"Combien j'ai douce souvenanceDu joli lieu de ma naissance!Ma cœur, qu'ils étaient beaux, les jours de France!O mon pays! sois mes amours,O mon pays! sois mes amours. Toujours!"
"Combien j'ai douce souvenanceDu joli lieu de ma naissance!Ma cœur, qu'ils étaient beaux, les jours de France!O mon pays! sois mes amours,O mon pays! sois mes amours. Toujours!"
Over the spruce fire the kettles began to drone to his music as he went on more tenderly:
"Te souvient-il que notre mère,Au foyer de notre chaumière,Nous pressait sur son cœur joyeuxMa chère?Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux.Tous deux."
"Te souvient-il que notre mère,Au foyer de notre chaumière,Nous pressait sur son cœur joyeuxMa chère?Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux.Tous deux."
Almost while Baptiste sang, the meal was ready. The Hudson's Bay men thawed their strips of jerked caribou over the coals and washed the meat down with small pails of hot tea. They snatched a few whiffs from their pipes before the command to march was given.
The afternoon sun shed abundance of light but afforded no warmth. The traveling was through a cheerless cold that intensified by degrees. The toil of marching had begun to tell on the men; they moved with less elasticity, their limbs began to lag as from some indefinable hindering pressure. This pressure seemed to come from without like unfriendly hands holding them back, but they knew it was really the weakening fibers protesting from within.
Only three of the travelers were untouched by this peculiar lethargy. Maskwa ran as ever with his unchanging, lurching stride. Dunvegan, knowing not the hint of weariness, traveled mechanically, his mind dwelling on personal things. And Baptiste Verenne still hummed of his sunny France, asking:
"Te souvient-il du lac tranquilleQue' effleurait l'hirondelle agile,Du vent qui courbait le roseau Mobile,Et du soleil couchant sur l'eau. Si beau?Ma cœur, te souv——"
"Te souvient-il du lac tranquilleQue' effleurait l'hirondelle agile,Du vent qui courbait le roseau Mobile,Et du soleil couchant sur l'eau. Si beau?Ma cœur, te souv——"
"G'wan, Baptiste, ye Frinch rogue," cried Terence Burke, "ye've no sister here to ask that. An' phwat the divil's the use o' askin'? Shure it's not France but Greenland we're in. An' it's on a howly treadmill o' snow we're walkin'."
Pete Connear kicked the Irishman's calves from behind with the toes of his snowshoes.
"Walk faster, man," he urged. "It makes it twice as easy and the frost doesn't touch you then."
But Terence shivered in the trail. The sweat of the morning's travel had chilled on him at the noonday halt, and he felt the lowering temperature keenly.
"It's so beastly cowld," he groaned dismally, "that me thoughts freeze 'fore Oi can express thim."
The sailor kicked him again to cheer him on. "Bucko! Bucko!" he growled.
And Baptiste Verenne, smiling, flashed white teeth over his shoulder and remarked:
"Mebbe you don' lak remembaire somet'ing lak dat in your own countree! Eh, dat so, M'sieu Burke?"
Terence frowned. Baptiste's smile grew more mischievous as he continued:
"Te souvient-il de cette amie,Douce compagne de ma vie?Dans les bois, en cueillant la fleur Jolie,Hélène appuyait sur mon cœur. Son cœur.Oh, qui rendra mon Hélène,Et la montagne, et le grand chêne?Leur souvenir fait tous les jours ma peine.Mon pays sera mes amours. Toujours!"
"Te souvient-il de cette amie,Douce compagne de ma vie?Dans les bois, en cueillant la fleur Jolie,Hélène appuyait sur mon cœur. Son cœur.
Oh, qui rendra mon Hélène,Et la montagne, et le grand chêne?Leur souvenir fait tous les jours ma peine.Mon pays sera mes amours. Toujours!"
The latter half of the day wore to a desolate grayness. The Hudson's Bay force was now in Nor'west country, and a strict lookout had to be maintained. Night approached quickly as the sun dipped. Maskwa, keeping closer to the main body, signaled that he had found something. Dunvegan ran up to him hastily.
The Indian stood pointing to the tracks made by a single person on snowshoes. The marks lay diagonally across their line of progress.
"Strong Father, see," Maskwa requested.
"Some trapper," commented the chief trader. "The shoes are Ojibway pattern."
"Yes," assented Maskwa, quietly. "I made the shoes."
Dunvegan scanned him sharply in the gathering dark.
"You?" he cried, astonished. "How do you know that?"
"By the knots," Maskwa answered, stooping to point out little dents in the snow pattern. "See how they lie in a curve? No one but Maskwa makes them that way!"
"Whose feet?" demanded Dunvegan, with swift suspicion. "Whose feet are in those shoes?"
The fort runner felt the pressed flakes gently before speaking. He arose immediately from the stooping posture.
"The Little Fool's," was his response. "And he has just passed here!"
"Gaspard Follet's tracks!" exclaimed the chief trader incredulously. "Maskwa, are you sure you are not mistaken?"
"I am not mistaken, Strong Father," the Ojibway declared gravely. "In the summer moons I made the shoes for the Little Fool. Give me leave to follow. I will bring him to you. He is no farther away than the ridge of balsam."
"Go," ordered Dunvegan curtly.
The fort runner launched himself into the gloom of the stunted shrubbery. Bunching where their leader was halted, the Hudson's Bay men waited silently. Presently there sounded the double crunch of two pairs of raquettes on the brittle crust. The branches of the dwarfed evergreens swayed. Maskwa strode out, dragging a diminutive figure by one arm.
"Here, Strong Father, is the Little Fool," he announced without emotion.
At the sight of the Oxford House men Gaspard Follet began to utter a series of joyous squeals.
"Blessed be the Virgin," he cried. "Here is safety. Oh! name of the dead saints, I was lost, lost—lost!"
He sprang to Dunvegan, ingratiating himself, praising, fawning, beseeching. The Ojibway fort runner looked grimly at the antics of his prize.
"The Little Fool is glad to meet with the Company's servants," he observed in ironic fashion. "It gives him great joy."
Dunvegan looked into Maskwa's face, quite surprised at the tone.
"Why not?" he questioned.
"That did not dwell in his mind until I caught him," the Indian declared. "Neither was the Little Fool lost."
"What do you mean, Maskwa?" Dunvegan asked. "My brother, you speak in riddles. Gaspard has evidently wandered from Oxford House and lost his way." To the idiot, he added: "Do you know where you are at all?"
"No, no," moaned Gaspard piteously. "I was lost, I tell you. I do not know this country."
The Ojibway fort runner grunted in derision. "Strong Father," he said, "the Little Fool was not lost as you believe. He has been following the Caribou Ridge all day. And Strong Father will remember that the trail on the Caribou Ridges, though it cannot be traveled with dog teams, shortens by half the distance to the fort of the French Hearts where we journey. That is how the Little Fool thought to reach it first!"
