"You were burned--terribly. For two days and nights you were in great
pain, but for many hours you have been sleeping, and Nepapinas says the
burns will not hurt any more. If it had not been for you--"
She bent over him. Her hand touched his face, and now he began to
understand the meaning of that glory shining in her eyes.
"If it hadn't been for you--he would have died!"
She drew back, turning to the door. "He is coming to see you--alone,"
she said, a little broken note in her throat. "And I pray God you will
see with clear understanding, David Carrigan--and forgive me--as I have
forgiven you--for a thing that happened long ago."
He waited. His head was in a jumble, and his thoughts were tumbling
over one another in an effort to evolve some sort of coherence out of
things amazing and unexpected. One thing was impressed upon him--he had
saved St. Pierre's life, and because he had done this Carmin Fanchet
was very tender to him. She had kissed him, and Marie-Anne had kissed
him, and--
A strange dawning was coming to him, thrilling him to his finger-tips.
He listened. A new sound was approaching from the hall. His door was
opened, and a wheel-chair was rolled in by old Nepapinas. In the chair
was St. Pierre Audemard. Feet and hands and arms were wrapped in
bandages, but his face was uncovered and wreathed in smiling happiness
when he saw David propped up against his pillows. Nepapinas rolled him
close to the bed and then shuffled out, and as he closed the door,
David was sure he heard the subdued whispering of feminine voices down
the hall.
"How are you, David?" asked St. Pierre.
"Fine," nodded Carrigan. "And you?"
"A bit scorched, and a broken leg." He held up his padded hands. "Would
be dead if you hadn't carried me to the river. Carmin says she owes you
her life for having saved mine."
"And Marie-Anne?"
"That's what I've come to tell you about," said St. Pierre. "The
instant they knew you were able to listen, both Carmin and Marie-Anne
insisted that I come and tell you things. But if you don't feel well
enough to hear me now--"
"Go on!" almost threatened David.
The look of cheer which had illumined St. Pierre's face faded away, and
David saw in its place the lines of sorrow which had settled there. He
turned his gaze toward a window through which the afternoon sun was
coming, and nodded slowly.
"You saw--out there. He's dead. They buried him in a casket made of
sweet cedar. He loved the smell of that. He was like a little child.
And once--a long time ago--he was a splendid man, a greater and better
man than St. Pierre, his brother, will ever be. What he did was right
and just, M'sieu David. He was the oldest--sixteen--when the thing
happened. I was only nine, and didn't fully understand. But he saw it
all--the death of our father because a powerful factor wanted my
mother. And after that he knew how and why our mother died, but not a
word of it did he tell us until years later--after the day of vengeance
was past.
"You understand, David? He didn't want me in that. He did it alone,
with good friends from the upper north. He killed the murderers of our
mother and father, and then he buried himself deeper into the forests
with us, and we took our mother's family names which was Boulain, and
settled here on the Yellowknife. Roger--Black Roger, as you know
him--brought the bones of our father and mother and buried them over in
the edge of that plain where he died and where our first cabin stood.
Five years ago a falling tree crushed him out of shape, and his mind
went at the same time, so that he has been like a little child, and was
always seeking for Roger Audemard--the man he once was. That was the
man your law wanted. Roger Audemard. Our brother."
"OUR brother," cried David. "Who is the other?"
"My sister."
"Yes?"
"Marie-Anne."
"Good God!" choked David. "St. Pierre, do you lie? Is this another bit
of trickery?"
"It is the truth," said St. Pierre. "Marie-Anne is my sister, and
Carmin--whom you saw in my arms through the cabin window--"
He paused, smiling into David's staring eyes, taking full measure of
recompense in the other's heart-breaking attitude as he waited. "--Is
my wife, M'sieu David."
A great gasp of breath came out of Carrigan.
