She stood against the sunset, and her delicate height and proud head showed like a statue's. I stooped and lifted an imaginary glove from the sand.
"I take your gauge," I said. "But I find it a small and delicate gauntlet for so warlike a purpose. May I wear it next my heart, madame?"
She looked at me proudly. "I am serious," she said.
"And I take you seriously," I rejoined. I stepped to her and let my hand touch hers. "You wrong me. I find that I take you very seriously indeed. Believe me. But I have always lived in the present. Come, we have been grave long enough. Let us be children and take the passing moment. Madame, Montreal is very far away."
We slept at that place that night, and the stars came out clear, and the water on the sand sang like a harp played by the wind. I slept, but I dreamed. I thought that Lord Starling came to me, and that the woman went away. And then the dream shifted, and I stood in a strange, barren mist-world, and I was alone. I saw the awful loneliness of creation, and immensity stretched around me. I traveled through infinite spaces of void and blackness, and found no sound of voice or life, yet all the time, welling high within me, was a tide, the fullness of which I had never known in my waking hours. All the strength that I had hoarded, all the desire for love that I had pushed aside, all of the fierce commotions of unrest that mark us from the brute, stirred in me till I felt as if I were suffocating, and cried out for a helping hand. But I was alone, and gray wastes surrounded me, and my surge of feeling beat itself out against desolation. I woke with sweat on my forehead.
I woke to a black night. The stars looked cold, and the men beside me lay as if dead. I looked up and watched the roll of the planets. The mystery of infinity which lies naked at midnight in the wilderness drives some men mad. Heretofore I had been untouched by it except with delight. Now I crept cautiously to my feet and went softly to the woman.
I know that I stepped without sound, but as I stood for a moment looking down at the couch of boughs where she lay I heard a guarded whisper.
"Monsieur, monsieur."
I bent over her. Her eyes were not only open, but wakeful, and her small face looked white against the dark blanket.
"What is it, monsieur?" she whispered.
I knelt that I might answer softly. "I woke, and thought you were in danger. I came to look at you and be sure that all was well. You do not sleep, madame?"
She shook her head. "I slept, but I dreamed. And you, monsieur?"
"I, too, have dreamed."
I thought that she smiled at me, though her face, when I leaned to see it clearly, blurred into the dark.
"Will you sleep the rest of the night within sound of my voice?" she asked, with a little tremble in her whisper. "The wilderness tonight is like that storm. Its greatness terrifies me. Do you think that all is well, monsieur?"
I was glad that she could not see my face. "Yes, I think that all is very well," I answered. "Blessedly well. Sleep, now, madame. I shall stay here, and your whisper would wake me. Is there terror in the wilderness now?"
Again she shook her head. "No," she whispered.
I lay beside her couch and cushioned my head in my arm. I had answered her truly. All was very well with me, for at last I saw clearly; I knew myself. The dream, the night, and something that I could not name, had stripped me naked to my own understanding. I felt as if, man that I had thought myself, I had played with toys until this moment, and that now, for the first time, I was conscious of my full power for joy or suffering. I looked up through the star spaces and was grateful for knowledge, for knowledge even if it brought pain.
I had not lain this way long when I heard her stir.
"Monsieur," came her whisper.
I lifted myself to my knees. "Yes, madame."
"You were not asleep?"
"No, madame."
"Monsieur, I was loath to disturb you, but I cannot sleep. Tell me. Suppose that Lord Starling should find us. Will he have power to take me?"
"Away from your husband? How could he, madame?"
She stirred, and turned her face from me, even though I could not see it in the dark.
"But he has a warrant," she whispered. "The letter said that you must deliver me to my cousin if we were found. What will be done with you, monsieur, if you refuse to obey?"
Then I bent close and let her hear me laugh softly.
"I know of no warrant that applies to you," I murmured. "Cadillac's letter mentioned an Englishman. I know of none such. I travel with a woman, my wife, and commandants have naught to do with us. Was that what was troubling you, madame?"
She bowed, and her breath came unevenly. Her right hand lay outside the blanket, and I bent and touched it with my lips.
"How you hate Lord Starling! How you hate him!" I whispered. "I wonder, can you love as singly? Can you love with as little care for self and comfort and for all the fat conveniences of life? Madame, you are a willful child to lie here and tilt at shadows when you should be garnering strength by sleep. I promised you my sword and my name, and I agreed that they should both be yours till of your own wish you should send me away. Had you forgotten that I promised? I had not."
I had slipped to my knees again and rested with my forehead on her hand. I could feel her other hand stray toward me.
"No," she whispered. "No, I had not forgotten, but the dark and a sudden loneliness made me a coward. Thank you. It is over now and I will sleep. Monsieur, my partner, I will say good-night, and this time I will not call you."
But I rested a moment longer on my knees with my head against her palm.Then I rose.
"Partners, perhaps," I said softly. "Yet more than that. Madame, are we not like pilgrims groping our way together on a dark road? We cannot see far ahead, but there is a light in the distance. I think that we shall reach it. Good-night. We shall both sleep now, madame."
But she slept and I did not. It was nearly day when I closed my eyes again, yet I did not find the moments long.
The next morning was quiet and the sky clear. I had read my maps rightly, and once embarked, an hour of paddling brought us to Sturgeon Cove. It opened before us suddenly, a wedge of flecked turquoise laid across the shaded greens of the peninsula. As we entered it a flock of white gulls rose from the rocky shore and flew before us. The air, rain washed, was so limpid that it seemed a marvel that it could sustain the heavy-pinioned birds, but they moved in sure curves and seemed to bear us with them. I pointed the woman's glance toward them.
"An omen. We shall follow them and rest here. It is our home."
We nosed our way, with leisurely paddles, close to the northern shore. The land sloped gently from the beach, and the quivering water, a faded green from the tree shadows, crawled over gravel that was patterned with the white of quartz and with the pomegranate of carnelian. It was a jeweled pavement, and it led to forest aisles where cathedral lights splashed through the trees. But I would not stop. The gulls were still leading.
The bay narrowed, and the shores pressed close to us, with compact ranks of cedars held spearwise. Yet we pushed on, and the water path spread out once more, a final widening. We saw before us the rounded end of the bay, and the neck of land that formed the Sturgeon portage. The woman looked at me.
"What now, monsieur?"
