a voice that was so soft it was almost a woman's.
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Delesse. He staggered to his feet, clutching his
crushed hand. "M'sieu--"
Reese Beaudin put his hands to the other's shoulders, smiling, friendly.
"I will apologize, I will explain, mon ami," he said. "But first, you
must tell me the name of that Yellow-back who ran away years ago. Do
you remember it?"
"Oui, but what has that to do with my crushed hand? The Yellow-back's
name was Reese Beaudin--"
"And I am Reese Beaudin," laughed the other gently.
On that day--the day of Wakoa, the dog sale--seven fat caribou were
roasting on great spits at Post Lac Bain, and under them were seven
fires burning red and hot of seasoned birch, and around the seven fires
were seven groups of men who slowly turned the roasting carcasses.
It was the Big Day of the mid-winter festival, and Post Lac Bain, with
a population of twenty in times of quiet, was a seething wilderness
metropolis of two hundred excited souls and twice as many dogs. From
all directions they had come, from north and south and east and west;
from near and from far, from the Barrens, from the swamps, from the
farther forests, from river and lake and hidden trail--a few white men,
mostly French; half-breeds and 'breeds, Chippewans, and Crees, and here
and there a strange, dark-visaged little interloper from the north with
his strain of Eskimo blood. Foregathered were all the breeds and creeds
and fashions of the wilderness.
Over all this, pervading the air like an incense, stirring the desire
of man and beast, floated the aroma of the roasting caribou. The
feast-hour was at hand. With cries that rose above the last words of a
wild song the seven groups of men rushed to seven pairs of props and
tore them away. The great carcasses swayed in mid-air, bent slowly over
their spits, and then crashed into the snow fifteen feet from the fire.
About each carcass five men with razor-sharp knives ripped off hunks of
the roasted flesh and passed them into eager hands of the hungry
multitude. First came the women and children, and last the men.
On this there peered forth from a window in the factor's house the
darkly bearded, smiling face of Reese Beaudin.
"I have seen him three times, wandering about in the crowd, seeking
someone," he said. "Bien, he shall find that someone very soon!"
In the face of McDougall, the factor, was a strange look. For he had
listened to a strange story, and there was still something of shock and
amazement and disbelief in his eyes.
"Reese Beaudin, it is hard for me to believe."
"And yet you shall find that it is true," smiled Reese.
"He will kill you. He is a monster--a giant!"
"I shall die hard," replied Reese.
He turned from the window again, and took from the table a violin
wrapped in buckskin, and softly he played one of their old love songs.
It was not much more than a whisper, and yet it was filled with a
joyous exultation. He laid the violin down when he was finished, and
laughed, and filled his pipe, and lighted it.
"It is good for a man's soul to know that a woman loves him, and has
been true," he said. "Mon pere, will you tell me again what she said?
It is strength for me--and I must soon be going."
McDougall repeated, as if under a strain from which he could not free
himself:
"She came to me late last night, unknown to Dupont. She had received
your message, and knew you were coming. And I tell you again that I saw
something in her eyes which makes me afraid! She told me, then, that
her father killed Bedore in a quarrel, and that she married Dupont to
save him from the law--and kneeling there, with her hand on the cross
at her breast, she swore that each day of her life she has let Dupont
know that she hates him, and that she loves you, and that some day
Reese Beaudin would return to avenge her. Yes, she told him that--I
know it by what I saw in her eyes. With that cross clutched in her
fingers she swore that she had suffered torture and shame, and that
never a word of it had she whispered to a living soul, that she might
turn the passion of Jacques Dupont's black heart into a great hatred.
And today--Jacques Dupont will kill you!"
"I shall die hard," Reese repeated again.
He tucked the violin in its buckskin covering under his arm. From the
table he took his cap and placed it on his head.
In a last effort McDougall sprang from his chair and caught the other's
arm.
"Reese Beaudin--you are going to your death! As factor of Lac
Bain--agent of justice under power of the Police--I forbid it!"
"So-o-o-o," spoke Reese Beaudin gently. "Mon pere--"
He unbuttoned his coat, which had remained buttoned. Under the coat was
a heavy shirt; and the shirt he opened, smiling into the factor's eyes,
and McDougall's face froze, and the breath was cut short on his lips.
"That!" he gasped.
Reese Beaudin nodded.
Then he opened the door and went out.
