CHAPTER XXVI
Scarcely had David sensed the Girl's words of warning than he was on his feet. And now, when he saw her, he thanked God that his head was clear, and that he could fight. Even yesterday, when she had stood before the fighting bears, and he had fought Brokaw, she had not been whiter than she was now. Her face told him of their danger before he had seen it with his own eyes. It told him that their peril was appallingly near and there was no chance of escaping it. He saw for the first time that his bed on the ground had been close to the wall of an old cabin which was in a little dip in the sloping face of the mountain. Before he could take in more, or discover a visible sign of their enemies, Marge had caught his hand and was drawing him to the end of the shack. She did not speak as she pointed downward. In the edge of the valley, just beginning the ascent, were eight or ten men. He could not determine their exact number for as he looked they were already disappearing under the face of the lower dip in the mountain. They were not more than four or five hundred yards away. It would take them a matter of twenty minutes to make the ascent to the cabin.
He looked at Marge. Despairingly she pointed to the mountain behind them. For a quarter of a mile it was a sheer wall of red sandstone. Their one way of flightlay downward, practically into the faces of their enemies.
"I was going to rouse you before it was light,Sakewawin," she explained in a voice that was dead with hopelessness. "I kept awake for hours, and then I fell asleep. Baree awakened me, and now—it is too late."
"Yes, too late torun!" said David.
A flash of fire leaped into her eyes.
"You mean...."
"We can fight!" he cried. "Good God, Marge—if only I had my own rifle now!" He thrust a hand into his pocket and drew forth the cartridges she had given him. "Thirty-twos! And only eleven of them! It's got to be a short range for us. We can't put up a running fight for they'd keep out of range of this little pea-shooter and fill me as full of holes as a sieve!"
She was tugging at his arm.
"The cabin,Sakewawin!" she exclaimed with sudden inspiration. "It has a strong bar at the door, and the clay has fallen in places from between the logs leaving openings through which you can shoot!"
He was examining Nisikoos' rifle.
"At 150 yards it should be good for a man," he said. "You get Tara and the pack inside, Marge. I'm going to try to get two or three of our friends as they come up over the knoll down there. They won't be looking for bulletsthisearly in the game and I'll have them at a disadvantage. If I'm lucky enough to get Hauck and Brokaw...."
His eyes had selected a big rock twenty yards from the cabin from which he could overlook the slope to the first dip below them, and as Marge darted from him to getTara into the cabin he crouched behind the boulder and waited. He figured that it was not more than 150 yards to the point where their pursuers would first appear, and he made up his mind that he would wait until they were nearer than that before he opened fire. Not one of those eleven precious cartridges must be wasted, for he could count on Hauck's revolver only at close quarters. It was no longer a time for doubt or indecision. Brokaw and Hauck were deliberately pushing the fight to a finish, and not to beat them meant death for himself and a fate for the Girl which made him grip his rifle more tightly as he waited. He looked behind him and saw Marge leading Tara into the cabin. Baree had crept up beside him and lay flat on the ground close to the rock. A moment or two later the Girl reappeared and ran across the narrow open space to David, and crouched down close to him.
"You must go into the cabin, Marge," he remonstrated. "They will probably begin shooting...."
"I'm going to stay with you,Sakewawin."
Her face was no longer white. A flush had risen into her cheeks, her eyes shone as she looked at him—and she smiled. A child! His heart rose chokingly in his throat. Her face was close to his, and she whispered:
"Last night I kissed you,Sakewawin. I thought you were dying. Before you, I have kissed Nisikoos. Never any one else."
Why did she say that, with that wonderful glow in her eyes? Couldn't be that she saw death climbing up the mountain? Was it because she wanted him to know—before that? A child!
She whispered again:
"And you—have never kissed me,Sakewawin. Why?"
Slowly he drew her to him, until her head lay against his breast, her shining eyes and parted lips turned up to him, and he kissed her on the mouth. A wild flood of colour rushed into her face and her arms crept up about his shoulders. The glory of her radiant hair covered his breast. He buried his face in it, and for a moment crushed her so close that she did not breathe. And then again he kissed her mouth, not once but a dozen times, and then held her back from him and looked into her face that was no longer the face of a child, but of a woman.
"Because...." he began, and stopped.