But I smiled at her with my conceit untroubled. I had seen reeds close to the northern shore. "Halt!" I cried to the canoes.
We lay quiet a moment, and the birds glancing back at us found us suddenly harmless. The reeds under them were swarming with young fish. The gulls looked down and squawked in a hungry chorus. In a moment they lighted, balancing their great wings like reefing sails.
I laughed as I looked at the woman. It was a small triumph, but intoxication breeds easy laughter. I had been drinking deep that morning of a sparkling happiness more disturbing than any wine.
We sent the canoes shoreward into the curve where the reeds lay. The stiff green withes rattled against our canoes like hail, and gave warning of our approach for a half mile distant. I nodded my inner approval.
"The gulls are wise," I said to the woman. "We could not plan a better water defense to our camp."
The grass came down to the water, and we pulled the canoes over short turf and into beds of white blossoms. A cloud of butterflies rose to greet us; they too were satin-white, the color that a bride should wear, and they fluttered over us without fear. The smell of the grasses rose like incense. With all the light and perfume there was a sense of quiet, of deep content and peace. Even the woods that fringed the meadow seemed kindly. They did not have the sombre awe of the heavy timber, but looked sun-drenched and gay.
"We shall stay here," I said. "Unload the canoes."
Five men with good sinews, some understanding, and well-sharpened axe blades, can make a great change in the forest in one day. When the sunset found us I had a fortified house built for my wife. It was framed of fragrant pine, and occupied the extremity of a spit of land that lay next the meadow. Its door opened on the water, and I made the opening wide so that the stars might look in at night. All about the sides and rear of the house were laid boughs, one upon another, and on the top of this barricade was stretched a long cord threaded with hawk's bells. The lodges for myself and the men we placed in the rear, and behind them we laid still another wall of brush to separate us from the forest. I was satisfied with the defenses. With the reeds in front and the brush behind, any intruder would sound his own alarm.
The woman took Singing Arrow and went to her house early that night, but I sat late over my charts and journal. I had much to study and more to plan.
Yet I was abroad the next morning while the stars were still reflected in the bay. Labarthe was with me, and we took Singing Arrow's light canoe and packed it with supplies and merchandise. Then we breakfasted on meal and jerked meat and were ready to start.
But the rest of the men were not yet astir, and the woman's house was silent. I walked to it and stood irresolute. I disliked to wake her. Yet I could not leave her without some message. But while I pondered I heard her step behind me. She came up from the water, and she looked all vigor and morning gladness.
"Why the canoe so early?" she called. "Do we have fish for breakfast?"
I took her hand. "Come with me to the water." I led her to the canoe and pointed out the bales of supplies. "You see we are ready for work. We shall be back in a few days."
She dropped my hand. "Then why did you build that house?"
"Why not, madame?"
"But you say that we are to go this morning."
"I must go, madame."
"And you intend to leave me here?"
"Why, yes, madame."
"But you said 'we.'"
I looked some amazement. "I take Labarthe with me. I leave three men with you on guard. There is nothing to fear."
And then she threw back her head. "I do not think that I am afraid," she said more quietly. "But—I was not prepared for this. It had not occurred to me that you would go away."
I stopped a moment. "I do not go for pleasure. Indeed, I cannot imagine a fairer spot in which to linger and forget the world. But did you think that I would sit in idleness, madame?"
She looked down. "I do not know that I thought at all about it. It has gone on like a play, a dream. Perhaps I thought it would continue. Your plan is to travel from tribe to tribe, and come back here at intervals?"
"That is my plan. I shall buy furs and cache them here. I shall try not to be away more than a week at a time. I regret that I surprised you. I did not think but that you understood."
She stood biting her lips and smiling to herself in half-satiric, half-whimsical fashion. "It says little for my intelligence that I was unprepared. You are a man, not a courtier. I should have known that you would not waste an hour. I wish that I might go with you."
"Madame, I wish it, too."
She looked up more briskly. "But that would be impossible. Have you instructions for me, monsieur?"
"Madame, if you are afraid, come with me."
"I am not afraid if you say that it is safe, monsieur."
"Thank you, madame. I think that it is entirely safe. Pierre is a good deal of a fool and more of a knave, but in some few respects there is no one like him; he is a rock. You are my wife and in his charge. He will guard you absolutely."
"Are we in danger of attack?"
"I can imagine no possible reason for attack, else I should not leave you. The Indians are friendly. One thing troubles me. Your cousin—— Should"——
She looked up. "Should Lord Starling find me?" she completed. "Well, he would tarry here until you came. He would at least show that courtesy. I can promise as much as that for the family name, monsieur."
I smiled at her. "I shall await the meeting," I said with unction. I motioned Labarthe to the paddle, and I kissed the woman's hand.
"I salute your courage. I shall see you within the week, madame."
She looked straight at me. "And until then, good fortune."
But I paused. "Wish me opportunity. That is all that I ask from you or of you,—opportunity. Good-by for a week, madame."
I squatted beside many camp fires in the next week. I sat in the flattened cones of the Chippewas' tepees and smoked innumerable pipes of rank tobacco with the old men. I traded some, but talked more, and at the end of the week I started home. I waited for a pleasant day and a westerly wind, for the small canoe was perilously laden with skins. There was scarcely room for Labarthe and myself to crowd down on our knees and use our paddles.
We slipped into Sturgeon Cove late in the afternoon, and swept with the wind up the stretches of the bay to the camping ground. Summer was at flood tide, and the air was pungent and the leaves shining. The sunset shone through tattered ends of cloud, so that the west was hung with crimson banners. It was my first homecoming.
Before we reached the camp I saw the woman. She had strayed down the shore to the west,—too far for safety, I thought,—and was standing alone on the sand, looking toward the sunset. Her head was back, and her arms flung out to the woods and the shining sky. I have sometimes found myself stretching my own arms in just that fashion when I have been alone and have felt something pressing within me that was too large for speech. I motioned Labarthe to ship his paddle that I might look. The western glow was full upon the woman, and her lips were parted. The open sleeves of her skin blouse fell away from her arms, which had grown gently rounded since I saw her first. I could not see her eyes, but she looked somewhere off into the untraveled west,—the west that was the portal of my enterprise. What was her thought? I must not let myself trap it unaware. I gave a long, low call; the call of the loon as he skirts the marshes in the twilight.
