Philip and Jeanne stood face to face in the firelight.
"Quick!" he cried. "We must hurry!"
He bent over to pick up his revolver from the ground. His movement was followed by a low sob of pain. Jeanne was swaying as though about to faint. She fell in a crumpled heap before he could reach her side.
"You are hurt!" he exclaimed. "Jeanne! Jeanne!"
He was upon his knees beside her, crying out her name, half holding her in his arms.
"No, no! I am not hurt—much," she replied, trying to recover herself. "It is my ankle. I sprained it—on the cliff. Now—"
She became heavier against his arm. Her eyes were limpid with pain.
Rising, Philip caught her in his arms. The crashing of brush was within pistol-shot distance of them, but in that moment he felt no fear. Life leaped back into his veins. He wanted to shout back his defiance as he ran with Jeanne along the path to the river. He could feel her pulsing against him. His lips were in her hair. Her heart was beating wildly against his own. One of her arms was about his shoulder, her hand against his neck. Life, love, the joy of possession swept through him in burning floods, and it seemed in these first moments of his contact with Jeanne, in the first sound of her voice speaking to him, that the passionate language of his soul must escape through his lips. For this moment he had risked his life, had taken a hundred chances; he had anticipated, and yet he had not dreamed beyond a hundredth part of what it would mean for him. He looked down into the white face of the girl as he ran. Her beautiful eyes were open to him. Her lips were parted; her cheek lay against his breast. He did not realize how close he was holding her until, at last, he stopped where he had hidden the canoe. Then he felt her beating and throbbing against him, as he had felt the quivering life of a frightened bird imprisoned in his hands. She drew a deep breath when he opened his arms, and lifted her head. Her loose hair swept over his breast and hands.
He spoke no word as he placed her in the canoe. Not a whisper passed between them as the canoe sped swiftly from the shore. A hundred yards down the stream Philip headed straight across the river and plunged into the shadows along the opposite bank.
Jeanne was close to him. He could hear her breathing. Suddenly he felt the touch of her hand.
"M'sieur, I must ask—about Pierre!"
There was the thrill of fear in the low words. She leaned back, her face a pale shadow in the deep gloom; and Philip bent over until he felt her breath, and the sweetness of her hair filled his nostrils. Quickly he whispered what had happened. He told her that Pierre was hurt, but not badly, and that he had promised to take her on to Fort o' God.
"It is up the Churchill?" he questioned.
"Yes," she whispered.
They heard voices now, and almost opposite them they saw shadowy figures running out to the canoes upon the sand-bar.
"They will think that we are escaping toward Churchill," said Philip, gloatingly. "It is the nearest refuge. See—"
One of the canoes was launched, and shot swiftly down the river. A moment later the second followed. The dip of paddles died away, and Philip laughed softly and joyously.
"They will hunt for us from now until morning between here and the Bay. And then they will look for you again in Churchill."
Philip was conscious, almost without seeing, that Jeanne had bowed her head in her arms and that she was giving way now to the terrific strain which she had been under. Not until he heard a low sob, which she strove hard to choke back in her throat, did he dare to lean over again and touch her. Whatever was throbbing in his heart, he knew that he must hide it now.
"You read the letter?" he asked, softly.
"Yes, M'sieur."
"Then you know—that you are safe with me!"
There was pride and strength, the ring of triumph in his voice. It was the voice of a man thrilled by his own strength, by the warmth of a great love, by the knowledge that he was the protector of a creature dearer to him than all else on earth. The truth of it set Jeanne quivering. She reached out until in the darkness her two hands found one of Philip's, and for a moment she held his paddle motionless in midair.
"Thank you, M'sieur," she whispered. "I trust you, as I would trust Pierre."
All the words that women had ever spoken to him were as nothing to those few that fell softly from Jeanne's lips; in the clinging pressure of her fingers as she uttered them were the concentrated joys of all that he had dreamed of in the touch of women. He knelt silent, motionless, until her hands left his own.
"I am to take you to Fort o' God," he said, fighting to keep the tremble of joy out of his voice. "And you—you must guide me."
"It is far up the Churchill," she replied, understanding the question he intended. "It is two hundred miles from the Bay."
He put his strength into his paddle for ten minutes, and then ran the canoe into shore fully half a mile above the sand-bar. He stepped out into water up to his knees.
"We must risk a little time here to attend to your injured ankle," he explained. "Then you can arrange yourself comfortably among these robes in the bow. Shall I carry you?"
"You can—help," said Jeanne. She gave him her hand and made an effort to rise. Instantly she sank back with a sob of pain.
It was strange that her pain should fill him with a wonderful joy. He knew that she was suffering, that she could not walk or stand alone. And yet, back at the camp, she had risen in her torture and had come to his rescue. She could not bear her own weight now, but then she had run to him and had fought for him. The knowledge that she had done this, and for him, filled him with an exquisite sensation.
"I must carry you," he said, speaking to her with the calm decision that he might have voiced to a little child. His tone reassured her, and she made no remonstrance when he lifted her in his arms. For a brief moment she lay against him again, and when he lowered her upon the bank his hand accidentally touched the soft warmth of her face.
"My specialty is sprains," he said, speaking a little lightly to raise her spirits for the instant's ordeal through which she must pass. "I have doctored half a dozen during the last three months. You must take off your moccasin and your stocking, and I will make a bandage."
He drew a big handkerchief from his pocket and dipped it in the water. Then he searched along the shore for a dozen paces, until he found an Indian willow. With his knife he scraped off a handful of bark, soaked it in water, crushed it between his hands, and returned to her. Jeanne's little foot lay naked in the starlight.
"It will hurt just a moment," he said, gently. "But it is the only cure. To-morrow it will be strong enough for you to stand upon. Can you bear a little hurt?"