The Indian stopped his speech abruptly and took a stride onward as if this circumstance was no concern of his. Dunvegan halted him, crying out:
"Hold there, Maskwa! Do you pretend to suspect Gaspard?"
Maskwa made a gesture of complete unconcern. "I have spoken," he returned placidly.
"Why," fumed Dunvegan, "such a thing in my estimation is incredible—preposterous! The idea of that dwarf, that idiot——No! It's too ridiculous!"
"I have spoken," repeated Maskwa, in the same even key.
When the chief trader attempted to question him by way of discovering his exact meaning, the Ojibway maintained a stubborn silence which he broke only with a suggestion about the night camp.
"Turn to the ridge of balsam, Strong Father," he advised. "We shall find it good to rest there."
Dunvegan accepted his trusted runner's hint. He knew that the Indian eye read wilderness signs which no white man living could ever interpret. He understood that the Indian brain gleaned an intelligence from inanimate things which the greatest mind of civilization could never comprehend. Therefore he was content to follow the native wisdom and follow it unseeingly, for at Maskwa's word he had walked blindly to his own ultimate advantage some hundreds of times.
So the Oxford House men diverged from their course on the first track that Gaspard Follet had tramped in the snowy ridge where it crossed Blazing Pine River. The Ojibway went ahead, and, when lost to the view of his fellows among the timber, he paralleled Gaspard's trail at some distance first on one side and then on the other. Soon he found what he sought and tramped on to the balsams, grunting with great satisfaction.
When Dunvegan and his retainers reached the balsam ridge, Maskwa stood there awaiting them. He called the chief trader aside.
"Strong Father," he began in a low voice, "does a lost man throw away his rifle and his food?"
"No! Great heavens, no!" exclaimed Dunvegan. "Why?"
Maskwa put his hand into a green tree and held out two objects.
"Because here is the rifle and the pack-sack of the Little Fool."
The chief trader wheeled with hot accusations for Gaspard Follet, but Maskwa checked them.
"Softly, Strong Father," was his caution. "I have something else to show you first."
"But he is the spy," murmured Dunvegan, trying to keep his voice down in spite of his anger. "I see it all now—curse his blithering impudence! What dolts we have been at Oxford House! And he fooled Malcolm Macleod. Good Lord, what infants, what imbeciles! A fool, a dwarf, an idiot to get the best of us! Maskwa, I think we need some guidance such as yours."
"The Little One is a dwarf," conceded Maskwa, "but he is not an idiot. Neither is he a fool, though the name comes easily to my tongue. Strong Father, he has the wisdom of the beaver, and the heart of the fox. But at last he is trapped!"
"I'll bind him," declared Dunvegan, full of vexation and self-contempt. "I'll tie the rat fast lest he outwit the elephants."
"Wait," begged the Ojibway fort runner. "Come to the top of the ridge of balsam first. Then we can bind the Little Fool."
Maskwa pushed through the trees with a slouching movement. He set his shoes without the slightest noise in the soft, deep undersnows of the evergreens. Dunvegan did likewise, taking care to snap no twig. On the crest which commanded the open valley the Ojibway pushed aside the thick branches hanging screen-like over the edge.
"Strong Father, look!" he directed.
Mechanically Dunvegan counted the dog teams that crossed the valley before his gaze. Five great sleds he made out, sleds piled high with huge bales of furs. Two men accompanied each sledge, a driver and an armed guard. Evidently the train was going into camp under the shoulders of the Caribou Ridges.
"Strong Father did not think that any of the French Hearts were so near?" ventured Maskwa quietly.
"No," the chief trader muttered, "I did not. Ah! they are halting. It is well that they did not get sight of us, Maskwa, for I fancy we could never catch them if those big teams once started galloping."
The Ojibway nodded gravely as he peered, animal-like, between two large tree trunks.
"That is why I bade Strong Father keep with the ridge," he replied. "On the River of the Blazing Pine the French Hearts would have seen us easily where the valleys meet."
"You knew it was coming?" Dunvegan cried in amazement. "This Niskitowaney train?"
"Even so, Strong Father."
"How?"
"By the actions of the Little Fool."
"What was Gaspard doing?"
The fort runner pointed to a ledge of rock that jutted out on the highest point of the hill.
"The Little Fool stood there, waiting," he observed. "He had seen the fur train of the French Hearts coming and thought to travel with them to their fort. But soon his thoughts were changed. He saw me and disappeared in the trees. When I caught him, he had no food or rifle. Yet I brought them to you, Strong Father.
"He is a little devil as well as a little fool," Maskwa summed up. "He deserves no pity. Mark you, Strong Father, he has been the right hand of that wicked French Heart, the Black Ferguson. Does Strong Father remember the ambush on Caribou Point when we thought to take the leader? Who brought the news? Who led us there? Who had planned the surprise with the French Hearts? None but the Little Fool! Who gave them notice of the movements of our fur trains? The Little Fool! Who warned the Crees to fall upon you as you journeyed to Kamattawa? Why, Strong Father, it is always the Little Fool. And his weak brain seems stronger than the wisdom of the Stern Father and his servants. He has laughed at us all."
"Yes," grumbled Dunvegan, "he has fooled us for a time. But that time is gone."
"While the wolf lives, his teeth may still rend," Maskwa philosophized. "Let the Little Fool die! Else will he work Strong Father greater harm."
The calm suggestion brought an expression of repugnance to the chief trader's face.
"I can't do that!" he objected.
"It is well," remarked the Ojibway. "I have counseled."
"As a prisoner he cannot do us any harm," Dunvegan persisted.
"I have counseled," Maskwa repeated. "When Strong Father wishes it had been done he will remember my counsel."
He dismissed the subject with habitual unconcern and devoted a few minutes to spying upon the camping preparations of the Nor'west fur train. With the movements of skilled woodsmen they set about it. First of all, they stepped out of their snowshoe loops and diligently used the raquettes as shovels, clearing the snow away and banking it up till a long rectangle of ground lay bare. While some thickly carpeted the cleared space with balsam brush taken from the foot of the ridge others chopped dead pines into firewood and built a long stringer of flame the entire length of the camp ground.
Then the dogs were unharnessed and the sledges drawn up by thongs into handy trees out of reach of these huskies, who otherwise would destroy the furs while the men slept. After that the Nor'west drivers and guards threw themselves down by the fires to prepare their supper of dried meat and tea, having already stuck the dogs' portion of frozen whitefish upon twigs to thaw by the fierce blaze.
From the height Dunvegan and Maskwa watched it all.
"They know how to make camp, all right," the chief trader observed.
The Ojibway nodded briefly. "They have also traveled many trails," he supplemented judicially.
"And since it is a good camp we will not need to change it," continued Dunvegan significantly.
