For what seemed to be an interminable time after the final breakdown of
his physical strength David Carrigan lived in a black world where a
horde of unseen little devils were shooting red-hot arrows into his
brain. He did not sense the fact of human presence; nor that the divan
had been changed into a bed and the four lamps lighted, and that
wrinkled, brown hands with talon-like fingers were performing a miracle
of wilderness surgery upon him. He did not see the age-old face of
Nepapinas--"The Wandering Bolt of Lightning"--as the bent and tottering
Cree called upon all his eighty years of experience to bring him back
to life. And he did not see Bateese, stolid-faced, silent, nor the
dead-white face and wide-open, staring eyes of Jeanne Marie-Anne
Boulain as her slim, white fingers worked with the old medicine man's.
He was in a gulf of blackness that writhed with the spirits of torment.
He fought them and cried out against them, and his fighting and his
cries brought the look of death itself into the eyes of the girl who
was over him. He did not hear her voice nor feel the soothing of her
hands, nor the powerful grip of Bateese as he held him when the
critical moments came. And Nepapinas, like a machine that had looked
upon death a thousand times, gave no rest to his claw-like fingers
until the work was done--and it was then that something came to drive
the arrow-shooting devils out of the darkness that was smothering
Carrigan.
After that Carrigan lived through an eternity of unrest, a life in
which he seemed powerless and yet was always struggling for supremacy
over things that were holding him down. There were lapses in it, like
the hours of oblivion that come with sleep, and there were other times
when he seemed keenly alive, yet unable to move or act. The darkness
gave way to flashes of light, and in these flashes he began to see
things, curiously twisted, fleeting, and yet fighting themselves
insistently upon his senses. He was back in the hot sand again, and
this time he heard the voices of Jeanne Marie-Anne and Golden-Hair, and
Golden-Hair flaunted a banner in his face, a triangular pennon of black
on which a huge bear was fighting white Arctic wolves, and then she
would run away from him, crying out--"St. Pierre Boulain--St. Pierre
Boulain--" and the last he could see of her was her hair flaming like
fire in the sun. But it was always the other--the dark hair and dark
eyes--that came to him when the little devils returned to assault him
with their arrows. From somewhere she would come out of darkness and
frighten them away. He could hear her voice like a whisper in his ears,
and the touch of her hands comforted him and quieted his pain. After a
time he grew to be afraid when the darkness swallowed her up, and in
that darkness he would call for her, and always he heard her voice in
answer.
Then came a long oblivion. He floated through cool space away from the
imps of torment; his bed was of downy clouds, and on these clouds he
drifted with a great shining river under him; and at last the cloud he
was in began to shape itself into walls and on these walls were
pictures, and a window through which the sun was shining, and a black
pennon--and he heard a soft, wonderful music that seemed to come to him
faintly from another world. Other creatures were at work in his brain
now. They were building up and putting together the loose ends of
things. Carrigan became one of them, working so hard that frequently a
pair of dark eyes came out of the dawning of things to stop him, and
quieting hands and a voice soothed him to rest. The hands and the voice
became very intimate. He missed them when they were not near,
especially the hands, and he was always groping for them to make sure
they had not gone away.
Only once after the floating cloud transformed itself into the walls of
the bateau cabin did the chaotic darkness of the sands fully possess
him again. In that darkness he heard a voice. It was not the voice of
Golden-Hair, or of Bateese, or of Jeanne Marie-Anne. It was close to
his ears. And in that darkness that smothered him there was something
terrible about it as it droned slowly the
words--"HAS-ANY-ONE-SEEN-BLACK-ROGER-AUDEMARD?" He tried to answer, to
call back to it, and the voice came again, repeating the words,
emotionless, hollow, as if echoing up out of a grave. And still harder
he struggled to reply to it, to say that he was David Carrigan, and
that he was out on the trail of Black Roger Audemard, and that Black
Roger was far north. And suddenly it seemed to him that the voice
changed into the flesh and blood of Black Roger himself, though he
could not see in the darkness--and he reached out, gripping fiercely at
the warm substance of flesh, until he heard another voice, the voice of
Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain, entreating him to let his victim go. It was
this time that his eyes shot open, wide and seeing, and straight over
him was the face of Jeanne Marie-Anne, nearer him than it had been even
in the visionings of his feverish mind. His fingers were clutching her
shoulders, gripping like steel hooks.
"M'sieu--M'sieu David!" she was crying.
For a moment he stared; then his hands and fingers relaxed, and his
arms dropped limply. "Pardon--I--I was dreaming," he struggled weakly.