He knelt before her and looked up, scarce daring to touch her foot before she spoke.
"I may cry," she said.
Her voice fluttered, but it gave him permission. He folded the wet handkerchief in the form of a bandage, with the willow bark spread over it. Then, very gently, he seized her foot in one hand and her ankle in the other.
"It will hurt just a little," he soothed. "Only a moment."
His fingers tightened. He put into them the whole strength of his grip, pulling downward on the foot and upward on the ankle until, with a low cry, Jeanne flung her hands over his.
"There, it is done," he laughed, nervously. He wrapped the bandage around so tightly that Jeanne could not move her foot, and tied it with strips of cloth. Then he turned to the canoe while she drew on her stocking and moccasin.
He was trembling. A maddening joy pounded in his brain. Jeanne's voice came to him sweetly, with a shyness in it that made him feel like a boy. He was glad that the night concealed his face. He would have given worlds to have seen Jeanne's.
"I am ready," she said.
He carried her to the bow of the canoe and fixed her among the robes, arranging a place for her head so that she might sleep if she wished. For the first time the light was so that he could see her plainly as she nestled back in the place made for her. Their eyes met for a moment.
"You must sleep," he urged. "I shall paddle all night."
"You are sure that Pierre is not badly hurt?" she asked, tremulously. "You—you would not—keep the truth from me?"
"He was not more than stunned," assured Philip. "It is impossible that his wound should prove serious. Only there was no time to lose, and I came without him. He will follow us soon."
He took his position in the stern, and Jeanne lay back among the bearskins. For a long time after that Philip paddled in silence. He had hoped that Jeanne would give him an opportunity to continue their conversation, in spite of his advice to her to secure what rest she could. But there came no promise from the bow of the canoe. After half an hour he guessed that Jeanne had taken him at his word, and was asleep.
It was disappointing, and yet there came a pleasurable throb with his disappointment. Jeanne trusted him. She was sleeping under his protection as sweetly as a child. Fear of her enemies no longer kept her awake or filled her with terror. This night, under these stars, with the wilderness all about them, she had given herself into his keeping. His cheeks burned. He dipped his paddle noiselessly, so that he might not interrupt her slumber. Each moment added to the fullness of his joy, and he wished that he might only see her face, hidden in the darkness of her hair and the bear-robes.
The silence no longer seemed a silence to him. It was filled with the beating of his heart, the singing of his love, a gentle sigh now and then that came like a deeper breath between Jeanne's sweet lips. It was a silence that pulsated with a voiceless and intoxicating life for him, and he was happy. In these moments, when even their voices were stilled, Jeanne belonged to him, and to him alone. He could feel the warmth of her presence. He felt still the thrill of her breast against his own, the touch of her hair upon his lips, the gentle clinging of her arms. The spirit of her moved, and sat awake, and talked with him, just as the old spirit of his dreams had communed with him a thousand times in his loneliness. Dreams were at an end. Now had come reality.
He looked up into the sky. The moon had dropped below the southwestern forests, and there were only the stars above him, filling a gray-blue vault in which there was not even the lingering mist of a cloud. It was a beautifully clear night, and he wondered how the light fell so that it did not reveal Jeanne in her nest. The thought that came to him then set his heart tingling and made his face radiant. Even the stars were guarding Jeanne, and refused to disclose the mystery of her slumber. He laughed within himself. His being throbbed, and suddenly a voice seemed to cry softly, trembling in its joy:
"Jeanne! Jeanne! My beloved Jeanne!"
With horror Philip caught himself too late. He had spoken the words aloud. For an instant reality had transformed itself into the old dream, and his dream-spirit had called to its mate for the first time in words. Appalled at what he had said, Philip bent over and listened. He heard Jeanne's breathing. It was deeper than before. She was surely asleep!
He straightened himself and resumed his paddling. He was glad now that he had spoken. Jeanne seemed nearer to him after those words.
Before this night he never realized how beautiful the wilderness was, how complete it could be. It had offered him visions of new life, but these visions had never quite shut out the memories of old pain. He watched and listened. The water rippled behind his canoe; it trickled in a soothing cadence after each dip of his paddle; he heard the gentle murmur of it among the reeds and grasses, and now and then the gurgling laughter of it, like the faintest tinkling of dainty bells. He had never understood it before; he had never joined in its happiness. The night sounds came to him with a different meaning, filled him with different sensations. As he slipped quietly around a bend in the river he heard a splashing ahead of him, and knew that a moose was feeding, belly-deep, in the water. At other times the sound would have set his fingers itching for a rifle, but now it was a part of the music of the night. Later he heard the crashing of a heavy body along the shore and in the distance the lonely howl of a wolf. He listened to the sounds with a quiet pleasure instead of creeping thrills which they once sent through him. Every sound spoke of Jeanne—of Jeanne and her world, into which each stroke of his paddle carried them a little deeper.
And yet the truth could not but come to him that Jeanne was but a stranger. She was a creature of mystery, as she lay there asleep in the bow of the canoe; he loved her, and yet he did not know her. He confessed to himself, as the night lengthened, that he would be glad when morning came. Jeanne would clear up a half of his perplexities then, perhaps all of them. He would at least learn more about herself and the reason for the attack at Fort Churchill.
He paddled for another hour, and then looked at his watch by the light of a match. It was three o'clock.
Jeanne had not moved, but as the match burned out between his fingers she startled him by speaking.
"Is it nearly morning, M'sieur?"
"An hour until dawn," said Philip. "You have been sleeping a long time—" Her name was on his lips, but he found it a little more difficult to speak now. And yet there was a gentleness in Jeanne's "M'SIEUR" which encouraged him. "Are you getting hungry?" he asked.
