Carrigan's first impulse, sudden as the thrill that leaped through him,
was to cry out to the occupants of the unseen canoe. Words were on his
lips, but he forced them back. They could not miss him, could not get
beyond the reach of his voice--and he waited. After all, there might be
profit in a reasonable degree of caution. He crept back toward his
rifle, sensing the fact that movement no longer gave him very great
distress. At the same time he lost no sound from the river. The voices
were silent, and the dip, dip, dip of paddles was approaching softly
and with extreme caution. At last he could barely hear the trickle of
them, yet he knew the canoe was coming steadily nearer. There was a
suspicious secretiveness in its approach. Perhaps the lady with the
beautiful eyes and the glistening hair had changed her mind again and
was returning to put an end to him.
The thought sharpened his vision. He saw a thin shadow a little darker
than the gloom of the river; it grew into shape; something grated
lightly upon sand and pebbles, and then he heard the guarded plash of
feet in shallow water and saw some one pulling the canoe up higher. A
second figure joined the first. They advanced a few paces and stopped.
In a moment a voice called softly,
"M'sieu! M'sieu Carrigan!"
There was an anxious note in the voice, but Carrigan held his tongue.
And then he heard the woman say,
"It was here, Bateese! I am sure of it!"
There was more than anxiety in her voice now. Her words trembled with
distress. "Bateese--if he is dead--he is up there close to the trees."
"But he isn't dead," said Carrigan, raising himself a little. "He is
here, behind the rock again!"
In a moment she had run to where he was lying, his hand clutching the
cold barrel of the pistol which he had found in the sand, his white
face looking up at her. Again he found himself staring into the glow of
her eyes, and in that pale light which precedes the coming of stars and
moon the fancy struck him that she was lovelier than in the full
radiance of the sun. He heard a throbbing note in her throat. And then
she was down on her knees at his side, leaning close over him, her
hands groping at his shoulders, her quick breath betraying how swiftly
her heart was beating.
"You are not hurt--badly?" she cried.
"I don't know," replied David. "You made a perfect shot. I think a part
of my head is gone. At least you've shot away my balance, because I
can't stand on my feet!"
Her hand touched his face, remaining there for an instant, and the palm
of it pressed his forehead. It was like the touch of cool velvet, he
thought. Then she called to the man named Bateese. He made Carrigan
think of a huge chimpanzee as he came near, because of the shortness of
his body and the length of his arms. In the half light he might have
been a huge animal, a hulking creature of some sort walking upright.
Carrigan's fingers closed more tightly on the butt of his automatic.
The woman began to talk swiftly in a patois of French and Cree. David
caught the gist of it. She was telling Bateese to carry him to the
canoe, and to be very careful, because m'sieu was badly hurt. It was
his head, she emphasized. Bateese must be careful of his head.
David slipped his pistol into its holster as Bateese bent over him. He
tried to smile at the woman to thank her for her solicitude--after
having nearly killed him. There was an increasing glow in the night,
and he began to see her more plainly. Out on the middle of the river
was a silvery bar of light. The moon was coming up, a little pale as
yet, but triumphant in the fact that clouds had blotted out the sun an
hour before his time. Between this bar of light and himself he saw the
head of Bateese. It was a wild, savage-looking head, bound
pirate-fashion round the forehead with a huge Hudson's Bay kerchief.
Bateese might have been old Jack Ketch himself bending over to give the
final twist to a victim's neck. His long arms slipped under David.
Gently and without effort he raised him to his feet. And then, as
easily as he might have lifted a child, he trundled him up in his arms
and walked off with him over the sand.
Carrigan had not expected this. He was a little shocked and felt also
the impropriety of the thing. The idea of being lugged off like a baby
was embarrassing, even in the presence of the one who had deliberately
put him in his present condition. Bateese did the thing with such
beastly ease. It was as if he was no more than a small boy, a runt with
no weight whatever, and Bateese was a man. He would have preferred to
stagger along on his own feet or creep on his hands and knees, and he
grunted as much to Bateese on the way to the canoe. He felt, at the
same time, that the situation owed him something more of discussion and
explanation. Even now, after half killing him, the woman was taking a
rather high-handed advantage of him. She might at least have assured
him that she had made a mistake and was sorry. But she did not speak to
him again. She said nothing more to Bateese, and when the half-breed
deposited him in the midship part of the canoe, facing the bow, she
stood back in silence. Then Bateese brought his pack and rifle, and
wedged the pack in behind him so that he could sit upright. After that,
without pausing to ask permission, he picked up the woman and carried
her through the shallow water to the bow, saving her the wetting of her
feet.