"I thought--"
He had seen the pain in her face. Now, changing swiftly, it lighted up
with relief and gladness. His vision, cleared by long darkness, saw the
change come in an instant like a flash of sunshine. And then--so near
that he could have touched her--she was smiling down into his eyes. He
smiled back. It took an effort, for his face felt stiff and unnatural.
"I was dreaming--of a man--named Roger Audemard," he continued to
apologize. "Did I--hurt you?"
The smile on her lips was gone as swiftly as it had come. "A little,
m'sieu. I am glad you are better. You have been very sick."
He raised a hand to his face. The bandage was there, and also a stubble
of beard on his cheeks. He was puzzled. This morning he had fastened
his steel mirror to the side of a tree and shaved.
"It was three days ago you were hurt," she said quietly. "This is the
afternoon of the third day. You have been in a great fever. Nepapinas,
my Indian doctor, saved your life. You must lie quietly now. You have
been talking a great deal."
"About--Black Roger?" he said.
She nodded.
"And--Golden--Hair?"
"Yes, of Golden--Hair."
"And--some one else--with dark hair--and dark eyes--"
"It may be, m'sieu."
"And of little devils with bows and arrows, and of polar bears, and
white wolves, and of a great lord of the north who calls himself St.
Pierre Boulain?"
"Yes, of all those."
"Then I haven't anything more to tell you," grunted David. "I guess
I've told you all I know. You shot me, back there. And here I am. What
are you going to do next?"
"Call Bateese," she answered promptly, and she rose swiftly from beside
him and moved toward the door.
He made no effort to call her back. His wits were working slowly,
readjusting themselves after a carnival in chaos, and he scarcely
sensed that she was gone until the cabin door closed behind her. Then
again he raised a hand to his face and felt his beard. Three days! He
turned his head so that he could take in the length of the cabin. It
was filled with subdued sunlight now, a western sun that glowed softly,
giving depth and richness to the colors on the floor and walls,
lighting up the piano keys, suffusing the pictures with a warmth of
life. David's eyes traveled slowly to his own feet. The divan had been
opened and transformed into a bed. He was undressed. He had on
somebody's white nightgown. And there was a big bunch of wild roses on
the table where three days ago the cat had been sleeping in the
work-basket. His head cleared swiftly, and he raised himself a little
on one elbow, with extreme caution, and listened. The big bateau was
not moving. It was still tied up, but he could hear no voices out where
the tar-sands were.
He dropped back on his pillow, and his eyes rested on the black pennon.
His blood stirred again as he looked at the white bear and the fighting
wolves. Wherever men rode the waters of the Three Rivers that pennon
was known. Yet it was not common. Seldom was it seen, and never had it
come south of Chipewyan. Many things came to Carrigan now, things that
he had heard at the Landing and up and down the rivers. Once he had
read the tail-end of a report the Superintendent of "N" Division had
sent in to headquarters.
"We do not know this St. Pierre. Few men have seen him out of his own
country, the far headwaters of the Yellowknife, where he rules like a
great overlord. Both the Yellowknives and the Dog Ribs call him KICHEOO
KIMOW, or King, and the same rumors say there is never starvation or
plague in his regions; and it is fact that neither the Hudson's Bay nor
Revillon Brothers in their cleverest generalship and trade have been
able to uproot his almost dynastic jurisdiction. The Police have had no
reason to investigate or interfere."
At least that was the gist of what Carrigan had read in McVane's
report. But he had never associated it with the name of Boulain. It was
of St. Pierre that he had heard stories, St. Pierre and his black
pennon with its white bear and fighting wolves. And so--it was St.
Pierre BOULAIN!
He closed his eyes and thought of the long winter weeks he had passed
at Hay River Post, watching for Fanchet, the mail robber. It was there
he had heard most about this St. Pierre, and yet no one he had talked
with had ever seen him; no one knew whether he was old or young, a
pigmy or a giant. Some stories said that he was strong, that he could
twist a gun-barrel double in his hands; others said that he was old,
very old, so that he never set forth with his brigades that brought
down each year a treasure of furs to be exchanged for freight. And
never did a Dog Rib or a Yellowknife open his mouth about KICHEOO KIMOW
St. Pierre, the master of their unmapped domains. In that great country
north and west of the Great Slave he remained an enigma and a sphinx.
If he ever came out with his brigades, he did not disclose his
identity, so that if one saw a fleet of boats or canoes with the St.
Pierre pennon, one had to make his own guess whether St. Pierre himself
was there or not. But these things were known--that the keenest,
quickest, and strongest men in the northland ran the St. Pierre
brigades, that they brought out the richest cargoes of furs, and that
they carried back with them into the secret fastnesses of their
wilderness the greatest cargoes of freight that treasure could buy. So
much the name St. Pierre dragged out of Carrigan's memory. It came to
him now why the name "Boulain" had pounded so insistently in his brain.