"Pierre and my father always ask me that when THEY are starving," replied Jeanne, sitting erect in her nest so that Philip saw her face and the shimmer of her hair. "There is everything to eat in the pack, M'sieur Philip, even to a bottle of olives."
"Good!" cried Philip, delighted, "But won't you please cut out that 'm'sieur?' My greatest weakness is a desire to be called by my first name. Will you?"
"If it pleases you," said Jeanne. "There is everything there to eat, and I will make you a cup of coffee, M'sieur—"
"What?"
"Philip."
There was a ripple of laughter in the girl's voice. Philip fairly trembled.
"You were prepared for this journey," he said. "You were going to leave after you saw me on the rock. I have been wondering why—why you took enough interest in me—"
He knew that he was blundering, and in the darkness his face turned red. Jeanne's tact was delightful.
"We were curious about you," she said, with bewitching candor. "Pierre is the most inquisitive creature in the world, and I wanted to thank you for returning my handkerchief. I'm sorry you didn't find a bit of lace which I lost at the same time!"
"I did!" exclaimed Philip.
He bit his tongue, and cursed himself at this fresh break. Jeanne was silent. After a moment she said:
"Shall I make you some coffee?"
"Will you be able to do it? Your foot—"
"I had forgotten that," she said. "It doesn't hurt any more. But I can show you how."
Her unaffected ingenuousness, the sweetness of her voice, the simplicity and ease of her manner delighted Philip, and at the same time filled him with amazement. He had never met a forest girl like Jeanne. Her beauty, her queen-like bearing, when she had stood with Pierre on the rock, had puzzled him and filled him with admiration. But now her voice, the music of her words, her quickness of perception added tenfold to those impressions. It might have been Miss Brokaw who was sitting there in the bow talking to him, only Jeanne's voice was sweeter than Miss Brokaw's; and even in the lightest of the words she had spoken there was a tone of sincerity and truth. It flashed upon Philip that Jeanne might have stepped from a convent school, where gentle voices had taught her and language was formed in the ripe fullness of music. In a moment he believed that something like this had happened.
"We will go ashore," he said, searching for an open space. "This must be tedious to you, if you are not accustomed to it."
"Accustomed to it, M'sieur—Philip!" exclaimed Jeanne, catching herself. "I was born here!"
"In the wilderness?"
"At Fort o' God."
"You have not always lived there?"
For a brief space Jeanne was silent.
"Yes, always, M'sieur. I am eighteen years old, and this is the first time that I have ever seen what you people call civilization. It is my first visit to Fort Churchill. It is the first time I have ever been away from Fort o' God."
Jeanne's voice was low and subdued. It rang with truth. In it there was something that was almost tragedy. For a breath or two Philip's heart seemed to stop its beating, and he leaned far over, looking straight and questioningly into the beautiful face that met his own. In that moment the world had opened and engulfed him in a wonder which at first his mind could not comprehend.
The canoe ran among the reeds, with its bow to the shore. Philip's astonishment still held him motionless.
"A little while ago you asked me if I would tell you anything but—but—the truth," he stammered, trying to find words to express himself, "and this—"
"Is the truth," interrupted Jeanne, a little coolly. "Why should I tell you an untruth, M'sieur?"
Philip had asked himself that same question shortly after their first meeting on the cliff. And now in the girl's question there was sounded a warning for him to be more discreet.
"I did not mean that," he cried, quickly. "Please forgive me. Only—it is so wonderful, so almost IMPOSSIBLE to believe. Do you know what I thought of for three-quarters of the night after I left you and Pierre on the rock? It was of years—centuries ago. I put you and Pierre back there. It seemed as though you had come to me from out of another world, that you had strayed from the chivalry and beauty of some royal court, that a queen's painter might have known and made a picture of you, as I saw you there, but that to me you were only the vision of a dream. And now you say that you have always lived here!"
He saw Jeanne's eyes glowing. She had lifted herself from among the bearskins and was leaning toward him. Her face was quivering with emotion; her whole being seemed concentrated on his words.
"M'sieur—Philip—did we seem—like that?" she asked, tremulously.
"Yes, or I would not have written the letter," replied Philip. He leaned forward over the pack, and his face was close to Jeanne's. "I had just passed over the place where men and women of a century or two ago were buried, and when I saw you and Pierre I thought of them; of Mademoiselle D'Arcon, who left a prince to follow her lover to a grave back there at Churchill, and I wondered if Grosellier—"
"Grosellier!" cried the girl.
She was breathing quickly, excitedly. Suddenly she drew back with a little, nervous laugh.
"I am glad you thought of us like THAT," she added. "It was Grosellier, le grand chevalier, who first lived at Fort o' God!"
Philip could no longer restrain himself. He forgot that the canoe was lying motionless among the reeds and that they were to go ashore. In a voice that trembled with his eagerness to be understood, to win her confidence, he told her fully of what had happened that night on the cliff. He repeated Pierre's instructions to him, described his terrible fear for her, and in it all withheld but one thing—the name of Lord Fitzhugh Lee. Jeanne listened to him without a word. She sat as erect as one of the slender reeds among which the canoe was hidden. Her dark eyes never left his face. They seemed to have grown darker when he finished.
"May the great God reward you for what you have done," she said, in a low voice, quivering with a suppressed passion. "You are brave, M'sieur Philip—as brave as I have dreamed of men being."
Philip's heart throbbed with delight, and yet he said quickly:
"It isn't THAT. I have done nothing—nothing more than Pierre would have done for me. But don't you understand? If there is to be a reward for the little I have given—I could ask for nothing greater than your confidence and Pierre's. There are reasons, and perhaps if I told you those you would understand."
