Shackled with cold, iron fetters that chilled the earth to its marrow, the mighty northland lay desolate beneath the brief sunshine, fantastic under the auroras. Past Fort Brondel the ghostly caribou hordes drifted rank on rank, coming from the foodless spaces, going where subsistence permitted. In phantom packs the wolves howled by, trailing the swift moose across the crusted barrens. Four-legged creatures which never hibernate foraged farther south where the snows were thinner. The winged terrors of the air followed them, preying as opportunity afforded. Survival was ordained for only the strong, the fierce-fanged, the predatory. Indented in the white surface of the forest aisles were ptarmigans' tracks and over these the long, shallow furrows left by swooping owls' wings.
A homely spot of life and warmth amid this vast desolation was the post of Brondel. All the Nor'west prisoners except Gaspard Follet, Glyndon, and Desirée had been transferred in care of a strong guard to Oxford House where they were confined under very strict surveillance in the blockhouse. The men of the guard returning brought news of how Malcolm Macleod, failing to surprise Fort Dumarge and rush its stockades, was besieging the place, hoping to starve it into surrender.
Dunvegan had hastened a messenger to Macleod, informing him of the capture of Brondel. The Factor dispatched a runner back with orders for Bruce to be ready to move on La Roche when Macleod should send him word of his coming on the completion of his own project. Realizing the danger in which he stood from the overwhelming power of his own desires, Dunvegan prayed in his heart for the fall of Fort Dumarge and the advent of the Factor. He thought he could find respite and ultimate safety in the call which would summon him to the attack of La Roche away from the lure of Desirée Lazard.
But monotonously the short days slipped into long nights, and still no word came from Malcolm Macleod. Dumarge was proving stubborn.
Nor did the tiresome fort routine offer the chief trader any relief. The unspeakable desolation all about, the inactivity, the eternal waiting, waiting for a command which failed to come, wore down by degrees the control Dunvegan had exercised over his emotions up to this stage. His pent-up passion was gradually gaining in volume. He knew that its torrent must soon sweep him away, beating to atoms the barrier of moral code which was now but an undermined protection. He was facing the certain issue, understanding the immensity of his struggle, seeing no chance of escape.
True, he contemplated asking permission of the Factor to send Glyndon and Desirée to Oxford House. But over this he hesitated long, fearing that beyond his guard Black Ferguson's cunning might prevail and that Desirée might fall into the Nor'wester's grip. But finally, driven to desperation, Bruce started a runner on the trail to the beleaguering camp outside the palisades of Dumarge, requesting the transfer of the prisoners to the home post.
Fate seemed determined to torture, to tempt, to break Dunvegan. Macleod would not hear of such a proceeding. His answer was that neither Edwin Glyndon nor Gaspard Follet must pass from confinement or out of the chief trader's sight. The one-time clerk and the spy, possessing Nor'west secrets and intimate knowledge of the enemy's affairs, were captives far too valuable in the Factor's eyes to be given the remotest opportunity of obtaining freedom. When he should have extracted much-desired information from them, Macleod planned to deal them the deserts their actions had merited. Death he had decreed for Gaspard, a hundred lashes from dried moosehide thongs, a lone journey to York Factory, and a homeward working passage on a fur barque were promised the puerile drunkard. Incidentally the runner whom Bruce had sent out mentioned the presence of two strange men at Oxford House.
"What sort of men were they?" he asked the halfbreed courier.
"W'ite mans, ver' strong," replied the shrewd breed. "Look lak dey come from ovaire de Beeg Wenipak."
And Dunvegan knew that Granger and Garfield, the hardy deputies, also awaited the success of Malcolm Macleod. Like shadows since the first had they moved across the northern reaches from obscurity to certainty, from vagueness to tangibility, omens of a coming law in the wilderness!
Also like a shadow Desirée Lazard flitted free before the chief trader in Fort Brondel. Bitter through her utter disillusionment, swept by a fire as compelling as that against which Bruce Dunvegan battled, she cared not how high ran the tide of feeling. With a woman's instinctive pride in her powers she smiled on the re-awakening of the old love, thrilled to its magnifying intensity, responded with a half guilty ecstacy to its fierce, measureless strength.
Listening in the fort, Desirée would hear Bruce's rifle talking as he hunted through the lonely woods. It spoke to her of misery, pain, and yearning. Secretly she rejoiced. Then at night her eyes shone across to him through the birch logs' glow. Her hair gleamed like the candlelight. Her lips allured through the half-dusk surrounding the crooning fireplace.
Maskwa, the wise old Ojibway, watching them thus evening after evening as the long winter months slipped away, nodded darkly.
"Nenaubosho is working in them," he observed to himself. "Soft Eyes will lose his wife unless Stern Father comes to move us."
But Fort Dumarge, feeling the pinch of hunger, still held firm against Malcolm Macleod.
As ever the evenings came round. Desirée's spell grew stronger. The attitude of the two began to be marked by all in the fort as the curb loosened imperceptibly, but surely. Out of hearing in the blockhouse or the trading room, the Hudson's Bay men commented on their leader's strange—to them—fight against his own inclination. A hard-bitten crowd, each followed impulse in the main. The only restriction they acknowledged was the Company's discipline. They were north of fifty-three, and they scorned the fine points of ecclesiastics. Two ruling powers they knew: red blood and a strong arm.
Because Bruce Dunvegan held the upper hand and wanted Desirée Lazard as he wanted nothing else on earth, they marveled that he did not get rid of the prisoner and marry her. Behind the screen of hundreds of miles of forest they had seen the thing done many times before, and no one in the outside world was the wiser.
"He goin' crazy eef somet'ing don' be happen," whispered Baptiste Verenne, one night when the winter had nearly run its course.
"'Tis always a woman as raises the divil," announced Terence Burke. "Oi was engaged wanst meself, an' Rosie O'Shea niver gave me a minnit's peace till the day she bruk it."
"Hold on there," Connear cried. "You meanyounever gavehera minute's peace. 'Twould be South Sea hell to live with you, Terence—even for a man!"
"Ye ear-ringed cannibal," returned Terence belligerently. "Divil a womanwouldlive wid ye, fer she'd be turned to rock salt by yer briny tongue."
Connear stuck out the offending member beneath his pipe stem.
"No woman will ever have the chance to do it," he declared. "I've been in a few ports in my time. I've had my lesson."
"Now you spik," smiled Baptiste. "You be t'ink of dat tale you told 'bout dat native girl w'en your boat she be stop at—w'at you call?—dose Solomon Isle!"
"Yes," the ex-sailor replied. "Made love to me in the second watch and stabbed me in the back with one hand to leave the way clear for her tribe to murder the crew and loot the vessel."
"Oi didn't hear that, Peter," Burke prompted. "Go on wid it."