Joe Delesse had been watching the factor's house, and he worked his way
slowly along the edge of the feasters so that he might casually come
into the path of Reese Beaudin. And there was one other man who also
had watched, and who came in the same direction. He was a stranger,
tall, closely hooded, his mustached face an Indian bronze. No one had
ever seen him at Lac Bain before, yet in the excitement of the carnival
the fact passed without conjecture or significance. And from the cabin
of Henri Paquette another pair of eyes saw Reese Beaudin, and Mother
Paquette heard a sob that in itself was a prayer.
In and out among the devourers of caribou-flesh, scanning the groups
and the ones and the twos and the threes, passed Jacques Dupont, and
with him walked his friend, one-eyed Layonne. Layonne was a big man,
but Dupont was taller by half a head. The brutishness of his face was
hidden under a coarse red beard; but the devil in him glowered from his
deep-set, inhuman eyes; it walked in his gait, in the hulk of his great
shoulders, in the gorilla-like slouch of his hips. His huge hands hung
partly clenched at his sides. His breath was heavy with whisky that
Layonne himself had smuggled in, and in his heart was black murder.
"He has not come!" he cried for the twentieth time. "He has not come!"
He moved on, and Reese Beaudin--ten feet away--turned and smiled at Joe
Delesse with triumph in his eyes. He moved nearer.
"Did I not tell you he would not find in me that narrow-shouldered,
smooth-faced stripling of five years ago?" he asked. "N'est-ce pas,
friend Delesse?"
The face of Joe Delesse was heavy with a somber fear.
"His fist is like a wood-sledge, m'sieu."
"So it was years ago."
"His forearm is as big as the calf of your leg."
"Oui, friend Delesse, it is the forearm of a giant."
"He is half again your weight."
"Or more, friend Delesse."
"He will kill you! As the great God lives, he will kill you!"
"I shall die hard," repeated Reese Beaudin for the third time that day.
Joe Delesse turned slowly, doggedly. His voice rumbled.
"The sale is about to begin, m'sieu. See!"
A man had mounted the log platform raised to the height of a man's
shoulders at the far end of the clearing. It was Henri Paquette, master
of the day's ceremonies, and appointed auctioneer of the great wakao. A
man of many tongues was Paquette. To his lips he raised a great
megaphone of birchbark, and sonorously his call rang out--in French, in
Cree, in Chippewan, and the packed throng about the caribou-fires
heaved like a living billow, and to a man and a woman and a child it
moved toward the appointed place.
"The time has come," said Reese Beaudin. "And all Lac Bain shall see!"
Behind them--watching, always watching--followed the bronze-faced
stranger in his close-drawn hood.
For an hour the men of Lac Bain gathered close-wedged about the log
platform on which stood Henri Paquette and his Indian helper. Behind
the men were the women and children, and through the cordon there ran a
babiche-roped pathway along which the dogs were brought.
The platform was twenty feet square, with the floor side of the logs
hewn flat, and there was no lack of space for the gesticulation and
wild pantomime of Paquette. In one hand he held a notebook, and in the
other a pencil. In the notebook the sales of twenty dogs were already
tabulated, and the prices paid.
Anxiously, Reese Beaudin was waiting. Each time that a new dog came up
he looked at Joe Delesse, but, as yet Joe had failed to give the signal.
On the platform the Indian was holding two malamutes in leash now and
Paquette was crying, in a well simulated fit of great fury:
"What, you cheap kimootisks, will you let this pair of malamutes go for
seven mink and a cross fox. Are you men? Are you poverty-stricken? Are
you blind? A breed dog and a male giant for seven mink and a cross fox?
Non, I will buy them myself first, and kill them, and use their flesh
for dog-feed, and their hides for fools' caps! I will--"
"Twelve mink and a Number Two Cross," came a voice out of the crowd.
"Twelve mink and a Number One," shouted another.
"A little better--a little better!" wailed Paquette. "You are waking
up, but slowly--mon Dieu, so slowly! Twelve mink and--"
A voice rose in Cree:
"Nesi-tu-now-unisk!"
Paquette gave a triumphant yell.
"The Indian beats you! The Indian from Little Neck Lake--an Indian
beats the white man! He offers twenty beaver--prime skins! And beaver
are wanted in Paris now. They're wanted in London. Beaver and
gold--they are the same! But they are the price of one dog alone. Shall
they both go at that? Shall the Indian have them for twenty
beaver--twenty beaver that may be taken from a single house in a
day--while it has taken these malamutes two and a half years to grow? I
say, you cheap kimootisks--"
And then an amazing thing happened. It was like a bomb falling in that
crowded throng of wondering and amazed forest people.
