They filed past the store, a weary looking squad, Montell's fat jowl
drawn into sullen lines, the men not wholly free of a certain furtive
bearing. Observing them I could very well enter into their feelings. My
brief experience between Benton and MacLeod had taught me something of
the fear that stalks at the elbow of a hunted man. The girl looked up at
Barreau and me, and for the first time there was no curl to her lip, no
scornful gleam in her eyes. Only a momentary flash of interest. Then the
listless, impersonal expression came back to her face. She walked at her
father's elbow like one utterly worn out. The men branched off to the
bunkhouse. Montell and his daughter went straight to their cabin.
"I think he is beginning to have a profound respect for the Company,"
Barreau told me that night as we sat over our fire. "They have set him
thinking. It seems that none of his men could get so much as a glimpse
of a moccasin track. Still, their saddle horses and pack-mules were
systematically shot down, until they were afoot again. After that they
were not molested. He knows that his whole party could as easily have
been put out of the way. That seems to have put the fear of God into the
lot of them. They can't understand the object. I don't, myself,
altogether. But I could hazard a close guess, I think."
All that night and the next day the big snowflakes came gyrating down.
The temperature remained the same, just short of freezing, and a dead
calm lay over the land. Then it faired gradually. With the clearing sky
the feathery snowfall melted and disappeared. Upon its passing the night
frosts took on a keener edge. Little vagrant gusts of wind went
frolicking through the open spaces in the woods, fluttering the dry,
fallen leaves into tiny heaps and scattering them again. Sometimes of a
night these same whisperings of the North rattled the bare limbs of the
cottonwoods and birch till the miles of forest seemed to voice a
protesting murmur. Steadily the cold grew, and the sun rode lower on its
diurnal passage. Save the pine and spruce and scattered cedars the great
woods shivered in their nakedness, lacking the white robe which the
North dons at such season. And presently that came also, with the
deep-throated whoop of a north-east gale to herald its coming. In one
night the Sicannie froze from bank to bank; at daybreak the wind drove
curling streamers of loose snow across its glassy surface, to pile in
frosty windows at the foot of the south slope.
During this period we of the post settled into a routine of minor tasks.
There were fires to keep against the cold. From dawn to dusk, somewhere
within the stockade or on the timbered hill above, the clink of an
axeblade on frosty wood rang like a bell. That, and water for cooking,
and caring for the stock now housed in the long stable, kept time from
hanging heavy on the hands of the men. Barreau and I gravitated between
our cabin and the store.
Montell sulked for a week after that last failure to reach the south.
Then he emerged from his shell of silence, and became ponderously
genial, talkative--a metamorphosis which Barreau regarded with frank
contempt. He spoke to Montell no oftener than was necessary, and when he
did speak his tongue was barbed. Openly and unequivocally he despised
and distrusted his flesh-burdened partner, and he made no effort to hide
the fact. For the most part Montell took his sneering unmoved, or
grinned pacifically, but there were times when his red face went purple
and his puffy eyelids would droop till the pupils glinted through mere
slits, like a cat about to pounce. Then it would be Barreau's turn to
smile, in his slow ironic way.
Of the girl, who kept close to the cabin she and her father shared, no
word ever passed between the two. Nor did she meet Barreau or myself
face to face for a matter of three weeks. Our sight of each was from a
distance, and from that distance, with a blanket coat to her heels and a
fur cap pulled over her ears, it was hard to distinguish her from one of
the few half-breed women who had followed their men into the North. In
what way Montell accounted for our presence, I did not know, nor how he
explained Barreau's assured position about the post. It may be that she
did not notice this incongruity on the part of a supposed fugitive; it
may be that Montell was a plausible liar. At any rate, upon the few
occasions when we three came near enough to recognize each other, she
appeared calmly indifferent. Barreau and I ate in the big cookhouse with
the rest of the men. Montell and his daughter had their meals served in
the cabin. So we--at least I will speak for myself, for Barreau
maintained a stony front and absolute silence on the subject--were saved
the embarrassment of meeting three times daily.
