A MAN AND A MAID
It was the second day after the arrival of John Kars and his outfit.
The noon meal at Ailsa Mowbray's house had been shared by the visitors.
The river was busy with the life of the post, mother and son had
returned to the Fort to continue their long day's work, and the
woodland paths approaching it were alive with a procession of those who
had wares to trade. It was a busy scene. And one which gave no hint
of any fear of the marauders whom Murray had gone to deal with.
Besides John Kars' outfit at the landing a number of canoes were moored
along the river bank under the shadow of the gracious, dipping willows,
which had survived years of the break up of the spring ice and the
accompanying freshet. Indians and half-breeds lounged and smoked,
squatting around regardless of the hours which had small enough meaning
for them at any time. Just now contentment reigned in their savage
hearts. Each hour of their lives contained only its own troubles.
It was the most pleasant time of the northern year. The spring dangers
on the river were past. The chill nights had long since sealed up the
summer wounds in the great glacier. As yet the summer heat of the
earth still shed its beneficent influence on the temperature of the
air. And, greatest blessing of all, the flies and mosquitoes were
rapidly abating their attacks, and the gaps in their ranks were
increasing with every frosty night that passed.
The fall tints in the woods were ablaze on every hand. The dark green
of the pine woods kept the character of the northland weird. The
vegetation of deciduous habit had assumed its clothing of russet and
brown, whilst the scarlet of the dying maple lit up the darkening
background with its splendid flare, so like the blaze of a setting sun.
Only the northland man can really appreciate the last weeks before the
merciless northern winter shuts him in. The hope inspired by the
turbulent spring speaks to him but of the delight of the season to
come. Far too often do the summer storms weight down his spirit to
make the height of the open season his time of festival. Those are the
days of labor. Fierce labor, in preparation for the dark hours of
winter. The days of early fall are the days in which he can look on
labor accomplished, and forward, with confidence, to security under
stress, and even a certain comfort.
Dr. Bill had been left at the landing with the canoes, and Peigan
Charley, and the pack Indians. The girl and the man were wandering
along the woodland bank, talking the talk of those whose years, for the
greater part, lay still before them, and finding joy in the simple fact
of the life which moved about them. No threat of the Indians which
Murray had gone to encounter on their behalf could cast a shadow over
their mood. They were full to the brim of strong young life, when the
world is gold tinted, a reflection of their own virile youth.
They had come to a broad ditch which contained in its depths the narrow
trickle of a miniature cascade, pouring down from some spring on the
hillside, whereon the old Fort stood. It was absurdly wide for the
trifling watercourse it now disgorged upon the river. But then, in
spring the whole character of it was changed. In spring it was a
rushing torrent, fed by the melting snows, and tearing out its banks in
a wild, rebellious effort against all restraint.
Just now its marshy bed was beyond Jessie's powers to negotiate. They
stood looking across it at the inviting shades of an avenue of heavy
red willows, with its winding alley of tawny grass fringing the stately
pine woods, whose depths suggested the chastened aisles of some
mediaeval cathedral.
To the disappointed girl all further progress in that direction seemed
hopeless, and Kars stood watching the play of her feelings in the
expression of the mobile features he had learned to dream about on the
long trail. His steady eyes were smiling happily. Even the
roughnesses of his rugged face seemed to have softened under the
influence of his new feelings. His heavy, thrusting jaw had lost
something of the grim setting it wore upon the trail. His brows had
lost their hard depression, and the smile in his eyes lit up the whole
of his face with a transparent frankness and delight. Just now he was
a perfect illustration of the man Father José beheld in him.
He pointed across the waterway.
"Kind of seems a pity," he said, with a tantalizing suggestion in his
smiling eyes. "Git a peek under those shady willows. The grass, too.
We don't get a heap of grass north of 'sixty.' Then the sun's getting
in amongst those branches. An' we need to turn right around back.
Seems a pity."
The girl withdrew her gaze from the scene. Her eyes smiled up into
his. They were so softly gray. So full of trusting delight.
"What can we do?" she asked, a woman looking for guidance from the one
man.
"Do?"