She turned instantly and saw us. I bent forward. The drabbled plume of my hat swept the water, and I heard Labarthe curse under his breath, and beg me remember that the canoe was laden. But just then I had no caution in me.
The woman's arms dropped. She had a moment of indecision, and she stood looking at me with the sunset in her face and eyes. Then she suddenly thrust out both hands towards me across the stretch of water. I could see her smooth-skinned brown fingers, and one wore my ring. She bade me welcome. I bent to my paddle, and would have crashed the canoe up to the shore.
But she forestalled me. She was already on her way back to the camp, and if she knew that I had started toward her she did not let me see. So I had, perforce, to follow. She walked with the free, gliding step of a woman whose foot had been trained on polished surfaces. I watched her, and let Labarthe paddle our way through the reeds.
We reached the camp, deafened by Pierre's bellow of greeting. The woman had kept pace with us, and stood waiting for us to disembark. She was breathing quickly and the blood was in her brown cheeks; her great eyes were frankly opened and shining. I pushed by the men and bent to kiss her hand.
"Madame, thank you for my welcome home."
She bowed, and I caught the perfume of a rose on her breast. "Monsieur, we are all rejoiced to see you safe." Her tone took, half-whimsically, the note of court and compliment. The fingers that I still held were berry stained. She showed them to me with a laugh and a light word, and so made excuse to draw them away. Her hair had grown long enough to blow into her eyes, and she smoothed a soft loose wave of it as she questioned me about my voyage.
I was new to the wonder of seeing her there, so answered her stupidly. For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that found me unprepared. I made but a poor figure. It was as well that work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away and direct the men.
We ate our supper at the time of the last daylight, and the whippoorwills were calling and the water singing in the reeds. It was a silent meal, but I sat beside the woman, and when it was over I drew her with me to the shore. It was very still. Fireflies danced in the grasses, and the stars pricked out mistily through a gauze of cloud. I wrapped the woman in her fur coat, and bade her sit, while I stretched myself at her feet. Then I turned to her.
"Madame, have you questions for me that you did not wish the men to hear?"
She sat very quietly, but I knew that her hand, which was within touch of mine, grew suddenly rigid.
"Monsieur, you heard nothing of Lord Starling?"
I touched her hand lightly. "Nothing, madame. I have no news."
"Then matters stand just as they did a week ago?"
I hesitated. "As concerns Lord Starling, yes. As concerns ourselves—— Madame, I carry a lighter heart than I did. All this week I have feared that you were fretting at the loneliness and the rough surroundings. But I find you serene and the surface of life smooth. It is a gallant spirit that you bring to this situation. I thank you, madame."
She did not speak for a moment, so that I wondered if I had vexed her. I looked up straight into her great eyes that were full on me, and there was something disquietingly alight in her glance, a flicker of that lightning that had played between us on the day of the storm.
"Monsieur!" she cried, with a little sobbing laugh. "I beg you never to thank me—for anything. The stream of gratitude must always run from me to you. I have not been serene because of any will of mine. It has been instinctive. I can sometimes carry out a fixed purpose, but I do it stiffly, inflexibly, not as you do, with a laugh and a shrug, monsieur. No, no! My serenity has not been calculated. I have been—I have been almost happy. It is strange, but it is true."
I drew my hand away from her finger tips, for my own were shaking."Madame, what makes you happy?"
She looked down at me with frank seriousness, but her eyes still kept their sweet, strange brightness; she pressed her palms together as she always did when much in earnest.
"Monsieur, is it so strange after all? Think of the wonder of what I see about me! The great stars, the dawns, and the strange waters that go no one knows where. I have lived all my life in courts and have not felt trammeled by them, but now—— Monsieur, there is a freedom, yes, and a happiness stirring in me that I have not known. I wonder if you understand?"
I watched the starlight draw elfin lines across her face, and my heart suddenly cried through my tongue words that my brain would have forbidden.
"I understand this at least. Madame, you talk of happiness. I am finding happiness at this moment that I never felt at court,—no, nor in the wilderness till now."
She did not draw back nor protest, but she looked at me with wistful gravity.
"Monsieur—— Monsieur"——
"I am your servant, madame."
She halted. "This is a masque, a comedy," she stumbled. "This—this life in the greenwood. Does it not seem a fantasy?"
"You seem very real to me, madame."
"Monsieur, I tell you, it is a masque. Will you not help me play it as such?"
"You treat it as a masque in your own heart, madame?"
She turned her face into the shadow. "I eat, I sleep, I laugh with the birds, and I play with Singing Arrow. I do not look ahead." She rose. "Play with me. Play it is a dream, monsieur."
I rose and stepped beside her toward her cabin. "I am a man," I said, with a short laugh of my own. "I cannot spin words nor cheat myself. But I shall not distress you. Do not fear me, madame."
But her step lingered. "You leave us soon?"
"At dawn to-morrow."
"Monsieur! And you go"——
"To the Winnebagoes. I shall return in a week."
She clasped her hands behind her as if her white cloak bound her. "To the Winnebagoes,—to another tribe of Indians! Are you sure that they are friendly? I forget that there are Indians in the forest, since I see none here. Ah, you must sleep now if you are to rise so early. Good-night, and—thank you, monsieur. Good-night." I had hardly bowed to her in turn before her long light step had brought her to her door.
And then I went back to work. The furs had been sorted, labeled, and cached; the canoe had been dried, and its splints examined and new bales of merchandise had been made up for the trip on the morrow. But there remained much writing and figuring to be gone over. It seemed as if I had but closed my eyes when Labarthe touched me on the shoulder and told me it was dawn.
And out in the dawn I found the woman. She had seen to it that the whole camp was astir, and the fire was crackling and the kettle already puffing steam. The morning was austere and gray-veiled, so that the red blaze was like the cheer of home. We ate with laughter, and sleepy birds scolded in the thickets. The woman sparkled with dainty merriment that held my thanks at bay. It was only when she waved her adieus at the beach that she dropped her foils.
"I shall pray for fair winds, monsieur," she called.
I looked back at her across the widening water. "Madame, can you hear me? The wind I pray for will blow me back to you."
Metaphor aside, it was a favorable day and the breeze was with us. We pushed up a tarpaulin on our paddles for a square sail, and covered the distance to the west shore of La Baye in a few hours. Before night we were lifting the rush mats that hung before the reed-thatched lodges of the Winnebagoes.