"I do understand, without further explanation," answered Jeanne, in the same low, strained voice. "You fought for Pierre on the cliff, and you have saved—me. We owe you everything, even our lives. I understand, M'sieur Philip," she said, more softly, leaning still nearer to him; "but I can tell you nothing."
"You prefer to leave that to Pierre," he said a little hurt. "I beg your pardon."
"No, no! I don't mean that!" she cried, quickly. "You misunderstand me. I mean that you know as much of this whole affair as I do, that you know what I know, and perhaps more."
The emotion which she had suppressed burst forth now in a choking sob. She recovered herself in an instant, her eyes still upon Philip.
"It was only a whim of mine that took us to Churchill," she went on, before he could find words to say. "It is Pierre's secret why we lived in our own camp and went down into Churchill but once—when the ship came in. I do not know the reason for the attack. I can only guess—"
"And your guess—"
Jeanne drew back. For a moment she did not speak. Then she said, without a note of harshness in her voice, but with the finality of a queen:
"Father may tell you that when we reach Fort o' God!"
And then she suddenly leaned toward him again and held out both her hands.
"If you only could know how I thank you!" she exclaimed, impulsively.
For a moment Philip held her hands. He felt them trembling. In Jeanne's eyes he saw the glisten of tears.
"Circumstances have come about so strangely," he said, his heart palpitating at the warm pressure of her fingers, "that I half believed you and Pierre could help me in—in an affair of my own. I would give a great deal to find a certain person, and after the attack on the cliff, and what Pierre said, I thought—"
He hesitated, and Jeanne gently drew her hands from him.
"I thought that you might know him," he finished. "His name is Lord Fitzhugh Lee."
Jeanne gave no sign that she had heard the name before. The question in her eyes remained unchanged.
"We have never heard of him at Fort o' God," she said.
Philip shoved the canoe more firmly upon the shore and stepped over the side.
"This Fort o' God must be a wonderful place," he said, as he bent over to help her. "You have aroused something in me I never thought I possessed before—a tremendous curiosity."
"It is a wonderful place, M'sieur Philip," replied the girl, holding up her hands to him. "But why should you guess it?"
"Because of you," laughed Philip. "I am half convinced that you take a wicked delight in bewildering me."
He found Jeanne a comfortable spot on the bank, brought her one of the bearskins, and began collecting a pile of dry reeds and wood.
"I am sure of it," he went on. He struck a match, and the reeds flared into flame, lighting up his face.
Jeanne gave a startled cry.
"You are hurt!" she exclaimed. "Your face is red with blood."
Philip jumped back.
"I had forgotten that. I'll wash my face."
He waded into the edge of the water and began scrubbing himself. When he returned, Jeanne looked at him closely. The fire illumined her pale face. She had gathered her beautiful hair in a thick braid, which fell over her shoulder. She appeared lovelier to him now than when he had first seen her in the night-glow on the cliff. She was dressed the same. He observed that the filmy bit of lace about her slender throat was torn, and that one side of her short buckskin skirt was covered with half-dried splashes of mud. His blood rose at these signs of the rough treatment of those who had attacked her. It reached fever-heat when, coming nearer, he saw a livid bruise on her forehead close up under her hair.
"They struck you?" he demanded.
He stood with his hands clenched. She smiled up at him.
"It was my fault," she explained. "I'm afraid I gave them a good deal of trouble on the cliff."
She laughed outright at the fierceness in Philip's face, and so sweet was the sound of it to him that his hands relaxed and he laughed with her.
"So help me, you're a brick!" he cried.
"There are pots and kettles and coffee and things to eat in the pack, M'sieur Philip," reminded Jeanne, softly, as he still remained staring down upon her.
Philip turned to the canoe, with a laugh that was like a boy's. He threw the pack at Jeanne's feet and unstrapped it. Together they sorted out the things they wanted, and Philip cut crotched sticks on which he suspended two pots of water over the fire. He found himself whistling as he gathered an armful of wood along the shore. When he came back Jeanne had opened a bottle of olives and was nibbling at one, while she held out another to him on the end of a fork.
"I love olives," she said. "Won't you have one?"
He accepted the thing, and ate it joyously, though he hated olives.
"Where did you acquire the taste?" he asked. "I thought it took a course at college to make one like 'em."
"I've been to college," answered Jeanne, quietly. There was a glow in her cheeks now, a swift flash of tantalizing fun in her eyes, as she fished after another olive. "I have been a student—a TENERIS ANNIS," she added, and he stood stupefied.
"That's Latin!" he gasped.
"Oui, M'sieur. Wollen Sie noch eine Olive haben?"
Laughter rippled in her throat. She held out another olive to him, her face aglow. Firelight danced in her hair, flooding its darker shadows with lights of red and gold.
"I was sure of it," he exclaimed, convinced. "That's post-graduate Latin and senior German, or I'm as mad as a March hare! Where—where did you go to school?"
"At Fort o' God. Quick, M'sieur Philip, the water is boiling over!"
Philip sprang to the fire. Jeanne handed him coffee, and set out cold meat and bread. For the first time that night he pulled out his pipe and filled it with tobacco.
"You don't mind if I smoke, do you, Miss Jeanne?" he groaned. "Under some circumstances tobacco is the only thing that will hold me up. Do you know that you are shaking my confidence in you?"
"I have told you nothing but the truth," retorted Jeanne, innocently. She was still busying herself over the pack, but Philip caught the slightest gleam of her laughing teeth.
"You are making fun of me," he remonstrated. "Tell me—where is this Fort o' God, and what is it?"
"It is far up the Churchill, M'sieur Philip. It is a log chateau, built hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I guess. My father, Pierre, and I, with one other, live there alone among the savages. I have never been so far away from home before."
