For a time after they had cleared up the supper things Philip sat
with Jean close to the fire and smoked. The half-breed had lapsed
again into his gloom and silence. Two or three times Philip caught
Jean watching him furtively. He made no effort to force a
conversation, and when he had finished his pipe he rose and went
to the tent which they were to share together. At last he found
himself not unwilling to be alone. He closed the flap to shut out
the still brilliant illumination of the fire, drew a blanket about
him, and stretched himself out on the top of his sleeping bag. He
wanted to think.
He closed his eyes to bring back more vividly the picture of
Josephine as she had given him her lips to kiss. This, of all the
unusual happenings of that afternoon, seemed most like a dream to
him, yet his brain was afire with the reality of it. His mind
struggled again with the hundred questions which he had asked
himself that day, and in the end Josephine remained as completely
enshrouded in mystery as ever. Yet of one thing was he convinced.
The oppression of the thing under which Jean and the girl were
fighting had become more acute with the turning of their faces
homeward. At Adare House lay the cause of their hopelessness, of
Josephine's grief, and of the gloom under which the half-breed had
fallen so completely that night. Until they reached Adare House he
could guess at nothing. And there--what would he find?
In spite of himself he felt creeping slowly over him a shuddering
fear that he had not acknowledged before. The darkness deepening
as the fire died away, the stillness of the night, the low wailing
of a wind growing out of the north roused in him the unrest and
doubt that sunshine and day had dispelled. An uneasy slumber came
at last with this disquiet. His mind was filled with fitful
dreams. Again he was back with Radisson and MacTavish, listening
to the foxes out on the barrens. He heard the Scotchman's moaning
madness and listened to the blast of storm. And then he heard a
cry--a cry like that which MacTavish fancied he had heard in the
wind an hour before he died. It was this dream-cry that roused
him.
He sat up, and his face and hands were damp. It was black in the
tent. Outside even the bit of wind had died away. He reached out a
hand, groping for Jean. The half-breed's blankets had not been
disturbed. Then for a few moments he sat very still, listening,
and wondering if the cry had been real. As he sat tense and still
in the half daze of the sleep it came again. It was the shrill
laughing carnival of a loon out on the lake. More than once he had
laughed at comrades who had shivered at that sound and cowered
until its echoes had died away in moaning wails. He understood
now. He knew why the Indians called it moakwa--"the mad thing." He
thought of MacTavish, and threw the blanket from his shoulders,
and crawled out of the tent.
Only a few faintly glowing embers remained where he had piled the
birch logs. The sky was full of stars. The moon, still full and
red, hung low in the west. The lake lay in a silvery and unruffled
shimmer. Through the silence there came to him from a great
distance the coughing challenge of a bull moose inviting a rival
to battle. Then Philip saw a dark object huddled close to
Josephine's tent.
He moved toward it, his moccasined feet making no sound. Something
impelled him to keep as quiet as the night itself. And when he
came near--he was glad. For the object was Jean. He sat with his
back to a block of birch twenty paces from the door of Josephine's
tent. His head had fallen forward on his chest. He was asleep, but
across his knees lay his rifle, gripped tightly in both hands.
Quick as a flash the truth rushed upon Philip. Like a faithful dog
Jean was guarding the girl. He had kept awake as long as he could,
but even in slumber his hands did not give up their hold on the
rifle.
Against whom was he guarding her? What danger could there be in
this quiet, starlit night for Josephine? A sudden chill ran
through Philip. Did Jean mistrust HIM? Was it possible that
Josephine had secretly expressed a fear which made the Frenchman
watch over her while she slept? As silently as he had approached
he moved away until he stood in the sand at the shore of the lake.
There he looked back. He could just see Jean, a dark blot; and all
at once the unfairness of his suspicion came upon him. To him
Josephine had given proofs of her faith which nothing could
destroy. And he understood now the reason for that tired, drawn
look in Jean's face. This was not the first night he had watched.
Every night he had guarded her until, in the small hours of dawn,
his eyes had closed heavily as they were closed now.
The beginning of the gray northern dawn was not far away. Philip
knew that without looking at the hour. He sensed it. It was in the
air, the stillness of the forest, in the appearance of the stars
and moon. To prove himself he looked at his watch with the match
with which he lighted his pipe. It was half-past three. At this
season of the year dawn came at five.