It was the closely hooded stranger who spoke.
"I will give a hundred dollars cash," he said.
A look of annoyance crossed Reese Beaudin's face.
He was close to the bronze-faced stranger, and edged nearer.
"Let the Indian have them," he said in a low voice. "It is Meewe. I
knew him years ago. He has carried me on his back. He taught me first
to draw pictures."
"But they are powerful dogs," objected the stranger. "My team needs
them."
The Cree had risen higher out of the crowd. One arm rose above his
head. He was an Indian who had seen fifty years of the forests, and his
face was the face of an Egyptian.
"Nesi-tu-now Nesoo-sap umisk!" he proclaimed.
Henri Paquette hopped excitedly, and faced the stranger.
"Twenty-two beaver," he challenged. "Twenty-two--"
"Let Meewe have them," replied the hooded stranger.
Three minutes later a single dog was pulled up on the log platform. He
was a magnificent beast, and a rumble of approval ran through the crowd.
The face of Joe Delesse was gray. He wet his lips. Reese Beaudin,
watching him, knew that the time had come. And Joe Delesse, seeing no
way of escape, whispered:
"It is her dog, m'sieu. It is Parka--and Dupont sells him today to show
her that he is master."
Already Paquette was advertising the virtues of Parka when Reese
Beaudin, in a single leap, mounted the log platform, and stood beside
him.
"Wait!" he cried.
There fell a silence, and Reese said, loud enough for all to hear:
"M'sieu Paquette, I ask the privilege of examining this dog that I want
to buy."
At last he straightened, and all who faced him saw the smiling sneer on
his lips.
"Who is it that offers this worthless cur for sale?" Lac Bain heard him
say. "P-s-s-st--it is a woman's dog! It is not worth bidding for!"
"You lie!" Dupont's voice rose in a savage roar. His huge shoulders
bulked over those about him. He crowded to the edge of the platform.
"You lie!"
"He is a woman's dog," repeated Reese Beaudin without excitement, yet
so clearly that every ear heard. "He is a woman's pet, and M'sieu
Dupont most surely does lie if he denies it!"
So far as memory went back no man at Lac Bain that day had ever heard
another man give Jacques Dupont the lie. A thrill swept those who heard
and understood. There was a great silence, in that silence men near him
heard the choking rage in Dupont's great chest. He was staring
up--straight up into the smiling face of Reese Beaudin; and in that
moment he saw beyond the glossy black beard, and amazement and unbelief
held him still. In the next, Reese Beaudin had the violin in his hands.
He flung off the buckskin, and in a flash the instrument was at his
shoulder.
"See! I will play, and the woman's pet shall sing!"
And once more, after five years, Lac Bain listened to the magic of
Reese Beaudin's violin. And it was Elise's old love song that he
played. He played it, smiling down into the eyes of a monster whose
face was turning from red to black; yet he did not play it to the end,
nor a quarter of it, for suddenly a voice shouted:
"It is Reese Beaudin--come back!"
Joe Delesse, paralyzed, speechless, could have sworn it was the hooded
stranger who shouted; and then he remembered, and flung up his great
arms, and bellowed:
"Oui--by the Saints, it is Reese Beaudin--Reese Beaudin come back!"
Suddenly as it had begun the playing ceased, and Henri Paquette found
himself with the violin in his hands. Reese Beaudin turned, facing them
all, the wintry sun glowing in his beard, his eyes smiling, his head
high--unafraid now, more fearless than any other man that had ever set
foot in Lac Bain. And McDougall, with his arm touching Elise's hair,
felt the wild and throbbing pulse of her body. This day--this
hour--this minute in which she stood still, inbreathing--had confirmed
her belief in Reese Beaudin. As she had dreamed, so had he risen. First
of all the men in the world he stood there now, just as he had been
first in the days when she had loved his dreams, his music, and his
pictures. To her he was the old god, more splendid,--for he had risen
above fear, and he was facing Dupont now with that strange quiet smile
on his lips. And then, all at once, her soul broke its fetters, and
over the women's heads she reached out her arms, and all there heard
her voice in its triumph, its joy, its fear.
"Reese! Reese--my sakeakun!"