"Nothing to go on with," snapped Connear. "She pinked me too high up. Knife-point struck the shoulder blade, and my pistol went off before she could give the signal yell."
"An' then?" Terence was interested.
"Nothin', I said. The crew rolled out. The night was so warm that they didn't care to sleep any more. Oh, yes, and there was a village funeral in the mornin'!"
"Whose?"
"The girl's, you blockhead. Died of fever—a night attack!"
"Howly Banshees!" stammered Burke.
Baptiste Verenne crossed himself.
"So," nodded Maskwa, unmoved. "Soft Eyes might die of fever, or cold, or the Red Death!"
South winds full of strange magic ate away the snows. Blinking evilly, the muskegs laughed in little gurglings and sucking sounds. The forest pools brimmed with black water. Fresh, blue reservoirs the big lakes shimmered, while rivers swirled in brown, sinuous torrents.
Spring! The mallards shot overhead like emerald bullets.
Spring! The geese ran a compass line across the world.
Spring! The blood of every Northerner, man or woman, rioted madly, leaping untamable as the Blazing Pine River roaring past Fort Brondel.
Through some swift necromancy the frozen wilderness turned to an arboreal paradise. Bird songs fell sweet on ears tuned to brawling blizzards. Music of rapid and waterfall seemed heavenly after the eternal hissing of the wind-freighted drifts. Hotly shone the sun, pouring vitality into the earth. Responsive the bloom came, wonderful, profligate, luxurious.
Gay as any of the mating birds Baptiste Verenne sang about the Post. And when even the veins of squaw and husky thrilled with excess of vigor, the tremendous swelling and merging of the passion that absorbed Desirée and Dunvegan could be vaguely gauged. As surely as the glowing warmth of spring was increasing to febrile summer heat, the man was being drawn to the woman. The distance between them gradually lessened. Dumarge had not fallen.
Then from the South in the dusk of an evening came the canoe express bearing the York Factory Packet in charge of Basil Dreaulond. Since Brondel now belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, that place had been added to the posts of call.
Baptiste Verenne sighted Basil and his bronzed paddlers far up the Blazing Pine before ever they reached the landing. Instantly Fort Brondel was in an uproar, but in accordance with the rule in troublesome times no one passed beyond the stockade to greet arrivals. The dangers of surprise was not courted.
Yet Baptiste had not been mistaken. Dreaulond and his men hailed the post cheerily.
"Holá!" was the cry. "Voyez le pacquet de la Compagnie."
"Oui, mes camarades," shouted Verenne as sentinel from the high stockades. "Entrez! Entrez vite!"
Joyfully Brondel received them. "Lettres par le Grand Pays," shrieked the volatile French-Canadians.
Bruce Dunvegan met Dreaulond in the store where he had his office as factor of the fort.
"What news?" he questioned, gripping Basil's brown palm.
"Dumarge she be taken," replied the smiling courier.
"When?" Pain not joy filled Dunvegan to his bewilderment. He began to think that he did not really understand himself or his feelings.
"'Fore I leave," Dreaulond responded. "De Factor send de word in depacquet."
A startled, feminine cry echoed behind the men. Bruce swung on his heel. Her eyes brooding with half-formed fear, Desirée Lazard was regarding them.
The chief trader motioned her out. She did not obey.
"He has won? The Factor has won at last?" Her manner was that of a person who faces a calamity long-feared, hard-hated.
Dully Bruce nodded.
"The papers!" she exclaimed. "Open them! See when the force moves."
He broke the thongs of the packet like thread, rummaged the bundle, and found the documents directed to him.
"Macleod will be here in two days," was his answer. "Now will you go!"
The intensity of Dunvegan bordered on savagery. Desirée slipped to the door. Outwardly conquered, she disappeared, but victory still lurked in her glance.
Basil Dreaulond wondered much at the chief trader's apparent mood, for he was always gentle in the extreme when dealing with women. The courier could not know that this was the bitterness of renunciation. He too went softly away and left Dunvegan alone.
An Indian had taken Baptiste Verenne's position as sentinel, and Baptiste, hurrying through the yard, met Basil coming out of the fort.
"Got de fiddle ready, Baptiste?" asked the tanned courier, grinning.
It was the custom at the posts to hold a dance upon the arrival of the packet. These festivals marked, as it were, the periods of relief and relaxation from the toil and danger of the long, arduous packet route.
"Oui, for sure t'ing," Verenne replied. "I be beeg mans dis night,mon camarade!"
And a big man Baptiste was as, perched high on a corner table, he drew the merry soul of him out across the strings of his instrument.
As he played, he smiled jubilantly down upon the light-hearted maze that filled the great floor of the trading room. The huge hall was decorated by the quick hands of women for the occasion. Varicolored ribbons ran round the walls after the manner of bunting and fell in festoons from the beamed ceiling. Candles stood in rows upon mantels and shelves, shedding soft, silver light from under tinselled shades. Evergreens were thrust in the fireplace and banked about with wild roses and the many flaming flowers of the wilderness. A sweet odor filled the air, an Eden smell, the fragrance of the untainted forest.
Riotously, exuberantly the frolic began. Blood pulsed hotly. Feet were free. Lips were ready. The Nor'westers' wives, the French-Canadian girls, the halfbreed women swung madly through the square and string dances with the Brondel men of their choice.
God of it all, Baptiste smiled perpetually over the tumult, quickening his music to a faster time, quivering the violin's fibres with sonorous volume. Mad hornpipes he shrilled out, sailors' tunes which Pete Connear stepped till the rafters shook with the clatter. Snappy reels he unwound in which Terence Burke led, throwing antics of Irish abandon that convulsed the throng. Also, Baptiste voiced the songs he loved, airs of his own race, dances he had whirled in old years with the belles of the Chaudiere and the Gatineau.
Out of sympathy for the prisoners, Glyndon and Follet, when all the amusement was going on above, Bruce Dunvegan had ordered them to be brought up. For the one evening they were allowed the freedom of the fort, but wherever they went two Indian guards stalked always at their elbows.
And Glyndon went most frequently where the rum flowed freest. After the abstinence imposed by confinement since the week-long debauch his thirst was a parching one. Half fuddled, he met Desirée threading her way through the crowd. He put out both hands awkwardly to bar her progress.
"What do you want?" she cried, drawing suddenly back as she would recoil from a snake.
"You," Glyndon answered thickly. "Can a man not speak with his wife?"
"Wife!" Desirée echoed. "Go find one of your halfbreed wenches. Speak withher!"
Disgust, contempt, revulsion were in Desirée's voice and manner. She darted aside and avoided him in the crowd.
Yet again he found her seated at a table between Dunvegan and Basil Dreaulond where she thought to be secure. He threw his arms about her neck, attempting a maudlin kiss, but instead of meeting her full, red lips his own insipid mouth met Dreaulond's great paw, swiftly thrust out to close upon his blotched cheekbones and whirl him into a seat on the courier's other side.
