The morning passed like a dream to Carrigan. He permitted himself to
live and breathe it as one who finds himself for a space in the heart
of a golden mirage. He was sitting so near Marie-Anne that now and then
the faint perfume of her came to him like the delicate scent of a
flower. It was a breath of crushed violets, sweet as the air he was
breathing, violets gathered in the deep cool of the forest, a whisper
of sweetness about her, as if on her bosom she wore always the living
flowers. He fancied her gathering them last bloom-time, a year ago,
alone, her feet seeking out the damp mosses, her little fingers
plucking the smiling and laughing faces of the violet flowers to be
treasured away in fragrant sachets, as gentle as the wood-thrush's
note, compared with the bottled aromas fifteen hundred miles south. It
seemed to be a physical part of her, a thing born of the glow in her
cheeks, a living exhalation of her soft red lips--and yet only when he
was near, very near, did the life of it reach him.
She did not know he was thinking these things. There was nothing in his
voice, he thought, to betray him. He was sure she was unconscious of
the fight he was making. Her eyes smiled and laughed with him, she
counted her stitches, her fingers worked, and she talked to him as she
might have talked to a friend of St. Pierre's. She told him how St.
Pierre had made the barge, the largest that had ever been on the river,
and that he had built it entirely of dry cedar, so that it floated like
a feather wherever there was water enough to run a York boat. She told
him how St. Pierre had brought the piano down from Edmonton, and how he
had saved it from pitching in the river by carrying the full weight of
it on his shoulders when they met with an accident in running through a
dangerous rapids bringing it down. St. Pierre was a very strong man,
she said, a note of pride in her voice. And then she added,
"Sometimes, when he picks me up in his arms, I feel that he is going to
squeeze the life out of me!"
Her words were like a sharp thrust into his heart. For an instant they
painted a vision for him, a picture of that slim and adorable creature
crushed close in the great arms of St. Pierre, so close that she could
not breathe. In that mad moment of his hurt it was almost a living,
breathing reality for him there on the golden fore-deck of the scow. He
turned his face toward the far shore, where the wilderness seemed to
reach off into eternity. What a glory it was--the green seas of spruce
and cedar and balsam, the ridges of poplar and birch rising like
silvery spume above the darker billows, and afar off, mellowed in the
sun-mists, the guardian crests of Trout Mountains sentineling the
country beyond! Into that mystery-land on the farther side of the
Wabiskaw waterways Carrigan would have loved to set his foot four days
ago. It was that mystery of the unpeopled places that he most desired,
their silence, the comradeship of spaces untrod by the feet of man. And
now, what a fool he was! Through vast distances the forests he loved
seemed to whisper it to him, and ahead of him the river seemed to look
back, nodding over its shoulder, beckoning to him, telling him the word
of the forests was true. It streamed on lazily, half a mile wide, as if
resting for the splashing and roaring rush it would make among the
rocks of the next rapids, and in its indolence it sang the low and
everlasting song of deep and slowly passing water. In that song David
heard the same whisper, that he was a fool! And the lure of the
wilderness shores crept in on him and gripped him as of old. He looked
at the rowers in the two York boats, and then his eyes came back to the
end of the barge and to St. Pierre's wife.
Her little toes were tapping the floor of the deck. She, too, was
looking out over the wilderness. And again it seemed to him that she
was like a bird that wanted to fly.
"I should like to go into those hills," she said, without looking at
him. "Away off yonder!"
"And I--I should like to go with you."
"You love all that, m'sieu?" she asked.
"Yes, madame!"
"Why 'madame,' when I have given you permission to call me
'Marie-Anne'?" she demanded.
"Because you call me 'm'sieu'."
"But you--you have not given me permission--"
"Then I do now," he interrupted quickly.
"Merci! I have wondered why you did not return the courtesy," she
laughed softly. "I do not like the m'sieu. I shall call you 'David'!"
She rose out of the hammock suddenly and dropped her needles and lace
work into the little basket. "I have forgotten something. It is for you
to eat when it comes dinner-time, m'sieu--I mean David. So I must turn
fille de cuisine for a little while. That is what St. Pierre sometimes
calls me, because I love to play at cooking. I am going to bake a pie!"
The dark-screened door of the kitchenette closed behind her, and
Carrigan walked out from under the awning, so that the sun beat down
upon him. There was no longer a doubt in his mind. He was more than
fool. He envied St. Pierre, and he coveted that which St. Pierre
possessed. And yet, before he would take what did not belong to him, he
knew he would put a pistol to his head and blow his life out. He was
confident of himself there. Yet he had fallen, and out of the mire into
which he had sunk he knew also that he must drag himself, and quickly,
or be everlastingly lowered in his own esteem. He stripped himself
naked and did not lie to that other and greater thing of life that was
in him.