And here for seven days I plied my trade. A man has many coats and all may fit him. The one that I wore in those days showed the bells and ribands of the harlequin, but there was chain armor underneath. I counted my results as satisfactory when I started home.
We did not reach the camp on this second homecoming till after the stars were out. That left me too few hours for a large labor, and I had but hurried greetings from the woman while all the camp looked on. The men were sleek from idleness, and I had need to goad them with word and eye. It was late before I could linger at the woman's cabin and beg a word. She sat with Singing Arrow, watching the soft night, and again her first question was of her cousin.
"You have heard nothing of Lord Starling?"
Was this fear of him or a covert wish to meet him? "Nothing, madame,"I replied. "But I have been to the south far out of your cousin's way.I go next to the Malhominis. I think I shall certainly hear tidings ofhim there."
"You go to-morrow?"
"I must, madame. Madame, I have been anxious about you. Will you promise me not to stray alone from the camp?"
She left the cabin and came and stood beside me in the quiet and starshine. She looked off at the forest.
"Is there danger around us, monsieur?"
I followed her look back into the dark timber. We both hushed our breathing till we heard the moan of the water and the lament of some strange night bird. The woman was so small, and yet I left her in the wilderness without me!
"Keep close to the camp," I said hoarsely. "No, I know of no danger.But keep close to the camp."
Her glance came back to me. "Ah, you do think there is danger! But, monsieur, of yourself—— If there is peril for me there must be more for you."
She looked at me fully, with no fear in her eyes, but with quick, intelligent concern. She stood beside me in the dusk, as wife should stand with husband, and feared for my safety and forgot her own. Yet I dared not touch her hand. I lifted my sword and slammed it in its scabbard.
"There is no danger," I said, with stupid brusqueness. "I am over-anxious. I bid you good-night, madame."
I went to the Malhominis with haste pushing me, for I hoped for news of Starling. I pressed forward, yet I recoiled. There would be cross-threads to untangle when I met my wife's cousin.
It was wonderful voyaging to the Malhominis. Their village was near the mouth of a river, and they were close bound with great rice swamps that gave them their name. Our low canoe burrowed through a tunnel of green as we nosed our way up to their camp. Birds fluttered in the tangle, and fish bubbled to the surface under our paddles. I did not wonder that I found the tribe as well fed as summer beavers. But I learned nothing from them. They were a good-natured people, as running over with talk as idle women, and they assured me that I was the first white man they had seen since the moon of worms. We talked of the Huron situation at Michillimackinac, but they said nothing of having seen a warrior of that tribe, so I made sure that Pemaou had not been with them. I swallowed relief and disappointment. They said that a small company of Sacs was encamped to the north, and that Father Nouvel was with them. So after a few days I went on.
A waft of fetid air on a hot day will bring the smell of that Sac camp to me even now. The Sacs were a migratory, brutish people, who snatched at life red-handed and growling, and as I squatted in their dirty hovels, I lost, like a dropped garment, all sense of the wonder and freedom of my wilderness life. Suddenly all the forest seemed squalid, and a longing for the soft ease and cleanliness of civilization came on me like a wave. But I hid the feeling, and lingered, though my welcome was but slight. Even my small cask of brandy failed to buy their smiles, and it was only when I talked of war that they listened. They were a useless people on the water, for they could not handle canoes, but land warfare was their meat. So I talked long.
I found Father Nouvel among them, his delicate old face shining white and serene amid their grime. I fell upon him eagerly, but he could tell me nothing. He had left the Pottawatamies the day after the wedding, and had heard no rumors of any Englishman. I did not take him into my confidence. He had outlived the time when the abstract terms "ambition" and "patriotism" had meaning to him. The story of my hopes would have tinkled in his ears like the blarings of a child's trumpet. But in one matter he questioned me.
"Your wife,—should you not have brought her with you, monsieur?"
I felt piqued. "But her comfort, Father Nouvel!"
He looked me over. "I think somehow that she would prefer your company to her own comfort," he said, and when I did not answer he looked troubled. When he bade me good-by, he spoke again.
"Your wife came strangely near my heart. You are giving her a hard life. You will be patient with her, monsieur?"
I bowed, for I did not wish to answer. Mine was a real marriage to Father Nouvel. I thought of the look in the priest's eyes as he made us man and wife, and of the voices of the Indian women as they chanted of life and marriage, and I shut my teeth on a sudden feeling of bitterness. A man may be counted rich yet know himself to be a pauper. I never saw Father Nouvel again. If he were living now I would go far to meet him.
It was a long day's travel back to Sturgeon Cove, and night had fallen before we wound our passage around the curves of the bay and saw the clear eye of the evening fire burning steadily on the shore. Our double trip had taken eleven days, and for me the time had lagged. I had carried an unreasoning weight of oppression, and the shout that I gave at sight of the black figures around the blaze was an outburst of relief.
My company flung themselves at the shore, and all talked at once.
"For three days we have watched," Singing Arrow scolded.
The woman stood near, and I went to her. "Have you watched for three days?" I asked, with my lips on her hand.
"Yes," she said, and then I felt ashamed, for her eyes looked worn and troubled.
"Forgive me, madame," I murmured, though I scarcely knew for what, andI felt embarrassed and without words.
"I will stay here to-morrow," I said stupidly, and when she said that she was glad, it did not seem to me that she meant it. I saw her no more that night.
But with the fresh morning I forgot all chill. We lingered over a breakfast of broiled bass, and the woman showed me a canoe that Simon had made for her. Simon was the deft-fingered member of my crew, and he had fashioned a fairy craft. I saw that it would carry two, and I said to the woman that we would take it, and have a day of idleness together. I feared she might demur, but she did not. Indeed, she suddenly laughed out like a child without much reason, and there was that in the sound that satisfied me, until I swore at the men and their blundering to keep down my own joy.
We took materials for lunch and started before the dew was dry. The woman showed me her new skill with the paddle, and I praised her without care for my conscience. We went slowly and we talked much. Yet we talked only of the birds and the woods and the paddling. Never of ourselves.