"Ba gosh, ma fren', you ain' be fit for kiss no woman," Basil observed sternly. "You got be mooch sobaire first. Eh,mon ami? Sit ver' still—dat's w'at I said."
Inwardly flaming, Dunvegan remained immovable, as if the incident were none of his concern. But though apparently so calm he was the victim of raging emotions. The magnetic personality of the woman beside him was a poignant thing. Her propinquity proved masterful beyond belief. He could hear her heart beating under restraint; interpret the heaving of her bosom; feel the hot pulsing of her blood; read her very thoughts as her mind evolved them. Conscious of the spell which grew stronger with every minute, Bruce sat there unable to tear himself away.
Presently, seeking to divert his mind from the cause of the unrest, the chief trader opened a few bottles of aged wine which he had found in the cellars of Fort Brondel that were stored with the Nor'wester's liquor. This he had carefully kept to celebrate the first visit of the Hudson's Bay Company's packet.
The amount was not large, yet a little to each the time-mellowed vintage brought from across the seas by way of Montreal went round.
"To the York Factory packet," Dunvegan cried, proposing the toast.
Cheers thundered out, hearty, loyal, sincere. Then reverently the toast was sipped.
"And Basil Dreaulond," Bruce added. A shout this time loud with great-hearted friendliness and comradeship! Strong pride of the northland race burned in their eyes as they drank to the finest type of it, the virile courier.
Now in fullness of spirit each voiced the toast that appealed to him personally.
"Scotia!—Scots wha hae!" shrilled two Highlanders of Dunvegan's band.
"The Emerald Isle," Terence Burke roared aggressively.
"The Eagle," yelled Pete Connear. "Drat your landsmen's eyes, drink with me. To the American Eagle and the salt of the sea!"
"La France! La France!" Voyageurs shrieked like mad.
"Old England," stammered Edwin Glyndon, pounding the table.
"Old fren's," spoke Basil Dreaulond, with quiet modesty.
"Old lovers!" Clear as a clarion Desirée's toast rang through the din, thrilling Dunvegan by its audacity, its fervor. As consuming flames her eyes drew him, withering stout resolves, melting his will. He bent his head lower, lower, glorying in the complete confession those two swift words had made.
"Ah, yes!" called Glyndon, leering evilly, "you seem to know that toast—too well."
She sprang from her seat in a fury. He sprang from his, ugly in his mood.
"You dog!" Her nostrils quivered. "You coward!"
"And liar!" Dunvegan's menacing face eager to avenge the insult rose behind her shoulder.
Uttering a wild, inarticulate cry, Glyndon struck the scornful face of the woman. Desirée gave a little moan and fell half stunned against the table.
The Brondel men roared in anger. As one man they sprang forward with the single purpose of rending Edwin Glyndon. But Dunvegan was quicker than they. White to his lips, he had leaped at the former clerk. His first savage impulse was to strike, to maim, to kill! One blow with all his mighty strength and Glyndon would never have spoken again.
Spoken! That was it. The quick realization pierced his brain even in the moment of obsessing anger. Glyndon was a prisoner. He must be produced before Malcolm Macleod. Macleod had questions to ask of him. Dead men could not answer questions.
Thus did sanity temper Dunvegan's rage. It was only his open palm that knocked the sot ten feet across the room.
Then fearfully he lifted Desirée. She stirred at the touch. The light of a smile came into the wan face with the red weal upon it. Her fortitude permitted not the slightest expression of pain, and Dunvegan's soul went out to her at knowledge of her woman's bravery. What before had seemed to him as only his human weakness now became the strength of duty. As if she had been a child, he raised Desirée in his arms and left the gaping crowd.
A murmur ran among the men when he was gone. They scowled as Glyndon staggered up.
Came an instant's silence and the piping of a thin voice. "Now my toast!"
Everyone looked to see Gaspard Follet grinning like an ogre at the foot of the table. He thrust his owlish face over the board and shook the wine in his glass till in the light it sparkled like rubies.
"To the devil!" he chuckled.
The feasters started and sat back silent, grave, awed by the vital significance of that last toast.
Outside the challenge of the Indian sentinel interrupted the quiet. They heard the clatter of the gates. Someone had arrived.
In the living room above the store where he had ascended on the first strange night of his coming into Brondel, Dunvegan laid Desirée on the lounge covered with fur robes. He sat by her, tenderly bathing the red weal with some soothing herbal mixture that the squaws were accustomed to brew. It relieved the pain, and she smiled up at him, her lustrous eyes innocent with their depth of love.
"By the God that makes and breaks hearts," Dunvegan breathed, "you'll never look on him again. You belong to me by first and only right of worship."
There sounded a step on the stairs. Whoever had arrived was coming up.
The door opened softly. Father Brochet stepped in.
"My son, my son," he murmured reproachfully but compassionately.
They had told him all below. He came across the room, clasping hands with Bruce, greeting Desirée parentally.
"Go to bed, child," he ordered kindly, assuming authority over the odd situation. "You look tired out. Go to bed! Bruce and I want to talk."
Wondering at her own obedience, Desirée vanished into the adjoining chamber. Marveling at his own sufferance, Dunvegan watched her go.
He turned to Brochet. "Everything unexpected seems to be happening to-night!" he exclaimed. "But I didn't think you were near. Where have you come from, Father?"
"From Loon Lake."
"You knew we had captured Fort Brondel, then?"
"Yes. The Indians gave me the news. As I was on my return journey to Oxford House, I thought I would pay you a call according to my promise. It seems, my son, that I have arrived very opportunely. You have ruled yourself for many months! Are you, in one mad moment, going to lose your grip?"
He linked an arm in the chief trader's and walked the floor with him, talking, talking, priming him with the wisdom of his saner years till Desirée in the next room fell asleep to the sound of their voices and the regular shuffle of their feet.
And by dawn Father Brochet felt the pulse of victory. Something of soul-light replaced the fevered gleam in Dunvegan's eyes. Not yet had he lost his grip!
"But she must go to her uncle, Pierre Lazard," he declared. "Seeing her, I cannot keep this strength you have given me."
"Pierre is at York Factory," the priest replied. "He could not bide the post long after his niece was gone. So Macleod let him go to the Factory. He passed through my Indian camp at Loon Lake before the winter trails broke."
"So much the better," sighed Dunvegan, with relief. "There she will be safe from Black Ferguson. She can go in the canoe express with Basil Dreaulond and his packeteers."
Brochet arranged it. The chief trader could not trust himself to look upon Desirée's departure with the York Factory packet. The Brondel people cheered its going, but Dunvegan was not at the landing to see. He had shut himself up in the office.