He was not only a fool, but a coward. Only a coward would have touched
the hair of St. Pierre's wife with his lips; only a coward would have
let live the thoughts that burned in his brain. She was St. Pierre's
wife--and he was anxious now for the quick homecoming of the chief of
the Boulains. After that everything would happen quickly. He thanked
God that the inspiration of the wager had come to him. After the fight,
after he had won, then once more would he be the old Dave Carrigan,
holding the trump hand in a thrilling game.
Loud voices from the York boats ahead and answering cries from Bateese
in the stern drew him to the open deck. The bateau was close to shore,
and the half-breed was working the long stern sweep as if the power of
a steam-engine was in his mighty arms. The York boats had shortened
their towline and were pulling at right angles within a few yards of a
gravelly beach. A few strokes more, and men who were bare to the knees
jumped out into shallow water and began tugging at the tow rope with
their hands. David looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock. Never in
his life had time passed so swiftly as that morning on the forward deck
of the barge. And now they were tying up, after a drop of six or eight
miles down the river, and he wondered how swiftly St. Pierre was
overtaking them with his raft.
He was filled with the desire to feel the soft crush of the earth under
his feet again, and not waiting for the long plank that Bateese was
already swinging from the scow to the shore, he made a leap that put
him on the sandy beach, St. Pierre's wife had given him this
permission, and he looked to see what effect his act had on the
half-breed. The face of Concombre Bateese was like sullen stone. Not a
sound came from his thick lips, but in his eyes was a deep and
dangerous fire as he looked at Carrigan. There was no need for words.
In them were suspicion, warning, the deadly threat of what would happen
if he did not come back when it was time to return. David nodded. He
understood. Even though St. Pierre's wife had faith in him, Bateese had
not. He passed between the men, and to a man their faces turned on him,
and in their quiet and watchful eyes he saw again that warning and
suspicion, the unspoken threat of what would happen if he forgot his
promise to Marie-Anne Boulain. Never, in a single outfit, had he seen
such splendid men. They were not a mongrel assortment of the lower
country. Slim, tall, clean-cut, sinewy--they were stock of the old
voyageurs of a hundred years ago, and all of them were young. The older
men had gone to St. Pierre. The reason for this dawned upon Carrigan.
Not one of these twelve but could beat him in a race through the
forest; not one that could not outrun him and cut him off though he had
hours the start!
Passing beyond them, he paused and looked back at the bateau. On the
forward deck stood Marie-Anne, and she, too, was looking at him now.
Even at that distance he saw that her face was quiet and troubled with
anxiety. She did not smile when he lifted his hat to her, but gave only
a little nod. Then he turned and buried himself in the green balsams
that grew within fifty paces of the river. The old joy of life leaped
into him as his feet crushed in the soft moss of the shaded places
where the sun did not break through. He went on, passing through a vast
and silent cathedral of spruce and cedar so dense that the sky was
hidden, and came then to higher ground, where the evergreen was
sprinkled with birch and poplar. About him was an invisible choir of
voices, the low twittering of timid little gray-backs, the song of
hidden--warblers, the scolding of distant jays. Big-eyed moose-birds
stared at him as he passed, fluttering so close to his face that they
almost touched his shoulders in their foolish inquisitiveness. A
porcupine crashed within a dozen feet of his trail. And then he came to
a beaten path, and other paths worn deep in the cool, damp earth by the
hoofs of moose and caribou. Half a mile from the bateau he sat down on
a rotting log and filled his pipe with fresh tobacco, while he listened
to catch the subdued voice of the life in this land that he loved.
It was then that the curious feeling came over him that he was not
alone, that other eyes than those of beast and bird were watching him.
It was an impression that grew on him. He seemed to feel their stare,
seeking him out from the darkest coverts, waiting for him to shove on,
dogging him like a ghost. Within him the hound-like instincts of the
man-hunter rose swiftly to the suspicion of invisible presence.
He began to note the changes in the cries of certain birds. A hundred
yards on his right a jay, most talkative of all the forest things, was
screeching with a new note in its voice. On the other side of him, in a
dense pocket of poplar and spruce, a warbler suddenly brought its song
to a jerky end. He heard the excited Pe-wee--Pe-wee--Pe-wee of a
startled little gray-back giving warning of an unwelcome intruder near
its nest. And he rose to his feet, laughing softly as he thumbed down
the tobacco in his pipe. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain might believe in
him, but Bateese and her wary henchmen had ways of their own of
strengthening their faith.