"Yes, my wife, and the greatest-hearted woman that ever lived, without
one exception in all the world!" cried St. Pierre, a fierce pride in
his voice. "It was she, and not Marie-Anne, who shot you on that strip
of sand, David Carrigan! Mon Dieu, I tell you not one woman in a
million would have done what she did--let you live! Why? Listen,
m'sieu, and you will understand at last. She had a brother, years
younger than she, and to that brother she was mother, sister,
everything, because they had no parents almost from babyhood. She
worshiped him. And he was bad. Yet the worse he became, the more she
loved him and prayed for him. Years ago she became my wife, and I
fought with her to save the brother. But he belonged to the devil hand
and foot, and at last he left us and went south, and became what he was
when you were sent out to get him, Sergeant Carrigan. It was then that
my wife went down to make a last fight to save him, to bring him back,
and you know how she made that fight, m'sieu--until the day you hanged
him!"
St. Pierre was leaning from his chair, his face ablaze. "Tell me, did
she not fight?" he cried. "And YOU, until the last--did you not fight
to have her put behind prison bars with her brother?"
"Yes, it is so," murmured Carrigan.
"She hated you," went on St. Pierre. "You hanged her brother, who was
almost a part of her flesh and body. He was bad, but he had been hers
from babyhood, and a mother will love her son if he is a devil. And
then--I won't take long to tell the rest of it! Through friends she
learned that you, who had hanged her brother, were on your way to run
down Roger Audemard. And Roger Audemard, mind you, was the same as
myself, for I had sworn to take my brother's place if it became
necessary. She was on the bateau with Marie-Anne when the messenger
came. She had but one desire--to save me--to kill you. If it had been
some other man, but it was you, who had hanged her brother! She
disappeared from the bateau that day with a rifle. You know, M'sieu
David, what happened. Marie-Anne heard the shooting and
came--alone--just as you rolled out in the sand as if dead. It was she
who ran out to you first, while my Carmin crouched there with her
rifle, ready to send another bullet into you if you moved. It was
Marie-Anne you saw standing over you, it was she who knelt down at your
side, and then--"
St. Pierre paused, and he smiled, and then grimaced as he tried to rub
his two bandaged hands together. "David, fate mixes things up in a
funny way. My Carmin came out and stood over you, hating you; and
Marie-Anne knelt down there at your side, loving you. Yes, it is true.
And over you they fought for life or death, and love won, because it is
always stronger than hate. Besides, as you lay there bleeding and
helpless, you looked different to my Carmin than as you did when you
hanged her brother. So they dragged you up under a tree, and after that
they plotted together and planned, while I was away up the river on the
raft. The feminine mind works strangely, M'sieu David, and perhaps it
was that thing we call intuition which made them do what they did.
Marie-Anne knew it would never do for you to see and recognize my
Carmin, so in their scheming of things she insisted on passing herself
off as my wife, while my Carmin came back in a canoe to meet me. They
were frightened, and when I came, the whole thing had gone too far for
me to mend, and I knew the false game must be played out to the end.
When I saw what was happening--that you loved Marie-Anne so well that
you were willing to fight for her honor even when you thought she was
my wife--I was sure it would all end well. But I could take no chances
until I knew. And so there were bars at your windows, and--"
St. Pierre shrugged his shoulders, and the lines of grief came into his
face again, and in his voice was a little break as he continued: "If
Roger had not gone out there to fight back the flames from the graves
of his dead, I had planned to tell you as much as I dared, M'sieu
David, and I had faith that your love for our sister would win. I did
not tell you on the river because I wanted you to see with your own
eyes our paradise up here, and I knew you would not destroy it once you
were a part of it. And so I could not tell you Carmin was my wife, for
that would have betrayed us--and--besides--that fight of yours against
a love which you thought was dishonest interested me very much, for I
saw in it a wonderful test of the man who might become my brother if he
chose wisely between love and what he thought was duty. I loved you for
it, even when you sat me there on the sand like a silly loon. And now,
even my Carmin loves you for bringing me out of the fire--But you are
not listening!"