That day he brooded dismally. That night he woke from troubled sleep, thinking he saw a nightmare. But the anxious features of the priest at his bedside were real. Real also the face of Basil Dreaulond! He had a bandage on his head, stained with dried blood!
Dunvegan sat up with a jerk.
"What's wrong, Basil?" he shouted. "My God, men, speak!"
"Wan party Nor'westaires waylay de canoe express," stammered Basil. "Dey must been spyin' round de post! Got de packet an' de girl. An' takin' her to Ferguson at La Roche! Dey keel ma voyageurs,maisI escape, me, in de woods."
The chief trader threw on his clothes and rushed for the door.
Brochet blocked him. "What now?" the priest demanded.
"Follow and——"
"No good dat," interrupted Dreaulond. "Dey got wan whole day start. No good!"
"We have men," cried Dunvegan wildly. "We must storm La Roche."
"Be wise!" Brochet urged, half angrily. "Twice your force couldn't storm La Roche—and you know it!"
"We must try. Great God, do you think I'll leave her in that brute's power? Every Brondel man marches at once!"
"No," thundered the priest. "You won't dare! You have the Factor's order. Don't dare wreck his plan through selfish desire. In another day he will be here. But move these men now to waste them in futile assaults and you halve his strength—you lose the Company's campaign!"
Dunvegan groaned. Well he knew that. Yet inactivity galled and tortured.
"Dey got dose prisonairesaussi," Basil put in.
"Are you crazed with your wound?" Dunvegan's eyes flashed.
"No. But I be see dem. Dis Glyndon an' Gaspard!"
"They were guarded," began the chief trader vehemently; "are guarded now—" but he broke off to see and to make sure.
Underground they looked into a cellar-dungeon, empty of captives. Stiff in death but without any marks of violence the Indian guards lay on the floor. Dreaulond sniffed their lips.
"DatdiableGaspard geeve dem de dog-berry poison," he announced. "Mus' be dropped in dere rum at de feast las' night."
It had been the duty of the guards to apportion the prisoners their food as well as to watch them. Thus their absence had not been marked through the day. It was evident that their escape had been effected some time after the supper and dance had ended when the Indians had succumbed to the fatal drink.
Dunvegan turned to his friends, the light of unshakeable determination on his face.
"My men are the Company's!" he exclaimed. "My life is my own! I'm going to La Roche. There may be a way. Somewhere there must be a means. Either I'll carry Desirée Lazard over the stockades or the Nor'westers' guns will riddle me."
They did not doubt him. They knew a million protests would not avail.
"An' me," cried Basil, thrilled by his courage. "I go for depacquet. De Company's trippers dey ain' nevaire lost wan yet. I ain' goin' be de first, me!"
"You lovable fools," reprimanded Brochet, tears in his eyes. "You have the stuff in you that makes the northmen great. But don't go alone on this mad mission! Let me go with you. For mark this, Bruce, where your strength or Dreaulond's cunning cannot prevail, my cloth may render some aid."
Thus across the chain of lakes and rivers three men went against La Roche.
Paddling Indian fashion with both elbows held rigid and shoulders thrusting strongly forward at the end of each stroke, the travelers threaded for miles the island channels of the Blazing Pine. Basil Dreaulond had the bow, Dunvegan the stern. Father Brochet sat amidships. They took advantage of the current and made rapid progress, their blades churning the water in long half-circular swirls. Skilled canoeists they accepted the aid of every shore-eddy, every rushing chute, every navigable cascade.
Down the Rapid Du Loup, a dangerous rock-split through which the river leaped rather than ran, their craft was snubbed with extreme care. The three shared the toil of portaging over to Lac Du Longe where a baffling head-wind blew.
"Ba gosh, I no lak dat, me," protested Basil, pointing to the great, white-crested combers which cannonaded the beach. "An' look at dose storm-clouds!Saprie!she goin' thundaire an' lightnin'!"
But the chief trader would hear of no delay. Into the brunt of the tempest the bow was forced. Shooting the sheer wave-slopes, poising dizzily on crests where momentum raised them, rocking sickeningly in the trough of the swinging seas, the men rode in the teeth of the gale. Half way across Du Longe the thunder and lightning Dreaulond had prophesied burst with raucous bellowing, with vivid flame. The wind increased. The lake became a boiling cauldron.
Basil called upon his last ounce of reserve strength to meet the emergency. Brochet muttered as if in prayer while the leaden-backed surges lipped across the gunwales and the spume slashed across the bow. But grim as the storm-wraiths themselves Dunvegan held to his course, wet drops glistening on his cheeks, wind furies reflected from his eyes. By sunset they made the other shore, their craft ready to sink under water which could not be bailed out fast enough.
Tired to the bone, their sleeping camp was as the camp of the dead that night. An owl hooted on the tent boughs. A big moose splashed in the shallows. A gray timber wolf growled over its kill on the shore. But nothing quickened their dulled ears till dawn, red-eyed from his yesterday revelry, stared through the spruce tops.
Then like the revolving of a treadmill came hours of monotonous straight-water paddling, intervals of tracking and snubbing, occasional poling through cross-currents, swift, transient moments of hazardous rapid-running, and the hateful, staggering grind of slippery portages.
Across the Nisgowan; across the Wakibogan; across the Koo-wai-chew! Through Wenokona, through Burnt Lake, through Lake of Stars! At Little Hayes Rapid, a half-day's paddle from Fort La Roche, came their first mishap. To Basil Dreaulond as bowsman the passage which he had often run seemed unfamiliar.
"I'm not be know dis, me," he cried as the canoe swung for a second in the head-swirls before taking the meteor-like plunge downwards.
"You're joking," called the chief trader. His paddle urged. The craft shot forward.
"Non, ba gosh! Dat rock she be split wit' de frost an' de ice——" and his voice went up in an alarmed yell.
"Diable!" he roared. "Undaire de nose!"
A desperate thrust of his blade, a tremendous straining did not avail to clear them. The canoe bow struck a fang of submerged rock with a horrible, ripping sound. On the instant they capsized.
His lungs full of water and twin mill-races booming in his ears, Father Brochet hung limply under Bruce Dunvegan's arm as the latter struggled up the bouldered side of the shallow channel. It was the most realistic drowning sensation that he ever wished to experience. After them crawled the bedraggled courier, hauling the gashed canoe beyond the hammering eddies. Blood flowed over his temple. The battering he had received had re-opened the wound in his head.
A sound whacking between the shoulders relieved the priest. Basil's hurt was promptly staunched with balsam gum.
"Mon Dieu, dat be ver' close t'ing," he commented, shrugging his shoulders.
"Aye," agreed the chief trader, regretfully eyeing the torn canoe bow. "We might guard our lives a little better. There is someone in Fort La Roche who needs them."
