THE LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS
Dunvegan lifted the flap of the Cree wigwam and knew that the third of
his missions was ended. Within the primitive tepee on a pile of
rabbit-skin blankets sat Flora Macleod, the Factor's fugitive daughter.
Her personal appearance bordered on the squalid, for toilette
necessaries were lacking in the tent. Her eyes shone defiantly into the
chief trader's, glinting dark like her coal-black hair.
Altogether, Bruce thought her somber eyes and swarthy skin held but
little difference from those of the Indians who ruled these lodges on
the Katchawan. To her breast she hugged a bundled infant whose blue
eyes and fair skin bespoke its white fathering.
"What brought you here?" she demanded, with an almost ferocious
abruptness.
"You," answered Dunvegan. "You and the boy. Your father will have you
wife to no Nor'wester. Nor will he have his daughter's son bear a
Nor'wester's name. He intends giving the babe his own----"
"He does?" Flora interrupted, the glow in her eyes flaming till they
blazed with anger.
"Yes. As for you--I cannot say. We all know the Factor is a stern, hard
man."
"I will never go back to his punishment."
Dunvegan's face hardened. "You must! I am under orders to take you at
any cost; and there are the means!" His brown, muscled hand indicated
the canoe brigade nosing the serrated river bank and filled with his
sinewed northmen whose combined might seemed quite sufficient to carry
away bodily the pole and skin structures which made up the Cree camp.
"You coward!" exclaimed the girl malignantly, releasing her neck from
its attitude of craned inspection and hushing the child's sudden
whimper. "You are both cowards, you and the one who sent you. You slip
in here with a score of voyageurs while the men are away after caribou.
I say you are nothing but a coward, Bruce Dunvegan!"
The chief trader's handsome face flushed to a deeper tint under its
bronze, but he kept his patience.
"Hardly that," he objected. "We happened to meet Dreaulond, the
Company's courier, on the Nisgowan portage, and he told me of your
whereabouts. I was glad of the meeting, since this brigade has been
searching for a long while, and in these bitter times the posts have
need of all their men. However, there was no secret about our coming; in
fact, we shall not dip a paddle till Running Wolf returns. The Company
cannot afford to lose the trade of his tribe through any real or fancied
offense in taking you away."
"Dreaulond told you," Flora Macleod repeated spitefully. "He has an old
woman's tongue. Basil Dreaulond is a gossip!"
"No," declared the chief trader, "he talks wisely when he talks at all,
and many an act of justice follows his words on the trail. He wondered,
though, at seeing you in the lodge of Running Wolf. What has Black
Ferguson, a Nor'wester, to do with our Indians?"
"Nothing," snapped the girl. "He deserted me here."
"Ah!" Dunvegan exclaimed. "I thought as much. But you were legally
married?"
"Father Merceraux, the Nor'west priest, married us."
Bruce's face brightened. "That's good. I know Merceraux. So there could
have been no trickery. You have a copy of his register?"
"Yes," answered Flora. "I treasure that--and the child."
"So will the Factor," Bruce observed.
The daughter frowned at the repeated mention of the grim one who would
pronounce judgment on her for disobeying his orders. "I hate him," she
declared; "I hate----"
"Stop!" interrupted Dunvegan harshly. "I don't want your confidences.
And take a little advice from me. Don't set your spirit up against his.
I know him--perhaps better than you. I myself rather fear to tell him of
your desertion."
"Fear!" exclaimed Flora, her glance running over Dunvegan's massive,
six-foot frame. "You never felt it. But let Malcolm MacLeod take care. I
have power here. Running Wolf wishes me to stay. The tribe I can twist
like a river weed. And the Nor'west Company is very active in gaining
ground. So let the lord of Oxford House consider. I can stir up trouble
for him."
Gazing at the defiant daughter, Bruce did not doubt her ability for
provoking mischief. Flora Macleod had not that perfection of womanly
beauty which makes abject slaves of men, but she possessed what is
perhaps a greater gift. She had inherently a natural authority, a
mastery, a fire of conquest which enabled her to subordinate many minds
to a single dominance. This was her most apparent talent, not wasting in
concealment but growing to supremacy through the frequency of its use.
And here, Dunvegan knew, she would not scruple in the using if the dour
Factor forced her to extremities.
"Why does Running Wolf wish you to stay?" he asked.
"Superstition," Flora replied, and she laughed contemptuously. "They
have had hard hunting and game has been scarce. They think I'll change
their luck. And, more than that, Running Wolf hopes I may some time
marry him----"
"Marry him!" echoed the chief trader. "Are you crazy? Or is he?"
"He is," Macleod's daughter responded with harsh merriment. "He wants to
get the Factor's permission." Her voice was bitterly contemptuous.
Dunvegan frowned blackly. "If he mentions that to Macleod he will raise
a storm with speech for thunder and blows for lightning. You are Black
Ferguson's wife. That fact cannot be got over."
"He got over it," snapped Flora.
"And why?" demanded the chief trader. "There must have been a reason.
