Scarcely had Jean uttered the few words that preceded his lapse
into unconsciousness than Philip heard the laughing voice of Adare
at the farther end of the hall. Heavy footsteps followed the
voice. Impulse rather than reason urged him into action. He
lowered Jean to the floor, sprang to the partly open door, closed
it and softly locked it. He was not a moment too soon. A few steps
more and Adare was beating on the panel with his fist.
"What, ho!" he cried in his booming voice. "Josephine wants to
know if you have forgotten her?" Adare's hand was on the latch.
"I am--undressed," explained Philip desperately. "Offer a thousand
apologies for me, Mon Pere. I will finish my bath in a hurry!"
He dropped on his knees beside Jean as the master of Adare moved
away from the door. A brief examination showed him where Croisset
was hurt. The half-breed had received a scalp wound from which the
blood had flowed down over his face and breast. He breathed easier
when he discovered nothing beyond this. In a few minutes he had
him partially stripped and on his bed. Jean opened his eyes as he
bathed the blood from his face. He made an effort to rise, but
Philip held him back.
"Not yet, Jean," he said.
Jean's glance shifted in a look of alarm toward the door.
"I must, M'sieur," he insisted. "It was the last few hundred yards
that made me dizzy. I am better now. And there is no time to lose.
I must get into my room--into other clothes!"
"We will not be interrupted," Philip assured him. "Is this your
only hurt, Jean?"
"That alone, M'sieur. It was not bad until an hour ago. Then it
broke out afresh, and made me so dizzy that with my last breath I
stumbled into your room. The saints be praised that I managed to
reach you!"
Philip left him, to return in a moment with a flask. Jean had
pulled himself to a sitting posture on the side of the bed.
"Here's a drop of whisky, Jean. It will stir up your blood."
"Mon Dieu, it has been stirred up enough this night, tanike,"
smiled Jean feebly. "But it may give me voice, M'sieur. Will you
get me fresh clothes? They are in my room--which is next to this
on the right. I must be prepared for Josephine or Le M'sieur
before I talk."
Philip went to the door and opened it cautiously. He could hear
voices coming from the room through which he had first entered
Adare House. The hall was clear. He slipped out and moved swiftly
to Jean's room. Five minutes later he reentered his own room with
an armful of Jean's clothes. Already Croisset was something like
himself. He quickly put on the garments Philip gave him, brushed
the tangles from his hair, and called upon Philip to examine him
to make sure he had left no spot of blood on his face or neck.
"You have the time?" he asked then.
Philip looked at his watch.
"It is eight o'clock."
"And I must see Josephine--alone--before ten," said Jean quickly.
"You must arrange it, M'sieur. No one must know that I have
returned until I see her. It is important. It means--"
"What?"
"The great God alone can answer that," replied Jean in a strange
voice. "Perhaps it will mean that to-morrow, or the next day, or
the day after that M'sieur Weyman will know the secret we are
keeping from him now, and will fight shoulder to shoulder with
Jean Jacques Croisset in a fight that the wilderness will remember
so long as there are tongues to tell of it!"
There was nothing of boastfulness or of excitement in his words.
They were in the voice of a man who saw himself facing the final
arbiter of things--a voice dead to visible hope, yet behind which
there trembled a thing that made Philip face him with a new fire
in his eyes.
"Why to-morrow or the next day?" he demanded. "Why shroud me in
this damnable mystery any longer, Jean? If there is fighting to be
done, let me fight!"
Jean's hollowed cheeks took on a flush.
"I would give my life if we two could go out and fight--as I want
to fight," he said in a low, tense voice, "It would be worth your
life and mine--that fight. It would be glorious. But I am a
Catholic, M'sieur. I am a Catholic of the wilderness. And I have
taken the most binding oath in the world. I have sworn by the
sweet soul of my dead Iowaka to do only as Josephine tells me to
do in this. Over her grave I swore that, with Josephine kneeling
at my side. I have prayed that my Iowaka might come to me and tell
me if I am right. But in this her voice has been silent. I have
prayed Josephine to free me from my oath, and she has refused. I
am afraid. I dare reveal nothing. I cannot act as I want to act.
But to-night--"
His voice sank to a whisper. His fingers gripped deep into the
flesh of Philip's hand.
"To-night may mean--something," he went on, his voice filled with
an excitement strange to him. "The fight is coming, M'sieur. We
cannot much longer evade what we have been trying to evade! It is
coming. And then, shoulder to shoulder, we will fight!"
"And until then, I must wait?"
"Yes, you must wait, M'sieur."
Jean freed his hand and sat down in one of the chairs near the
table. His eyes turned toward the window.
"You need not fear another shot, M'sieur," he said quietly. "The
man who fired that will not fire again."
"You killed him?"
Jean bowed his head without replying. The movement was neither of
affirmation nor denial:
"He will not fire again."
"It was more than one against one," persisted Philip. "Does your
oath compel you to keep silent about that, too?"
There was a note of irritation in his voice which was almost a
challenge to Jean. It did not prick the half-breed. He looked at
Philip a moment before he replied:
"You are an unusual man, M'sieur," he said at last, as though he
had been carefully measuring his words. "We have known each other
only a few days, and yet it seems a long time. I had my suspicions
of you back there. I thought it was Josephine's beauty you were
after, and I have stood ready to kill you if I saw in you what I
feared. But you have won, M'sieur. Josephine loves you. I have
faith in you. And do you know why? It is because you have fought
the fight of a strong man. It does not take great soul in a man to
match knife against knife, or bullet against bullet. Not to keep
one's word, to play a hopeless part in the dark, to leap when the
numma wapew is over the eyes and you are blind--that takes a man.
And now, when Jean Jacques Croisset says for the first time that
there is a ray of hope for you, where a few hours ago no hope
existed, will you give me again your promise to play the part you
have been asked to play?"
"Hope!" Philip was at Jean's side in an instant. "Jean, what do
you mean? Is it that you, even YOU--now give me hope of
possessing Josephine?"
Slowly Jean rose from his chair.
"I am part Cree, M'sieur," he said. "And in our Cree there is a
saying that the God of all things, Kisamunito, the Great Spirit,
often sits on high and laughs at the tricks which he plays on men.
Perhaps this is one of those times. I am beginning to believe so.
Kisamunito has begun to run our destinies, not ourselves.
Yesterday we--our Josephine and I--had our hopes, our plans, our
schemes well laid. To-night they no longer exist. Before the night
is much older all that Josephine has done, all that she has made
you promise, will count for nothing. After that--a matter of
hours, perhaps of days--will come the great fight for you and me.
Until then you must know nothing, must see nothing, must ask
nothing. And when the crash comes--"
"It will give Josephine to me?" cried Philip eagerly.
"I did not say that, M'sieur," corrected Jean quietly. "Out of
fighting such as this strange things may happen. And where things
happen there is always hope. Is that not true?"
He moved to the door and listened. Quietly he opened it, and
looked out.
"The hall is clear," he whispered softly. "Go to Josephine. Tell
her that she must arrange to see me within an hour. And if you
care for that bit of hope I have shown you, let it happen without
the knowledge of the master of Adare. From this hour Jean Jacques
Croisset sacrifices his soul. Make haste, M'sieur--and use
caution!"
Without a word Philip went quietly out into the hall. Behind him
Jean closed and locked the door.