At noon we landed in a pocket of an inlet on the south side of the cove toward its mouth. There was a wonderful meadow there with tiger lilies burning like blood and a giant sycamore leaning to the water. I cooked a venison steak on hot stones, and we had maize cakes and wild berries and water from a spring. We sat alone at meat as we had never done.
After lunch the woman sat under the sycamore and I lay at her feet. I looked up at her till her eyes dropped.
"Madame," I whispered, "madame, you were vexed with me last night."
She forced her glance to mine. "Monsieur, I had been terribly anxious for three days. When I saw you"——
A sun ray fell across her face, and I took my hat and held it between her and the light. "You did not finish," I said. "I will help you. When you saw that I was safe you were vexed that I had not come earlier and so saved you anxiety? Is that what you were about to say, madame?"
She turned to smile and shake her head at my seriousness. She fought down her rising color and held her head like a gallant boy.
"I was unreasonable," she said. "Please forget it. Did your trading prosper, monsieur?"
But I would not shift my eyes. "I shall try not to vex you again in that way. I did not think—except of my own anxiety. Let me tell you what I have been doing. I have been trading, yes, but I have also"——
"Careful, monsieur!"
"I wish you to know. Madame, I am succeeding in my intriguing among the tribes. I talk more than I trade. You would smile at my rhetoric and call me a mountebank, but I am succeeding. I tell the tribes that when more than one Englishman reaches here the whole race will follow and will overflow the hunting grounds as a torrent does the lowlands. I tell them the English will bring the Iroquois. I show them that the French are their only protection. They listen, for what I say is not new. It has been talked around their fires for a long time, but the tribes are not powerful enough to act alone, and they have lacked a leader who could unite them. I think that they will follow me if I call them to war, madame!"
She looked at me steadily. "War upon whom, monsieur?"
"War upon the Iroquois. Upon the English if they venture near."
"And you tell me this because"——
"Because I wish sincerity between us."
My hat lay at her feet, and she pressed its sorry plume between her fingers. "Monsieur, if you had heard news of Lord Starling during this last week you would have told me at once."
"I should have told you at once, madame. I am glad you introduced this matter. Does your mind still hold? Or do you now think that we should seek your cousin?"
Again she lowered her eyes, but I did not miss the sudden flash in them. "My cousin chose his path. Why need we interfere? Have you—have you theories as to where he can be?"
I flicked my finger at a wandering robin. "I am as guiltless of theories as that bird. It is passing strange. Your cousin and our ghostly Huron seem to have gone up in vapor."
"Our ghostly Huron, monsieur?"
I planted my elbows on the grass that I might face her. "Listen, madame. It is time you knew the story of Pemaou." And thereupon I recited all that had happened between the Huron and myself from the day when we had played at shuttlecock with spears till the night when he had shadowed us at the Pottawatamie camp,—the night before our wedding. I even told her of the profile in his pouch.
She winced at that. "Why did you not tell me before?"
"It seemed useless to alarm you."
"But you tell me now."
I smiled at her. "I know you better. It seems fitting to tell you everything now, madame."
She looked at me with a frown of worry. "Monsieur, you are in danger from that Huron. He hates you if you humbled him."
I laughed at her. "He would not dare harm a Frenchman, madame."
"Then why does he follow you?"
But there I could only shrug. "He was probably in Lord Starling's pay, and was keeping track of us that he might direct your cousin to us. But we have shaken him off."
She thought this over for some time without speaking, and I was content to lie silent at her feet. Bees droned in the flowers and white drifts of afternoon clouds floated over us. I was happy in the moment, and more than that, I was drugged with my dreams of the future. There were days and days and days before us. This was but the threshold. And then, with my ear to the ground, I heard the sound of an axe. The sound of an axe in an untraveled wilderness!
I crowded closer to the ground. My blood beat in my temples, and I was awake with every muscle. But I learned nothing. The sound of an axe and then silence.
The woman looked at me. "Monsieur, is something wrong? Your face has changed."
I stretched out my hand to her. "You must not grow fanciful. But come. It is time to go home, madame."
I pushed her into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the light. I dropped my paddle.
"Tell me more about yourself. Talk to me. Tell me of your childhood,"I breathed.
She put out her hand. "Monsieur! Our contract!"
I let the canoe drift. "Madame; tell me the truth. Why do you hold yourself so detached from me? Is it—— Madame, is it because you fear that we shall learn to love each other,—to love against our wills?"
She looked down. "It would be a tragedy if we did, monsieur."
"You would think it a tragedy to learn to love me?"
"It could be nothing else, monsieur."
The breeze took us where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking canoe. I leaned forward.
"Listen, madame, you know life. You know how little is often given under the bond of marriage. You know how men and women live long lives together though completely sundered in heart, and how others though separated in life walk side by side in the spirit. As this is so, why do you fear to see or know too much of me? Propinquity does not create love."
Still she looked down. "Men say that it does, monsieur."
"Then why are so many marriages unhappy? No, madame, you know better than that. And you know that if love should grow between us it would sweep away your toy barriers like paper. Nearness or absence would not affect it. Madame, let me have your hand."
"No, no! Monsieur, I do not know you."
"You shall know me better. Come, what is a hand? There. Madame, would you prefer, from now on, to travel in hardship with me rather than be left in comfort here?"
"I should indeed, monsieur."
"Then you shall go with me."
"But your work, monsieur!"
I released her hand and picked up my paddle. "I see that Indian tribes are not my only concern," I explained. "I have other matters to conquer. We shall not be separated from now on."
She did not answer, and I paddled home in silence with my eyes on her face. As we landed, she gave me her hand.
"I do not care for supper, and am going to my house. Good-night, monsieur."
I bowed over her hand. "Are you glad that you are to travel with me and know me better? Are you glad, madame?"
She smiled a little. "I—I think so, monsieur."
"You are not sure? Think of it to-night. Perhaps you will tell me to-morrow. Will you tell me to-morrow, madame?"
She drew back into the dusk. "Perhaps—to-morrow. Good-night, monsieur."
I walked through the meadow. I would not eat supper and I would not work. Finally I called Simon. He was a strange, quiet man, not as strong as the others of the crew, but of use to me for his knowledge of woodcraft. As a boy he had been held captive by the Mohawks, and he was almost as deft of hand and eye as they.
"Have you seen any sign or sound of Indian or white men in these three weeks?" I asked him.
He looked at me rather sullenly. "Yes. A canoe went through here one night about a week ago."