He walked slowly along the strip of sand between the dark wall of
the forest and the lake. Not until he was a mile away from the
camp did he stop. Then something happened to betray the uneasy
tension to which his nerves were drawn. A sudden crash in the
brush close at hand drew him about with a start, and even while he
laughed at himself he stood with his automatic in his hand.
He heard the whimpering, babyish-like complaint of the porcupine
that had made the sound, and still chuckling over his nervousness
he seated himself on a white drift-log that had lain bleaching for
half a century in the sand.
The moon had fallen behind the western forests; the stars were
becoming fainter in the sky, and about him the darkness was
drawing in like a curtain. He loved this hour that bridged the
northern night with the northern day, and he sat motionless and
still, covering the glow of fire in his pipe bowl with the palm of
his hand.
Out of the brush ambled the porcupine, chattering and talking to
itself in its queer and good-humoured way, fat as a poplar bud
ready to burst, and so intent on reaching the edge of the lake
that it passed in its stupid innocence so close that Philip might
have struck it with a stick. And then there swooped down from out
of the cover of the black spruce a gray cloudlike thing that came
with the silence and lightness of a huge snowflake, hovered for an
instant over the porcupine, and disappeared into the darkness
beyond. And the porcupine, still oblivious of danger and what the
huge owl would have done to him had he been a snowshoe rabbit
instead of a monster of quills, drank his fill leisurely and
ambled back as he had come, chattering his little song of good-
humour and satisfaction.
One after another there came now the sounds that merged dying
night into the birth of day, and for the hundredth time Philip
listened to the wonders that never grew old for him. The laugh of
the loon was no longer a raucous, mocking cry of exultation and
triumph, but a timid, question note--half drowsy, half filled with
fear; and from the treetops came the still lower notes of the
owls, their night's hunt done, and seeking now the densest covers
for the day. And then, from deep back in the forests, came a cry
that was filled with both hunger and defiance--the wailing howl of
a wolf. With these night sounds came the first cheep, cheep, cheep
of the little brush sparrow, still drowsy and uncertain, but
faintly heralding the day. Wings fluttered in the spruce and cedar
thickets. From far overhead came the honking of Canada geese
flying southward. And one by one the stars went out, and in the
south-eastern skies a gray hand reached up slowly over the forests
and wiped darkness from the earth. Not until then did Philip rise
from his seat and turn his face toward camp.
He tried to throw off the feeling of oppression that still clung
to him. By the time he reached camp he had partly succeeded. The
fire was burning brightly again, and Jean was busy preparing
breakfast. To his surprise he saw Josephine standing outside of
her tent. She had finished brushing her hair, and was plaiting it
in a long braid. He had wondered how they would meet that morning.
His face flushed warm as he approached her. The thrill of their
kiss was still on his lips, and his heart sent the memory of it
burning in his eyes as he came up, Josephine turned to greet him.
She was pale and calm. There were dark lines under her eyes, and
her voice was steady and without emotion as she said "Good
morning." It was as if he had dreamed the thing that had passed
the night before. There was neither glow of tenderness, of regret,
nor of memory in her eyes. Her smile was wan and forced. He knew
that she was calling upon his chivalry to forget that one moment
before the door of her tent. He bowed, and said simply:
"I'm afraid you didn't sleep well, Josephine. Did I disturb you
when I stole out of camp?"
"I heard nothing," she replied. "Nothing but the cries of that
terrible bird out on the lake. I'm afraid I didn't sleep much."
The atmosphere of the camp that morning weighted Philip's heart
with a heaviness which he could not throw off. He performed his
share of the work with Jean, and tried to talk to him, but
Croisset would only reply to his most pointed remarks. He
whistled. He shouted out a song back in the timber as he cut an
armful of dry birch, and he returned to Jean and the girl
laughing, the wood piled to his chin and the axe under his arm.
Neither showed that they had heard him. The meal was eaten in a
chilly silence that filled him with deepest foreboding. Josephine
seemed at ease. She talked with him when he spoke to her, but
there seemed now to be a mysterious restraint in every word that
she uttered. She excused herself before Jean and he were through,
and went to her tent. A moment later Philip rose and went down to
his canoe.