"It is well," grunted Maskwa. He shook the screening boughs back in place and turned about, adding: "When the dark falls thickly, we will come this way again."
The Oxford House men were growing impatient in the increasing cold, but they received the news of the Nor'west fur train's proximity with jubilation. The frost was becoming so intense that to do without a fire even for a few hours proved impossible; so the whole force backtrailed a mile as a precaution and huddled over a hastily built pyramid of lighted spruce branches. The Caribou Ridges, looming up, shut off the flames from the Nor'westers' view. Also, Dunvegan posted an Indian lookout on the height above the other bivouac to carry warning of any untoward move. The dogs' jaws were tied with strips of buckskin that they might not growl or bark, for sounds carried far in the frosty air.
Attention was now paid to Gaspard Follet, and he was placed in the custody of two Hudson's Bay men, who had orders to shoot him on his first attempt at escape. He still kept up his pretense of foolish wits, but a sinister threat from Dunvegan silenced his idiotic whining. The chief trader did not condescend to parley with Follet nor tell him of what he was suspected. He simply ordered the dwarf into strict charge. It was the business of Malcolm Macleod, the Factor, to judge him.
The hour of waiting while the gray twilight thickened to black dark became oppressive. The Oxford House men chafed under the restraint and the silence. Other than murmurings and flame noises no sounds came from around the fire. Terence Burke had soaked himself through and through with the radiating heat. Complacently he pawed his limbs. Now these limbs, reinvigorated, cried out for active work as loudly as his hungry stomach cried for hearty food.
He whispered to Connear: "'Tis a bloomin' wake we're at. Phwat's the use o' dallyin' loike this? Why don't we take these Nor'west divils by the scruffs o' their necks an' shake them? They're outnumbered four to wan!"
"Mind your own business," growled Connear. "You keep mixin' yourself up with every plan that's being made. You're too fresh! Keep your own place, you Irish lubber, and don't try runnin' the whole show!"
Baptiste Verenne flashed his customary grin, with the attribute of ivory teeth.
"Oui," he commented, "kip de place an' go ver' cautious. Dat's de way in dis countree. You see, we mus' spring on dose mansvitew'en dey not t'ink! Geeve dem no taim harness de fas' dogs. Dat's onlee way we get dem."
"It's a slow sphring," Terence complained. "If the recoil's as slow as the sphring, bewitch me if divil a thing comes av it."
"Shut up," commanded Connear tersely. "Your mouth's as big as the Irish sea."
"Yes," snapped Burke, "an' it's swallowed better sailors than yerself."
Baptiste made an angry gesture for quiet and motioned furtively to where Dunvegan stood silently warming himself on the other side of the fire.
"Saprie!You be stubborn mans!" he snarled contemptuously.
But now the order came to move. Several Indians were left with the sledges and the newly-made prisoner. The rest of the men filed off in the direction of the balsam ridge. Its crest was reached silently and in perfect order. There the men paused at a point directly over the camp they purposed to rush.
Maskwa, with Dunvegan, surveyed the slope, contemplating the moment of descent. Far below they could see the line of crackling fire with the banked snow at the sides glowing pink beneath the blaze. Etched out dully against each fitful flame, the squatting figures crouched low. At times a hand was cleanly outlined in the white upper light as it raised food to mouth. A tea pail passing down the line of men flashed intermittently.
"Now while they eat is the time, Strong Father," the Ojibway fort runner murmured. "They think only of their stomachs, and their arms are not handy. If we are swift and sure on our feet not a shot need be fired."
"Very well," assented Dunvegan. "You lead. I will stay on your heels."
"Let the men make no sound," warned Maskwa. "We go without noise as close as possible. As soon as their dogs scent us we must spring like the hungry panther."
The chief trader passed a whispered caution to his retainers.
"Keep close to us," he adjured, "and rush when we rush! Grasp the fellows and prevent them from shooting! There is no need for bloodshed, and we cannot afford to lose any of our number. Every man we have will be needed at Fort Brondel!"
There was a faint, dissatisfied murmur at this command. Fresh in the minds of the Hudson's Bay men were the accounts given by survivors of the bloody sacking of the Wokattiwagan and Shamattawa fur trains. They would have liked a sanguinary reprisal, but they knew better than to disobey any order of Dunvegan's. So they relinquished their vengeful anticipations and followed watchfully.
Down the snowy hillside they dropped, noiseless as shadows. No figure at the fire stirred from its eating; no dog voiced alarm. The balsams were left behind and the men entered scrubby spruces, where they found better cover.
The camp was no more than a little dome of light walled in by impenetrable darkness. The night crowded to its red ramparts, full of mystery, unreadable, sinister, fear-compelling. And, crowding like the night, came the Oxford House force, with all the advantage of position that the inky darkness gave.
Slowly, their nerves growing more tense at every step, they worked through the spruces. Each yard they advanced increased the strain. A little drumming noise began to vibrate in the men's throats. An almost inaudible sound it was, but to their own strained hearing it rose in a roar. Closer and closer they stole till, seeing their enemies so plainly, the idea that they themselves must be seen impressed itself with ever-increasing power.
Maskwa treaded the evergreen aisles like a swift wraith. Holding the ends of each other's sashes, the rest walked in single file after him. So great was the curb on their feelings, so suffocating the silence, that some would have gained immense relief by uttering tremendous shouts. But they dared not! The first outcry must come from the camp. The alarm would ring out unexpectedly, and the invaders waited for that moment and wrestled with their tingling senses.
Forty paces!—the impaled whitefish before the fires looked ludicrously large, like young sharks. Thirty paces!—the ruddy blaze limned the dark, lean-featured countenances of the Nor'westers, resting in natural unconsciousness of impending disaster. Twenty-five!—the nervous tension snapped with a sudden mental jerk that set every sinew in the men's bodies tingling!
The suspicious huskies blew loudly and growled. Instinctively the Nor'west guards reached quickly for their guns, only to be seized by the shoulders and hurled back into the snow. The camp turned instantly to a mass of rolling, grappling bodies. Red coals kicked into the banks sent forth hissing steam clouds. Feet stamped and plunged and twisted here and there, throwing up white spurts of snow, knocking burning branches through the air, tripping opponents with savage force.
The struggle took place practically in silence except for the uneasy snarling of the dogs and the heavy breathing and occasional oaths of the men. Often a knife blade gleamed redly as it poised for a blow. The thud of steel on flesh and the groan of pain followed.
Then, bringing the climax of brute savagery, the growling huskies charged, indifferent whether their chisel-like fangs sliced master or master's foe. But they had waited too long! The moment when their assault might have seriously hindered the Hudson's Bay men—in the initial minute of the fight—was past. A half dozen of Dunvegan's followers sprang out of the mêlée, and, catching up dog whips, flayed neutrality through their tough hides.