"Who was in it?"
"I do not know."
"You should have followed."
"I did."
"You should have reported to me."
He glowered at me with the eye of a rebellious panther. "I watched. The master went away." Then he showed his teeth in open defiance. "I watched every night on the beach. The master slept or went away."
I opened my mouth to order him under guard, but I did not form the words. I thought of the way that he had spent his days working on the delicately fashioned canoe and his nights in keeping guard. And all for the woman. Women make mischief in the wilderness. I grew pitiful.
"Watch again to-night," I said kindly, "and you shall sleep to-morrow. Simon, I thought that I heard the sound of an axe off the south shore to-day. I shall take the small canoe at daybreak and see what I can find. Tell the camp I have gone fishing. I shall return by noon. And, Simon"——
"Yes, master."
"Madame de Montlivet is your special care till I return."
I slipped off in grayness the next morning. There was a water fog that hugged me clammily, and sounds echoed in it as in a metal canopy. I could not have found my way in open water, but here I could crowd tight to the shore and keep my bearings. I took a keg of pitch with me, for when I saw the weather I knew that I would give the canoe many a scrape on rocks and snags.
It was tedious traveling, and it seemed a long time before I made my worming way around every inequality in the shore and reached the inlet where we had eaten lunch. Here I lifted the canoe, turned it bottom side up in the meadow, and covered it with a sailcloth. I wanted it to dry, and the air was still dripping moisture. I had expected the fog to lift before this, but it seemed to be growing heavier.
I tried to light my pipe, but the tobacco was damp and would not burn. Slow drops dribbled from the trees and the meadow was soggy. Where should I go? I could hear nothing, and as for seeing anything I could have passed my own camp a rod away. It began to seem a fool's errand. I thought of returning.
Perhaps it was a boyish feeling that took me to the sycamore. I looked about. The ashes of our little fire still lay in a rounded pile, and at the edge of the pile, printed deep in the yielding surface, was a moccasin print. It was not the woman's moccasin, nor my own boot. One look showed me that.
And then I went over the surrounding ground. I learned nothing, for pebbles and short grass are as non-committal as a Paris pavement. The print had been made before the mist fell, for the dew was unbrushed. I looked at the encircling forest, and its dripping uniformity gave no clue. I knocked the charred tobacco from my pipe, pulled my hat down on my ears, and plunged straight ahead.
It was a fool's way of going at the matter, but a fool has as good a chance as a philosopher in such a case. I clove my way through the mist as blind and breathless as a swimmer in a breaker. The forest was thickly grown and the trees stood about me as alike as water-reeds. Whenever I touched one it pelted me with drops, and I was numbed with cold. My feet slipped, for the ground was slimy with wet. But I was not thinking of comfort, nor of speed. I was listening.
For the strange, gray air was trembling with echoes. Every snapped twig, every bird murmur, every brush of a padded foot on leaf mould was multiplied many-fold. The fog was a sounding-board. All the spectral space around me, above me, below me was quivering and talking. My very breath was peopled with murmurs. I have been in many fogs, but none like this one. If the spirits of the dead should revisit us, they would whisper, I think, as the air whispered around me then.
How long I groped, learning nothing, I do not know, for when the mind forgets the body minutes may be long or short, and no count is taken of them. But at last among the noises that knocked at my ear came a new note. I heard a human voice.
And then, indeed, I pressed all my faculties into service. I put my ear to the wet ground and strained it against tree trunks, trying to weed out the myriad tiny whisperings that assailed me and grasp that one sound that I wanted and hold it clear. And at last I heard it unmistakably; there were voices, more than one it seemed.
My ears buzzed with my effort to listen. I heard the sound, lost it, then heard it again. It was like a child's game. I heard it, blundered after it, then it disappeared. I turned to go back, and it came behind and mocked me. It was everywhere and nowhere. It came near, then faded into silence. The fog suffocated me; I found myself pressing at it with my hands.
Yet on the whole I made progress. In time the voices grew clearer. There were several of them, perhaps many. I heard shouting,—orders, presumably,—and once a clink of metal,—an iron kettle it might have been. But the sound was back of me, in front of me, at the sides of me, above me. I could not hold it. It reverberated like the drumming of a woodcock that comes to the ear from four quarters at once. And all the time the fog pressed on my eyelids like a hand.
I had left my musket hidden under the canoe, for I could not have used it in the dampness, so I had only my knife for guard. I carried it open, and made an occasional notch upon a tree. Once I came to a notched tree a second time. The old woodland madness was on me, and I was stepping in circles. Yet the sounds were growing clearer. They were approaching, though I could not tell from what quarter. I stood still.
What followed was like a dream; like the dream that I had had the night after the storm when I woke with sweat cold on me. The fog pinioned me like a clammy winding-sheet; I could see nothing; I was too chilled to feel; I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the damp leather of the carrying-straps. Something cracked, pricking in my ears in a blur of sound, and I knew that the men had brushed a branch with the canoe that they were carrying on their heads. They were near me; at any moment they might come within touch of my hand. But where were they? Whoever they were, whatever they were, the wish to see them became an obsession. I knew no feeling but my tingling to get at them. I pushed to right and left. I knocked against trees. The sounds were here, then there. I could not reach them. They taunted me as lost spirits tantalize a soul in purgatory. Whichever way I turned they were just out of my grasp. I clenched my hands and swore that I would not be beaten.
But my pitiful little oath was all bluster and impotent defiance. I was as helpless as a squirming puppy held by the neck. I ran like a madman, but I ran the wrong way. The invisible crew passed me, and their voices faded. I heard them melt, melt into nothing. A sound, an impression,—that had been all. Not even a gray shadow on the fog to show that I had not been dreaming. I looked at my skinned knuckles and disordered clothes, and a strange feeling shook me. A certain rashness of temperament had all my life made me contemptuous of fear. But this was different. I tried to laugh at myself, but could not.
It was a simple matter to retrace my route, for I had left a trail like a behemoth's. And one thought I chewed all the way back to the meadow. If I could have done it over again I should have called, and so have drawn whatever thing it was toward me. That would have been dangerous, and I might have paid the forfeit of a head that was not my own to part with, but at least I should have seen what thing it was that passed me in the fog. There began to be something that was not wholly sound and sane in the depth of my feeling that I ought, at whatever cost, to have confronted that noise and forced it to declare itself.