Baree was growling. David peered down the slope.
"They are coming!" he said. "Marge, you must creep back to the cabin!"
"I am going to stay with you,Sakewawin. See, I will flatten myself out like this—with Baree."
She snuggled herself down against the rock and again David peered from his ambush. Their pursuers were well over the crest of the dip, and he counted nine. They were advancing in a group and he saw that both Hauck and Brokaw were in the rear and that they were using staffs in their toil upward, and did not carry rifles. The remaining seven were armed, and were headed by Langdon, who was fifteen or twenty yards in advance of his companions. David made up his mind quickly to take Langdon first, and to follow up with others who carried rifles. Hauck and Brokaw, unarmed with guns, were least dangerous just at present. He would get Brokaw with his fifth shot—the sixth if he made a miss with the fifth.
A thin strip of shale marked his 100-yard dead-line, andthe instant Langdon set his foot on this David fired. He was scarcely conscious of the yell of defiance that rang from his lips as Langdon whirled in his tracks and pitched down among the men behind him. He rose up boldly from behind the rock and fired again. In that huddled and astonished mass he could not miss. A shriek came up to him. He fired a third time, and he heard a joyous cry of triumph beside him as their enemies rushed for safety toward the dip from which they had just climbed. A fourth shot, and he picked out Brokaw. Twice he missed! His gun was empty when Brokaw lunged out of view. Langdon remained an inanimate blotch on the strip of shale. A few steps below him was a second body. A third man was dragging himself on hands and knees over the crest of thecoulée. Three—with six shots! And he had missed Brokaw! Inwardly David groaned as he caught the Girl by the arm and hurried with her into the cabin, followed by Baree.
They were not a moment too soon. From over the edge of thecouléecame a fusillade of shots from the heavy-calibre weapons of the mountain men that sent out sparks of fire from the rock.
As he thrust the remaining five cartridges into the chamber of Nisikoos' rifle, David looked about the cabin. In one of the farther corners the huge grizzly sat on his quarters as motionless as if stuffed. In the centre of the single room was an old box stove partly fallen to pieces. That was all. Marge had dropped the sapling bar across the door, and stood with her back against it. There was no window, and the closing of the door had shut out most of the light. He could see that she was breathing quickly,and the wonderful light that had come into her eyes behind the rock was still glowing at him in the half gloom. It gave him fresh confidence to see her standing like that, looking at him in that way, telling him without words that a thing had come into her life which had lifted her above fear. He went to her and took her in his arms again, and again he kissed her sweet mouth, and felt her heart beating against him, and the warm thrill of her arms clinging to him.
A splintering crash sent him reeling back into the centre of the cabin with Marge in his arms. The crash had come simultaneously with the report of a rifle, and both saw where the bullet had passed through the door six inches above David's head, carrying a splinter as large as his arm with it. He had not thought of the door. It was the cabin's vulnerable point, and he sprang out of line with it as a second bullet crashed through and buried itself in the log wall at their backs. Baree growled. A low rumble rose in Tara's throat, but he did not move.
In each of the four log walls were the open chinks which Marge had told him about, and he sprang to one of these apertures that was wide enough to let the barrel of his rifle through and looked in the direction from which the two shots had come. He was in time to catch a movement among the rocks on the side of the mountain about two hundred yards away, and a third shot tore its way through the door, glanced from the steel top of the stove, and struck like a club two feet over Tara's back. There were two men up there among the rocks, and their first shots were followed by a steady bombardment that fairly riddled the door. David could see their heads and shoulders andthe gleam and faint puffs of their rifles, but he held his fire. Where were the other four, he wondered? Without doubt Hauck and Brokaw were now armed with the rifles of the men who had fallen, so he had six to deal with. Cautiously he thrust the muzzle of his rifle through the crack, and watched his chance, aiming a foot and a half above the spot where a pair of shoulders and a head would appear in a moment. His chance came, and he fired. The head and shoulders disappeared, and exultantly he swung his rifle a little to the right and sent another shot as the second man exposed himself. He, too, disappeared, and David's heart was thumping wildly in the thought that his bullets had reached their marks when both heads appeared again and a hail of lead spattered against the cabin. The men among the rocks were no longer aiming at the door, but at the spot from which he had fired, and a bullet ripped through so close that a splinter stung his face, and he felt the quick warm flow of blood down his cheek. When the Girl saw it her face went as white as death.