Surely his wooing and marrying was more than a simple whim to thwart
Macleod. Surely there was a reason, and a good one, for this swift
divorce!"
"There was," admitted Flora grimly, Her eyes burned up into Dunvegan's
with fierce irony. "A good reason. He set eyes on your own ideal."
"My own ideal!" exclaimed Dunvegan, making a poor pretence of ignorance.
"I hardly catch your meaning."
"No?" Flora sneered. "Paddling down Lake Lemeau, as we hunted, who did
we encounter but Desirée Lazard, with her Uncle Pierre and his men.
Desirée Lazard, you understand! The ripest beauty of Oxford House, the
breaker of Hudson's Bay hearts, and the very idol of one Dunvegan."
Flora's harsh, grating chuckle, seeming to come more from the dark,
unfathomable eyes than from the thin-lipped mouth, held the essence of
taunt.
At the pointedness of her speech Bruce Dunvegan's tanned skin took on a
deeper flame of red even than that caused by her charge of cowardice. He
could not well retort, but as his fingers involuntarily clenched he
wished a man had done the baiting.
"Desirée's beauty struck him suddenly and blindingly, like the morning
sun over the Blood Flats," the girl went on, more impersonally. "I give
Desirée her due! No northman has ever looked upon her unmoved, and
Ferguson is the most beastially susceptible of them all. She was like
red wine in his eyes. I think if he had had a few more paddlers he would
have attacked Pierre Lazard's men with the idea of carrying her away by
force."
"Didn't Lazard attack him?" cried the chief trader. "He reported
sighting and chasing the Nor'wester; and Pierre does not lie."
"Nor I," returned Flora Macleod--"when there is no need! Pierre feared
our small party was but in advance of a Nor'west force and hung off on
guard and ready for a skirmish. When he found that nothing was following
our three canoes he did give chase, but we were lightly loaded, and left
them easily. However, the mischief was done. Ferguson desired Lazard's
niece as he had desired no other thing in all his life. My release came
that night in camp. Black Ferguson and his paddlers were gone before I
awoke in the morning. So I came here for shelter."
"Damnation to his black heart!" exclaimed Dunvegan. "Is there nothing of
the man about this Nor'wester? Had he no thought of your rights and the
rights of the child?"
The Factor's daughter flung a gesture of the arms riverward, a motion
vindictive in the extreme. "I," she averred, "was a cast-off rag. The
boy was nothing more. You know Ferguson has no heart--only impulse. He
appears to have gone mad over Desirée Lazard."
"Much good it will do him if we have our hands on him!"
"But what if you haven't?"
"We can trust Desirée at the fort."
"Perhaps. But, remember, one person at Oxford House made trysts and kept
them in spite of guards and gates."
Bruce smiled grimly. "And her reward?" he asked, and cursed himself
instantly because of the pain that momentarily changed the girl's
expression. He had, as it were, a glimpse of her soul in that moment and
knew that for all her waywardness she was inwardly true. Blessed with a
more merciful environment, she would doubtless have been a transformed
woman.
"Watch Desirée well," she warned. "Black Ferguson is hard on her trail,
and she is too fine to be lorded by such a beast."
Dunvegan paced some awkward steps before the Cree tents, his glance
wandering uncertainly to the waiting brigade by the Katchawan's bank.
"I haven't the right," he complained.
"Win it," she flashed. "You are the pick of the Company's men. If you
weren't you would not be Malcolm Macleod's chief trader."
"She is a Nor'wester at heart. Her father died in their service, and his
spirit is in her. She cherishes his pride of allegiance. Desirée vows
she will never wed a man of the H. B. C. Her vow stands!"
"Tut!" mocked Flora. "A woman's whim easily changed! She stays under the
Company's roof with her uncle, a servant of the same organization. Does
that fit in with her vow? A fig for such vows!"
"She has no other relative and no place else to live," asserted the
chief trader. "As for her resolve, it is proof against changing, for
I--have tested it."
"Then," observed Macleod's daughter, "the Nor'wester has a good chance
of marrying her. Here are the Cree men coming back!"
Over the ridge which rimmed the camp with a rampart of spruce the
Indians dropped, one by one, bounding lightly from rock to rock in
noiseless buckskins. They threaded the birch belt and crossed the cedar
"slash," swung around the long beaver meadow below, and emerged upon the
flat river point supporting their camp. The chief trader saw they were
carrying nothing except weapons.
"They have left the carrying of the game for the squaws," he observed.
"No," cried Flora, "I can tell by their faces that the hunt has failed.
They have found no caribou and are in a bad mood. You had better leave
me here."
"Not if we have to fight the whole tribe," declared Dunvegan.
But his eyes, only, saw the Crees coming up to the sun-scalded camp. His
mental vision focused on the image of Desirée Lazard. He had told Basil
Dreaulond that he was anxious to complete his mission and return to
Oxford House. And Basil had smiled, knowing well why! Now was he doubly
anxious. Flora's news had a perturbing effect. He hungered for a sight
of Desirée singing gayly within the stockades. He yearned for the chance
of conflict to sweep the Nor'wester's shadow from her path.