"Oui," returned Dreaulond, with deep significance, "an' eef I know anyt'ing, mebbe she be get demaussi."
"Maybe," assented the chief trader, unmoved.
The priest uttered a thankful sigh. "We are in the hands of God," he declared. "White-water or Nor'westers, it is all the same!"
Bruce made a fatalistic gesture.
"I believe you, Father; I believe you," he returned. "Nevertheless we must always aid ourselves. Let us portage to the other end of the rapid and try to mend our canoe."
But first he fished their sunken outfit from the clear water of the channel. Brochet went down and found the paddles where they had been cast upon the sand below Little Hayes Rapid. Dreaulond pushed over a dead birch, heaping its dried husk and powdery center for a quick fire.
Then they stripped off their soaked garments and spread them upon the rocks under the perpendicular sun of high noon. There the steaming clothes dried more quickly than would have been possible before the flames. It was time to eat. The hot meal of fried fish newly caught, bannocks baked from the already wetted flour, and tea proved welcome. A pipe or two formed the dessert.
After the meal the men set about the task of mending the canoe. A long rent grinned in the right side of the bow, a bad gash that would require patience in the gumming. Basil measured it tentatively and went off into the forest to cut a strip of bark large enough to cover the opening generously. Dunvegan melted the pitch over the fire, getting it ready to cement the patch.
Basil returned. Skilfully the two accomplished the delicate work. The patch was gummed tight. Over all they spread an extra coat of pitch for surety. Then the canoe was set aside in the shade for a space that the gum might cool and harden sufficiently against the water's friction.
The bark Dreaulond cut had fitted neatly, the gum stuck well. The finish of the thing pleased Basil. He gave vent to his satisfaction in a contented grunt as he lay back with lighted pipe among the greening shrubs and ferns.
"Bien!" he exclaimed. "She be carry us lak wan newbatteau. Lakbatteaux surde old Saguenay—dat's long way from here, ba gosh! I see heem some nights in ma dreams, me. An' dat's w'en de trails be ver' hard an' I'm ver' tired. Onlee las' night,mes amis, I see datcherold Saguenay an' Lac Saint Jean."
"Was St. John anything like Du Longe?" asked Dunvegan whimsically.
Basil shivered at the comparison. "Non," he protested. "Du Longe wandiable. Saint Jean wan angel.Par Dieu, I be tell you,mes camarades, doselacsan'rivièreson ma home ain' lak dese in dis beegNord.Non, M'sieu'Brochet! Back dere I be go out for some leetl' pleasure; nevaire be t'ink of dangaire—she so peaceful an' sweet.Maisoop here I always t'ink disNordlak wan sharp enemy watchin' for take you off de guard, for catch you in some feex. Onlee de strong mans leeve in dis countree—you see dat. An' w'en I journey on deselacsan'rivièresan' dese beeg woods, I kip de open eye, de tight hand."
"Feeling that if you ever relax your vigilance, the North will hurl you down," suggested Father Brochet.
"Oui, dat's way I feel.Maisnot dat way on ma home in de old days! Las' night I be dream I dreeft lak I used to dreeft from Lac Saint Jean down de Saguenay. From Isle D'Almâ to de Shipshaw—oui, an' all the way to Chicoutimi! All in ma newbatteau!"
"And was there anyone in the bow?" ventured Dunvegan softly. He was strangely moved, recalling an ancient confidence of Dreaulond's.
"Oui," murmured Basil tenderly, "depetiteTherese,ma fille!"
"Man, man," cried Brochet earnestly, "haven't you forgotten yet? It is years since you told us of that sorrow."
"Non, not w'ile I leeve," Dreaulond replied, a suspicious moisture gathering on his lashes. "She be wit' me las' night, de leetl' Therese, black-eyed, wit' de angel smile—Therese from the quiet, green graveyard on de hill of St. Gédéon."
Silently they marveled at him, this man of iron strength, but of exquisite feeling, with poetic heart and temperament, who on the edge of danger could float with the dream-conjured vision of his dead child down between the water-cooled, moss-wrapped rocks of the Saguenay.
But Basil's attitude changed swiftly as he sensed one of those northern menaces which he had mentioned minutes before. He rolled on his side and stared downstream.
"Who's dis?" His tone, low and harsh, seemed that of another person.
Bruce Dunvegan raised himself on one elbow, his face frowning in a cloud of smoke.
"A Nor'wester—curse it!" he muttered savagely. "Coming from La Roche! He cannot miss us here. For see he's on the portage. Keep a still tongue till I speak and follow my lead. There is a chance that he may mistake us."
The chief trader lay back again with an assumption of careless indifference. The other two imitated it.
Meanwhile the Nor'wester was crossing the portage with a speed and ease which showed that he was not overburdened by traveling gear. The lines of the canoe on his head bespoke a fast, light craft. His dunnage was scant.
Ascending from the shore level to the hog-back of rock which ran along parallel with Little Hayes Rapid till it dipped down to clear water at the other end, the Nor'wester glimpsed beneath the broad band of the tump-line on his forehead the three strangers lolling beside their fire. Immediately he dropped his load, paused, and glared uncertainly. Dunvegan gave him a cheery call which reassured him.
"Knife me, but at first I was afraid you might be of the Hudson's Bay people," he laughed, coming on and depositing his canoe and luggage with their own. "Yet that was a foolish idea, for one does not see Company men so close to Fort La Roche. But your faces are strange to me!" He paused and puzzled them over. "To which of our parties do you belong? You're from the Labrador, I'll wager!"
Dunvegan took safer ground. "No," he answered. "We've come over from the Pontiac with a priest for your district. From complaints at headquarters at Montreal it seems there has been a dearth of priests since Father Beauseul died. So the Jesuits have sent you Father Marcin from the Keepawa Post."
Bruce nodded to Brochet by way of introduction, a narrowing of the eye warning the priest to act the part. And the pseudo Father Marcin sat up and greeted the fellow gravely. It was lucky that Dunvegan had some knowledge of Nor'west affairs.
But the sight of Brochet's cloth on the Nor'wester was startling. He stared a second, emitting a great pleased laugh.
"By all the gods, a priest!" he shouted. "What good fortune! As you say, there is a dearth of priests." Again he laughed that great, pleased laugh they could not understand. "A dearth of priests!"
He thrust out a hand. "I will never be any gladder to see you, Father Marcin, than I am now. You have saved me a long paddle to Watchaimene Lake. There is one of your cloth there. I was going for him."
Brochet looked up sharply. "Who is dying?" he questioned.
"No one. It's Ferguson, our leader. He can't get a priest to marry him quick enough!"
Silence fell, a hateful, awkward, dangerous silence! Brochet looked at Dunvegan. The latter's face was a mask. The pipe protruded rigidly from one corner of his mouth. He betrayed no emotion, but the priest's glance, falling to his bare arms, noted the quivering of the sinews.