It was close to noon when he turned back, and he did not return by the
moose path. Deliberately he struck out a hundred yards on either side
of it, traveling where the moss grew thick and the earth was damp and
soft. And five times he found the moccasin-prints of men.
Bateese, with his sleeves up, was scrubbing the deck of the bateau when
David came over the plank.
"There are moose and caribou in there, but I fear I disturbed your
hunters," said Carrigan, grinning at the half-breed. "They are too
clumsy to hunt well, so clumsy that even the birds give them away. I am
afraid we shall go without fresh meat tomorrow!"
Concombre Bateese stared as if some one had stunned him with a blow,
and he spoke no word as David went on to the forward deck. Marie-Anne
had come out under the awning. She gave a little cry of relief and
pleasure.
"I am glad you have come back, M'sieu David!"
"So am I, madame," he replied. "I think the woods are unhealthful to
travel in!"
Out of the earth he felt that a part of the old strength had returned
to him. Alone they sat at dinner, and Marie-Anne waited on him and
called him David again--and he found it easier now to call her
Marie-Anne and look into her eyes without fear that he was betraying
himself. A part of the afternoon he spent in her company, and it was
not difficult for him to tell her something of his adventuring in the
north, and how, body and soul, the northland had claimed him, and that
he hoped to die in it when his time came. Her eyes glowed at that. She
told him of two years she had spent in Montreal and Quebec, of her
homesickness, her joy when she returned to her forests. It seemed, for
a time, that they had forgotten St. Pierre. They did not speak of him.
Twice they saw Andre, the Broken Man, but the name of Roger Audemard
was not spoken. And a little at a time she told him of the hidden
paradise of the Boulains away up in the unmapped wildernesses of the
Yellowknife beyond the Great Bear, and of the great log chateau that
was her home.
A part of the afternoon he spent on shore. He filled a moosehide bag
full of sand and suspended it from the limb of a tree, and for
three-quarters of an hour pommeled it with his fists, much to the
curiosity and amusement of St. Pierre's men, who could see nothing of
man-fighting in these antics. But the exercise assured David that he
had lost but little of his strength and that he would be in form to
meet Bateese when the time came. Toward evening Marie-Anne joined him,
and they walked for half an hour up and down the beach. It was Bateese
who got supper. And after that Carrigan sat with Marie-Anne on the
foredeck of the barge and smoked another of St. Pierre's cigars.
The camp of the rivermen was two hundred yards below the bateau,
screened between by a finger of hardwood, so that except when they
broke into a chorus of laughter or strengthened their throats with
snatches of song, there was no sound of their voices. But Bateese was
in the stern, and Nepapinas was forever flitting in and out among the
shadows on the shore, like a shadow himself, and Andre, the Broken Man,
hovered near as night came on. At last he sat down in the edge of the
white sand of the beach, and there he remained, a silent and lonely
figure, as the twilight deepened. Over the world hovered a sleepy
quiet. Out of the forest came the droning of the wood-crickets, the
last twitterings of the day birds, and the beginning of night sounds. A
great shadow floated out over the river close to the bateau, the first
of the questing, blood-seeking owls adventuring out like pirates from
their hiding-places of the day. One after another, as the darkness
thickened, the different tribes of the people of the night answered the
summons of the first stars. A mile down the river a loon gave its harsh
love-cry; far out of the west came the faint trail-song of a wolf; in
the river the night-feeding trout splashed like the tails of beaver;
over the roof of the wilderness came the coughing, moaning challenge of
a bull moose that yearned for battle. And over these same forest tops
rose the moon, the stars grew thicker and brighter, and through the
finger of hardwood glowed the fire of St. Pierre Boulain's men--while
close beside him, silent in these hours of silence, David felt growing
nearer and still nearer to him the presence of St. Pierre's wife.
On the strip of sand Andre, the Broken Man, rose and stood like the
stub of a misshapen tree. And then slowly he moved on and was swallowed
up in the mellow glow of the night.
"It is at night that he seeks," said St. Pierre's wife, for it was as
if David had spoken the thought that was in his mind.
David, for a moment, was silent. And then he said, "You asked me to
tell you about Black Roger Audemard. I will, if you care to have me. Do
you?"
He saw the nodding of her head, though the moon and star-mist veiled
her face.
"Yes. What do the Police say about Roger Audemard?"