Kars laughed. He flung out a hand. He was not thinking of what he
purposed. The magic of Jessie's personality held him. Her tall
gracious figure. Its exquisite modeling. The full rounded shoulders,
their contours unconcealed by the light jacket she was wearing. Her
neck, soft with the gentle fulness of youth. The masses of ruddy brown
hair coiled on her bare head without any of the artificiality of the
women he encountered in Leaping Horse. The delicate complexion of her
oval cheeks, untouched by the fierce climate in which she lived. To
him she had become a perfect picture of womanhood.
The girl laid her small hand in his with all the confidence of a child.
The warm pressure, as his fingers closed over it, thrilled her.
Without a word of protest she submitted to his lead. They clambered
down to the water's edge.
In a moment she was lifted off her feet. She felt herself borne high
above the little gurgling cascade. Then she became aware of the
splashing feet under her. Then of a sinking sensation, as the man
waded almost knee-deep in mud. There were moments of alarmed suspense.
Then she found herself standing on the opposite bank, with the man
dripping at her side.
Of the two courses open to her she chose the better.
She laughed happily. Perhaps the choice was forced on her, for John
Kars' eyes were so full of laughter that the infection became
overwhelming.
"You--you should have told me," she exclaimed censoriously.
But the man shook his head.
"Guess you'd have--refused."
"I certainly should."
But the girl's eyes denied her words.
"Then we'd have gone around back, and you'd have been disappointed. I
couldn't stand for your being disappointed. Say----" The man paused.
His eyes were searching the sunlit avenue ahead, where the drooping
willow branches hung like floral stalactites in a cavern of ripe
foliage. "It's queer how folks'll cut out the things they're yearning
for because other folks are yearning to hand 'em on to them."
"No girl likes to be picked up, and--and thrown around like some ball
game, because a man's got the muscles of a giant," Jessie declared with
spirit.
"No. It's kind of making out he's superior to her, when he isn't.
Say, you don't figger I meant that way?"
There was anxiety in the final question for all the accompanying smile.
In a moment Jessie was all regret.
"I didn't have time to think," she said, "and anyway I wouldn't have
figgered that way. And--and I'd hate a man who couldn't do things when
it was up to him. You'd stand no sort of chance on the northern trail
if you couldn't do things. You'd have been feeding the coyotes years
back, else."
"Yes, and I'd hate to be feeding the coyotes on any trail."
They were moving down the winding woodland alley. They brushed their
way through the delicate overhanging foliage. The dank scent of the
place was seductive. It was intoxicating with an atmosphere such as
lovers are powerless to resist. The murmur of the river came to them
on the one hand, and the silence of the pine woods, on the other, lent
a slumberous atmosphere to the whole place.
Jessie laughed. To her the thought seemed ridiculous.
"If the stories are true I guess it would be a mighty brave coyote
would come near you--dead," she said. Then of a sudden the happy light
died out of her eyes. "But--but--you nearly did--pass over. The Bell
River neches nearly had your scalp."
It was the man's turn to laugh. He shook his head,
"Don't worry a thing that way," he said.
But the girl's smile did not so readily return. She eyed the ominous
bandage which was still about his neck, and there was plain anxiety in
her pretty eyes.
"How was it?" she demanded. "A--a chance shot?"
"A chance shot."
The man's reply came with a brevity that left Jessie wondering. It
left her feeling that he had no desire to talk of his injury. And so
it left her silent.
They wandered on, and finally it was Kars who broke the silence.
"Say, I guess you feel I ought to hand you the story of it," he said.
"I don't mean you're asking out of curiosity. But we folks of the
north feel we need to hold up no secrets which could help others to
steer a safe course in a land of danger. But this thing don't need
talking about--yet. I got this getting too near around Bell River.
Well, I'm going to get nearer still." He smiled. "Guess I've been hit
on one cheek, and I'm going to turn 'em the other. It'll be a dandy
play seeing 'em try to hit that."
"You're--you're going to Bell River--deliberately?"
The girl's tone was full of real alarm.
"Sure. Next year."
"But--oh, it's mad--it's craziness."
The terror of Bell River was deep in Jessie's heart. Hers was the
terror of the helpless who have heard in the far distance but seen the
results. Kars understood. He laughed easily.