Montell himself became very friendly toward me. Bit by bit he drew from
me the story of my wanderings, and shook his head over it, assuring me
that Missouri river sternwheel men were a hard lot. Once he became
reminiscent and spoke of his dead wife and her people with a poorly
concealed pride in the alliance. His palpable satisfaction amused me. It
seemed odd that a man of his rugged type, a hard-headed business
buccaneer, should have that fatuous overestimation of wealth and
so-called "blood." But he had it to the n'th degree. I dare say it was
his one weak spot. She was a Charbonne, of the old New Orleans
Charbonnes, originally a Hugenot family, but for the last generation or
two of St. Louis, he told me; and in the telling he shed his natural
carelessness of speech, and spoke in the stilted, exactly-phrased
English in which he might have addressed the aristocratic parent of his
bride. I knew more or less of the St. Louis Charbonnes myself, and I
wondered that I had never heard of Montell or his daughter. Barreau
smiled when I spoke of this later.
"That's Montell all over," he drawled. "Marrying a Charbonne stands out
as one of the big things he has accomplished. He can't help boasting of
it now and then. I imagine that if he were dying in a snowbank that
thought would cheer him in his last hour. He regards it as a distinct
achievement. He was a big, perfectly-formed, good-looking brute when he
met her, and from all I know it was a case of two strong natures
brushing aside all obstacles. I've heard that the Charbonnes were
furious over what they considered the rankest sort of mesalliance--but
they were married, and so far as I know she never discovered his very
obvious clay feet. She died in child-birth--the second child. The family
has kept up a desultory intercourse with him for the girl's sake. They
recognize her as their own blood, and tolerate him on that account."
A day or two after this Barreau rigged up a dog-team and left the post,
bound for a point down the river, where they had established two
Frenchmen with some trading goods, on the chance of getting into touch
with some few lodges that hunted in that territory. He took one man, and
I tramped a few miles with them, for the sake of the snowshoe practice
of which I was sadly in need. It looked easy to go stalking over the
drifts on those webbed ovals, but it was trying work for a novice I
discovered at my first attempt. There was a certain free, swinging
stride, which I had yet to master. So it happened that I did not return
to the post until that chill hour between sundown and dark.
I was aware that the fire in our cabin was long dead, and the room
corresponding in temperature to an ice-box, but I was in no mood for the
ultra-friendly conversation Montell had been favoring me with of late.
For which reason I eschewed the blaze that I knew was crackling on the
store hearth and made straight for my own quarters.
The day's work was at an end. Besides myself not a soul moved within the
frosty area of the stockade. The doors of every building were shut tight
against the sharp-toothed cold. This I noted almost mechanically. I was
beginning to develop the woodsman's faculty of observing detail, without
conscious purpose. With my mind busy about the prospect of getting a
fire started in the shortest possible space of time my gaze for a moment
rested on the Montell cabin, as I stopped at my own door. At that
instant Jessie Montell stepped outside, a shawl thrown over her head,
carrying in one hand some object covered with a white cloth.
The dogs must have been lying at the end of the cabin. The slam of the
door had barely sounded when she was confronted by one wolf-like brute.
He faced her boldly, his nose pointed inquisitively toward the thing she
carried. She made a threatening gesture and spoke sharply to him,
whereat the husky retreated a foot or two--and was instantly reinforced
by half a dozen of his fellows. The girl lifted her hand a little higher
and berated them, her clear voice reproaching them for their lack of
manners. And then of a sudden one cock-eared brute sprang at the thing
she carried. He missed, and one of the others had a try. She gave
ground, holding above her head what I now saw was a plate; and
immediately the snarling pack was snapping at her skirts and she was cut
off from the door. I could hear the click of their white fangs as I ran.
She backed against the wall, scolding them in a voice that betrayed some
alarm.
I reached her on the double-quick, when I saw that the dogs meant
mischief. The short-tempered devils turned on me in a body with the
first blow I struck. One after the other I knocked galley-west and
crooked with the barrel of my rifle, and shortly emerged victorious from
the melee, but with my leggings ripped in divers places and the left
sleeve of my _parka_ slit as if with a knife. From this last the blood
streamed forth merrily, flowing down over my mitten and dripping redly
on the trampled snow. Prior to that my experience of vicious dogs had
been with those which grabbed and held on. The slashing wolfish snap of
the husky was new to me. I stood looking at my gashed arm in some
astonishment.
"Why, they've bitten you," the girl exclaimed, with a sharp intake of
her breath. "Let me see?"