"I suppose," said Philip, "that the savages up your way converse in Latin, Greek, and German—"
"Latin, FRENCH, and German," corrected Jeanne. "We haven't added a Greek course yet."
"I know of a girl," mused Philip, as though speaking to himself, "who spent five years in a girls' college, and she can talk nothing but light English. Her name is Eileen Brokaw."
Jeanne looked up, but only to point to the coffee.
"It is done," she advised, "unless you like it bitter."
Philip knew that Jeanne was watching him as he lifted the coffee from the fire and placed the pot on the ground to cool. His mind was in a hopeless tangle—a riot of things he would like to say, throbbing with a hundred questions he would like to ask, one after another. And yet Jeanne seemed bewitchingly unconscious of his uneasiness. Not one of his references to names and events so vital to himself had in any way produced a change in her. Was she, after all, innocent of all knowledge in the things he wished to know? Was it possible that she was entirely ignorant as to the identity of the men who had attacked Pierre and herself on the cliff? Was it true that she did not know Eileen Brokaw, that she had never heard of Lord Fitzhugh Lee, and that she had always lived among the wild people of the north? By what miracle performed here in the heart of a savage world could this girl talk to him in German and Latin? Was she making fun of him? He turned to look at her and found her dark, clear eyes upon him. She smiled at him in a tired little way, and he saw nothing but sweetness and truth in her face. In an instant every suspicion was swept away. He felt like a criminal for having doubted her; and for a moment he was on the point of confessing to her what had been in his thoughts. He restrained himself, and went to the river to wash the pot-black from his hands. Jeanne was a mystery to him, a mystery that delighted him and filled him each moment with a deeper love. He saw the life and freedom of the forests in her every movement—in the gesture of her hands, the bird-like poise of her pretty head, the lithe grace of her slender body. She breathed the forests. It glowed in her eyes, in the rich red of her lips, and revealed its beauty and strength in the unconfined wealth of her gold-brown hair. In a dozen ways he could see her primitiveness, her kinship to the wilderness. She had told him the truth. Her eyes smiled truth at him as he came up the bank. No other woman's eyes had ever looked at him like hers; none had he seen so beautiful. And yet in them he saw nothing that she would not have expressed in words—companionship, trust, thankfulness that he was there to care for her. Such eyes as those belonged only to the wilderness, brimming with the flawless beauty of an undefiled nature. He had seen them, but not so beautiful, in Cree women. He thought of Eileen Brokaw's eyes as he looked at Jeanne's. They were very beautiful, but they were DIFFERENT. Jeanne's could not lie.
On a white napkin Jeanne had spread out cold meat, bread, pickles, and cheese, and Philip brought her the coffee. He noticed that she was resting a little of her weight upon her injured ankle.
"Better?" he asked, indicating the bandaged ankle with a nod of his head.
"Much," replied Jeanne, as tersely. "I'm going to try standing upon it in a few minutes. But not now. I'm starved."
She gave him his coffee and began eating with a relish that made him want to sit back and watch her. Instead, he joined her; and they ate like two hungry children. It was when she turned him out a second cup of coffee that Philip noticed her hand tremble a little.
"If Pierre was here we would be quite happy, M'sieur Philip," she said, uneasily. "I can't understand why he asked you to run away with me to Fort o' God. If he is not badly hurt, as you have told me, why do we not hide and wait for him? He would overtake us to-morrow."
"There—there was no time to talk over plans," answered Philip, inwardly embarrassed for a moment by the unexpectedness of Jeanne's question. A vision of Pierre, bleeding and unconscious on the cliff, leaped into his mind, and the thought that he had lied to Jeanne and must still make her believe what was half false sickened him. There was, after all, a chance that Pierre would never again come up the Churchill. "Perhaps Pierre thought we would be hotly pursued," he went on, seeing no escape from the demand in the girl's eyes. "In that event it would be best for me to get you to Fort o' God as quickly as possible. You must remember that Pierre was thinking of you. He can care for himself. It may take him two or three days to get back the strength of—of his arm," he finished, blindly.
"He was wounded in the arm?"
"And on the head," said Philip. "It was only a scalp wound, however—nothing at all, except that it dazed him a little at the time."
Jeanne pointed to the reflection of the fire on the river.
"If we should be pursued?" she suggested.
"There is no danger," assured Philip, though he had left the flap of his revolver holster unbuttoned. "They will search for us between their camp and Churchill."
"Citius venit periculum cum contemnitur," remonstrated Jeanne, half smiling.
She was pale, but Philip saw that she was making a tremendous effort to appear brave and cheerful.
"Perhaps you are right," laughed Philip, "but I swear that I don't know what you mean. I suppose you picked that lingo up among the Indians."
He caught the faintest gleam of Jeanne's white teeth again as she bent her head.
"I have a tutor at home," she explained, softly. "You shall meet him when we reach Fort o' God. He is the most wonderful man in the world."
Her words sent a strange chill through Philip. They were filled with an exquisite tenderness, a pride that sent her eyes back to his, glowing. The questions that he had meant to ask died and faded away. He thought of her words of a few minutes before, when he had asked about Fort o' God. She had said, "My father, Pierre, and I, WITH ONE OTHER, live there alone." The OTHER was the tutor, the man who had come from civilization to teach this beautiful girl those things which had amazed him, and this man was THE MOST WONDERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD. He had no excuse for the feelings which were aroused in him. Only he knew, as he rose to his feet, that a part of his old burden seemed suddenly to have returned to his shoulders, and the old loneliness was beating at the door of his heart. He rearranged the pack in silence, and the strength and joy of life were gone from his arms when he helped Jeanne back to her place among the bear-skins. He did not notice that her eyes were watching him curiously, or that her lips trembled once or twice, as if about to speak words which never came. Jeanne, as well as he, seemed to have discovered something which neither dared to reveal in that last five minutes on the shore.