As she turned to find her paddle her face was toward David, and for a
moment she was looking at him.
"Do you mind telling me who you are, and where we are going?" he asked.
"I am Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain," she said. "My brigade is down the
river, M'sieu Carrigan."
He was amazed at the promptness of her confession, for as one of the
working factors of the long arm of the police he accepted it as that.
He had scarcely expected her to divulge her name after the cold-blooded
way in which she had attempted to kill him. And she had spoken quite
calmly of "my brigade." He had heard of the Boulain Brigade. It was a
name associated with Chipewyan, as he remembered it--or Fort McMurray.
He was not sure just where the Boulain scows had traded freight with
the upper-river craft. Until this year he was positive they had not
come as far south as Athabasca Landing. Boulain--Boulain--The name
repeated itself over and over in his mind. Bateese shoved off the
canoe, and the woman's paddle dipped in and out of the water beginning
to shimmer in moonlight. But he could not, for a time, get himself
beyond the pounding of that name in his brain. It was not merely that
he had heard the name before. There was something significant about it.
Something that made him grope back in his memory of things. Boulain! He
whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman
ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her
hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation swept
over him, disgust at his own mental impotency. And the dizzying
sickness was brewing in his head again.
"I have heard that name--somewhere--before," he said. There was a space
of only five or six feet between them, and he spoke with studied
distinctness.
"Possibly you have, m'sieu."
Her voice was exquisite, clear as the note of a bird, yet so soft and
low that she seemed scarcely to have spoken. And it was, Carrigan
thought, criminally evasive--under the circumstances. He wanted her to
turn round and say something. He wanted, first of all, to ask her why
she had tried to kill him. It was his right to demand an explanation.
And it was his duty to get her back to the Landing, where the law would
ask an accounting of her. She must know that. There was only one way in
which she could have learned his name, and that was by prying into his
identification papers while he was unconscious. Therefore she not only
knew his name, but also that he was Sergeant Carrigan of the Royal
Northwest Mounted Police. In spite of all this she was apparently not
very deeply concerned. She was not frightened, and she did not appear
to be even slightly excited.
He leaned nearer to her, the movement sending a sharp pain between his
eyes. It almost drew a cry from him, but he forced himself to speak
without betraying it.
"You tried to murder me--and almost succeeded. Haven't you anything to
say?"
"Not now, m'sieu--except that it was a mistake, and I am sorry. But you
must not talk. You must remain quiet. I am afraid your skull is
fractured."
Afraid his skull was fractured! And she expressed her fear in the
casual way she might have spoken of a toothache. He leaned back against
his dunnage sack and closed his eyes. Probably she was right. These
fits of dizziness and nausea were suspicious. They made him top-heavy
and filled him with a desire to crumple up somewhere. He was
clear-mindedly conscious of this and of his fight against the weakness.
But in those moments when he felt better and his head was clear of
pain, he had not seriously thought of a fractured skull. If she
believed it, why did she not treat him a bit more considerately?
Bateese, with that strength of an ox in his arms, had no use for her
assistance with the paddle. She might at least have sat facing him,
even if she refused to explain matters more definitely.
A mistake, she called it. And she was sorry for him! She had made those
statements in a matter-of-fact way, but with a voice that was like
music. She had spoken perfect English, but in her words were the
inflection and velvety softness of the French blood which must be
running red in her veins. And her name was Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain!
With eyes closed, Carrigan called himself an idiot for thinking of
these things at the present time. Primarily he was a man-hunter out on
important duty, and here was duty right at hand, a thousand miles south
of Black Roger Audemard, the wholesale murderer he was after. He would
have sworn on his life that Black Roger had never gone at a killing
more deliberately than this same Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had gone
after him behind the rock!