David was looking past him toward the door, and St. Pierre smiled when
he saw the look that was in his face.
"Nepapinas!" he called loudly. "Nepapinas!"
In a moment there was shuffling of feet outside, and Nepapinas came in.
St. Pierre held out his two great, bandaged hands, and David met them
with his own, one bandaged and one free. Not a word was spoken between
them, but their eyes were the eyes of men between whom had suddenly
come the faith and understanding of a brotherhood as strong as life
itself.
Then Nepapinas wheeled St. Pierre from the room and David straightened
himself against his pillows, and waited, and listened, until it seemed
two hearts were thumping inside him in the place of one.
It was an interminable time, he thought, before Marie-Anne stood in the
doorway. For a breath she paused there, looking at him as he stretched
out his bandaged arm to her, moved by every yearning impulse in her
soul to come in, yet ready as a bird to fly away. And then, as he
called her name, she ran to him and dropped upon her knees at his side,
and his arms went about her, insensible to their hurt--and her hot face
was against his neck, and his lips crushed in the smothering sweetness
of her hair. He made no effort to speak, beyond that first calling of
her name. He could feel her heart throbbing against him, and her hands
tightened at his shoulders, and at last she raised her glorious face so
near that the breath of it was on his lips. Then, seeing what was in
his eyes, her soft mouth quivered in a little smile, and with a broken
throb in her throat she whispered,
"Has it all ended--right--David?"
He drew the red mouth to his own, and with a glad cry which was no word
in itself he buried his face in the lustrous tresses he loved.
Afterward he could not remember all it was that he said, but at the end
Marie-Anne had drawn a little away so that she was looking at him, her
eyes shining gloriously and her cheeks beautiful as the petals of a
wild rose. And he could see the throbbing in her white throat, like the
beating of a tiny heart.
"And you'll take me with you?" she whispered joyously.
"Yes; and when I show you to the old man--Superintendent Me Vane, you
know--and tell him you're my wife, he can't go back on his promise. He
said if I settled this Roger Audemard affair, I could have anything I
might ask for. And I'll ask for my discharge, I ought to have it in
September, and that will give us time to return before the snow flies.
You see--"
He held out his arms again. "You see," he cried, his face smothered in
her hair again, "I've found the place of my dreams up here, and I want
to stay--always. Are you a little glad, Marie-Anne?"
In a great room at the end of the hall, with windows opening in three
directions upon the wilderness, St. Pierre waited in his wheel-chair,
grunting uneasily now and then at the long time it was taking Carmin to
discover certain things out in the hall. Finally he heard her coming,
tiptoeing very quietly from the direction of David Carrigan's door, and
St. Pierre chuckled and tried to rub his bandaged hands when she came
in, her face pink and her eyes shining with the greatest thrill that
can stir a feminine heart.
"If we'd only known," he tried to whisper, "I would have had the
keyhole made larger, Cherie! He deserves it for having spied on us at
the cabin window. But--tell me!--Could you see? Did you hear? What--"
Carmin's soft hand went over his mouth. "In another moment you'll be
shouting," she warned. "Maybe I didn't see, and maybe I didn't hear,
Big Bear--but I know there are four very happy people in Chateau
Boulain. And now, if you want to guess who is the happiest--"
"I am, chere-coeur."
"No."
"Well, then, if you insist--YOU are."
"Yes. And the next?"
St. Pierre chuckled. "David Carrigan," he said.
"No, no, no! If you mean that--"
"I mean--always--that I am second, unless you will ever let me be
first," corrected St. Pierre, kissing the hand that was gently stroking
his cheek.
And then he leaned his great head back against her where she stood
behind him, and Carmin's fingers ran where his hair was crisp with the
singe of fire, and for a long time they said no other word, but let
their eyes rest upon the dim length of the hall at the far end of which
was David Carrigan's room.