"There is one thing that I must know," said Philip, when they were about to start, "and that is where to find Fort o' God? Is it on the Churchill?"
"It is on the Little Churchill, M'sieur, near Waskiaowaka Lake."
Darkness concealed the effect of her words upon Philip. For a moment he stared like one struck dumb. He stifled the exclamation that rose to his lips. He felt himself trembling. He knew that if he spoke his voice would betray him.
NEAR WASKIAOWAKA LAKE! And Waskiaowaka was within thirty miles of his own camp on the Blind Indian! If a bomb had burst under his feet he could not have been more amazed than at this information, given to him in Jeanne's quiet voice. Fort o' God—within thirty miles of the scene where very soon he was to fight the great battle of his life! He dug his paddle into the water and sent the canoe hissing up the river. His blood pounded like that of a racehorse on the home-stretch. Of all the things that had happened, of all he had learned, this was the most significant. Every thought ran like a separate powder-flash to a single idea, to one great, overpowering question. Were Fort o' God and its people the key to the plot against himself and his company? Was it the rendezvous of those who were striving to work his ruin? Doubt, suspicion, almost belief came to him in those few moments, in spite of himself.
He looked at Jeanne. The gray dawn was breaking, and now light followed swiftly and dissolved the last mist. In the chill of early morning, when with the approach of the sun a cold, uncomfortable sweat rises heavily from the earth and water, Jeanne had drawn one of the bearskins closely about her. Her head was bare. Her hair, glistening with damp, clung in heavy masses about her face. There was a bewitching childishness about her, a pathetic appeal to him in the forlorn little picture she made—so helpless, and yet so confident in him. Every energy in him leaped up in defiance of the revolution which for a few moments had stirred within him. And Jeanne, as though she had read the working of his mind, looked straight at him and smiled, with a little purring note in her throat that took the place of a thousand words. It was such a smile, and yet not one of love, which puts the strength of ten men in one man's arms; and Philip laughed back at her, every chord in his body responding in joyous vibration to the delicate note that had come with it. No matter what events might find their birth at Fort o' God, Jeanne was innocent of all knowledge of plot or wrong-doing. Once for all Philip convinced himself of this.
The thought that came to him, as he looked at Jeanne, found voice through his lips.
"Do you know," he said, "if I never saw you again I would always have three pictures of you in my memory. I would never forget how you looked when I first saw you on the cliff—or as I see you now, wrapped in your bearskins. Only—I would think of you—as you smiled."
"And the third picture?" questioned Jeanne, little guessing what was in his mind. "Would that be at the fire, when I burned the bad man's neck—or—or when—"
She stopped herself, and pouted her mouth in sudden vexation, while a flush which Philip could easily see rose in her cheeks.
"When I doctored your foot?" he finished, rather unchivalrously, chuckling in his delight at her pretty discomfiture. "No, that wouldn't be the third, Miss Jeanne. The other scene which I shall never forget was that on the stone pier at Churchill, when you met a beautiful girl who was coming off the ship."
The blood leaped to Jeanne's face. Her soft lips tightened. A sudden movement, and the bearskin slipped from her shoulders, leaving her leaning a little forward, her eyes blazing. A dozen words had transformed her from the child he had fancied her to a woman quivering with some powerful emotion, her beautiful head proud and erect, her nostrils dilating with the quickness of her breath.
"That was a mistake," she said. There was no sign of passion in her voice. It trembled a little, but that was all. "It was a mistake, M'sieur Philip. I thought that I knew her, and—and I was wrong. You—you must not remember THAT!"
"I am no better than a wild beast," groaned Philip, hating himself. "I'm the biggest idiot in the world when it comes to saying the wrong thing, I never miss a chance. I didn't mean to say anything—that would hurt—"
"You haven't," interrupted the girl, quickly, seeing the distress in his face. "You haven't said a thing that's wrong. Only I don't want you to remember THAT picture. I want you to think of me as—as—I burned the bad man's neck."
She was laughing now, though her breast was rising and falling a little excitedly and the deep color was still in her cheeks.
"Will you?" she entreated.
"Until I die," he exclaimed.
She was fumbling under the luggage, and dragged forth a second paddle.
"I've had an easy time with you, M'sieur Philip," she said, turning so that she was kneeling with her back to him. "Pierre makes me work. Always I kneel here, in the bow, and paddle. I am ashamed of myself. You have worked all night."
"And I feel as fresh as though I had slept for a week," declared Philip, his eyes devouring the slim figure a paddle's length in front of him.
For an hour they continued up the river, with scarcely a word between them to break the silence. Their paddles rose and fell with a rhythmic motion; the water rippled like low music under their canoe; the spell of the silent shores, of voiceless beauty, of the wilderness awakening into day appealed to them both and held them quiet. The sun broke faintly through the drawn mists behind. Its first rays lighted up Jeanne's rumpled hair, so that her heavy braid, partly undone and falling upon the luggage behind her, shone in rich and changing colors that fascinated Philip. He had thought that Jeanne's hair was very dark, but he saw now that it was filled with the rare life of a Titian head, running from red to gold and dark brown, with changing shadows and flashes of light. It was beautiful. And Jeanne, as he looked at her, he thought to be the most beautiful thing on earth. The movement of her arms, the graceful, sinuous twists of her slender body as she put her strength upon the paddle, the poise of her head, the piquant tilt to her chin whenever she turned so that he caught a half profile of her flushed, eager face all filled his cup of admiration to overflowing. And he found himself wondering, suddenly, how this girl could be a sister to Pierre Couchee. He saw in her no sign of French or half-breed blood. Her hair was fine and soft, and waved about her ears and where it fell loose upon the back. The color in her cheeks was as delicate as the tints of the bakneesh flower. She had rolled up her broad cuffs to give her greater freedom in paddling, and her arms shone white and firm, glistening with the wet drip of the paddle. He was marveling at her relationship to Pierre when she looked back at him, her face aglow with exercise and the spice of the morning, and he saw the sunlight as blue as the sky above him in her eyes. If he had not known, he would have sworn that there was not a drop of Pierre's blood in her veins.