Now that it was all over, and he was alive, she was taking him
somewhere as coolly and as unexcitedly as though they were returning
from a picnic. Carrigan shut his eyes tighter and wondered if he was
thinking straight. He believed he was badly hurt, but he was as
strongly convinced that his mind was clear. And he lay quietly with his
head against the pack, his eyes closed, waiting for the coolness of the
river to drive his nausea away again.
He sensed rather than felt the swift movement of the canoe. There was
no perceptible tremor to its progress. The current and a perfect
craftsmanship with the paddles were carrying it along at six or seven
miles an hour. He heard the rippling of water that at times was almost
like the tinkling of tiny bells, and more and more bell-like became
that sound as he listened to it. It struck a certain note for him. And
to that note another added itself, until in the purling rhythm of the
river he caught the murmuring monotone of a name
Boulain--Boulain--Boulain. The name became an obsession. It meant
something. And he knew what it meant--if he could only whip his memory
back into harness again. But that was impossible now. When he tried to
concentrate his mental faculties, his head ached terrifically.
He dipped his hand into the water and held it over his eyes. For half
an hour after that he did not raise his head. In that time not a word
was spoken by Bateese or Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. For the forest
people it was not an hour in which to talk. The moon had risen swiftly,
and the stars were out. Where there had been gloom, the world was now a
flood of gold and silver light. At first Carrigan allowed this to
filter between his fingers; then he opened his eyes. He felt more
evenly balanced again.
Straight in front of him was Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. The curtain of
dusk had risen from between them, and she was full in the radiance of
the moon. She was no longer paddling, but was looking straight ahead.
To Cardigan her figure was exquisitely girlish as he saw it now. She
was bareheaded, as he had seen tier first, and her hair hung down her
back like a shimmering mass of velvety sable in the star-and-moon glow.
Something told Carrigan she was going to turn her face in his
direction, and he dropped his hand over his eyes again, leaving a space
between the fingers. He was right in his guess. She fronted the moon,
looking at him closely--rather anxiously, he thought. She even leaned a
little toward him that she might see more clearly. Then she turned and
resumed her paddling.
Carrigan was a bit elated. Probably she had looked at him a number of
times like that during the past half-hour. And she was disturbed. She
was worrying about him. The thought of being a murderess was beginning
to frighten her. In spite of the beauty of her eyes and hair and the
slim witchery of her body he had no sympathy for her. He told himself
that he would give a year of his life to have her down at Barracks this
minute. He would never forget that three-quarters of an hour behind the
rock, not if he lived to be a hundred. And if he did live, she was
going to pay, even if she was lovelier than Venus and all the Graces
combined. He felt irritated with himself that he should have observed
in such a silly way the sable glow of her hair in the moonlight. And
her eyes. What the deuce did prettiness matter in the present
situation? The sister of Fanchet, the mail robber, was beautiful, but
her beauty had failed to save Fanchet. The Law had taken him in spite
of the tears in Carmin Fanchet's big black eyes, and in that particular
instance he was the Law. And Carmin Fanchet was pretty--deucedly
pretty. Even the Old Man's heart had been stirred by her loveliness.
"A shame!" he had said to Carrigan. "A shame!" But the rascally Fanchet
was hung by the neck until he was dead.
Carrigan drew himself up slowly until he was sitting erect. He wondered
what Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain would say if he told her about Carmin.
But there was a big gulf between the names Fanchet and Boulain. The
Fanchets had come from the dance halls of Alaska. They were bad, both
of them. At least, so they had judged Carmin Fanchet--along with her
brother. And Boulain--
His hand, in dropping to his side, fell upon the butt of his pistol.
Neither Bateese nor the girl had thought of disarming him. It was
careless of them, unless Bateese was keeping a good eye on him from
behind.
A new sort of thrill crept into Carrigan's blood. He began to see where
he had made a huge error in not playing his part more cleverly. It was
this girl Jeanne who had shot him. It was Jeanne who had stood over him
in that last moment when he had made an effort to use his pistol. It
was she who had tried to murder him and who had turned faint-hearted
when it came to finishing the job. But his knowledge of these things he
should have kept from her. Then, when the proper moment came, he would
have been in a position to act. Even now it might be possible to cover
his blunder. He leaned toward her again, determined to make the effort.