The cowing of the Nor'westers' huskies was coincident with the overpowering of the Nor'westers themselves. Held in the grip of two, and often three, antagonists each of the guards and the Indian drivers was subdued, bound, and laid beside the raked-up fire.
In a sullen line they lay, beaten but full of stubborn enmity. To that line Dunvegan added Gaspard Follet when the Company's sledges came on. The capture of the Niskitowaney fur train was complete.
Immediately the Oxford House men re-established the camp to suit their own requirements. Then they devoted themselves to a long-delayed supper till their ravenous appetites were fully appeased. The dogs of the Nor'westers had been fed to keep them quiet. The turn of the newly arrived teams came when the masters were satisfied. Baptiste Verenne and the drivers arose, taking the allotted portion of thawed whitefish. They took their dog whips also.
"Ici, giddés," Baptiste called.
The animals leaped forward on the instant, growling and slavering for the whitefish. One meal in twenty-four hours was not in any wise sufficient for their savage stomachs, and now it was three hours past the end of that customary space of fasting. A sound kicking met their energetic advance, and they were scattered out that they might be more easily fed. Then the Nor'westers' dogs jumped in, making a tangle of furry backs, bushy tails, and snapping jaws.
On these intruders the heavy whips smote viciously. They retreated, thoroughly cowed, and with sharp commands, kicks, and blows the food was at length distributed. The more cunning beasts bolted their two whitefish in a flash and fought with slower comrades for their remaining portion. Slowly the tumult died down and the dogs crept up close to the lower end of the fire, where brush beds had been thrown for them.
Having indulged in a brief after-supper smoke, the Hudson's Bay men began to prepare for immediate slumber. They removed their outer parkas with the capotes and hung them on sticks to dry before the fire, together with gauntlets, leggings, and traveling shoepacks.
They put on great, fur-lined sleeping moccasins and rolled themselves in thick fur robes designed for preserving the body warmth during slumber. Against the abnormal frost it was imperative to cover their heads with the upper folds of these sleeping garments, as any part of the face left exposed would be frozen in a solid mask by morning. Weary with the long day's trail, the men lay motionless beside the banked-up fires.
Only two, Dunvegan and Maskwa, remained sitting upright, talking together in low tones over their plans, the crucial point of which was not far away.
"At three in the morning we break camp," the chief trader announced. "By nightfall we must be within sight of Brondel. I think with a few hours' rest that we might take them by surprise in the very early dawn."
The Ojibway fort runner smoked slowly, pondering. He offered no word. Squatting squarely on his haunches, he stared at the fire with a sort of somnolent vacancy on his countenance. Yet the Indian brain was active! Beneath their glassy surface lights his eyes studied future events. When he saw things as clearly as his shrewd discernment demanded he would speak, and not before!
"You understand, my brother," continued Dunvegan, "that it is necessary for me to succeed in my enterprise. The seizure of this fort of the French Hearts is so necessary to the Factor's whole plan that we cannot think of failure. If I accomplish the capture he will join me after he has taken Fort Dumarge. Then, together, we purpose to besiege the third, last, and strongest of the Nor'west posts in our district."
Maskwa grunted noncommittally and for an instant took the pipe from his lips.
"Fort La Roche of the French Hearts is powerful," he commented briefly.
"So powerful," supplemented Dunvegan, "that it will test even our combined forces to rush its stockades. Otherwise it is impregnable. Fort Dumarge must go, Maskwa; also Fort Brondel! The enemy's opposition must be wiped out as we proceed. Having no harassing foes at our backs, we will at the last stand an equal chance against the defenders of Fort La Roche."
"So," remarked the Ojibway. "It is a good plan, Strong Father. And should we stand inside La Roche we may see some old friends."
"That may be." The unconquered bitterness surged up in Dunvegan.
"No doubt we shall see the Wayward One, the daughter of Stern Father."
"Yes, doubtless."
"Also Soft Eyes, the traitor, who came from over the Big Waters."
"Aye, indeed," murmured Dunvegan, "and the Factor proposes to deal with him. It will be dark dealing, I fancy, for Edwin Glyndon."
"We shall meet, too," Maskwa went on oratorically, "the wise Chief Running Wolf and his hasty son, Three Feathers."
"In the fight we may meet them, for we know Running Wolf has added his tribe's strength to that of Black Ferguson in defense of Fort La Roche."
"There at the last will we stalk the Black Ferguson in his lair," rejoiced the Ojibway. "It will be a good stalk, Strong Father. The old wolf is worthy of a hard chase. And, Strong Father, there is one other we shall see!"
"Whom?"
"The Fair One! The niece of old Pierre—her that Soft Eyes took to wife!"
Dunvegan winced, finding no words. Maskwa voiced something that had evolved in his facile mind.
"Strong Father is my brother," he declared, "and I have read my brother's thoughts. It was his wish to place the Fair One at his own fireside. That is still his desire, although he does not fulfill it. If Strong Father were an Indian, it would swiftly be done. Yet the Indian's ways are not the ways of the white man. He must not steal his brother's wife till that brother dies. Is it not so, Strong Father?"
"Even so, Maskwa," sighed Dunvegan, burdened by his grim thoughts.
"Then Strong Father shall have the Fair One to wife. I, Maskwa, will see when it comes to the last that Soft Eyes falls in the attack."
"No!" cried Dunvegan vehemently, "a thousand times, no! Not a prick of the skin will you give Edwin Glyndon. I warn you once. Let that stay your hand!"
The Ojibway grumbled at the adjuration of restraint, for although he did not quite comprehend its moral motive he fully understood its decisiveness.
"Be it so," he observed. "What I say is wisdom. I have also other wisdom for Strong Father."
"How?"
"I would have him enter the gates of Fort Brondel by cunning."
"Explain, Maskwa," commanded the chief trader quietly.
"In the night of to-morrow let ten men drive this Niskitowaney fur train inside the stockades, the rest of the Company's servants lying in wait outside. When the gates are won, the rest is easy, Strong Father."
The chief trader turned to Maskwa with an exclamation of amazement.
"By Rupert's bones, but you are bold," he cried admiringly.
"The move of the bold often wins," remarked Maskwa.
Dunvegan revolved the project mentally, getting each separate point of view.
"We'll do it," he rapped out, smashing a burnt stick-end into the coals with a force that sent fresh flames roaring up. "Maskwa, we'll do it!"
"Good!" exclaimed the Ojibway, without elation. "But first we need the password of the gates. If Strong Father allows, I will get it." He motioned to the prone, blanket-wrapped prisoners alongside the fire.
"Get it," ordered the chief trader. "But no torture, remember!"
"So," promised Maskwa coolly. "I will frighten it from one of them."
He plucked the Worcester pistol out of Dunvegan's belt and went slowly up the line. Presently he singled out the spokesman of the captives lying completely muffled up in the sleeping robes. At the touch of Maskwa's toe the Nor'wester sat erect, his black-bearded, swarthy face full of evil glints. He was one of the scum that the younger fur company had picked up to swell their none too formidable ranks.