When I came to the meadow it was wet and spectral. The fog had lifted somewhat and now the air was curiously luminous. It appeared transparent, as if the vision could pierce far-stretching reaches, but when I tried to peer ahead I found my glance baffled a few feet away. It was as if the world ended suddenly, exhaled in grayness, just beyond the reach of my hand. It made objects remote and unreal and singularly shining. I looked toward the sycamore, and my heart beat fast for a moment, for I thought that a pool of fresh blood lay in the grass where the woman and I had sat the day before. But I looked again and saw that it was only the bunch of red lilies that she had plucked and worn and thrown away. I had told her that their red was the color of war, and she had let them drop to the ground. I went to them and picked them up, and they left heavy, scarlet stains upon my fingers.
When I went to the canoe I found it still damp, but I uncovered it and went to work to do what I could with the frayed seams. An unreasoning haste had possession of me, and I worked fumblingly and badly, like a man with fear behind him. Yet I was not afraid. I was consumed by the feeling that I must get back to camp and to the woman without delay.
Kneeling to my work with my back to the forest, strange noises came behind and begged attention. But I would not look up. I had had enough of visions and whisperings and a haunted wood. I wanted my canoe and my paddle and a chance to shoot straight and to get home. For already I thought of the camp as home, and of this meadow as a place where I had been held for a long time. It was a strange morning.
And so it was that even when I heard the thud, thud of a man's step behind me I did not turn. A man's step is unlike an animal's, and I had no doubt in my heart that a man was coming. But let him come to me. My immediate and pressing concern was to repair my canoe that I might get to camp, and I would squander neither movement nor eyesight till that was done. A few moments before it had seemed a vital matter to find what creatures they were that whispered and rustled past me in the grayness. Now my anxiety was transferred.
The echoing fog played witchcraft with the step as it had done with the other noises. The sound came, came, came,—a steady, moderate note; no haste, no dallying, no indecision. Quiet, purposeful, controlled, it sounded; that pace, pace, that came through the twig-carpeted timber. The Greek Fates were pictured as moving with just that even relentlessness of stride. Yet in life, so far as I have seen it, tragedies commonly pounce upon us, like a wolfish cat upon her prey, and we find ourselves stunned and mangled before we gather dignity to meet the blow. I thought of this, in an incoherent, muddy way, as the step came nearer. And I worked with hurrying hands at the canoe.
Then came a voice. No whispering, no rustling, nothing vague and formless and haunting, but a low, commanding call:—
"Bonjour, mon ami."
I did not start. If I turned slowly it was because I knew what was waiting me, and was adjusting several possibilities to meet it. It was a man's voice that called, yet its every inflection was familiar, familiar as the beating of my heart. For madame, my wife, had called to me more or less often in the twin of that voice with its slurring deliberateness and its insolent disregard of the pitfall accents of a foreign tongue. And now I turned to meet her cousin, the man whom she had promised to marry; the man who had deserted her to the knives of savages; the man whom she despised and yet feared, and who now called to me in a voice that was hers and yet was not; that haunted and repelled, all in one. I did not think out any of this by rule and line. I only knew that I dreaded meeting this man who was stepping, stepping into my life through the fog, and that I turned to meet him with my heart like ice but my brain on fire.
I had ado to keep my tongue from exclaiming when I turned. I do not know why I expected the man to be small, except that I myself am overly large, and that I was looking for him to be my antithesis in every way. But the figure that loomed toward me out of the luminous mist dwarfed my own stature. Never had my eyes seen so powerful a man. Long and swinging as an elk, he had the immense, humped shoulders of a buffalo and the length of arm of a baboon. His head would have sat well on some rough bronze coin of an early day. Semitic in type he looked, with his eagle-beaked nose and prominent cheek bones, but the blue of his eyes was English. They were intelligent eyes.
He looked at me a moment, and I stood silent for his initiative. I remembered that I was dressed roughly, was torn and rumpled by my contest with the forest, and that I must appear an out-at-elbowscoureur de bois. He would not know me for the man he was seeking. I waited for him to ask my name, and selected one to give him that was my own and yet was not M. de Montlivet. Since names cannot be sold nor squandered, my father had bequeathed me a plethora of them.
But I credited the Englishman with too little acuteness. He stepped forward. "This is Monsieur de Montlivet?"
I could do no less than bow, but I kept my hand by my side. "And you, monsieur?"
He smiled as at one indulging a childish skirmish of wits; but controlled as his face was, I could see the relief that overspread it at my admission. "My name is Starling. I have a packet for you, monsieur," and he handed me Cadillac's letter.
I hated the farce of the whole affair, and when I ran my eye over Cadillac's message, which I could forecast word for word, I felt like a play-acting fool. But I read it and put it in my pocket.
"You have had a long trip, Lord Starling," I said, with some show of courtesy. "It is new to see a man of your nation in this land!"
He waved me and my words into limbo.
"Where is the Englishman,—the prisoner?"
A folded blanket lay beside the canoe, and I shook it out and spread it on the dew-drenched grass. "Will you sit, Lord Starling? Forgive me if I smoke. It is unusual grace to meet a man of my own station, and I would enjoy it in my own way. Will you do the same? I see you have your pipe."
He swung his great arm like a war club. "Where is the prisoner?"
I sat on the red blanket and filled my pipe. "I know of no prisoner."
I thought he would have broken into oaths, but instead he shrugged his shoulders. He walked to the other side of the blanket, and I saw that he limped painfully. Then he sat down opposite me, his great turtle neck standing up between his humping shoulders. With all his size and ugliness he was curiously well finished,—a personality. He was a man to sway men and women. I felt it as I felt his likeness to his cousin, a likeness that I could not put my finger on but that I knew was there. Small wonder that she dreaded him. He was a replica in heavy lines of the sterner traits in her own nature. He had something of her curiously winning quality, too. Did she feel that? She had promised to marry him. I lit my pipe and smoked, and waited for him to declare himself.
He did it with his glance hard on me. "You are playing for time. Is that worthy your very evident intelligence, monsieur, since you can protract the game only the matter of a few hours at most? I have Cadillac's warrant for the prisoner."
I smoked. I felt no haste for speech. What I had to say would make a brutal, tearing wound, and I hugged my sense of power and gloated over it like an Iroquois. A woman was between us, and I knew no mercy.