"We are coming to the first rapids, M'sieur Philip," she announced. "It is just beyond that ugly mountain of rock ahead of us, and we will have a quarter-mile portage. It is filled with great stones and so swift that Pierre and I nearly wrecked ourselves coming down."
It was the most that had been said since the beginning of that wonderful hour that had come before the first gleam of sunrise, and Philip, laying his paddle athwart the canoe, stretched himself and yawned, as though he had just awakened.
"Poor boy," said Jeanne; and it struck him that her words were strangely like those which Eileen might have spoken had she been there, only an artless comradeship replaced what would have been Miss Brokaw's tone of intimacy. She added, with genuine sympathy in her face and voice: "You must be exhausted, M'sieur Philip. If you were Pierre I should insist upon going ashore for a number of hours. Pierre obeys me when we are together. He calls me his captain. Won't you let me command you?"
"If you will let me call you—my captain," replied Philip. "Only there is one thing—one reservation. We must go on. Command me in everything else, but we must go on—for a time. To-night I will sleep. I will sleep like the dead. So, My Captain," he laughed, "may I have your permission to work to-day?"
Jeanne was turning the bow shoreward. Her back was turned to him again.
"You have no pity on me," she pouted. "Pierre would be good to me, and we would fish all day in that pretty pool over there. I'll bet it's full of trout."
Her words, her manner of speaking them, was a new revelation to Philip. She was delightful. He laughed, and his voice rang out in the clear morning like a school-boy's. Jeanne pretended that she saw nothing to laugh at, and no sooner had the canoe touched shore than she sprang lightly out, not waiting for his assistance. With a laughing cry, she stumbled and fell. Philip was at her side in an instant.
"You shouldn't have done that," he objected. "I am your doctor, and I insist that your foot is not well."
"But it is!" cried Jeanne, and he saw that there was laughter instead of pain in her eyes. "It's the bandage. My right foot feels like that of a Chinese debutante. Ugh! I'm going to undo it."
"You've been to China, too," mused Philip, half to himself.
"I know that it's filled with yellow girls, and that they squeeze their feet like this," said Jeanne, unlacing her moccasin. "My tutor and I have just finished a delightful trip along the Great Wall. We'd go to Peking, in an automobile, if I wasn't afraid."
Philip's groan was audible. He went to the canoe, and Jeanne's red lips curled in a merriment which it was hard for her too suppress. Philip did not see. When he had unloaded the canoe and turned, Jeanne was walking slowly back and forth, limping a little.
"It's all right," she said, answering the question on his lips. "I don't feel any pain at all, but my foot's asleep. Won't you please unstrap the small pack? I'm going to make my toilet while you are gone with the canoe."
Half an hour later Philip unshouldered the canoe at the upper end of the rapids. His own toilet articles were back in the cabin with Gregson, but he took a wash in the river and combed his hair with his fingers. When he returned, there was a transformation in Jeanne. Her beautiful hair was done up in shining coils. She had changed her bedraggled skirt for another of soft, yellow buckskin. At her throat she wore a fluffy mass of crimson stuff which seemed to reflect a richer rose-flush in her cheeks. A curious thought came to Philip as he looked at her. Like a flash the memory of a certain night came to him—when it had taken Miss Brokaw and her maid two hours to make a toilet for a ball. And Jeanne, in the heart of a wilderness, had made herself more beautiful than Eileen. He imagined, as she stood before him, a little embarrassed by the admiration in his eyes, the sensation Jeanne would create in a ballroom at home. And then he laughed—laughed joyously at thoughts which he could not reveal to Jeanne, and which she, by some quick intuition, knew that she should not ask him to express.
Twice again Philip made the portage, accompanied the second time by Jeanne, who insisted on carrying a small pack and two paddles. In spite of his determination and splendid physique, Philip began to feel the effects of the tremendous strain which he had been under for so long. He counted back and found that he had slept but six hours in the last forty-eight. There was a warning ache in his shoulders and a gnawing pain in the bones of his forearms. But he knew that he had not yet made sufficient headway up the Churchill. It would not be difficult for him to make a camp far enough back in the bush to avoid discovery; but, at the same time, if he and Jeanne were pursued, the stop would give their enemies a chance to get ahead of them. This danger he wished to escape.
He flattered himself that Jeanne saw no signs of his weakening. He did not know that Jeanne put more and more effort into her paddle, until her arms and body ached, because she saw the truth.
The Churchill narrowed and its current became swifter as they progressed. Five portages were made between sunrise and eleven o'clock. They ate dinner at the fifth, and rested for two hours. Then the journey was resumed. It was three o'clock when Jeanne dropped her paddle and turned to Philip. There were deep lines in his face. He smiled, but there was more of haggard misery than cheer in the smile. There was an unnatural flush in his cheeks, and he began to feel a burning pain where the blow had fallen upon his head before. For a full half-minute Jeanne looked at him without speaking. "Philip," she said—and it was the first time she had spoken his name in this way, "I insist upon going ashore immediately. If you do not land—now—in that opening ahead, I shall jump out, and you can go on alone."
"As you say—my Captain Jeanne," surrendered Philip, a little dizzily.