The Ojibway squatted opposite this fellow, in whose charge the Niskitowaney fur train had been traveling.
"The password at your fort," he commanded with abruptness and vigor.
A villainous oath was the response, an epithet that would have been a vicious blow had the Nor'wester's arms been loose.
"The password!" Maskwa's voice kept even, but he stabbed the black man through with the needle points of his concentrated gaze.
No response! The Ojibway brought the pistol into view and leveled it with a precision more deadly than visual concentration.
"The password!" he repeated stonily for the third time.
"Shoot and be damned to you!" cried the Nor'wester, the swagger and braggadocio which in his breed is a substitute for courage breaking out. Swift as light came Maskwa's side-twist of the hand.
Bang! The pistol's scorch stung the Nor'wester's right ear.
Bang! Its red muzzle jet seared his left ear.
Bang! The round, fiendish mouth spat a white furrow through his black hair.
The awakened camp, thinking of an attack, sat up and grasped weapons, then put them furtively back, half ashamed of their mistake, and gazed wonderingly at the strange tableau.
"French Heart, the next one goes through your head," warned the Ojibway. "The password!"
The Nor'wester, staring into the deadly cylinder of steel, experienced a prickly, spreading sensation in the nerves of the forehead just between his eyes. He imagined the crashing impact of the leaden missile. He already felt the oozy bullet-hole.
Maskwa's eyes lanced him with bloody light which the coals infused. His spirit quivered under that knife. His nerves collapsed. He pitched forward on his face, reiterating the password in choking gasps.
"Marseillaise," he panted. "Marseillaise!"
The Ojibway tossed the man's sleeping robes over his fear-shaken visage. Abruptly he stalked back and dropped the pistol in Dunvegan's lap.
"You have heard, Strong Father?" he asked. "It is good! He spoke the truth, because he dared not lie. In the night of to-morrow we will enter the gates of the fort of the French Hearts with that password. I have spoken!"
Like a snake Maskwa slid into his fur blankets. Dunvegan followed, and the whole camp was soon still.
Gradually the banked logs of the fire broke in little falling rifts of coals. Uncombated, the frost advanced and screened the red glow with a gray hand. Across the valley of the Blazing Pine came the howling of wolves. Then of a sudden the winter aurora leaped out of the north, sweeping majestically from stars to earth-line. No rustling sound such as is heard within the Arctic Circle accompanied its movement. It came and vanished in mystic silence, only to reappear with twofold brilliance and multitudinous variations of hue. Up in the zenith a corona of dazzling splendor formed, and the miracle, continuing, left pulsating, nebulous rays walking the far-off, frozen shores.
The immensity of the wilderness reaches gave field for unlimited display. Flooded with resplendent light, the primal wastes of snow reflected every colored bar, every glorious cloud, every celestial flash. As a monstrous mirror to augment the radiance and multiply the lambent gleams, the speckless crust stretched on and on. The very earth seemed to acquire motion and to roll its snows in red and white undulating waves.
Wrapped in the sleep of utter weariness, lost to the hard facts of life, the sleepers lay in a realm of mysticism, of phantasmagoria. Thus all night across the world blazed this carnival of flame.
"Arrêtez!" The sentinel's challenge from the gates of Fort Brondel rang out sharply in the near-dawn.
Through the blinding smother of great, soft-falling snowflakes he had heard rather than seen the advance of a dog train toiling up the rising ground upon which the post was situated. It came, he thought, as a Nor'west train would come, making no unnecessary clamor, but without any precautions for secrecy. The storm-laden air choked the first cry of the watchman, preventing it from reaching the clogged ears of the approaching party. Again his hail was lifted up.
"Holá! Arrêtez!" he commanded, the strident tone cutting the snow.
Instantly the leading team pulled up. The others lined behind it. Brondel's sentinel could discern five bulky sledges, each accompanied by a driver and a guard with rifle on shoulder. Their faces and garments plastered thickly by moist flakes, the men looked like tall, white stumps suddenly moved out of the forest and set before the stockades. Identities were impossibly vague in the storm and in the gray dark which preceded the morning.
"Qui vive?" asked the keeper of the post gate doubtfully.
"The Niskitowaney fur train," answered the muffled voice of one of the halfbreeds who drove.
"The password?"
"Marseillaise!"
The gate bars rattled with release; a gap yawned in the stockade.
"Entrez," came the permission.
Walking with the leading sledge, Maskwa whirled as he passed the sentinel and felled him with a quick blow of the rifle butt. Quickly he removed the unconscious man's weapons and threw him on the sled.
"Strong Father, the thing is easy, as I told you," the Ojibway muttered to the first snow-coated giant guard, who was in reality Bruce Dunvegan.
"Too easy," was Bruce's answer. "Listen! There is no stir about the buildings, no sound. That puzzles me, Maskwa."
"Men sleep soundest just before the light breaks," explained the fort runner in a tone of satisfaction.
"Perhaps." Dunvegan's tone was doubtful.
As they stood in the palisade entrance, listening keenly for any cry which would mean their discovery, the pulses of the Hudson's Bay men surged faster and faster. The cold chill of the storm-beaten atmosphere changed suddenly to an electric glow. The fever of waiting strain flushed their bodies. They began to breathe hard and shift weapons from left hands to armpits and back again.
But no clamor beat out of the post structures; a ghostly blur they lay, walled round with gigantic drifts. The only vibration which communicated itself to the ear was the velvet brushing of falling snow against the high stockades.
Faces turned in the direction whence they had come, the ten figures with the dog teams remained poised in perfect silence, anxious, eager, expectant. Then, quite near, the wilderness voice they awaited spoke out abruptly.
"Yir-r-r-ee-ee!" echoed the weird, panicky screech of a lynx.
Maskwa curved his hands about his mouth and replied with the horned owl's full-throated whoop.
"Kee-yoo-oo-oo-oo!" he quavered in a quick, ever-diminishing tremolo.
At the pre-arranged signal the rest of the Oxford House force moved swiftly up and passed through Brondel's guardless gate. Two Indians had been left with the bound prisoners and the Nor'west sledge teams in the fringe of the timber.
"Are you ready, men?" Dunvegan asked.
"Aye, aye, sir," cried Connear quaintly. "This is what we have all been waiting for."
To the chief trader it was an incredible thing that they reached the buildings in the center of the yard without any alarm being raised. Thegiddéswhined. Instantly a howling response arose from the quarters where the fort dogs were kept. Gripping their arms tightly, the invaders waited for the uproar that should follow the huskies' wailing and for the man-to-man struggle which must succeed the awakening of the post.
No uproar came! The expected onslaught failed to materialize!
Even Maskwa became mystified. "Strong Father," he whispered, "this is beyond my wisdom."