"Sure it's--crazy. But," his smiling eyes were gazing down into the
anxious depths the girl had turned up to him, "every feller who makes
the northern trail needs to be crazy some way. Guess I'm no saner than
the others. It's a craziness that sets me chasing down Nature's
secrets till I locate 'em right. Sometimes they aren't just Nature's
secrets. Anyway it don't figger a heap. Just now I'm curious to know
why some feller, who hadn't a thing to do with Nature beyond his shape,
fancied handing it me plumb in the neck. Maybe it'll take me all next
summer finding it out. But I'm going to find it out--sure."
The easy confidence of the man robbed his intention of half its terror
for the girl. Her anxiety melted, and she smiled at his manner of
stating his case.
"I wonder how it comes you men-folk so love the trail," she said. "I
don't suppose it's all for profit--anyway not with you. Is it
adventure? No. It's not all adventure either. It's just dead
hardship half the time. Yes--it's a sort of craziness. Say, how does
it feel to be crazy that way?"
"Feel? That's some proposition." Kars' face lit with amusement as he
pondered the question. "Say, ever skip out of school at the Mission,
and make a camp in the woods?"
The girl shook her head.
"Ah, then that won't help us any," Kars demurred, his eyes dwelling on
the ruddy brown of the girl's chestnut hair. "What about a swell party
after three days of chores in the house, when a blizzard's blowing?"
"That doesn't seem like any craziness," the girl protested.
"No, I guess not."
Kars searched again for a fresh simile.
"Say, how'd you feel if you'd never seen a flower, or green grass, or
woods, and rivers, and mountains?" he suddenly demanded. "How'd you
feel if you'd lived in a prison most all your life, and never felt your
lungs take in a big dose of God's pure air, or stretched the strong
elastic of the muscles your parents gave you? How'd you feel if you'd
read and read all about the wonderful things of Nature, and never seen
them, and then, all of a sudden, you found yourself out in a world full
of trees, and flowers, and mountains, and woods, and skitters, and
neches, and air--God's pure air, and with muscles so strong you could
take a ten foot jump, and all the wonderful things you'd read about
going on around you, such as fighting, murdering, and bugs and things,
and folks who figger they're every sort of fellers, and aren't,
and--and all that? Say, wouldn't you feel crazy? Wouldn't you feel
you wanted to take it all in your arms, and, and just love it to death?"
"Maybe--for a while."
The girl's eyes were smiling provocatively. She loved to hear him
talk. The strong rich tones of his voice in the quiet of the woodland
gave her a sense of possession of him.
She went on.
"After, I guess I'd be yearning for the big wood stove, and a rocker,
with elegant cushions, and the sort of food you can't cook over a
camp-fire."
Kars shook his head.
"Maybe you'd fancy feeling those things were behind you on the day your
joints began aching, and your breath gets as short as a locomotive on
an up grade. When the blood's running hot there's things on the trail
get right into it. Maybe it's because of the things they set into a
man when he first stubbed his toes kicking against this old earth; when
they told him he'd need to git busy fixing himself a stone club a size
bigger than the other feller's; and that if he didn't use it quicker,
and harder, he'd likely get his head dinged so his brain box wouldn't
work right and he wouldn't be able to rec'nize the coyotes when they
came along to pick his bones clean. You can't explain a thing of the
craziness in men's blood when they come up with the Nature they belong
to. It's the thing that sets lambs skipping foolish on legs that don't
ever look like getting sense. It's the same sets a kiddie dancing
along a sidewalk coming out of the schoolhouse, and falling into dumps
and getting its bow-tie mussed. It's the same sets a boy actin'
foolish when a gal's sorrel top turns his way, even when she's all legs
and sass. It's the same sets folks crazy to risk their lives on
hilltops that a chamois 'ud hate to inspect. Guess it's a sort o'
thanks offerin' to Providence it didn't see fit setting us crawling
around without feet or hands, same as slugs and things that worry
folks' cabbige patches. I allow I can't figger it else."
"You needn't to," Jessie declared, with a happy laugh. "Guess I know
it all--now." Then her eyes sobered. "But I--I wish you'd cut Bell
River right out."
"Just don't you worry a thing, little Jessie," Kars said, with prompt
earnestness. He had no wish to distress her. "Bell River can't hand
me anything I don't know. Anyway I'd need to thank it if it could.
And when I get back maybe you won't need to lie awake o' nights
guessing a coyote's howl is the whoop of a neche yearning for your
scalp. Hello!"