In the rubber sack was the last of his tobacco. He was fumbling
for it when his heart gave a great jump. A voice had spoken softly
behind him:
"Philip."
Slowly, unbelieving, he turned. It was Josephine. For the first
time she had called him by his name. And yet the speaking of it
seemed to put a distance between them, for her voice was calm and
without emotion, as she might have spoken to Jean.
"I lay awake nearly all of the night, thinking," she said. "It was
a terrible thing that we did, and I am sorry--sorry--"
In the quickening of her breath he saw how heroically she was
fighting to speak steadily to him.
"You can't understand," she resumed, facing him with the
steadiness of despair. "You cannot understand--until you reach
Adare House. And that is what I dread, the hour when you will know
what I am, and how terrible it was for me to do what I did last
night. If you were like most other men, I wouldn't care so much.
But you have been different."
He replied in words which he would not dare to have uttered a few
hours before.
"And yet, back there when you first asked me to go with you as
your husband, you knew what I would find at Adare House?" he
asked, his voice low and tense. "You knew?"
"Yes."
"Then what has produced the change that makes you fear to have me
go on? Is it because"--he leaned toward her, and his face was
bloodless--"Is it because you care a little for me?"
"Because I respect you, yes," she said in a voice that
disappointed him. "I don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to
go back into the world thinking of me as you will. You have been
honest with me. I do not blame you for what happened last night.
The fault was mine. And I have come to you now, so that you will
understand that, no matter how I may appear and act, I have faith
and trust in you. I would give anything that last night might be
wiped out of our memories. That is impossible, but you must not
think of it and you must not talk to me any more as you have,
until we reach Adare House. And then--"
Her white face was pathetic as she turned away from him.
"You will not want to," she finished. "After that you will fight
for me simply because you are a knight among men, and because you
have promised. There will not even be the promise to bind you, for
I release you from that."
Philip stood silent as she left him. He knew that to follow her
and to force further conversation upon her after what she had said
would be little less than brutal. She had given him to understand
that from now on he was to hold himself toward her with greater
restraint, and the blood flushed hot and uncomfortable into his
face as he realized for the first time how he had overstepped the
bounds.
All his life womanhood had been the most beautiful thing in the
world to him. And now there was forced upon him the dread
conviction that he had insulted it. He did not stop to argue that
the overwhelming completeness of his love had excused him. What he
thought of now was that he had found Josephine alone, had declared
that love for her before he knew her name, and had followed it up
by act and word which he now felt to be dishonourable. And yet,
after all, would he have recalled what had happened if he could?
He asked himself that question as he returned to help Jean. And he
found no answer to it until they were in their canoes again and
headed up the lake, Josephine sitting with her back to him, her
thick silken braid falling in a sinuous and sunlit rope of red
gold over her shoulders. Then he knew that he would not.
Jean gave little rest that day, and by noon they had covered
twenty miles of the lake-way. An hour for dinner, and they went
on. At times Josephine used her paddle, and not once during the
day did she sit with her face to Philip. Late in the afternoon
they camped on a portage fifty miles from Adare House.
There were no stars or moon in the sky this night. The wind had
changed, and came from the north. In it was the biting chill of
the Arctic, and overhead was a gray-dun mass of racing cloud. A
dozen times Jean turned his face anxiously from the fire into the
north, and held wet fingers high over his head to see if in the
air was that peculiar sting by which the forest man forecasts the
approach of snow.
At last he said to Philip: "The wind will grow, M'sieur," and
picked up his axe.
Philip followed with his own, and they piled about Josephine's
tent a thick protection of spruce and cedar boughs. Then together
they brought three or four big logs to the fire. After that Philip
went into their own tent, stripped off his outer garments, and
buried himself in his sleeping bag. For a long time he lay awake
and listened to the increasing wail of the wind in the tall spruce
tops. It was not new to him. For months he had fallen asleep with
the thunderous crash of ice and the screaming fury of storm in his
ears. But to-night there was something in the sound which sunk him
still deeper into the gloom which he had found it impossible to
throw off. At last he fell asleep.