"I want to ask your pardon," he said. "May I?"
His voice startled her. It was as if the stinging tip of a whip-lash
had touched her bare neck. He was smiling when she turned. In her face
and eyes was a relief which she made no effort to repress.
"You thought I might be dead," he laughed softly. "I'm not, Miss
Jeanne. I'm very much alive again. It was that accursed fever--and I
want to ask your pardon! I think--I know--that I accused you of
shooting me. It's impossible. I couldn't think of it--In my clear mind.
I am quite sure that I know the rascally half-breed who pot-shotted me
like that. And it was you who came in time, and frightened him away,
and saved my life. Will you forgive me--and accept my gratitude?"
There came into the glowing eyes of the girl a reflection of his own
smile. It seemed to him that he saw the corners of her mouth tremble a
little before she answered him.
"I am glad you are feeling better, m'sieu."
"And you will forgive me for--for saying such beastly things to you?"
She was lovely when she smiled, and she was smiling at him now. "If you
want to be forgiven for lying, yes," she said. "I forgive you that,
because it is sometimes your business to lie. It was I who tried to
kill you, m'sieu. And you know it."
"But--"
"You must not talk, m'sieu. It is not good for you: Bateese, will you
tell m'sieu not to talk?"
Carrigan heard a movement behind him.
"M'sieu, you will stop ze talk or I brak hees head wit' ze paddle in my
han'!" came the voice of Bateese close to his shoulder. "Do I mak' ze
word plain so m'sieu compren'?"
"I get you, old man," grunted Carrigan. "I get you--both!"
And he leaned back against his dunnage-sack, staring again at the
witching slimness of the lovely Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as she calmly
resumed her paddling in the bow of the canoe.
V
In the few minutes following the efficient and unexpected warning of
Bateese an entirely new element of interest entered into the situation
for David Carrigan. He had more than once assured himself that he had
made a success of his profession of man-hunting not because he was
brighter than the other fellow, but largely because he possessed a
sense of humor and no vanities to prick. He was in the game because he
loved the adventure of it. He was loyal to his duty, but he was not a
worshipper of the law, nor did he covet the small monthly stipend of
dollars and cents that came of his allegiance to it. As a member of the
Scarlet Police, and especially of "N" Division, he felt the pulse and
thrill of life as he loved to live it. And the greatest of all thrills
came when he was after a man as clever as himself, or cleverer.
This time it was a woman--or a girl! He had not yet made up his mind
which she was. Her voice, low and musical, her poise, and the tranquil
and unexcitable loveliness of her face had made him, at first, register
her as a woman. Yet as he looked at the slim girlishness of her figure
in the bow of the canoe, accentuated by the soft sheen of her partly
unbraided hair, he wondered if she were eighteen or thirty. It would
take the clear light of day to tell him. But whether a girl or a woman,
she had handled him so cleverly that the unpleasantness of his earlier
experience began to give way slowly to an admiration for her capability.
He wondered what the superintendent of "N" Division would say if he
could see Black Roger Audemard's latest trailer propped up here in the
center of the canoe, the prisoner of a velvety-haired but dangerously
efficient bit of feminine loveliness--and a bull-necked,
chimpanzee-armed half-breed!
Bateese had confirmed the suspicion that he was a prisoner, even though
this mysterious pair were bent on saving his life. Why it was their
desire to keep life in him when only a few hours ago one of them had
tried to kill him was a. question which only the future could answer.
He did not bother himself with that problem now. The present was
altogether too interesting, and there was but little doubt that other
developments equally important were close at hand. The attitude of both
Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain and her piratical-looking henchman was
sufficient evidence of that. Bateese had threatened to knock his head
off, and he could have sworn that the girl--or woman--had smiled her
approbation of the threat. Yet he held no grudge against Bateese. An
odd sort of liking for the man began to possess him, just as he found
himself powerless to resist an ingrowing admiration for Marie-Anne. The
existence of Black Roger Audemard became with him a sort of indefinite
reality. Black Roger was a long way off. Marie-Anne and Bateese were
very near. He began thinking of her as Marie-Anne. He liked the name.
