the white men."
The man's mind worked rapidly as he watched in silence while the girl
removed some bacon and bannock from his pack-sack and set the
coffee-pot upon the coals. When she had finished her meal he spoke,
slowly but firmly.
"Jeanne, you have waited here a night and a day; you are rested, you
have eaten. I will now make up the pack, and we will take the trail."
"To-night?"
"Yes, to-night--now. The back trail for the lodge of Jacques." The girl
regarded him in amazement, and then smiled sadly, as a mother smiles on
an erring child.
"We cannot return," she said, speaking softly. "Wa-ha-ta-na-ta would
kill me. She thinks we came away together. Wa-ha-ta-na-ta was married;
we are not married; we cannot go back." The man rolled the blankets and
buckled the straps of his pack-sack. He was about to swing it to his
shoulders when the girl grasped his arm.
"I love you," she repeated, "and I will go with you."
"But, Jeanne," the man cried, "this cannot be. I cannot marry you. In
my life I have loved but one woman----"
"And she is the wife of another!" cried the girl.
Bill winced as from a blow, and she continued, speaking rapidly:
"I do not ask that you marry me--not even that you love me. It is
enough that I am at your side. You will treat me kindly, for you are
good. Marriage is nothing--empty words--if the heart loves; nothing
else matters, and some day you will love me."
The man slowly shook his head:
"No, Jeanne, it is impossible. Come, we will return to the lodge of
Jacques. I myself will tell Wa-ha-ta-na-ta that no harm has befallen
you, and----"
"Do you think she will believe _you_? Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, who hates all
white men and, next to Moncrossen, you most of all, for she has seen
that I love you. We have been gone three nights. She will not believe
you. If you will not take me I will go alone to the land of the white
men; I have no place else to go."
The man's jaw squared, his eyes narrowed, and the low, level tones of
his voice cut upon the silence in words of cold authority:
"We are going back to-night. Wa-ha-ta-na-ta will believe me. She is
very old and very wise; and she will know that I speak the truth."
The words ceased abruptly, and the two drew closer together, their eyes
fixed upon the blanketed form which, silent as a shadow, glided from
the bushes and stood motionless before them.
Within an arm's reach, in the dull, red glow, the somber figure stood
contemplating the pair through beady, black eyes, that glowed ominously
in the half-light.
Slowly, deliberately, a clawlike hand was withdrawn from a fold of the
blanket, and the feeble rays of the fire glinted weakly upon the cold,
gray steel of a polished blade.