"I can't get them with this rifle, Marge," he groaned. "It's wild—wild as a hawk! Good God!..."
A crash of fire had come from behind the cabin, and another bullet, finding one of the gaping cracks, passed between them with a sound like the buzz of a monster bee. With a sudden cry he caught her in his arms and held her tight, as if in his embrace he would shield her.
"Is it possible—they would killyouto get me?"
He loosed his hold of her, sprang to the broken stove, and began dragging it out of the line of fire that came through the door. The Girl saw his peril and sprang to help him. He had no time to urge her back. In tenseconds he had the stove close to the wall, and almost forcibly he made her crouch down behind it.
"If you expose yourself for one second I swear to Heaven I'll stand up there against the door until I'm shot!" he threatened. "I will, so help me God!"
His brain was afire. He was no longer cool or self-possessed. He was blind with a wild rage, with a mad desire to reach in some way, with his vengeance, the human beasts who were bent on his death even if it was to be gained at the sacrifice of the Girl. He rushed to the side of the cabin from which the fresh attack had come, and glared through one of the embrasures between the logs. He was close to Tara, and he heard the low, steady thunder that came out of the grizzly's chest. His enemies were near on this side. Their fire came from the rocks not more than a hundred yards away, and all at once, in the heat of the great passion that possessed him now, he became suddenly aware that they knew the only weapon he possessed was Nisikoos' little rifle—and Hauck's revolver. Probably they knew also how limited his ammunition was. And they were exposing themselves. Why should he save his last three shots? When they were gone and he no longer answered their fire they would rush the cabin, beat in the door, and then—the revolver! With that he would tear out their hearts as they entered. He saw Hauck, fired and missed. A man stood up within seventy yards of the cabin a moment later, firing as fast as he could pump the lever of his gun, and David drove one of Nisikoos' partridge-killers straight into his chest. He fired a second time at Hauck—another miss! Then he flung the useless rifle to the floor as he sprang back to Marge.
"Got one. Five left. Now—damn 'em—let then come!"
He drew Hauck's revolver. A bullet flew through one of the cracks, and they heard the soft thud of it as it struck Tara. The growl in the grizzly's throat burst forth in a roar of thunder. The terrible sound shook the cabin, but Tara still made no movement, except now to swing his head with open, drooling jaws. In response to that cry of animal rage and pain a snarl had come from Baree. He had slunk close to Tara.
"Didn't hurt him much," said David, with the fingers of his free hand crumpling the Girl's hair. "They'll stop shooting in a minute or two, and then...."
Straight into his eyes from that farther wall a splinter hurled itself at him with a hissing sound like the plunge of hot iron into water. He had a lightningimpressionimpression of seeing the bullet as it tore through the clay between two of the logs; he knew that he was struck, and yet he felt no pain. His mind was acutely alive, yet he could not speak. His words had been cut off, his tongue was powerless—it was like a shock that had paralyzed him. Even the Girl did not know for a moment or two that he was hit. The thud of his revolver on the floor filled her eyes with the first horror of understanding, and she sprang to his side as he swayed like a drunken man toward Tara. He sank down on the floor a few feet from the grizzly, and he heard the Girl moaning over him and calling him by name. The numbness left him, slowly he raised a hand to his chin, filled with a terrible fear. It was there—his jaw, hard, unsmashed, but wet with blood. He thought the bullet had struck him there.
"A knockout," were the first words, spoken slowly and thickly, but with a great gasp of relief. "A splinter hit me on the jaw.... I'm all right...."
He sat up dizzily, with the Girl's arm about him. In the three or four minutes of forgetfulness neither had noticed that the firing had ceased. Now there came a tremendous blow at the door. It shook the cabin. A second blow, a third—and the decaying saplings were crashing inward! David struggled to rise, fell back, and pointed to the revolver.
"Quick—the revolver!"