"And mine," admitted Dunvegan, worried as well as puzzled by the utter lack of the expected developments.
"Can the post be deserted? Have they had warning and fled?"
"No! In case of warning the stockades would have been lined with fighters. There is something extraordinarily wrong about the place. A sentinel isn't set in a deserted fort, you know. And yet, why is there no sign of life? Maskwa, it's uncanny!"
Although totally unfamiliar with the ground and the plan of Fort Brondel, Dunvegan decided to investigate without delay. He pressed open the door of the dark building in front of him, the latch offering no resistance.
"Come," he ordered. "If any man is clumsy enough to make a noise let him stay outside!"
Within the silent room, Dunvegan drew a candle-end and a match from his inner pocket and struck a light. The faint beams showed that he was in the store of the Northwest Fur Company's post. Shelves held neat arrays of goods; orderly piles of bales and boxes were ranged about the walls; but no person could be seen.
As many men as the store was capable of accommodating crowded after Dunvegan. In their shoepacks they walked soft-footed as panthers.
"These French Hearts must sleep as the dead," murmured Maskwa.
"Yes, or else they hide somewhere to pistol the half of us at a stroke," the chief trader returned.
He lighted a fresh candle taken from a shelf. Its larger glimmer projected giant shadows of the men upon the farther end of the store. The huge silhouettes loomed up with a mysterious vagueness suggestive of the advent of the real human figures. Dunvegan's followers passed their own surmises to each other in low, husky whispers, remarking on such a chance as their leader had recognized.
"If they are hiding in order to get to close quarters," observed Connear, "they'll be sorry in the end. For we can hit in a clinch as well as they can. Eh, Terence Burke?"
"Yes, me enemy," muttered the vigorous-minded Irishman, whom no strange situation could abash, "an' if it's thim same Donnybrook Fair tricks they're after, they'll find me rifle butt makes a mighty foine black-thorn."
Baptiste Verenne spoke to Black Fox, the Salteaux Indian, in a soft aside.
"Black Fox, you be son of beeg medicine-mans," he whispered. "Mebbe you be tell us w'at dis mean. Spik de wise word an' say w'y de Nor'westaires don' joomp out for keel us queeck."
But the Salteaux shook his head.
"The French Hearts are fools and snakes," he replied. "Their ways are dark as the ways of evil spirits. Therefore they cannot be read."
"Dat mooch I be know, me," confided Baptiste.
Numerous whispers were making a very audible rustle. Bruce Dunvegan held up his hand for silence. He began to examine what lay beyond the other two of the three doors in the store.
Throwing open the one on the right, his candle gleam flashed across a large, empty floor. According to the custom of new forts built purely for aggressive purposes, Dunvegan judged that store, blockhouse, and trading-room adjoined or were connected by passages. This section, he presumed, was the blockhouse.
A hasty survey proved his conclusion correct. The light played around the rough walls, revealing weapons, trophies of the chase and the various equipments used in wilderness life throughout the different seasons. But, like the store, the blockhouse was without occupants of any kind.
Dunvegan made a quick decision and gave a quicker order.
"Bring lights," was his command. "Let half your number hold the blockhouse and half occupy the store. It will take an army of Nor'westers to oust us now."
Immediately the chief trader's directions were carried out. The men assigned themselves promptly in equal bodies to both buildings.
There remained the trading-room and the factor's quarters to search. Dunvegan concluded that there was no separate house for the factor of the post, because a stairway led up through the store ceiling. He surmised that the residential apartments of the one in command of Brondel lay above. Gently he opened the door in the left-hand wall of the store and saw a long, gloomy passageway.
"No light," Bruce commented. "Nothing there either, it seems!"
He closed the door again and set foot on the stairs.
"Guard those entrances well," was his adjuration. "Don't stir unless you get a signal from me. I'm going up to awaken the lord of Fort Brondel, whoever he may be, and let him know that he is a prisoner of the Hudson's Bay Company."
Slowly Dunvegan ascended the stairway and reached the upper floor. He still had the candle in his hand, its pale flame revealing a sort of living-room which held a table, a stove, chairs, shelves of books, a lounge covered with fur robes, a large wooden cupboard, a pair of leather-padded stools, a writing-desk in the corner. The furnishings were plain, though comfortable; they seemed such as any hard-working factor might possess.
Treading softly, the chief trader crossed to the door at the other end and pushed on it. It remained fast, bolted inside. He put his ear to the wood. No sound!
Dunvegan stepped back a stride. Rising with a swift movement on the toes of the left foot, he planted his right sole flatly against the door with a straight, powerful body jolt. There came the crunching noise of metal tearing through hard wood, and the barrier swung back trembling on its hinges.
Instantly the wind of suction puffed out the candle. Bruce growled and smothered a low imprecation. Stepping cautiously to the side of the jamb beyond the range of any sudden missile which might be sent through the open doorway, he fumbled in his pockets for a match. He scratched it hurriedly against the wall, his eyes searching the gloom for a sign of the sleeper whom he must have awakened. He dabbed the match to the wick, and gazed more eagerly. But no figure launched from the blackness beyond the threshold; there arose not even a rustle to show that someone's slumber had been broken. To the listening Dunvegan there was something weird in this circumstance. He wondered if he should find the sleeping chamber as he had found the store and the blockhouse—empty!
His pondering, like his hesitation, occupied only a second. The air of uncertainty left a tinge of suspense which Bruce hastened to dispel. Feeling some subtle magnetism, some unaccountable sensation of a familiar presence, some tremendous unknown climax which his heart acknowledged blindly, he strode abruptly into the dark apartment, his one hand holding the light well to the side, the other clasping the weapon in his belt.
"Another step, you beast, and husband or no husband, I'll kill you!"
Bitter as acid was the woman's voice which hurled the threat. Across the flickering candle rays Dunvegan's startled glance met a leveled pistol and beyond that the beautiful, defiant eyes of Desirée Lazard.
The unintelligible cry rising within the man choked in his dry throat. He gasped and trembled, causing the white light to play over bedstead, coverlet, and the loose-frocked figure crouching behind. His physical courage and indomitable will, sufficient to face the fierce Nor'westers within the very walls of their stronghold, was displaced by a nerveless weakness that banished self-control.
"One more step," she warned, marking his restless muscular twitching. "I mean it. As God hears me, I mean it!"
Dunvegan's mind was battling chaotically with amazement at Desirée's presence, with wonder at her attitude, with a thousand conflicting emotions, each inspired by some swift-passing thought. Joy, doubt, jealousy, malice, love, judgment, forgiveness—these all mingled, held momentary sway, separated one by one and disappeared. Out of this chaos of human feeling Bruce retained no reigning passion. Wisely he let the hot mixture of mad ideas spend itself and give way to his usual cool reserve. Therein rested his salvation.
He still held the candle to one side, and his face was not clear. Even his figure remained shadowy in the sputtering gleam. That, he knew, accounted for Desirée's mistaking him for her husband.
