Virginia went with this man passively--to an appointment which, but
an hour ago, she had promised herself she would not keep. Her
inmost soul was stirred, just as before. Then it had been few
words, now it was a little common song. But the strange power of
the man held her close, so she realized that for the moment at
least she would do as he desired. In the amazement and
consternation of this thought she found time to offer up a little
prayer, "Dear God, make him kind to me."
They leaned against the old bronze guns, facing the river. He
pulled her shawl about her, masterfully yet with gentleness, and
then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he drew
her to him until she rested against his shoulder. And she remained
there, trembling, in suspense, glancing at him quickly, in
birdlike, pleading glances, as though praying him to be kind. He
took no notice after that, so the act seemed less like a caress
than a matter of course. He began to talk, half-humorously, and
little by little, as he went on, she forgot her fears, even her
feeling of strangeness, and fell completely under the spell of his
power.
"My name is Ned Trent," he told her, "and I am from Quebec. I am a
woods runner. I have journeyed far. I have been to the uttermost
ends of the North even up beyond the Hills of Silence." And then,
in his gay, half-mocking, yet musical voice he touched lightly on
vast and distant things. He talked of the great Saskatchewan, of
Peace River, and the delta of the Mackenzie, of the winter journeys
beyond Great Bear Lake into the Land of the Little Sticks, and the
half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. He spoke of life with the Dog
Ribs and Yellow Knives, where the snow falls in midsummer. Before
her eyes slowly spread, like a panorama, the whole extent of the
great North, with its fierce, hardy men, its dreadful journeys by
canoe and sledge, its frozen barrens, its mighty forests, its
solemn charm. All at once this post of Conjurors House, a month in
the wilderness as it was, seemed very small and tame and civilized
for the simple reason that Death did not always compass it about.
"It was very cold then," said Ned Trent "and very hard. _Le grand
frete_ [froid--cold] of winter had come. At night we had no other
shelter than our blankets, and we could not keep a fire because the
spruce burned too fast and threw too many coals. For a long time
we shivered, curled up on our snowshoes; then fell heavily asleep,
so that even the dogs fighting over us did not awaken us. Two or
three times in the night we boiled tea. We had to thaw our
moccasins each morning by thrusting them inside our shirts. Even
the Indians were shivering and saying, 'Ed-sa, yazzi ed-sa'--'it is
cold, very cold.' And when we came to Rae it was not much better.
A roaring fire in the fireplace could not prevent the ink from
freezing on the pen. This went on for five months."
Thus he spoke, as one who says common things. He said little of
himself, but as he went on in short, curt sentences the picture
grew more distinct, and to Virginia the man became more and more
prominent in it. She saw the dying and exhausted dogs, the
frost-rimed, weary men; she heard the quick _crunch, crunch,
crunch_ of the snow-shoes hurrying ahead to break the trail; she
felt the cruel torture of the _mal de raquette_, the shrivelling
bite of the frost, the pain of snow blindness, the hunger that yet
could not stomach the frozen fish nor the hairy, black caribou
meat. One thing she could not conceive--the indomitable spirit of
the men. She glanced timidly up at her companion's face.
"The Company is a cruel master," she sighed at last, standing
upright, then leaning against the carriage of the gun. He let her
go without protest, almost without thought, it seemed.
"But not mine," said he.