It was the Boulain part of it that worked in him with an irritating
insistence.
For the first time since the canoe journey had begun, he looked beyond
the darkly glowing head and the slender figure in the bow. It was a
splendid night. Ahead of him the river was like a rippling sheet of
molten silver. On both sides, a quarter of a mile apart, rose the walls
of the forest, like low-hung, oriental tapestries. The sky seemed near,
loaded with stars, and the moon, rising with almost perceptible
movement toward the zenith, had changed from red to a mellow gold.
Carrigan's soul always rose to this glory of the northern light. Youth
and vigor, he told himself, must always exist under those unpolluted
lights of the upper worlds, the unspeaking things which had told him
more than he had ever learned from the mouths of other men. They stood
for his religion, his faith, his belief in the existence of things
greater than the insignificant spark which animated his own body. He
appreciated them most when there was stillness. And tonight it was
still. It was so quiet that the trickling of the paddles was like
subdued music. From the forest there came no sound. Yet he knew there
was life there, wide-eyed, questing life, life that moved on velvety
wing and padded foot, just as he and Marie-Anne and the half-breed
Bateese were moving in the canoe. To have called out in this hour would
have taken an effort, for a supreme and invisible Hand seemed to have
commanded stillness upon the earth.
And then there came droning upon his ears a break in the stillness, and
as he listened, the shores closed slowly in, narrowing the channel
until he saw giant masses of gray rock replacing the thick verdure of
balsam, spruce, and cedar. The moaning grew louder, and the rocks
climbed skyward until they hung in great cliffs. There could be but one
meaning to this sudden change. They were close to LE SAINT-ESPRIT
RAPIDE--the Holy Ghost Rapids. Carrigan was astonished. That day at
noon he had believed the Holy Ghost to be twenty or thirty miles below
him. Now they were at its mouth, and he saw that Bateese and Jeanne
Marie-Anne Boulain were quietly and unexcitedly preparing to run that
vicious stretch of water. Unconsciously he gripped the gunwales of the
canoe with both hands as the sound of the rapids grew into low and
sullen thunder. In the moonlight ahead he could see the rock walls
closing in until the channel was crushed between two precipitous
ramparts, and the moon and stars, sending their glow between those
walls, lighted up a frothing path of water that made Carrigan hold his
breath. He would have portaged this place even in broad day.
He looked at the girl in the bow. The slender figure Was a little more
erect, the glowing head held a little higher. In those moments he would
have liked to see her face, the wonderful something that must be in her
eyes as she rode fearlessly into the teeth of the menace ahead. For he
could see that she was not afraid, that she was facing this thing with
a sort of exultation, that there was something about it which thrilled
her until every drop of blood in her body was racing with the impetus
of the stream itself. Eddies of wind puffing out from between the chasm
walls tossed her loose hair about her back in a glistening veil. He saw
a long strand of it trailing over the edge of the canoe into the water.
It made him shiver, and he wanted to cry out to Bateese that he was a
fool for risking her life like this. He forgot that he was the one
helpless individual in the canoe, and that an upset would mean the end
for him, while Bateese and his companion might still fight on. His
thought and his vision were focused on the girl--and what lay straight
ahead. A mass of froth, like a windrow of snow, rose up before them,
and the canoe plunged into it with the swiftness of a shot. It
spattered in his face, and blinded him for an instant. Then they were
out of it, and he fancied he heard a note of laughter from the girl in
the bow. In the next breath he called himself a fool for imagining
that. For the run was dead ahead, and the girl became vibrant with
life, her paddle flashing in and out, while from her lips came sharp,
clear cries which brought from Eateese frog-like bellows of response.
The walls shot past; inundations rose and plunged under them; black
rocks whipped with caps of foam raced up-stream with the speed of
living things; the roar became a drowning voice, and then--as if
outreached by the wings of a swifter thing--dropped suddenly behind
them. Smoother water lay ahead. The channel broadened. Moonlight filled
it with a clearer radiance, and Carrigan saw the girl's hair glistening
wet, and her arms dripping.
For the first time he turned about and faced Bateese. The half-breed
was grinning like a Cheshire cat!