Now deliberately and with a steady hand he moved his light to the front so that its glimmer yellowed his wind-tanned face.
"Bruce!" Her voice was pitched in the unnatural, hysterical scream of a person struggling with a nightmare.
The sense of the dramatic leaped through the blood of both. Dunvegan glowed with the hectic pulse of old desire, but his cold reserve was maintained by a nerve-wrenching effort.
"You do not dream," he ventured in a measured tone. "I am a strict reality, though an intruding one."
At the sound of his voice Desirée dropped her loaded pistol on the bed. Her tense body shivered, as if at escape from menace or danger. She covered her face with her hands. The full bosom worked in a paroxysm of sobs.
"My God! My God!" she moaned, her words coming like a prayer.
Dunvegan set the candle on a nearby stool and leaned back with folded arms against the door jamb. Thus could he the better control himself, for Desirée's weeping tore his fibres. Irrelevantly he noted that she was not prepared for slumber, but wore a flowing, open-throated day dress. This fact added to Bruce's mystification.
Presently Desirée glanced up, an expression of fear succeeding the despair in her face. She rushed swiftly across the chamber to Dunvegan, her hands extended appealingly.
"Go," she pleaded. "Go before someone hears you! How you learned—how you got here is nothing. Only go! Do you know what danger you stand in?"
"No," Bruce answered grimly. "I am not aware of any."
Her beauty even in tears burned its image in his tortured soul. To clasp her tight would have given both physical and mental relief, but his fingers clenched hard on his flexed biceps; he did not unfold his arms.
"Are you mad?" she cried earnestly, tempestuously. "You enter a Nor'west fort! You force in the door of the factor's apartment! And why? How did you find out I was here—and alone?"
"I didn't find out. Till two minutes ago I thought you were in Fort La Roche."
"La Roche!" she echoed with astonishment. "Why there?"
"According to Black Ferguson's plan as I read it."
Desirée looked searchingly at the chief trader for a half-minute.
"What do you know?" was her suspicious question, barbed with a slight resentment of his curt words.
"I know, first, that Black Ferguson was informed by Gaspard Follet of your favoring Glyndon; second, that the clerk was approached through Follet, and bribed to join the Nor'west ranks with his wife; third, that the foregoing was but a design of Black Ferguson's to get you beyond the stockades of Oxford House and in a place where he could lay hands on you."
"But he can't," protested Desirée. "I am—you see, I was married."
"Can't!" Dunvegan exploded. The tone of the one word was eloquent conviction. He added darkly: "It is well that I have come in time."
"Ah! no," she cried, the fear for his safety, momentarily forgotten, returning. "You must leave instantly. I will lead you down in silence. Come!"
Her hand was throbbing on his arm, her hot breath beating up against his cheeks. Bruce freed himself, fighting to keep his feelings in check.
"There is no need," he returned. "I shall not stir from here."
She scanned his face. No madness was visible in it. Bruce laughed.
"I am quite sane," he answered her.
"You are in Fort Brondel," Desirée announced severely. "A Nor'west fort——"
"Your pardon," Dunvegan interrupted. "A Hudson's Bay fort!"
"Now you are surely mad."
A slight timidity touched her. She drew back.
"Mad enough to have taken this post! I command forty-odd men in the rooms below."
Incredulity widened Desirée's eyes, but the chief trader's manner was convincing. She murmured a little in astonishment.
"We—of the post?" she stammered.
"Taken, too! The men become my prisoners—when I find them. You also are a captive!"
"Thank God!" Desirée cried, flushing to the temples. "Thank God!"
It was Bruce's turn for bewilderment. The ecstatic fervor of the woman's voice astounded him.
"What talk!" he exclaimed. "Prisoners don't generally rejoice. Yet this post seems the place of riddles to-night. Oddest of all to me is the fact that I have met with no opposition—except from yourself!"
He smiled, bowing courteously. Desirée smiled too, wanly and without the least approach to mirth.
"Come," she suggested. "I will show you why."
Taking the candle, she led the way across the living room, down the stairs, and through the great store which belonged to the Northwest Fur Company. Under the wondering gaze of the men they passed and entered the passage into which Bruce Dunvegan had glanced before. This passageway extended for many paces. A closed door stopped their progress at the farther end. Desirée laid her finger tips against it.
"The garrison of Fort Brondel is in there," she murmured.
"The trading room?"
"Yes."
"I had better call my fighters. And you? Wouldn't it be well for you to go back? There may be violence, and——"
"No necessity whatever," Desirée interrupted cynically. "They will not strike a blow. I can vouch for that."
An instant she paused, as if summoning her will power to do a hateful thing. Then she swung the door sharply back and held her light inside.
"Look!" she commanded with bitter irony.
Dunvegan looked. The scene in the huge interior of the trading room struck him with disgust as well as surprise. Around the long, rough table over a score of men and halfbreed women lay in drunken stupor. A liquor barrel crowned the board. At the table's end one man's debauched face lay on the breast of his halfbreed Bacchante of the revel. Bruce recognized the features of Glyndon, enpurpled and drink-puffed. The rest of the revelers had fallen into every imaginable attitude expressive of uncontrolled muscle and befuddled mind.
The stench of spirits was overpowering. Dunvegan drew Desirée back.
"This is sickening," he cried.
She gazed at Bruce with an intensity that went to the heart of him. The look awakened glad, magnetic throbs, yet left uneasy forebodings for the future because her eyes prophesied things which could never be.
"Now you know," she replied, pointing at the table. "I have shown you why."
And in her words Dunvegan read the answer to more than one riddle.
Someone moved behind them ostentatiously in order to attract attention. Bruce turned quickly. The tall Ojibway fort runner stood there.
"What is it, Maskwa?"
"Two messengers clamoring at the gates, Strong Father. What is your will?"
"I will go with you, my brother," the chief trader decided. "It is well to see who they are, myself." He walked with Desirée back into the store.
"Bind the drunken Nor'westers in the trading room," he ordered the men. "Come, Maskwa," he added to the Ojibway.
The fort runner stalked at his back through the snowy yard. Desirée stood and watched them from the door, while away in the east the light of dawn grew little by little.
"Who speaks!" called Dunvegan from the watchtower to the noisy fellows who were shouting and beating upon the gates with the ostensible object of awakening the sleepy post.
"Messengers from Fort La Roche," they screeched.
"La Roche? Ah! With what news?"
"A message for Brondel's factor."
"Well?"
"Ferguson, our leader, orders his transfer to Fort La Roche. He is to occupy the same position there."
The chief trader roared outright with laughter.
"It seems that I arrived none too soon," he commented ironically, half to himself and half to Maskwa, standing silent by his shoulder.
"Sir?" the couriers interrogated. But Bruce failing to answer, studied some sudden idea grimly and at length.