Their wanderings had brought them to a break in the willows where the
broad flow of the river came into full view, and the overhang of
glacial ice thrust out on the top of the precipitous bank beyond. But
it was none of this that had elicited the man's ejaculation, or had
caused his abrupt halt, and sobered the smile in his keen eyes.
It was a pair of canoes moored close in to the bank. Two powerful
canoes, which were larger and better built than those of trading
Indians. Then there were two neches squatting on the bank crouching
over a small fire smoking their red clay pipes in silent contemplation.
Jessie recognized the neches at a glance.
"Why, Murray must be back or----"
Kars turned abruptly.
"They're Murray's? Say----" He glanced up at the hill which stood
over them. A well-beaten path led up through the pine woods.
Jessie understood the drift of his thought.
"That's a short way to the Fort," she said. "I wonder why he landed
here. He doesn't generally."
But the man had no speculation to offer.
"We best get his news," he said indicating the path.
The moments of Jessie's delight had been swallowed up in the
significance of Murray's return. She agreed eagerly. And her
eagerness displayed the nearness to her heart of the terror of the
marauding Indians.
John Kars led the way up the woodland path. It was the same path over
which the two trading Indians had reached the Fort on the night of his
arrival from Bell River. As he went he pondered the reason of the
trader's avoidance of the usual landing.
Jessie watched his vigorous movements and found difficulty in keeping
pace with him. She saw in his hurry the interest he had in the affairs
of Bell River. She read in him something like confirmation of her own
fears. So she labored on in his wake without protest.
Later, when they broke from the cover of the woods, she drew abreast of
him. She was breathing hard, and Kars became aware of the pace at
which he had come. In a moment he was all contrition.
"Say, little Jessie," he cried, in his kindly fashion, "I'm real
sorry." Then he smiled as he slackened his gait. "It's my fool legs;
they're worse than some tongues for getting away with me. We'll take
it easy."
But the girl refused to become a hindrance, and urged him on. Her own
desire was no less than his.
The frowning palisade of the old Fort was above them. It stood out
staunch against the sky, yet not without some suggestion of the
sinister. And for the first time in her years of association with it
Jessie became aware of the impression.
The old blackened walls frowned down severely. They looked like the
prison walls enclosing ages of secret doings which were never permitted
the clear light of day. They suggested something of the picture
conjured by the many fantastic folk stories which she had read in
Father José's library. The ogres and giants. The decoy of beautiful
girls luring their lovers to destruction within the walls of some
dreadful monster's castle.
They passed in through the great gateway, with its massive doors flung
wide to the trade of the river. And they sought Murray's office.
There they found Mrs. Mowbray and Alec. Murray, too, was at his desk.
On their entrance they were greeted at once by the mother. Her eyes
were smiling and full of confidence. She looked into John Kars' face,
and he read her news even before she spoke.
"The country's clear of them," she cried, and her relief and delight
rang in every tone.
Jessie went at once to her side. But Kars turned to the squat figure
which filled its chair to overflowing. His steady eyes regarded the
smiling features of the trader.
"Did it come to a scrap?" he inquired easily.
Murray shook his head. His dark eyes were no less direct than the
other's.
"Guess there were too many in my outfit," he said with a shrug. "It
was a bunch of neches I'd have thought your outfit could have--eaten.
A poor lot--sure."
He finished up with a deliberate laugh, and his intention was obvious.
Kars understood, and did not display the least resentment.
"I'm glad," he said seriously. "Real glad." Then he added: "I didn't
guess you'd have a heap of trouble."
He turned to the women. And his attitude left the trader's purpose
mean and small.
"Murray's got us all beaten anyhow," he said easily. "We think we're
wise. We think we know it all. But we don't. Anyway I'm glad the
danger's fixed. I guess it'll leave me free to quit for the outside
right away."
Then he turned to Murray, and their eyes met, and held, and only the
two men knew, and understood, the challenge which lay behind.
"Guess I can make Leaping Horse before the rivers freeze. But I'm
getting back here with the thaw. I allow next year I'm taking no sort
of chance. This hole in my neck," he went on, indicating the bandage
about his throat, "has taught me a lot I didn't know before. The
outfit I get around with next year will be big enough to eat up any
proposition Bell River can hand me."