Jeanne guided the canoe to the shore, and was the first to spring out, while Philip steadied the light craft with his paddle. She pointed to the luggage.
"We will want the tent—everything," she said, "because we are going to camp here until to-morrow."
Once on shore, Philip's dizziness left him. He pulled the canoe high up on the bank, and then Jeanne and he set off, side by side, to explore the high, wooded ground back from the river. They followed a well-worn moose trail, and two or three hundred yards from the stream came upon a small opening cluttered by great rocks and surrounded by clumps of birch, spruce, and banskian pine. The moose trail crossed this rough open space; and, following it to the opposite side, Philip and Jeanne came upon a clear, rippling little stream, scarcely two yards in width, hidden in places under thick caribou moss and jungles of seedling pines. It was an ideal camping spot, and Jeanne gave a little cry of delight when they found the cold water of the creek.
Philip then returned to the river, concealed the canoe, covered up all traces of their landing, and began to carry the camping outfit back to the open. The small silk tent for Jeanne's use he set up in a little grassy corner of the clearing, and built their fire a dozen paces from it. With a sort of thrilling pleasure he began cutting balsam boughs for Jeanne's bed. He cut armful after armful, and it was growing dusk in the forest by the time he was done. In the glow and the heat of the fire Jeanne's cheeks were as pink as an apple. She had turned a big flat rock into a table, and as she busied herself about this she burst suddenly into a soft ripple of song; then, remembering that it was not Pierre who was near her, she stopped. Philip, with his last armful of bedding, was directly behind her, and he laughed happily at her over the green mass of balsam when she turned and saw him looking at her.
"You like this?" he asked.
"It is glorious!" cried Jeanne, her eyes flashing. She seemed to grow taller before him, and stood with her head thrown back, lips parted, gazing upon the wilderness about her. "It is glorious!" she repeated, breathing deeply. "There is nothing in the whole world that could make me give this up, M'sieur Philip. I was born in it. I want to die in it. Only—"
Her face clouded for a moment as her eyes rested upon his.
"Your civilization is coming north to spoil it all," she added, and turned to the rock table.
Philip dropped his load.
"Supper is ready," she said, and the cloud had passed.
It was Jeanne's first reference to his own people, to the invasion of civilization into the north, and there recurred to Philip the words in which she had cried out her hatred against Churchill. But Jeanne did not betray herself again. She was quiet while they were eating, and Philip saw that she was very tired. When they had finished, they sat for a few minutes watching the lowering flames of the fire. Darkness had gathered about them. Their faces and the rock were illumined more and more faintly as the embers died down. A silence fell upon them. In the banskians close behind them an owl hooted softly, a cautious, drumming note, as though the night-bird possessed still a fear of the newly dead day. The brush gave out sound—voices infinitesimally small, strange quiverings, rustlings that might have been made by wind, by breath, by shadows, almost. Overhead the tips of the spruce and tall pines whispered among themselves, as they never commune by day. Spirits seemed to move among them, sending down to Jeanne's and Philip's listening ears a restful, sleepy murmur. Farther back there sounded a deep sniff, where a moose, traveling the well-worn trail, stopped in sudden fear and wonder at the strange man-scent which came to its nostrils. And still farther, from some little lake nameless and undiscovered in the black depths of the forest to the south, a great northern loon sent out its cowardly cry of defiance to all night things, and then plunged deep under water, as though frightened into the depths by its own mad jargon. The fire died lower. Philip moved a little nearer to the girl, whose breathing he could hear.
"Jeanne," he said, softly, fighting to keep himself from touching her hand, "I know what you mean—I understand. Two years ago I gave up civilization for this. I am glad that I wrote to you as I did, for now you will believe me and know that I understand. I love this world up here as you love it. I am never going back again."
Jeanne was silent.
"But there is one thing, at least one—which I cannot understand in you," he went on, nerving himself for what might come a moment later. "You are of this world—you hate civilization—and yet you have brought a man into the north to teach you its ways. I mean this man who you say is the most wonderful man in the world."
He waited, trembling. It seemed an eternity before Jeanne answered. And then she said:
"He is my father, M'sieur Philip."
Philip could not speak. Darkness hid him from Jeanne. She did not see that which leaped into his face, and that for a moment he was on the point of flinging himself at her feet.
"You spoke of yourself, of Pierre, of your father, and of one other at Fort o' God," said Philip. "I thought that he—the other—was your tutor."
"No, it is Pierre's sister," replied Jeanne.
"Your sister! You have a sister?"
He could hear Jeanne catch her breath.
"Listen, M'sieur,'" she said, after a moment. "I must tell you a little about Pierre, a story of something that happened a long, long time ago. It was in the middle of a terrible winter, and Pierre was then a boy. One day he was out hunting and he came upon a trail—the trail of a woman who had dragged herself through the snow in her moccasined feet. It was far out upon a barren, where there was no life, and he followed. He found her, M'sieur, and she was dead. She had died from cold and starvation. An hour sooner he might have saved her, for, wrapped up close against her breast, he found a little child—a baby girl, and she was alive. He brought her to Fort o' God, M'sieur—to a noble man who lived there almost alone; and there, through all these years, she has lived and grown up. And no one knows who her mother was, or who her father was, and so it happens that Pierre, who found her, is her brother, and the man who has loved her and cared for her is her father."
"And she is the other at Fort o' God—Pierre's sister," said Philip.
Jeanne rose from the rock and moved toward the tent, glimmering indistinctly in the night. Her voice came back chokingly.
"No, M'sieur. Pierre's real sister is at Fort o' God. I am the one whom he found out on the barren."
To the night sounds there was added a heart-broken sob, and Jeanne disappeared in the tent.