Marge sprang to it. The door crashed inward as she picked it up, and scarcely had she faced about when their enemies were rushing in, with Henry and Hauck in their lead, and Brokaw just behind them. With a last effort David fought to gain his feet. He heard a single shot from the revolver, and then, as he rose staggeringly, he saw Marge fighting in Brokaw's arms. Hauck came for him, the demon of murder in his face, and as they went down he heard scream after scream come from the Girl's lips, and in that scream the agonizing call of "Tara! Tara! Tara!" Over him he heard a sudden roar, the rush of a great body—and with that thunder of Tara's rage and vengeance there mingled a hideous, wolfish snarl from Baree. He could see nothing. Hauck's hands were at his throat.
But the screams continued, and above them came now the cries of men—cries of horror, of agony, of death; and as Hauck's fingers loosened at his neck he heard with the snarling and roaring and tumult the crushing of great jaws and the thud of bodies. Hauck was rising, his face blanched with a strange terror. He was half up when agaunt, lithe body shot at him like a stone flung from a catapult and Baree's inch-long fangs sank into his thick throat and tore his head half from his body in one savage, snarling snap of the jaws. David raised himself and through the horror of what he saw the Girl ran to him—unharmed—and clasped her arms about him, her lips sobbing all the time—"Tara—Tara—Tara...." He turned her face to his breast, and held it there. It was ghastly. Henry was dead. Hauck was dead. And Brokaw was dead—a thousand times dead—with the grizzly tearing his huge body into pieces.
Through that pit of death David stumbled with the Girl. The fresh air struck their faces. The sun of day fell upon them. The green grass and the flowers of the mountain were under their feet. They looked down the slope, and saw, disappearing over the crest of thecoulée, two men who were running for their lives.
CHAPTER XXVII
It may have been five minutes that David held the Girl in his arms, staring down into the sunlit valley into which the last two of Hauck's men had fled, and during that time he did not speak, and he heard only her steady sobbing. He drew into his lungs deep breaths of the invigorating air, and he felt himself growing stronger as the Girl's body became heavier in his embrace, and her arms relaxed and slipped down from his shoulders. He raised her face. There were no tears in her eyes, but she was still moaning a little, and her lips were quivering like a crying child's. He bent his head and kissed them, and she caught her breath pantingly as she looked at him with eyes which were limpid pools of blue out of which her terror was slowly dying away. She whispered his name. In her look and in that whisper there was unutterable adoration. It was forhimshe had been afraid. She was looking at him now as one saved to her from the dead, and for a moment he strained her still closer, and as he crushed his face to hers he felt the warm, sweet caress of her lips, and the thrilling pressure of her hands, at his blood-stained cheeks. A sound from behind made him turn his head, and fifty feet away he saw the big grizzly ambling cumbrously from the cabin. They could hear him growling as he stood in the sunshine, his head swinging slowly from side to side like a huge pendulum—in his throat the last echoingof that ferocious rage and hate that had destroyed their enemies. And in the same moment Baree stood in the doorway, his lips drawn back and his fangs gleaming, as if he expected other enemies to face him.
Quickly David led Marge beyond the boulder from behind which he had opened the fight, and drew her down with him into a soft carpet of grass, thick with the blue of wild violets, with the big rock shutting out the cabin from their vision.
"Rest here, little comrade," he said, his voice low and trembling with his worship of her, his hands stroking back her wonderful hair. "I must return to the cabin. Then—we will go."
"Go!"
She repeated the word in the strangest, softest whisper he had ever heard, as if in it all at once she saw the sun and stars, the day and night, of her whole life. She looked from his face down into the valley, and into his face again.
"We—will go," she repeated, as he rose to his feet.
She shivered when he left her, shuddered with a terrible little cry which she tried to choke back even as she visioned the first glow of that wonderful new life that was dawning for her. David knew why. He left her without looking down into her eyes again, anxious to have these last terrible minutes over. At the open door of the cabin he hesitated, a little sick at what he knew he would see. And yet, after all, it was no worse than it should be; it was justice. He told himself this as he stepped inside.
He tried not to look too closely, but the sight, after a moment, fascinated him. If it had not been for the difference in their size he could not have told which was Hauck and which was Brokaw, for even on Hauck, Tara had vented his rage after Baree had killed him. Neither bore very much the semblance of a man just now—it seemed incredible that claw and fang could have worked such destruction, and he went suddenly back to the door to see that the Girl was not following him. Then he looked again. Henry lay at his feet across the fallen saplings of the battered door, his head twisted completely under him—or gone. It was Henry's rifle he picked up. He searched for cartridges then. It was a sickening task. He found nearly fifty of them on the three, and went out with the pack and the rifle. He put the pack over his shoulders before he returned to the rock, and paused only for a moment, when he rejoined the Girl. With her hand in his he struck down into the valley.