"Why so much haste?" inquired Father Brochet, calmly assuming the task of preserving the former indifference of the atmosphere.
The Nor'wester chuckled significantly. "It is natural," he answered. "Ferguson has already waited a year in order to lay hands on his bride. For you must know she was under the guard of the Hudson's Bay till she married an English clerk in their service who was bribed to come over to the Nor'west ranks and put in charge of Fort Brondel, which has since been captured by the Company!"
"How came Black Ferguson to seize her, then?" the priest asked, drawing all possible information from the swart fellow.
"There was a feast in Brondel when the York Factory packet arrived. After the dance the English clerk escaped with a spy who was also a prisoner. Expecting that some of our men would be lurking about spying on the fort, they sought and found them and gave them news. The clerk's wife, the lady Ferguson desired, was to go north with the canoe express to York Factory. So our men waylaid it, capturing the packet and the woman. The clerk, poor fool, thought she was being taken for himself."
"And was it not so?" cried Brochet. "They were married, you say! Does this lady lean toward bigamy?"
"Theyweremarried, yes," admitted the Nor'wester, with a sinister meaning. "She is now a widow."
All three men started, nearly betraying themselves. "A widow!" they echoed.
"A widow indeed! The English clerk was shot by some of the packeteers."
"Dat wan dam lie!" shouted Basil, unwarily.
"Why? What do you know?" The Nor'wester looked askance at the voyageur's vehemence.
"I see dat in your eye," Dreaulond declared, quick to recover himself. "We all bebon amis. Spik de truth, now!" He winked knowingly at the dark-faced man.
"Well," began the other, sheepishly, "it wasn't in the fight, that's true. It happened afterwards. I was not with the party, but they say the English clerk stumbled over his own gun."
"Where was he shot?" Dunvegan hurled the query almost ferociously.
"In the back, I heard!"
Bruce spat an oath. Brochet gave a sympathetic murmur. The courier growled inarticulately.
"Mon Dieu," he muttered under his breath, "dat's wan more count for M'sieu' Ferguson, wan more hell fire. I t'ink he be need de pries' for shrive, not for marry heem. Ba gosh, I do!"
The Nor'wester was obviously growing impatient.
"I must be going back if you are ready to move, Father Marcin," he asserted, "for Ferguson will question me as to where I found you, and if he thinks there has been any lagging, I shall pay the price."
Dunvegan's head moved the fraction of an inch in a nod perceptible only to Father Brochet. The latter quickly arose.
"I am ready to make all haste," he averred. "If I delay, I am perhaps permitting sin."
"As for you, my friends," spoke the Nor'wester, turning to the others, "there is nothing to hinder your coming also. They will give you good cheer in La Roche. You may rest there a while and return at your leisure."
"It would please us," replied Dunvegan, "but the Pontiac is a long way from here. There is little use in adding extra miles to our labor. And Keepawa Post cannot spare us for long. We will go back."
"Your plans are your own," the Nor'wester assented. "And I must paddle on. La Roche should see me by sunset."
They helped him launch his craft and load the duffle. Dunvegan addressed a last remark to him.
"You did not tell us," he observed carelessly, "how this lady takes your leader's haste. The story has interested me."
"She pleaded for a little time against his eagerness," answered the Nor'wester, "and she stalls him off thus. He has given her till the priest's arrival, which time she is lucky to get! Also she is lucky to have Father Marcin!" The man's chuckle implied much.
Dunvegan's jaw tightened. His pipe broken at his lips clattered on the flinty rocks.
"It was worn!" he exclaimed.
Brochet picked up the fallen portion. Showing no sign of wear, the amber was fresh and thick. Proof of the volcanic feeling rioting in him, Dunvegan's strong teeth had bitten clear through the stem.
As the Nor'wester slipped his canoe into the water, Bruce whispered to Brochet.
"Do what you can," he begged. "We shall not be far behind you."
With ostentation the priest bade the two good-bye. The Nor'wester waved a paddle in farewell as his canoe shot round a bend. Two or three miles start Basil and Dunvegan gave him before they launched their own craft.
Like a colossal casting in bronze Fort La Roche loomed against the bloody sunset. Brochet glimpsed it for the first time with a prescience of impending evil. Couchant on the serrated headland it lay some sixty feet above river level, commanding the waterway, grinning like a powerful monster, impregnable, austere, forbidding. Strongest of all the Nor'west posts, most cunningly built, most substantially fortified, the mere thought of bringing anyone over its stockades unresisted seemed maddest folly.
The priest had in his day seen many weird-looking dens bristling with defence, smacking of wrong-doing, smelling of spilled blood. But this impressed him above all as likely to be the abode of extreme malevolence. Even to enter it, he felt, would be like putting one's head into a wild beast's lair not knowing what minute it might be snapped off.
Brochet was glad at this crisis that he had never seen Black Ferguson. He rejoiced that the Nor'west leader had had no opportunity to set eyes on him, for in such a contingency he could not hope to blind the man's innate cunning and preserve his incognito. Recognition by two people he still had to fear. They were Flora Macleod and Gaspard Follet. Against this he drew up the hood of his black cassock to shade his features, formulating in his mind an excuse which embraced asthma and the dark evening mist for the moment when he should be questioned as to the cause.
Under the lee of the headland the Nor'wester's canoe drifted. Backwatering with his rigidly held paddle, he lay to below the rivergate. A loud voice hailed them from the watchtower.
"Halloo! Who comes?"
"It is Black Ferguson himself," whispered the Nor'west man to Brochet, studying the tall figure poised on the high wall. "He finds it harder to wait than he thought."
Then, lifting up his shout, Ferguson's messenger answered his leader.
"Cartienne!" he roared. "Cartienne comes. And with a priest!"
Wide swung the watergate in the space of a breath. Black Ferguson seemed to have fallen from the watchtower so quickly did he accomplish the descent. His eager face peered at them from the dusky landing.
"By all the saints, Cartienne!" he laughed, mightily pleased. "What did you use? Witchcraft?"
The messenger explained. Voluble with blessings on his good luck, Ferguson dismissed Cartienne and haled the priest off to the store, in a room above which Desirée Lazard was confined.
"No supper, Father," he joked, "till you have seen my bride-to-be. And knife me, she'll give you an appetite! I'll warrant that. After supper you shall marry us."
"Is she so fair, then?" ventured Brochet.
"Fair? I'll take my oath you saw none like her in all the Pontiac, Father Marcin. But you shall judge for yourself! Here is the place. Let me lead the way aloft."