Over the heads of all the forest people she called him beloved! Like
the fang of an adder the word stung Dupont's brain. And like fire
touched to powder, swiftly as lightning illumines the sky, the glory of
it blazed in Reese Beaudin's face. And all that were there heard him
clearly:
"I am Reese Beaudin. I am the Yellow-back. I have returned to meet a
man you all know--Jacques Dupont. He is a monkey-man--a whipper of
boys, a stealer of women, a cheat, a coward, a thing so foul the crows
will not touch him when he dies--"
There was a roar. It was not the roar of a man, but of a beast--and
Jacques Dupont was on the platform!
Quick as Dupont's movement had been it was no swifter than that of the
closely-hooded stranger. He was as tall as Dupont, and about him there
was an air of authority and command.
"Wait," he said, and placed a hand on Dupont's heaving chest. His smile
was cold as ice. Never had Dupont seen eyes so like the pale blue of
steel.
"M'sieu Dupont, you are about to avenge a great insult. It must be done
fairly. If you have weapons, throw them away. I will search this--this
Reese Beaudin, as he calls himself! And if there is to be a fight, let
it be a good one. Strip yourself to that great garment you have on,
friend Dupont. See, our friend--this Reese Beaudin--is already
stripping!"
He was unbuttoning the giant's heavy Hudson's Bay coat. He pulled it
off, and drew Dupont's knife from its sheath. Paquette, like a stunned
cat that had recovered its ninth life, was scrambling from the
platform. The Indian was already gone. And Reese Beaudin had tossed his
coat to Joe Delesse, and with it his cap. His heavy shirt was closely
buttoned; and not only was it buttoned, Delesse observed, but also was
it carefully pinned. And even now, facing that monster who would soon
be at him, Reese Beaudin was smiling.
For a moment the closely hooded stranger stood between them, and
Jacques Dupont crouched himself for his vengeance. Never to the people
of Lac Bain had he looked more terrible. He was the gorilla-fighter,
the beast fighter, the fighter who fights as the wolf, the bear and the
cat--crushing out life, breaking bones, twisting, snapping, inundating
and destroying with his great weight and his monstrous strength. He was
a hundred pounds heavier than Reese Beaudin. On his stooping shoulders
he could carry a tree. With his giant hands he could snap a two-inch
sapling. With one hand alone he had set a bear-trap. And with that
mighty strength he fought as the cave-man fought. It was his boast
there was no trick of the Chippewan, the Cree, the Eskimo or the forest
man that he did not know. And yet Reese Beaudin stood calmly, waiting
for him, and smiling!
In another moment the hooded stranger was gone, and there was none
between them.
"A long time I have waited for this, m'sieu," said Reese, for Dupont's
ears alone. "Five years is a long time. And my Elise still loves me."
Still more like a gorilla Jacques Dupont crept upon him. His face was
twisted by a rage to which he could no longer give voice. Hatred and
jealousy robbed his eyes of the last spark of the thing that was human.
His great hands were hooked, like an eagle's talons. His lips were
drawn back, like a beast's. Through his red beard yellow fangs were
bared.
And Reese Beaudin no longer smiled. He laughed!
"Until I went away and met real men, I never knew what a pig of a man
you were, M'sieu Dupont," he taunted amiably, as though speaking in
jest to a friend. "You remind me of an aged and over-fat porcupine with
his big paunch and crooked arms. What horror must it have been for my
Elise to have lived in sight of such a beast as you!"
With a bellow Dupont was at him. And swifter than eyes had ever seen
man move at Lac Bain before, Reese Beaudin was out of his way, and
behind him; and then, as the giant caught himself at the edge of the
platform, and turned, he received a blow that sounded like the
broadside of a paddle striking water. Reese Beaudin had struck him with
the flat of his unclenched hand!
A murmur of incredulity rose out of the crowd. To the forest man such a
blow was the deadliest of insults. It was calling him an Iskwao--a
woman--a weakling--a thing too contemptible to harden one's fist
against. But the murmur died in an instant. For Reese Beaudin, making
as if to step back, shot suddenly forward--straight through the giant's
crooked arms--and it was his fist this time that landed squarely
between the eyes of Dupont. The monster's head went back, his great
body wavered, and then suddenly he plunged backward off the platform
and fell with a crash to the ground.
A yell went up from the hooded stranger. Joe Delesse split his throat.
The crowd drowned Reese Beaudin's voice. But above it all rose a
woman's voice shrieking forth a name.