"A great justice has overtaken them," he said, and that was all he told her about the cabin, and she asked him no questions.
At the edge of the green meadows they stopped where a trickle of water from the mountain tops had formed a deep pool. David followed this trickle a little up thecouléeit had worn in the course of ages, found a sheltered spot, and stripped himself. To the waist he was covered with the stain and grime of battle. In the open pool Marge bathed her face and arms, and then sat down to finish her toilet with David's comb and brush. When he returned to her she was a radiant glory, hidden to her waist in the gold and brown fires of her disentangled hair. It was wonderful. He stood a step off and looked at her, his heart filled with a wonderful joy, his lips silent. The thought surged uponhim now in an overmastering moment of exultation that she belonged to him, not for to-day, or to-morrow, but for all time; that the mountains had given her to him; that among the flowers and the wild things that "great, good God," of whom Father Roland had spoken so often, had created her for him; and that she had been waiting for him here, pure as the wild violets under his feet. She did not see him for a space, and he watched her as she ran out her glowing tresses under the strokes of his brush.
And once—ages ago it seemed to him now—he had thought that another woman was beautiful, and that another woman's glory was her hair! He felt his heart singing. She had not been like this. No. Worlds separated those two—that woman and this God-crowned little mountain flower who had come into his heart like the breath of a new life, opening for him new visions that reached even beyond the blue skies. And he wondered that she should love him. She looked up suddenly and saw him standing there. Love? Had he in all his life dreamed of the look that was in her face now? It made his heart choke him. He held open his arms, silently, as she rose to her feet, and she came to him in all that burnished glory of her unbound hair; and he held her close in his arms, kissing her soft lips, her flushed cheeks, her blue eyes, the warm sweetness of her hair. And her lips kissed him. He looked out over the valley. His eyes were open to its beauty, but he did not see; a vision was rising before him, and his soul was breathing a prayer of gratitude to the Missioner's God, to the God of the totem-worshippers over the ranges, to the God of all things. It may be that the Girl sensed his voiceless exaltation, for up through thesoft billows of her hair that lay crumpled on his breast she whispered:
"You love me a great deal, mySakewawin?"
"More than life," he replied.
Her voice roused him. For a few moments he had forgotten the cabin, had forgotten that Brokaw and Hauck had existed, and that they were now dead. He held her back from him, looking into her face out of which all fear and horror had gone in its great happiness; a face filled with the joyous colour sent surging there by the wild beating of her heart, eyes confessing their adoration without shame, without concealment, without a droop of the long lashes behind which they might have hidden. It was wonderful, that love shining straight out of their blue, marvellous depths!
"We must go now," he said, forcing himself to break the spell. "Two have escaped, Marge. It is possible, if there are others at the Nest...."
His words brought her back to the thing they had passed through. She glanced in a startled way over the valley, then shook her head.
"There are two others," she said. "But they will not follow us,Sakewawin. If they should, we shall be over the mountain."
She braided her hair as he adjusted his pack. His heart was like a boy's. He laughed at her in joyous disapproval.
"I like to see it—unbound," he said. "It is beautiful. Glorious."
It seemed to him that all the blood in her body leaped into her face at his words.
"Then—I will leave it that way," she cried softly, her words trembling with happiness and her fingers working swiftly in the silken plaits of her braid. Unconfined, her hair shimmered about her again. And then, as they were about to set off, she ran up to him with a little cry, and without touching him with her hands raised her face to his.
"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me, mySakewawin!"
It was noon when they stood under the topmost crags of the southward range, and under them they saw once more the green valley, with its silvery stream, in which they had met that first day beside the great rock. It seemed to them both a long time ago, and the valley was like a friend smiling up at them its welcome and its gladness that they had at last returned. Its drone of running waters, the whispering music of the air, and the piping cries of the marmots sunning themselves far below, came up to them faintly as they rested, and as the Girl sat in the circle of David's arm, with her head against his breast, she pointed off through the blue haze miles to the eastward.