Brochet looked round as he followed Ferguson up the stairway and saw, coming into the building with some trappers to barter goods, the familiar, hideous figure of Gaspard Follet. He swiftly turned his back and pulled the hood tighter. The spy's bellowing laugh made him flinch with the sickening feeling of discovery, but immediately he was ashamed of the falsity of his alarm. Gaspard's mirth held no hint of wicked triumph; nothing but harsh deviltry as he stared a second upon Ferguson and the black cassocked one.
"A priest, a marriage and afterwards—h—l!" Brochet heard the dwarf cheerfully prophesy to the trappers. Again his mawkish laugh vibrated among the hewn rafters.
Above the Nor'west leader quickly crossed the room and indicated a door.
"Here, Father! Cover your eyes lest her beauty blind you!" The tone was exultant as well as bantering.
He fumbled with the bolt, failed to shoot it, and stooped to examine, for the dark was gathering thickly so that small things could not be easily seen.
"The devil!" he cried amazedly. "It's unlocked! Now what cursed trickery is this?"
Kicked back without ceremony, the door banged and quivered. Ferguson bounded inside, the breathless priest on his heels. A single candle, burning serenely, lighted an empty room.
"Legions of fiends and devils!" blasphemed the angry Nor'wester, blundering round in sheer astonishment. "Escaped? It can't be, Father Marcin! She could not have gone through the store. My men would have seen. And yonder door, the only other way out, leads into the upper part of the fur-house where the powder is stored. It is locked! What traitor——"
The grating of a key interrupted him. Ferguson whirled at the sound. The door he had mentioned had opened and closed softly. Flora, paler than when Brochet had last seen her and with the shadow of disappointment in her eyes, quietly broke the key in the lock. She failed to recognize the priest whose face was partly concealed by his hood.
"You—you!" Ferguson shrieked, choking with terrible wrath.
"I," she answered unflinchingly. "I told you that you would never marry her. Neither shall you! Had I been able to spirit her out of La Roche, it would have been done. Failing that, I have placed her beyond your earthly reach. You cannot kiss her living lips!"
"What! You she-fiend," shouted the Nor'wester, thoughts of evil dealing leaping into his bewildered brain, "do you dare tell me——"
But Flora stopped him with an imperious gesture.
"Don't misunderstand me," she returned contemptuously. "Go look for her in the powder-room."
At that, enlightenment swept him. He leaped forward, madly incensed, with fists clenched to strike her. Father Brochet had just time to throw himself between.
"Softly," the priest cautioned, whispering low that the Factor's daughter might not know his voice; "you must not offer a blow to a woman. I thought a prospective bridegroom had been more gentle with the sex."
"Your pardon, Father," he begged.
But he was barely containing himself. The judgment for the woman who was his wife leaped out.
"I'll suffer you here no longer," he snarled. "Leave La Roche at dawn. That's my last word to you!"
But the gleaming devil in his eye leered back at him in the steady contemptuous gaze of Malcolm Macleod's daughter.
Downstairs in wild, inconsiderate haste the Nor'wester dragged the priest. Dark had fallen on La Roche, a deep darkness of velvety, impenetrable gloom peculiar to the North. A drifting pall of mist that beaded the stockades and dripped from the blockhouse eaves added to the intensity of the night. Suggestive of tragedy, symbolic of disaster, prophetic of unknown calamity, the weird atmosphere chilled the men as with a breath of fatalism. Both felt it, but neither stopped long enough to analyze the feeling. Brochet attributed the odd sensation to his delicate position which in the event of discovery would become fatal. Black Ferguson thought the impression was simply attendant upon his abnormal excitement as he raced across the yard to the fur-house.
There the priest sweated with a very natural fear when they met a group of Indians who had been storing bales by torchlight. Trooping back from their work, the red gleam licking across their coppery features, Brochet saw Running Wolf, his hot-tempered son Three Feathers and others of the Cree tribe from the Katchawan.
Veering a little, the priest walked on Ferguson's right side on the edge of the ring of light. Thus he avoided encountering them fairly and escaped keen eyes that would have undoubtedly recognized him even under his muffling capote.
"Bo' jou', bo' jou'," the Crees grunted, and stalked on.
Into the fur-house between rows of strong-odored pelts the Nor'wester hurried through the dark with Brochet. Up the long ladder which was wide enough for both to climb abreast they hastened. Ferguson threw back the ceiling trapdoor with a resounding clang. The tableau that met the two men's eyes as they pushed up their heads was one to be stamped indelibly on their memories.
A candle gleaming beside her in a sconce on the wall, Desirée Lazard crouched behind a heap of powder kegs in the middle of the room. The top of the central keg had been broken in. The powder's black crystals shone with an awesome refraction of light. And, white-lipped, tense-fibered, Desirée held the great pistol in her hand so that its muzzle was buried in the deadly stuff.
Her eyes lightened with recognition at sight of Brochet's colorless face in the dark square of the trapdoor's space. But, being behind Ferguson's shoulder, he placed a finger on his lips so that the girl understood and gave no sign.
First the Nor'wester cursed in helplessness and baffled anger. Then his powers of entreaty were exhausted to no betterment. His handsome, diabolical countenance was set with a rigid glare almost maniacal in distortion.
"Are you mad, girl?" he screamed, his voice more animal-like than human.
"No, but you are," Desirée retorted scornfully, "if you think to approach me. Remember! A crook of my finger and Fort La Roche goes!"
To Brochet it was splendid—the soft woman holding at certain bay the wily Nor'wester whom none had ever baffled before. Her courage sent a glow through his own frame, but instantly he shivered at the thought that this could not last any great length of time. The situation was impossible. Yet such as it was, Desirée was mistress of it!
"The minute that you or your men show foot above those ladder rungs, I fire," she declared with an intense earnestness which the Nor'wester did not for an instant doubt. "Your priest there may come up. But no other!"
Devil that he was, Black Ferguson began to test her nerve, prancing on the rounds upward, ever upward, showing his waist, his hips, knees, even ankles, while Father Brochet trembled for the sake of the girl. He expected every instant to hear the thunderous reverberation that would carry destruction and death. Once the Nor'west leader rose on the last rung till his boot-tops levelled the floor, balanced thus, grinning to see how little he had to spare.
The priest noted Desirée's hand whitening on the pistol butt, noted the weapon's muzzle thrusting deeper into the powder. Involuntarily his fingertips went to his ears. But the explosion did not come. Laughing a grim, satisfied laugh, Black Ferguson dropped down a rung or so alongside Brochet.
"You should not do that," the latter reproved. "A slip of your foot or a nervous quiver of the girl's hand and we would all be in Heaven!"
"You and the girl might, Father. I would be in a fitter place."
Ferguson's face was insolent. He had no fear, neither had he any reverence.
"Hard as you are," the priest went on, "I give you credit for your courage."
"Give Desirée credit too! There is a woman of steel, Father. A fit mate for a Nor'wester!"
"But most unwilling, it seems!"
"Her will must break."