He told her. And not once in the telling of the story did she speak or
move. It was a terrible story at best, he thought, but he did not
weaken it by smoothing over the details. This was his opportunity. He
wanted her to know why he must possess the body of Roger Audemard, if
not alive, then dead, and he wanted her to understand how important it
was that he learn more about Andre, the Broken Man.
"He was a fiend, this Roger Audemard," he began. "A devil in man shape,
afterward called 'Black Roger' because of the color of his soul."
Then he went on. He described Hatchet River Post, where the tragedy had
happened; then told of the fight that came about one day between Roger
Audemard and the factor of the post and his two sons. It was an unfair
fight; he conceded that--three to one was cowardly in a fight. But it
could not excuse what happened afterward. Audemard was beaten. He crept
off into the forest, almost dead. Then he came back one stormy night in
the winter with three strange friends. Who the friends were the Police
never learned. There was a fight, but all through the fight Black Roger
Audemard cried out not to kill the factor and his sons. In spite of
that one of the sons was killed. Then the terrible thing happened. The
father and his remaining son were bound hand and foot and fastened in
the ancient dungeon room under the Post building. Then Black Roger set
the building on fire, and stood outside in the storm and laughed like a
madman at the dying shrieks of his victims. It was the season when the
trappers were on their lines, and there were but few people at the
post. The company clerk and one other attempted to interfere, and Black
Roger killed them with his own hands. Five deaths that night--two of
them horrible beyond description!
Resting for a moment, Carrigan went on to tell of the long years of
unavailing search made by the Police after that; how Black Roger was
caught once and killed his captor. Then came the rumor that he was
dead, and rumor grew into official belief, and the Police no longer
hunted for his trails. Then, not long ago, came the discovery that
Black Roger was still living, and he, Dave Carrigan, was after him.
For a time there was silence after he had finished. Then St. Pierre's
wife rose to her feet. "I wonder," she said in a low voice, "what Roger
Audemard's own story might be if he were here to tell it?"
She stepped out from under the awning, and in the full radiance of the
moon he saw the pale beauty of her face and the crowning luster of her
hair.
"Good night!" she whispered.
"Good night!" said David.
He listened until her retreating footsteps died away, and for hours
after that he had no thought of sleep. He had insisted that she take
possession of her cabin again, and Bateese had brought out a bundle of
blankets. These he spread under the awning, and when he drowsed off, it
was to dream of the lovely face he had seen last in the glow of the
moon.
It was in the afternoon of the fourth day that two things happened--one
that he had prepared himself for, and another so unexpected that for a
space it sent his world crashing out of its orbit. With St. Pierre's
wife he had gone again to the ridge-line for flowers, half a mile back
from the river. Returning a new way, they came to a shallow stream, and
Marie-Anne stood at the edge of it, and there was laughter in her
shining eyes as she looked to the other side of it. She had twined
flowers into her hair. Her cheeks were rich with color. Her slim figure
was exquisite in its wild pulse of life.
Suddenly she turned on him, her red lips smiling their witchery in his
face. "You must carry me across," she said.
He did not answer. He was a-tremble as he drew near her. She raised her
arms a little, waiting. And then he picked her up. She was against his
breast. Her two hands went to his shoulders as he waded into the
stream; he slipped, and they clung a little tighter. The soft note of
laughter was in her throat when the current came to his knees out in
the middle of the stream. He held her tighter; and then stupidly, he
slipped again, and the movement brought her lower in his arms, so that
for a space her head was against his breast and his face was crushed in
the soft masses of her hair. He came with her that way to the opposite
shore and stood her on her feet again, standing back quickly so that
she would not hear the pounding of his heart. Her face was radiantly
beautiful, and she did not look at David, but away from him.
"Thank you," she said.
And then, suddenly, they heard running feet behind them, and in another
moment one of the brigade men came dashing through the stream. At the
same time there came from the river a quarter of a mile away a
thunderous burst of voice. It was not the voice of a dozen men, but of
half a hundred, and Marie-Anne grew tense, listening, her eyes on fire
even before the messenger could get the words out of his mouth.
"It is St. Pierre!" he cried then. "He has come with the great raft,
and you must hurry if you would reach the bateau before he lands!"
In that moment it seemed to David that Marie-Anne forgot he was alive.
A little cry came to her lips, and then she left him, running swiftly,
saying no word to him, flying with the speed of a fawn to St. Pierre
Boulain! And when David turned to the man who had come up behind them,
there was a strange smile on the lips of the lithe-limbed forest-runner
as his eyes followed the hurrying figure of St. Pierre's wife.
Until she was out of sight he stood in silence and then he said:
"Come, m'sieu. We, also, must meet St. Pierre!"