When he awoke he struck a match and looked at his watch. It was
four o'clock, and he dressed and went outside. The wind had died
down. Jean was already busy over the cook-fire, and in Josephine's
tent he saw the light of a candle. She appeared a little later,
wrapped close in a thick red Hudson's Bay coat, and with a marten-
skin cap on her head. Something in her first appearance, the
picturesqueness of her dress, the jauntiness of the little cap,
and the first flush of the fire in her face filled him with the
hope that sleep had given her better spirit. A closer glance
dashed this hope. Without questioning her he knew that she had
spent another night of mental torture. And Jean's face looked
thinner, and the hollows under his eyes were deeper.
All that day the sky hung heavy and dark with cloud, and the water
was rough. Early in the afternoon the wind rose again, and
Croisset ran alongside them to suggest that they go ashore. He
spoke to Philip, but Josephine interrupted quickly:
"We must go on, Jean," she demanded. "If it is not impossible we
must reach Adare House to-night."
"It will be late--midnight," replied Jean. "And if it grows
rougher--"
A dash of spray swept over the bow into the girl's face.
"I don't care for that," she cried. "Wet and cold won't hurt us."
She turned to Philip, as if needing his argument against Jean's.
"Is it not possible to get me home to-night?" she asked.
"It is two o'clock," said Philip. "How far have we to go, Jean?"
"It is not the distance, M'sieur--it is that," replied Jean, as a
wave sent another dash of water over Josephine. "We are twenty
miles from Adare House."
Philip looked at Josephine.
"It is best for you to go ashore and wait until to-morrow,
Josephine. Look at that stretch of water ahead--a mass of
whitecaps."
"Please, please take me home," she pleaded, and now she spoke to
Philip alone. "I'm not afraid. And I cannot live through another
night like last night. Why, if anything should happen to us"--she
flung back her head and smiled bravely at him through the mist of
her wet hair and the drenching spray--"if anything should happen I
know you'd meet it gloriously. So I'm not afraid. And I want to go
home."
Philip turned to the half-breed, who had drifted a canoe length
away.
"We'll go on, Jean," he called. "We can make it by keeping close
inshore. Can you swim?"
"Oui, M'sieur; but Josephine--"
"I can swim with her," replied Philip, and Josephine saw the old
life and strength in his face again as she turned to the white-
capped seas ahead of them.
Hour after hour they fought their way on after that, the wind
rising stronger in their faces, the seas burying them deeper; and
each time that Josephine looked back she marvelled at the man
behind her, bare-headed, his hair drenched, his arms naked to the
elbows, and his clear gray eyes always smiling confidence at her
through the gloom of mist. Not until darkness was falling about
them did Jean drop near enough to speak again. Then he shouted:
"Another hour and we reach Snowbird River, M'sieur. That is four
miles from Adare House. But ahead of us the wind rushes across a
wide sweep of the lake. Shall we hazard it?"
"Yes, yes," cried the girl, answering for Philip. "We must go on!"
Without another word Croisset led the way. The wind grew stronger
with each minute's progress. Shouting for Jean to hold his canoe
for a space, Philip steadied his own canoe while he spoke to the
girl.
"Come back to me as quietly as you can, Josephine," he said. "Pass
the dunnage ahead of you to take the place of your weight. If
anything happens, I want you near me."
Cautiously Josephine did as he bade her, and as she added slowly
to the ballast in the bow she drew little by little nearer to
Philip, Her hand touched an object in the bottom of the canoe as
she came close to him. It was one of his moccasins. She saw now
his naked throat and chest. He had stripped off his heavy woollen
shirt as well as his footwear. He reached out, and his hand
touched her lightly as she huddled down in front of him.
"Splendid!" he laughed. "You're a little brick, Josephine, and the
best comrade in a canoe that I ever saw. Now if we go over all
I've got to do is to swim ashore with you. Is it good walking to
Adare House?"
He did not hear her reply; but a fresh burst of the wind sent a
loose strand of her hair back into his face, and he was happy.