He had seen this pennon with its white bear and fighting wolves only
once before, and that had been over a Boulain scow at Chipewyan. But
his memory had lost its grip on that incident while retaining vividly
its hold on the stories and rumors of the mystery-man, St. Pierre.
Carrigan pulled himself a little higher on his pillow and with a new
interest scanned the cabin. He had never heard of Boulain women. Yet
here was the proof of their existence and of the greatness that ran in
the red blood of their veins. The history of the great northland,
hidden in the dust-dry tomes and guarded documents of the great
company, had always been of absorbing interest to him. He wondered why
it was that the outside world knew so little about it and believed so
little of what it heard. A long time ago he had penned an article
telling briefly the story of this half of a great continent in which
for two hundred years romance and tragedy and strife for mastery had
gone on in a way to thrill the hearts of men. He had told of huge forts
with thirty-foot stone bastions, of fierce wars, of great warships that
had fired their broadsides in battle in the ice-filled waters of
Hudson's Bay. He had described the coming into this northern world of
thousands and tens of thousands of the bravest and best-blooded men of
England and France, and how these thousands had continued to come,
bringing with them the names of kings, of princes, and of great lords,
until out of the savagery of the north rose an aristocracy of race
built up of the strongest men of the earth. And these men of later days
he had called Lords of the North--men who had held power of life and
death in the hollow of their hands until the great company yielded up
its suzerainty to the Government of the Dominion in 1870; men who were
kings in their domains, whose word was law, who were more powerful in
their wilderness castles than their mistress over the sea, the Queen of
Britain.
And Carrigan, after writing of these things, had stuffed his manuscript
away in the bottom of his chest at barracks, for he believed that it
was not in his power to do justice to the people of this wilderness
world that he loved. The powerful old lords were gone. Like dethroned
monarchs, stripped to the level of other men, they lived in the
memories of what had been. Their might now lay in trade. No more could
they set out to wage war upon their rivals with powder and ball. Keen
wit, swift dogs, and the politics of barter had taken the place of
deadlier things. LE FACTEUR could no longer slay or command that others
be slain. A mightier hand than his now ruled the destinies of the
northern people--the hand of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
It was this thought, the thought that Law and one of the powerful
forces of the wilderness had met in this cabin of the big bateau, that
came to Carrigan as he drew himself still higher against his pillow. A
greater thrill possessed him than the thrill of his hunt for Black
Roger Audemard. Black Roger was a murderer, a wholesale murderer and a
fiend, a Moloch for whom there could be no pity. Of all men the Law
wanted Black Roger most, and he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to
consummate its desire. Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the
strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger.
It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him,
rousing his faculties from the slough into which they had fallen
because of his wound and sickness. It was, after all, the most vital of
all things, a matter of his own life. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had
tried to kill him deliberately, with malice and intent. That she had
saved him afterward only added to the necessity of an explanation, and
he was determined that he would have that explanation and settle the
present matter before he allowed another thought of Black Roger to
enter his head.
This resolution reiterated itself in his mind as the machine-like voice
of duty. He was not thinking of the Law, and yet the consciousness of
his accountability to that Law kept repeating itself. In the very face
of it Carrigan knew that something besides the moral obligation of the
thing was urging him, something that was becoming deeply and
dangerously personal. At least--he tried to think of it as dangerous.
And that danger was his unbecoming interest in the girl herself. It was
an interest distinctly removed from any ethical code that might have
governed him in his experience with Carmin Fanchet, for instance.
Comparatively, if they had stood together, Carmin would have been the
lovelier. But he would have looked longer at Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain.
He conceded the point, smiling a bit grimly as he continued to study
that part of the cabin which he could see from his pillow. He had lost
interest--temporarily at least--in Black Roger Audemard. Not long ago
the one question to which, above all others, he had desired an answer
was, why had Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain worked so desperately to kill
him and so hard to save him afterward? Now, as he looked about him, the
question which repeated itself insistently was, what relationship did
she bear to this mysterious lord of the north, St. Pierre?
Undoubtedly she was his daughter, for whom St. Pierre had built this
luxurious barge of state. A fierce-blooded offspring, he thought, one
like Cleopatra herself, not afraid to kill--and equally quick to make
amends when there was a mistake.
There came the quiet opening of the cabin door to break in upon his
thought. He hoped it was Jeanne Marie-Anne returning to him. It was
Nepapinas. The old Indian stood over him for a moment and put a cold,
claw-like hand to his forehead. He grunted and nodded his head, his
little sunken eyes gleaming with satisfaction. Then he put his hands
under David's arms and lifted him until he was sitting upright, with
three or four pillows at his back.