She spread apart the opening in my buckskin sleeve and frowned at sight
of the torn flesh, meanwhile balancing on her other hand the plate of
meat that had caused the onslaught. Most women, I found time to reflect,
would have dropped it at the first intention, but she had clung to it as
a miser clings to his gold.
"Come in and let me tie that up," she commanded peremptorily, and flung
open the door, giving me little chance to debate whether I would or no.
And I followed her in, as much through a sudden desire to see a little
more of this very capable and impulsive young lady, as to have the sharp
sting of the wound allayed.
She brought water in a basin, a sponge, and a piece of clean linen which
she speedily reduced to strips; and after helping me remove the _parka_
proceeded to dress the gash in my forearm with deft tenderness. During
this ministering to my need we were both silent. When it was done she
tilted her head on one side and surveyed her handiwork, for all the
world like a small bird perched on a limb and looking down. This
fanciful notion struck me as rather absurd, and the more I thought of it
the more absurd it seemed, till I found myself smiling broadly. Likening
Jessie Montell to a saucy bird was, in a way, a very far-fetched
comparison. She was distinctly unbirdlike--apart from that trick of
tipping her head sidewise and gazing speculatively at whatsoever
interested her.
"I'm really and truly sorry I got you into such a scrape," she
apologized sweetly. "I suppose I should have thrown the meat to those
ferocious things. But dear me, I'd toiled so over it, getting it thawed
and fixed for papa's supper, that I hated to see it literally go to the
dogs. You mustn't let the cold get into that cut. You'll have a nasty
sore if you do."
"Oh, I'll see that the cold doesn't have a chance at it," I assured her.
"And you don't need to feel guilty on my account. I'd rather it was my
arm than yours. I'm only too glad to pay a little interest on my debt."
She looked puzzled for a second.
"Oh," she said then, "you mean that time on the _Moon_. There's no debt
to me. Those ruffians would have paid little heed to me. Mr.
Barreau----"
She colored and broke off abruptly, with an impatient gesture.
"Papa has been telling me about you," she changed the subject. "Another
St. Louis unfortunate"--smilingly--"aren't you. As the Scotch say, I
feel 'verra weel acquentit.' Your mother and my aunt Lois were more or
less intimate. So that I know you by proxy, in a way."
I don't recollect just what reply I made. If she were trying to put me
at my ease she made a woeful mess of it the very next minute, for she
demanded to know, with embarrassing directness:
"Why in the world didn't you stand your ground at Benton? Whatever
possessed you to cross the line?"
"Well, you see--I--it was----" and there I halted lamely. I couldn't
discuss the ethics of my flight with this self-sufficient young woman.
My grounds for self-justification in that particular instance, were
rather untenable. I couldn't explain the psychology of the thing to her,
when I couldn't quite grasp it myself. I couldn't honestly admit that I
had refused to stay and face the consequences of Tupper's sudden end at
my hands because I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn't believe that
myself. Even if I had believed it, I would have been ashamed to admit
frankly to that gray-eyed girl that I had run away because I was afraid.
It had been a peculiar situation for me, one that I could hardly attempt
to make clear to her. With Barreau it had been different. He seemed to
understand, to divine how and why I did such and such a thing at such a
time and place, with but a meager explanation from me. Certain effects
invariably led him intuitively to first causes.
Moreover, with her I seemed to be put upon the defensive. I found myself
reflecting on what she would do in such a case, and instantly deciding
that Miss Jessie Montell would defy the devil and all his works if she
thought herself in the right. In addition thereto I felt that she was
unconsciously appraising me and classing me as a weakling; and that,
added to my own half-formed conviction that in time of trial I was
likely to prove so, made me a most uncomfortable individual for a few
moments. Montell's entrance saved me from a rather unwelcome situation.
There is no knowing how deep a tangle I should have got myself into--she
was so uncompromisingly direct. Montell, however, opened the door at the
crucial period, and she turned to him with a recital of the huskies'
outbreak, lighting a cluster of candles as she talked.
"If you don't shut up those ferocious brutes, or feed them a little
oftener," she concluded, "they'll devour somebody one of these days, and
there won't be so much as a moccasin left to tell the tale." At which
extravagant forecast we all three laughed, and I felt myself equal to
the occasion once more.
The upshot of this dog episode was that I stayed to supper with them,
and went to my own cabin rather late in the evening.