Happy in spite of a peril which neither he nor Jean would have
thought of facing alone. In the darkness he could no longer see
Croisset or his canoe. But Jean's shout came back to him every
minute on the wind, and over Josephine's head he answered. He was
glad that it was so dark the girl could not see what was ahead of
them now. Once or twice his own breath stopped short, when it
seemed that the canoe had taken the fatal plunge which he was
dreading. Every minute he figured the distance from the shore, and
his chances of swimming it if they were overturned. And then,
after a long time, there came a sudden lull in the wind, and the
seas grew less rough. Jean's voice came from near them, filled
with a thrill of relief.
"We are behind the point," he shouted. "Another mile and we will
enter the Snowbird, M'sieur!"
Philip leaned forward in the gloom. Josephine's cap had fallen
off, and for a moment his hand rested on her wet and wind-blown
hair.
"Did you hear that?" he cried. "We're almost home."
"Yes," she shivered. "And I'm glad--glad--"
Was it an illusion of his own, or did she seem to shiver and draw
away from him AT THE TOUCH OF HIS HAND? Even in the blackness he
could FEEL that she was huddled forward, her face in her hands.
She did not speak to him again. When they entered the smooth water
of the Snowbird, Jean's canoe drew close in beside them, but not a
word fell from Croisset. Like shadows they moved up the stream
between two black walls of forest. A steadily increasing
excitement, a feeling that he was upon the eve of strange events,
grew stronger in Philip. His arms and back ached, his legs were
cramped, the last of his splendid strength had been called upon in
the fight with wind and seas, but he forgot this exhaustion in
anticipation of the hour that was drawing near. He knew that Adare
House would reveal to him things which Josephine had not told him.
She had said that it would, and that he would hate her then. That
they were burying themselves deeper into the forest he guessed by
the lessening of the wind.
Half an hour passed, and in that time his companion did not move
or speak. He heard faintly a distant wailing cry. He recognized
the sound. It was not a wolf-cry, but the howl of a husky. He
fancied then that the girl moved, that she was gripping the sides
of the canoe with her hands. For fifteen minutes more there was
not a sound but the dip of the paddles and the monotone of the
wind sweeping through the forest tops. Then the dog howled again,
much nearer; and this time he was joined by a second, a third, and
a fourth, until the night was filled with a din that made Philip
stare wonderingly off into the blackness. There were fifty dogs if
there was one in that yelping, howling horde, he told himself, and
they were coming with the swiftness of the wind in their
direction.
From his canoe Croisset broke the silence.
"The wind has given the pack our scent, ma Josephine, and they are
coming to meet you," he said.
The girl made no reply, but Philip could see now that she was
sitting tense and erect. As suddenly as it had begun the cry of
the pack ceased. The dogs had reached the water, and were waiting.
Not until Jean swung his canoe toward shore and the bow of it
scraped on a gravelly bar did they give voice again, and then so
close and fiercely that involuntarily Philip held his canoe back.
In another moment Josephine had stepped lightly over the side in a
foot of water. He could not see what happened then, except that
the bar was filled with a shadowy horde of leaping, crowding,
yelping beasts, and that Josephine was the centre of them. He
heard her voice clear and commanding, crying out their names--
Tyr, Captain, Bruno, Thor, Wamba--until their number seemed
without end; he heard the metallic snap of fangs, quick, panting
breaths, the shuffling of padded feet; and then the girl's voice
grew more clear, and the sounds less, until he heard nothing but
the bated breath of the pack and a low, smothered whine.
In that moment the wind-blown clouds above them broke in a narrow
rift across the skies, and for an instant the moon shone through.
What he saw then drew Philip's breath from him in a wondering
gasp.
On the white bar stood Josephine. The wind on the lake had torn
the strands of her long braid loose and her hair swept in a damp
and clinging mass to her hips. She was looking toward him, as if
about to speak. But it was the pack that made him stare. A sea of
great shaggy heads and crouching bodies surrounded her, a fierce
yellow and green-eyed horde flattened like a single beast upon
their bellies their heads turned toward her, their throats
swelling and their eyes gleaming in the joyous excitement of her
return. An instant of that strange and thrilling picture, and the
night was black again. The girl's voice spoke softly. Bodies
shuffled out of her path. And then she said, quite near to him;
"Are you coming, Philip?"