"Strong Father," interrupted the Ojibway softly, "bid me open the gates, let these French Hearts enter, and thus make them prisoners."
Dunvegan shook his head. "No," he returned. "They shall go back to La Roche. The shock Ferguson receives will be well worth the warning."
To the Nor'west messengers he cried whimsically: "The password?"
"Marseillaise," they answered without hesitation.
Again the chief trader chuckled, drawing something of humor from the situation.
"An hour ago that countersign would have let you in," he observed. "Now it is of no use whatever for the post is in possession of the Hudson's Bay Company."
He paused, looking into the up-turned, surprised faces of the couriers quite visible in the strengthening daylight.
"Go back to Black Ferguson," Dunvegan directed. "Tell him that you delivered the message he sent to the lord of Fort Brondel, but explain that the lord of Fort Brondel is Bruce Dunvegan. Explain also that the men of the fort lie in babiche bonds; that Glyndon is a prisoner; that Glyndon's wife is a captive. Announce to your leader the leaguer of Fort Dumarge. By the time he hears the news, it, too, will have fallen. And advise him in conclusion that the Hudson's Bay forces from these two posts will shortly combine before La Roche's stockades."
The Nor'west messengers fell away from the gates, astonishment mastering their speech.
"Never fear," Dunvegan reassured them. "If I wished to take you prisoners it would have been done long ago. Now go back as I bade you. And one more message for Black Ferguson! Tell him he did a foolish thing in bribing a drunkard to join his ranks that he might steal the drunkard's wife. Tell him that, and tell him Bruce Dunvegan said it."
Swiftly the couriers retraced the track they had furrowed in the deep-snowed slope. Their movements were furtive, and in spite of Bruce's assurance of safety, they cast many backward glances.
As the chief trader and the Ojibway quitted the watchtower, Maskwa spoke in a voice of protestation.
"Was that a wise doing, Strong Father?" he asked.
"How, my brother?"
"To send your enemy warning?"
Dunvegan smiled. "I could not forbear the thrust," he declared. "I could not help but let him know that his well-made plans had miscarried; that the woman he thought to seize was again under the protection of the mighty Company."
Maskwa ruminated.
"Then Strong Father has unknowingly accomplished what the French Heart would have done," he mused aloud. "It is well. It is even better than having Soft Eyes, the husband, fall in the fight."
"Ah! you mistake my meaning, Maskwa," observed the chief trader hastily. "The woman is in my protection, not in my possession."
"So!" the fort runner exclaimed with a slight inflection of surprise. "The French Heart may steal, but Strong Father steals not. How is that?"
"We are different men," answered Bruce, as they entered the store.
Desirée still waited beside the door. Maskwa passed her by without a look, making his way toward the trading room. Had she had the beauty of all the angels, her fairness would have commanded no homage from his cunning, leathery heart.
But Dunvegan, more susceptible, stopped at her word, his hungry eyes dwelling on her beauty, which even after the wearing night appeared faultless.
"Who were those messengers at the gates?" she inquired.
"Men of Black Ferguson's with a drafting order for Brondel's factor."
"Ah!" she gasped, "to—to——"
"To La Roche," Bruce supplied. "You see I was right. I came just in time."
With an impulsive, winning gesture Desirée put her hands in Dunvegan's.
"I ought to be thankful," she began, brokenly. "And I am! Heaven knows I am! But I should also be frank. After greeting you as I did in my room I must explain."
"Not unless you wish, unless——"
"It is my wish, my will," she interrupted.
"I need relief; I must give someone my confidence. Otherwise I shall go mad!"
"There is another who should receive your confidence."
"You think so?" she cried bitterly. "Even if he could comprehend no single word of it? If he were sunk in debauchery from the very day of our marriage? From the moment of flight?"
"What!" exclaimed the thunderstruck chief trader. "What's that you say?"
Desirée tottered. "Let me sit down on this bench," she begged. "I'm weak somehow and—and faint."
Dunvegan leaned back against the store counter.
"God," he breathed—"no wonder!"
The woman looked up beneath the hand which soothed her hammering temples.
"You love Glyndon," Bruce burst out unguardedly.
Her fist descended viciously on the bench where she sat.
"No! My God, who could—now?" Vehemence, abhorrence, disgust, filled her voice.
"You did," he persisted, rather cruelly and with an ultra-selfish motive.
"Infatuation," Desirée cried, "for the clean mask that he wore. But love?—Ah! no, can one love a sot, a beast?"
"Tell me," Dunvegan urged.
She caught her breath a few times helplessly in the stress of emotion, her eyes roving round the big store which held none but themselves. Her gaze stopped on Bruce's face. Her sentences came from her lips mechanically.
"I think his beauty and his old-world manners dazzled me," was her frank, pride-dissolving confession. "For the time I—I forgot you, Bruce. I imagined I cared more for the other. My indecision could not brook his mad wooing. For remember that change, absence, and pressure are the three things which convert any woman's will."
Desirée paused, a pleading for pity in her glance.
"I took refuge behind my vow," she continued after a second. "But that gave me no stability. If I would marry him, he promised to leave Oxford House immediately and join the Nor'westers. You see Ferguson had already approached him through Gaspard Follet."
"That," Dunvegan observed, "should have shown you his true character."
"I was blind," she lamented. "I deemed it sacrifice. In a way it was, I suppose. How could I know that the plan arranged by Ferguson through Gaspard Follet was the very thing that suited his evil intentions? He offered Edwin command of Brondel. I thought it safe enough to be the factor's wife in a post removed from Fort La Roche."
Bruce made a disdainful gesture. "Those messengers showed you how safe it was," he remarked acridly.
"Father Brochet married us," Desirée went on stonily. "It was in the evening. At once we fled from Oxford House, the sentry thinking we were only taking a turn on the lake with the dogs. But in the forest a Nor'west guide from Brondel met us with another sledge as agreed, and the flight began in earnest. The Nor'wester had rum with him. I rode on one sledge. The thing I had married rode on the other, gulping down the rum. You can imagine what happened!"
"Ah!" breathed Dunvegan pityingly.
"When we made camp near dawn he was drunk! He rolled off the sled, while the Nor'wester built a fire, in order to greet his bride——"
Bruce's smothered oath interrupted.
"What?" Desirée asked.
"Nothing," he murmured, the veins of his neck swelling and nearly choking him.
"Instead," Desirée resumed, "he greeted my pistol muzzle. Day and night since he has greeted it also."
Struck with the lightning significance of her speech, Bruce Dunvegan leaped across the intervening floor space. Like some cherished possession of his own he snatched her palms. "Desirée! Desirée!" he panted.
The danger note was in his voice, the danger fire in his look. Recklessly she met the sweet menace. Facing each other for a long minute, secret thoughts were read to the full.
"Yet you are married to him," breathed Dunvegan.
"Not in the bonds of God!" she declared.