"You're a confoundedly queer pair!" grunted Carrigan, and he turned
about again to find Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as unconcerned as though
running the Holy Ghost Rapids in the glow of the moon was nothing more
than a matter of play.
It was impossible for him to keep his heart from beating a little
faster as he watched her, even though he was trying to regard her in a
most professional sort of way. He reminded himself that she was an
iniquitous little Jezebel who had almost murdered him. Carmin Fanchet
had been like her, an AME DAMNEE--a fallen angel--but his business was
not sympathy in such matters as these. At the same time he could not
resist the lure of both her audacity and her courage, and he found
himself all at once asking himself the amazing question as to what her
relationship might be to Bateese. It occurred to him rather
unpleasantly that there had been something distinctly proprietary in
the way the half-breed had picked her up on the sand, and that Bateese
had shown no hesitation a little later in threatening to knock his head
off unless he stopped talking to her. He wondered if Bateese was a
Boulain.
The two or three minutes of excitement in the boiling waters of the
Holy Ghost had acted like medicine on Carrigan. It seemed to him that
something had given way in his head, relieving him of an oppression
that had been like an iron hoop drawn tightly about his skull. He did
not want Bateese to suspect this change in him, and he slouched lower
against the dunnage-pack with his eyes still on the girl. He was
finding it increasingly difficult to keep from looking at her. She had
resumed her paddling, and Bateese was putting mighty efforts in his
strokes now, so that the narrow, birchbark canoe shot like an arrow
with the down-sweeping current of the river. A few hundred yards below
was a twist in the channel, and as the canoe rounded this, taking the
shoreward curve with dizzying swiftness, a wide, still straight-water
lay ahead. And far down this Carrigan saw the glow of fires.
The forest had drawn back from the river, leaving in its place a broken
tundra of rock and shale and a wide strip of black sand along the edge
of the stream itself. Carrigan knew what it was--an upheaval of the
tar-sand country so common still farther north, the beginning of that
treasure of the earth which would some day make the top of the American
continent one of the Eldorados of the world. The fires drew nearer, and
suddenly the still night was broken by the wild chanting of men. David
heard behind him a choking note in the throat of Bateese. A soft word
came from the lips of the girl, and it seemed to Carrigan that her head
was held higher in the moon glow. The chant increased in volume, a
rhythmic, throbbing, savage music that for a hundred and fifty years
had come from the throats of men along the Three Rivers. It thrilled
Carrigan as they bore down upon it. It was not song as civilization
would have counted song. It was like an explosion, an exultation of
human voice unchained, ebullient with the love of life, savage in its
good-humor. It was LE GAITE DE COEUR of the rivermen, who thought and
sang as their forefathers did in the days of Radisson and good Prince
Rupert; it was their merriment, their exhilaration, their freedom and
optimism, reaching up to the farthest stars. In that song men were
straining their vocal muscles, shouting to beat out their nearest
neighbor, bellowing like bulls in a frenzy of sudden fun. And then, as
suddenly as it had risen in the night, the clamor of voices died away.
A single shout came up the river. Carrigan thought he heard a low
rumble of laughter. A tin pan banged against another. A dog howled. The
flat of an oar played a tattoo for a moment on the bottom of a boat.
Then one last yell from a single throat--and the night was silent again.
And that was the Boulain Brigade--singing at this hour of the night,
when men should have been sleeping if they expected to be up with the
sun. Carrigan stared ahead. Shortly his adventure would take a new
twist. Something was bound to happen when they got ashore. The peculiar
glow of the fires had puzzled him. Now he began to understand. Jeanne
Marie-Anne Boulain's men were camped in the edge of the tar-sands and
had lighted a number of natural gas-jets that came up out of the earth.
Many times he had seen fires like these burning up and down the Three
Rivers. He had lighted fires of his own; he had cooked over them and
had afterward had the fun and excitement of extinguishing them with
pails of water. But he had never seen anything quite like this that was
unfolding itself before his eyes now. There were seven of the fires
over an area of half an acre--spouts of yellowish flame burning like
giant torches ten or fifteen feet in the air. And between them he very
soon made out great bustle and activity. Many figures were moving
about. They looked like dwarfs at first, gnomes at play in a little
world made out of witchcraft. But Bateese was sending the canoe nearer
with powerful strokes, and the figures grew taller, and the spouts of
flame higher. Then he knew what was happening. The Boulain men were
taking advantage of the cool hours of the night and were tarring up.