And then Jacques Dupont was on the platform again. In the moments that
followed one could almost hear his neighbor's heart beat. Nearer and
still nearer to each other drew the two men. And now Dupont crouched
still more, and Joe Delesse held his breath. He noticed that Reese
Beaudin was standing almost on the tips of his toes--that each instant
he seemed prepared, like a runner, for sudden flight. Five
feet--four--and Dupont leapt in, his huge arms swinging like the limb
of a tree, and his weight following with crushing force behind his
blow. For an instant it seemed as though Reese Beaudin had stood to
meet that fatal rush, but in that same instant--so swiftly that only
the hooded stranger knew what had happened--he was out of the way, and
his left arm seemed to shoot downward, and then up, and then his right
straight out, and then again his left arm downward, and up--and it was
the third blow, all swift as lightning, that brought a yell from the
hooded stranger. For though none but the stranger had seen it, Jacques
Dupont's head snapped back--and all saw the fourth blow that sent him
reeling like a man struck by a club.
There was no sound now. A mental and a vocal paralysis seized upon the
inhabitants of Lac Bain. Never had they seen fighting like this
fighting of Reese Beaudin. Until now had they lived to see the science
of the sawdust ring pitted against the brute force of Brobdingnagian,
of Antaeus and Goliath. For Reese Beaudin's fighting was a fighting
without tricks that they could see. He used his fists, and his fists
alone. He was like a dancing man. And suddenly, in the midst of the
miracle, they saw Jacques Dupont go down. And the second miracle was
that Reese Beaudin did not leap on him when he had fallen. He stood
back a little, balancing himself in that queer fashion on the balls and
toes of his feet. But no sooner was Dupont up than Reese Beaudin was in
again, with the swiftness of a cat, and they could hear the blows, like
solid shots, and Dupont's arms waved like tree-tops, and a second time
he was off the platform.
He was staggering when he rose. The blood ran in streams from his mouth
and nose. His beard dripped with it. His yellow teeth were caved in.
This time he did not leap upon the platform--he clambered back to it,
and the hooded stranger gave him a lift which a few minutes before
Dupont would have resented as an insult.
"Ah, it has come," said the stranger to Delesse.
"He is the best close-in fighter in all--"
He did not finish.
"I could kill you now--kill you with a single blow," said Reese Beaudin
in a moment when the giant stood swaying. "But there is a greater
punishment in store for you, and so I shall let you live!"
And now Reese Beaudin was facing that part of the crowd where the woman
he loved was standing. He was breathing deeply. But he was not winded.
His eyes were black as night, his hair wind-blown. He looked straight
over the heads between him and she whom Dupont had stolen from him.
Reese Beaudin raised his arms, and where there had been a murmur of
voices there was now silence.
For the first time the stranger threw back his hood. He was unbuttoning
his heavy coat.
And Joe Delesse, looking up, saw that Reese Beaudin was making a mighty
effort to quiet a strange excitement within his breast. And then there
was a rending of cloth and of buttons and of pins as in one swift
movement he tore the shirt from his own breast--exposing to the eyes of
Lac Bain blood-red in the glow of the winter sun, the crimson badge of
the Royal Northwest Mounted Police!
And above the gasp that swept the multitude, above the strange cry of
the woman, his voice rose:
"I am Reese Beaudin, the Yellow-back. I am Reese Beaudin, who ran away.
I am Reese Beaudin,--Sergeant in His Majesty's Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, and in the name of the law I arrest Jacques Dupont for the
murder of Francois Bedore, who was killed on his trap-line five years
ago! Fitzgerald--"
The hooded stranger leaped upon the platform. His heavy coat fell off.
Tall and grim he stood in the scarlet jacket of the Police. Steel
clinked in his hands. And Jacques Dupont, terror in his heart, was
trying to see as he groped to his knees. The steel snapped over his
wrists.
And then he heard a voice close over him. It was the voice of Reese
Beaudin.
"And this is your final punishment, Jacques Dupont--to be hanged by the
neck until you are dead. For Bedore was not dead when Elise's father
left him after their fight on the trap-line. It was you who saw the
fight, and finished the killing, and laid the crime on Elise's father.
Mukoki, the Indian, saw you. It is my day, Dupont, and I have waited
long--"
The rest Dupont did not hear. For up from the crowd there went a mighty
roar. And through it a woman was making her way with outreaching
arms--and behind her followed the factor of Lac Bain.
THE FIDDLING MAN