My silence appeared to amuse him. He studied me and looked unhurried and reflective. He stretched out a long, yellow arm in simulation of contented weariness. "I wonder why you wish to keep the prisoner with you longer," he marveled.
And then I laughed. I looked him full in the face and laughed again."But I have no prisoner. Unless, indeed, matrimony be a sort ofbondage. I travel with my wife, with Madame de Montlivet, néeStarling, monsieur."
I knew that I had cut him in a vital part, but he held himself well. An oath burst from him, but it did not move his great, immobile face into betraying lines. Yet when he tried to speak his voice trailed off in an unmeaning rattle. He tried twice, and his hands were sweat-beaded. Then he heaved his great bulk upward and stood over me, his baboon arms reaching for my throat.
"The marriage was honest? Speak."
I could respect that feeling. "Father Nouvel married us," I replied. "We found him at the Pottawatamie Islands. I marvel that you did not hear news of us from there, monsieur."
He sank back on the blanket. "I did not go there. I sprained my ankle." He talked still with that curious rattling in his voice. "I lost time and the damned Indians left me. When did you discover"——
"I married madame as soon as I discovered. Monsieur, you are of her family. I can assure you that I have shown your cousin all the respect and consideration in my power."
He looked at me as if I were some smirking carpet knight who prated of conventions when a man was dying.
"Where is she?"
"In my camp, monsieur."
"Take me to her."
"Monsieur, I must refuse."
He opened his mouth with a look that cursed me, but before the words came he thought twice and changed his front. He spoke calmly. "I am her guardian and her cousin. I was her intended husband. You are a gentleman. I ask you to bring me to my cousin, monsieur."
His tone of calm possession fired me, I remembered what he was, and I enumerated his titles in order.
"Yes. You are the guardian who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in the future, monsieur."
The great face turned yellow to the eyes. "She told you this?"
"I am no mind reader, monsieur."
And then he turned away. I took one glimpse of his face and knew it was not decent to look a second time. He had done a hideous thing, but he was having a hideous punishment. Nature had formed him for a proud man, and he had lived arrogantly, secure of homage. I wondered now that he could live at all.
And so I went to work at the canoe, and waited till he should turn to me. When he did it was with a child's plea for pity, and the abjectness of his tone was horrible, coming from a man of his girth and power.
"You might have done the same thing yourself, monsieur."
I bowed. I could not but toss him that bone of comfort, for it was the truth. Sometimes a spring snaps suddenly in a man, and he becomes a brute. How could I boast that I would be immune?
"But I would have shot myself the moment after," I said.
He had regained his level. "Then you would have been a double coward.I shall do better."
"You think to reinstate yourself?"
"I know that I shall reinstate myself. Monsieur, I throw myself upon your courtesy. I ask to be taken to my cousin."
"No, monsieur. I follow my wife's wishes."
"I loved her, monsieur."
My pity of the moment before was gone like vapor. I looked up from my canoe, and took the man's measure. "I think not. You loved something, I grant. Her wit, perhaps, her money, the pleasure she gave your epicure's taste. But you did not love her, the woman. My God, if you loved her how could you endure to scatter her likeness broadcast among the savages as you did? To make that profile, that mouth, that chin, the jest and property of a greasy Indian! No, you shall not see my wife, monsieur."
He changed no line at my outburst. "Then I shall follow by force. I shall sit here till you move, monsieur."
I shrugged. "A rash promise. Are your provisions close at hand?"
He looked at me steadfastly. "Then you absolutely refuse to take me to her?"
"I refuse."
"Yet I shall reach her."
I took moss from my pocket and calked a seam with some precision. I did not speak.
"You think that I cannot reach her?"
I smiled. There was a womanish vein in the man that he should press me in this fashion for a useless answer. I began to see his weakness as well as his obvious strength. I waited till he asked yet again.
"You think that I shall not be able to reach your wife, monsieur?"
And then I shrugged and examined him over my pipe-bowl. "Yes, you will reach her, I think. You have a certain persistence that often wins small issues,—seldom large ones. But I shall not help you."
"I shall stay here till you go."
"Then we shall be companions for some time. May I offer you tobacco, monsieur?"
He smiled, though wryly and against his will. It was plain that we were taking a certain saturnine enjoyment out of the situation. We could hate each other well, and we were doing it, but we were both starved for men's talk,—the talk of equals.
"It seems a pity to detain you," he mused. "You are obviously on business. When I came up behind you I thought that I had never seen a man work in such a frenzy of haste. There was sweat on your forehead."
I waved my pipe at him. I had the upper hand, and I felt cruelly jovial. "It was haste to meet you," I assured him. "I missed you in the fog, and feared you would reach camp before me."
"You feared me, monsieur?"
I felt an unreasoning impulse to be candid with him. The strange, choking terror had swept back at that instant, and again it had me by the throat. Yet here sat the cause of my terror before me, and he was in my power.
"I feared your Indians." I spoke gravely. "Handle those Hurons carefully, monsieur. It is a tricky breed."
"But I have no"—— He stopped, and looked at me strangely. "What made you think that I was near?"
"For one thing I heard your axe yesterday."
"But yesterday I was five leagues from here."
I whistled through my teeth. I hate a useless lie. "I heard your axe," I reiterated. "This morning you and your men passed me in the fog."
He stared at me, then at the forest. "Monsieur, I have no men!"
"What?"
"I came alone."
"Monsieur, you are lying."
"It is you who are mad. Take your hands away!"
"I will let you go when you tell me the truth. Remember, your men passed me this morning."
"I tell you, I came alone."
"Where are your Indians that Cadillac sent with you?"
"I sprained my ankle and they left me."
"Where did they go?"
"How should I know? I tell you they left me."
"Was Pemaou, the Huron, one of them?"
"He was guide. Monsieur, what do you mean?"
I could not answer. My throat was dry as if I breathed a furnace blast. I looked at the canoe under my hands. It was not seaworthy. "Will your canoe carry two?" I cried.
He nodded. His great rough face was sickly with suspense. "Monsieur, what does this mean?"
I swore at him and at the hour he had made me lose. "Men passed me in a fog. They have been hiding here for a day at least. Show me your canoe. We must get to camp. Yes, come with me. Come, show me your canoe."