He could smell the tar, and he could see the big York boats drawn up in
the circle of yellowish light. There were half a dozen of them, and men
stripped to the waist were smearing the bottoms of the boats with
boiling tar and pitch. In the center was a big, black cauldron steaming
over a gas-jet, and between this cauldron and the boats men were
running back and forth with pails. Still nearer to the huge kettle
other men were filling a row of kegs with the precious black GOUDRON
that oozed up from the bowels of the earth, forming here and there
jet-black pools that Carrigan could see glistening in the flare of the
gas-lamps. He figured there were thirty men at work. Six big York boats
were turned keel up in the black sand. Close inshore, just outside the
circle of light, was a single scow.
Toward this scow Bateese sent the canoe. And as they drew nearer, until
the laboring men ashore were scarcely a stone's throw away, the
weirdness of the scene impressed itself more upon Carrigan. Never had
he seen such a crew. There were no Indians among them. Lithe,
quick-moving, bare-headed, their naked arms and shoulders gleaming in
the ghostly illumination, they were racing against time with the
boiling tar and pitch in the cauldron. They did not see the approach of
the canoe, and Bateese did not draw their attention to it. Quietly he
drove the birchbark under the shadow of the big bateau. Hands were
waiting to seize and steady it. Carrigan caught but a glimpse of the
faces. In another instant the girl was aboard the scow, and Bateese was
bending over him. A second time he was picked up like a child in the
chimpanzee-like arms of the half-breed. The moonlight showed him a scow
bigger than he had ever seen on the upper river, and two-thirds of it
seemed to be cabin. Into this cabin Bateese carried him, and in
darkness laid him upon what Carrigan thought must be a cot built
against the wall. He made no sound, but let himself fall limply upon
it. He listened to Bateese as he moved about, and closed his eyes when
Bateese struck a match. A moment later he heard the door of the cabin
close behind the half-breed. Not until then did he open his eyes and
sit up.
He was alone. And what he saw in the next few moments drew an
exclamation of amazement from him. Never had he seen a cabin like this
on the Three Rivers. It was thirty feet long if an inch, and at least
eight feet wide. The walls and ceiling were of polished cedar; the
floor was of cedar closely matched. It was the exquisite finish and
craftsmanship of the woodwork that caught his eyes first. Then his
astonished senses seized upon the other things. Under his feet was a
soft rug of dark green velvet. Two magnificent white bearskins lay
between him and the end of the room. The walls were hung with pictures,
and at the four windows were curtains of ivory lace draped with damask.
The lamp which Bateese had lighted was fastened to the wall close to
him. It was of polished silver and threw a brilliant light softened by
a shade of old gold. There were three other lamps like this, unlighted.
The far end of the room was in deep shadow, but Carrigan made out the
thing he was staring at--a piano. He rose to his feet, disbelieving his
eyes, and made his way toward it. He passed between chairs. Near the
piano was another door, and a wide divan of the same soft, green
upholstery. Looking back, he saw that what he had been lying upon was
another divan. And dose to this were book-shelves, and a table on which
were magazines and papers and a woman's workbasket, and in the
workbasket--sound asleep--a cat!
And then, over the table and the sleeping cat, his eyes rested upon a
triangular banner fastened to the wall. In white against a background
of black was a mighty polar bear holding at bay a horde of Arctic
wolves. And suddenly the thing he had been fighting to recall came to
Carrigan--the great bear--the fighting wolves--the crest of St. Pierre
Boulain!
He took a quick step toward the table--then caught at the back of a
chair. Confound his head! Or was it the big bateau rocking under his
feet? The cat seemed to be turning round in its basket. There were half
a dozen banners instead of one; the lamp was shaking in its bracket;
the floor was tilting, everything was becoming hideously contorted and
out of place. A shroud of darkness gathered about him, and through that
darkness Carrigan staggered blindly toward the divan. He reached it
just in time to fall upon it like a dead man.