Black Ferguson turned again to glimpse her fully. He played again his trick of mounting the ladder rungs.
Brochet thought the Nor'wester was baiting her out of sardonic recklessness. This was partially the truth, but had the priest followed Black Ferguson's eyes more closely, he would have seen that the cunning giant had an ulterior purpose in his baiting. Once more he dropped back to Brochet's side without betraying that purpose.
"Beautiful and brave!" he gloated. "Brave and beautiful! Did you ever see her like, Father Marcin? I'll wager not. Not even in the Pontiac! Yet look what madness it is—this standing at bay. I don't want her destroyed. Nor the fort. She knows that. But how long can she play this pretty game? Soon she will need food, and with that she-fiend who planted her here gone, she will never get it. What then? What then, my worthy priest? You see it is no use. Go up and reason with her, Father. You have wisdom. She will listen. As for me I can wait a little longer!"
He urged Brochet through the opening and closed the trapdoor. His heavy boots clattered down the ladder. The outer door of the fur-house opened and shut.
Dropping her weapon, Desirée swayed forward on unsteady feet and, sobbing with nerve-strain, collapsed on the priest's breast.
"My child, my child," murmured Father Brochet.
And when she lay a little quieter in his arms, he whispered in her ear a word about Dunvegan and Dreaulond.
"They can't be far off," he explained. "A few miles behind Cartienne's canoe! That would be all—just enough to keep well out of sight or sound. And I shouldn't wonder if they're about La Roche now!"
"But what can two men do?" cried Desirée, utterly hopeless. "He—he will only sacrifice himself. And for me in the end it will be this." She motioned to the powder, and then drawing away from Brochet with a return of strength went and seated herself upon the keg.
"You had—you had the pistol," ventured the priest.
"Yes," she returned quietly, "but I could not use it even on a beast. You yourself would not have me use it so, Father!"
"No, daughter, not so! Nor yet the other way—the powder! Pray God he gives Dunvegan strength to do something."
Brochet paced up and down in a distracted manner. There was little he could say. Reason with her the Nor'wester had ordered! The priest would rather see her press the trigger above the keg than reason her into the arms of the Nor'wester lord. He began to question her as to the details of the attack upon the York Factory packet. Desirée explained how they had been waylaid, for since she was in the hands of the victors after the skirmish she could better learn how they had fulfilled their plans than could Basil Dreaulond who had escaped. She shuddered when she told of the accident to Glyndon which happened afterwards as they made speed to Fort La Roche.
For accident it was in Desirée's eyes. How could she know that the men of the party had had their orders from Black Ferguson before they departed on their mission? Father Brochet did not enlighten her.
She went on to tell of the arrival at the Nor'west stronghold, of Ferguson's greeting with his offer of marriage. Her eyes flashed as she spoke of it.
"Did you ever see a panther stalk a fawn?" she cried. "That was it! But I defied him. I scorned him. I—I spurned him. Yet defiance seemed only to increase his appetite. He laughed at my fear. He roared at my fury. He thrust me into a locked chamber to change my mind before the priest arrived. He said I was lucky to have a priest——"
She paused, interrupted by a slight sound which seemed to come up from the river. The wall trembled never so slightly. "What is it?" she whispered.
Brochet had stepped swiftly to the other end of the powder room and laid ear to a loop-hole. Suddenly his left hand beckoned. Desirée tip-toed across.
"What?" she panted. "Who?" She breathed in little gasps.
"I don't know, daughter," murmured the priest, his voice tremulous with excitement. "Dunvegan—maybe. He swore he would carry you over these walls."
"What madness!" Desirée gasped. "Think of the cliffs. The stockades are fifty feet above the water. It would require a miracle!"
"You forget there is a God who still works miracles. And through earthly instruments! Remember the fur-chute!"
"But it is drawn up every night," the girl protested.
"To-night it cannot be, for the noise is coming from it. The Crees and voyageurs were unloading fur-bales. They have been careless and left it down. Or perhaps they have not finished. Pray Heaven they may not come back too soon!"
Undoubtedly the noise, as of someone crawling, was coming from the fur-chute, the long box-pipe of pine that projected like a spout from the lower room of the fur-house and slanted down over the stockades to within a few feet of the river's surface. It was used for the loading and unloading of pelts carried in canoes, the huge bales being hoisted or lowered by a stout rope which ran through the center on a pulley. The height of Fort La Roche above the water made such a contrivance necessary. It effected a tremendous saving of time and portaging up the steep.
The only drawback was that it afforded means of ingress to enemies, since an active man could pull himself up by the rope, and this the Nor'westers had overcome by hinging the fur-house end on a great wooden pin. Thus at will the spout could be raised like the arm of a derrick out of reach from anyone below.
That the chute was not raised now could hardly have been an oversight. Brochet knew that Ferguson was far too careful for that. It must mean that there was still work to be done. The priest sweated at every distant echo of voice or footfall for fear it heralded the return of the Nor'west voyageurs.
The scraping, crawling noise continued. While they strained to hear, their ears tense as those of listening deer, they caught a faint metallic sound from the room downstairs.
"Bolts," muttered Brochet, straightening up suddenly. "Now what does that mean?"
He was shown! The trapdoor behind them flew open and Black Ferguson's head and shoulders rose up. He had worked the ruse of coming back unheard. In his hand the priest could see a piece of binding cord drawn taut as if fastened to something under the powder-room's floor.
"Ho! Ho!" His huge laugh reverberated among the rafters. "Ho! Ho!"
Desirée dashed toward the kegs, but the Nor'wester swiftly jerked on the cord he held. A gap yawned in the floor before her feet. Kegs and pistol tumbled down into the fur-room.
"Ho! Ho!" roared Ferguson. "It's an old trapdoor where the ladder used to be. I put a string to the bolt. What do you think of my reasoning, Father? Better than yours, what?"
He had reached the floor and was rushing across to them.
"The candle, Father! The candle!" Desirée shrieked. For keg on keg of powder, many of them open, was still up-piled around the room.
She sprang for it. Black Ferguson sprang also and wrested the flaming taper from her fingers. Still laughing, he shoved her aside with one great paw and replaced the light in the sconce on the wall.
"There's a spitfire, Father Marcin," he exulted. "There's spirit for you. It's the spirit I want. By heaven you'll marry us now. I ask no better chancel."
And he leaped after the retreating girl.
"Wait till I get her in these arms," he cried hoarsely, his cheeks aflame, his eyes shining with desire. "Else will she not stand quiet for the vows!"
Fawn and panther!—the comparison Desirée herself had made! As tawny, as cruel, as strong, and as fierce to feed as any beast of prey the Nor'wester ran round the yawning floor-gap to seize her. As slim, as supple, as tender as any fawn Desirée crouched and trembled an instant before him. Then she leaped straight down through the opening.