"Thanks," said Carrigan. "That makes me feel better. And--if you don't
mind--my last lunch was three days ago, boiled prunes and a piece of
bannock--"
"I have brought you something to eat, M'sieu David," broke in a soft
voice behind him.
Nepapinas slipped away, and Jeanne Marie-Anne stood in his place. David
stared up at her, speechless. He heard the door close behind the old
Indian. Then Jeanne Marie-Anne drew up a chair, so that for the first
time he could see her clear eyes with the light of day full upon her.
He forgot that a few days ago she had been his deadliest enemy. He
forgot the existence of a man named Black Roger Audemard. Her slimness
was as it had pictured itself to him in the hot sands. Her hair was as
he had seen it there. It was coiled upon her head like ropes of spun
silk, jet-black, glowing softly. But it was her eyes he stared at, and
so fixed was his look that the red lips trembled a bit on the verge of
a smile. She was not embarrassed. There was no color in the clear
whiteness of her skin, except that redness of her lips.
"I thought you had black eyes," he said bluntly. "I'm glad you haven't.
I don't like them. Yours are as brown as--as--"
"Please, m'sieu," she interrupted him, sitting down close beside him.
"Will you eat--now?"
A spoon was at his mouth, and he was forced to take it in or have its
contents spilled over him. The spoon continued to move quickly between
the bowl and his mouth. He was robbed of speech. And the girl's eyes,
as surely as he was alive, were beginning to laugh at him. They were a
wonderful brown, with little, golden specks in them, like the freckles
he had seen in wood-violets. Her lips parted. Between their bewitching
redness he saw the gleam of her white teeth. In a crowd, with her
glorious hair covered and her eyes looking straight ahead, one would
not have picked her out. But close, like this, with her eyes smiling at
him, she was adorable.
Something of Carrigan's thoughts must have shown in his face, for
suddenly the girl's lips tightened a little, and the warmth went out of
her eyes, leaving them cold and distant. He finished the soup, and she
rose again to her feet.
"Please don't go," he said. "If you do, I think I shall get up and
follow. I am quite sure I am entitled to a little something more than
soup."
"Nepapinas says that you may have a bit of boiled fish for supper," she
assured him.
"You know I don't mean that. I want to know why you shot me, and what
you think you are going to do with me."
"I shot you by mistake--and--I don't know just what to do with you,"
she said, looking at him tranquilly, but with what he thought was a
growing shadow of perplexity in her eyes. "Bateese says to fasten a big
stone to your neck and throw you in the river. But Bateese doesn't
always mean what he says. I don't think he is quite as bloodthirsty--"
"--As the young lady who tried to murder me behind the rock," Carrigan
interjected.
"Exactly, m'sieu. I don't think he would throw you into the
river--unless I told him to. And I don't believe I am going to ask him
to do that," she added, the soft glow flashing back into her eyes for
an instant. "Not after the splendid work Nepapinas has done on your
head. St. Pierre must see that. And then, if St. Pierre wishes to
finish you, why--" She shrugged her slim shoulders and made a little
gesture with her hands.
In that same moment there came over her a change as sudden as the
passing of light itself. It was as if a thing she was hiding had broken
beyond her control for an instant and had betrayed her. The gesture
died. The glow went out of her eyes, and in its place came a light that
was almost fear--or pain. She came nearer to Carrigan again, and
somehow, looking up at her, he thought of the little brush warbler
singing at the end of its birch twig to give him courage. It must have
been because of her throat, white and soft, which he saw pulsing like a
beating heart before she spoke to him.
"I have made a terrible mistake, m'sieu David," she said, her voice
barely rising above a whisper. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I thought it was
some one else behind the rock. But I can not tell you more than
that--ever. And I know it is impossible for us to be friends." She
paused, one of her hands creeping to her bare throat, as if to cover
the throbbing he had seen there.
"Why is it impossible?" he demanded, leaning away from his pillows so
that he might bring himself nearer to her.
"Because--you are of the police, m'sieu."
"The police, yes," he said, his heart thrumming inside his breast. "I
am Sergeant Carrigan. I am out after Roger Audemard, a murderer. But my
commission has nothing to do with the daughter of St. Pierre Boulain.
Please--let's be friends--"
He held out his hand; and in that moment David Carrigan placed another
thing higher than duty--and in his eyes was the confession of it, like
the glow of a subdued fire. The girl's fingers drew more closely at her
throat, and she made no movement to accept his hand.
"Friends," he repeated. "Friends--in spite of the police."
Slowly the girl's eyes had widened, as if she saw that new-born thing
riding over all other things in his swiftly beating heart. And afraid
of it, she drew a step away from him.
"I am not St. Pierre Boulain's daughter," she said, forcing the words
out one by one. "I am--his wife."