"Are we going that way?" she asked.
He had been thinking as they had climbed up the mountain. Off there, where she was pointing, were his friends, and hers; between them and that wandering tribe of the totem people on the Kwadocha there were no human beings. Nothing but the unbroken peace of the mountains, in which they were safe. He had ceased to fear their immensity—was no longer disturbed by the thought that intheir vast and trackless solitude he might lose himself forever. After what had passed, their gleaming peaks were beckoning to him, and he was confident that he could find his way back to the Finley and down to Hudson's Hope. What a surprise it would be to Father Roland when they dropped in on him some day, he and Marge! His heart beat excitedly as he told her about it, described the great distance they must travel, and what a wonderful journey it would be, with that glorious country at the end of it.... "We'll find your mother, then," he whispered. They talked a great deal about her mother and Father Roland as they made their way down into the valley, and whenever they stopped to rest she had new questions to ask, and each time there was that trembling doubt in her voice. "I wonder whether it'strue." And each time he assured her that it was.
"I have been thinking that it was Nisikoos who sent to her that picture you wanted to destroy," he said once. "Nisikoos must have known."
"Then why didn't she tell me?" she flashed.
"Because, it may be that she didn't want to lose you—and that she didn't send the picture until she knew that she was not going to live very long."
The girl's eyes darkened, and then—slowly—there came back the softer glow into them.
"I loved—Nisikoos," she said.
It was sunset when they began making their first camp in a cedar thicket, where David shot a porcupine for Tara and Baree. After their supper they sat for a while in the glow of the stars, and after that Marge snuggled down in her cedar bed and went to sleep. But before sheclosed her eyes she put her arms about his neck and kissed him good-night. For a long time after that he sat awake, thinking of the wonderful dream he had dreamed all his life, and which at last had come true.
Day after day they travelled steadily into the east and south. The mountains swallowed them, and their feet trod the grass of many strange valleys. Strange—and yet now and then David saw something he had seen once before, and he knew that he had not lost the trail. They travelled slowly, for there was no longer need of haste; and in that land of plenty there was more of pleasure than inconvenience in their foraging for what they ate. In her haste in making up the contents of the pack Marge had seized what first came to her hands in the way of provisions, and fortunately the main part of their stock was a 20-pound sack of oatmeal. Of this they made bannock and cakes. The country was full of game. In the valleys the black currants and wild raspberries were ripening lusciously, and now and then in the pools of the lower valleys David would shoot fish. Both Tara and Baree began to grow fat, and with quiet joy David noticed that each day added to the wonderful beauty and happiness in the Girl's face, and it seemed to him that her love was enveloping him more and more, and there never was a moment now that he could not see the glow of it in her eyes. It thrilled him that she did not want him out of her presence for more than a few minutes at a time. He loved to fondle her hair, and she had a sweet habit of running her fingers through his own, and telling him each time how she loved it because it was a little gray; and she had a still sweeter way of holding one of his hands in hers when she was sitting beside him, and pressing it now and then to her soft lips.
They had been ten days in the mountains when, one evening, sitting beside him in this way, she said, with that adorable and almost childish ingenuousness which he loved in her:
"It will be nice to have Father Roland marry us,Sakewawin!" And before he could answer, she added: "I will keep house for you two at the Château."
He had been thinking a great deal about it.
"But if your mother should live down there—among the cities?" he asked.
She shivered a little, and nestled to him.
"I wouldn't like it,Sakewawin—not for long. I lovethis—the forest, the mountains, the skies." And then, suddenly she caught herself, and added quickly: "But anywhere—anywhere—if you are there,Sakewawin!"
"I too, love the forests, the mountains, and the skies," he whispered. "We will have them with us always, little comrade."
It was the fourteenth day when they descended the eastern slopes of the Divide, and he knew that they were not far from the Kwadocha and the Finley. Their fifteenth night they camped where he and the Butterfly's lover had built a noonday fire; and this night, though it was warm and glorious with a full moon, the Girl was possessed of a desire to have a fire of their own, and she helped to add fuel to it until the flames leaped high up into the shadows of the spruce, and drove them far back with its heat. David was content to sit and smoke his pipewhile he watched her flit here and there after still more fuel, now a shadow in the darkness, and then again in the full fireglow. After a time she grew tired and nestled down beside him, spreading her hair over his breast and about his face in the way she knew he loved, and for an hour after that they talked in whispering voices that trembled with their happiness. When at last she went to bed, and fell asleep, he walked a little way out into the clear moonlight and sat down to smoke and listen to the murmur of the valley, his heart too full for sleep. Suddenly he was startled by a voice.
"David!"
He sprang up. From the shadow of a dwarf spruce half a dozen paces from him had stepped the figure of a man. He stood with bared head, the light of the moon streaming down upon him, and out of David's breast rose a strange cry, as if it were a spirit he saw, and not a man.
"David!"
"My God—Father Roland!"
They sprang across the little space between them, and their hands clasped. David could not speak. Before he found his voice, the Missioner was saying:
"I saw the fire, David, and I stole up quietly to see who it was. We are camped down there not more than a quarter of a mile. Come! I want you to see...."
He stopped. He was excited. And to David his face seemed many years younger there in the moonlight, and he walked with the spring of youth as he caught his arm and started down the valley. A strange force held David silent, an indefinable feeling that something tremendous and unexpected was impending. He heard the other'squick breath, caught the glow in his eyes, and his heart was thrilled. They walked so swiftly that it seemed to him only a few moments when they came to a little clump of low trees, and into these Father Roland led David by the hand, treading lightly now.
In another moment they stood beside someone who was sleeping. Father Roland pointed down, and spoke no word.
It was a woman. The moonlight fell upon her, and shimmered in the thick masses of dark hair that streamed about her, concealing her face. David choked. It was his heart in his throat. He bent down. Gently he lifted the heavy tresses, and stared into the sleeping face that was under them—the face of the woman he had met that night on the Transcontinental!
Over him he heard a gentle whisper.
"My wife, David!"
He staggered back, and clutched Father Roland by the shoulders, and his voice was almost sobbing in its excitement as he cried, whisperingly:
"Then you—you are Michael O'Doone—the father of Marge—and Tavish—Tavish...."
His voice broke. The Missioner's face had gone white. They went back into the moonlight again, so that they should not awaken the woman.
Out there, so close that they seemed to be in each other's arms, the stories were told, David's first—briefly, swiftly; and when Michael O'Doone learned that his daughter was in David's camp, he bowed his face in his hands andDavid heard him giving thanks to his God. And then he, also, told what had happened—briefly, too, for the minutes of this night were too precious to lose. In his madness Tavish had believed that his punishment was near—believed that the chance which had taken him so near to the home of the man whose life he had destroyed was his last great warning, and before killing himself he had written out fully his confession for Michael O'Doone, and had sworn to the innocence of the woman whom he had stolen away.
"And even as he was destroying himself, God's hand was guiding my Margaret to me," explained the Missioner. "All those years she had been seeking for me, and at last she learned at Nelson House about Father Roland, whose real name no man knew. And at almost that same time, at Le Pas, there came to her the photograph you found on the train, with a letter saying our little girl was alive at this place you call the Nest. Hauck's wife sent the letter and picture to the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and it was sent from inspector to inspector, until it found her at Le Pas. She came to the Château. We were gone—with you. She followed, and we met as Metoosin and I were returning. We did not go back to the Château. We turned about and followed your trail, to seek our daughter. And now...."
Out of the shadow of the trees there broke upon them suddenly the anxious voice of the woman.
"Napao! where are you?"
"Dear God, it is the old, sweet name she called me so many years ago," whispered Michael O'Doone. "She is awake. Come!"
David held him back a moment.
"I will go to Marge," he said quickly. "I will wake her. And you—bring her mother. Understand, dear Father? Bring her up there, where Marge is sleeping...."
The voice came again:
"Napao—Napao!"
"I am coming; I am coming!" cried the Missioner.
He turned to David.
"Yes—I will bring her—up there—to your camp."
And as David hurried away, he heard the sweet voice saying:
"You must not leave me alone,Napao—never, never, never, so long as we live...."
On his knees, beside the Girl, David waited many minutes while he gained his breath. With his two hands he crumpled her hair; and then, after a little, he kissed her mouth, and then her eyes; and she moved, and he caught the sleepy whisper of his name.
"Wake," he cried softly. "Wake, little comrade!"
Her arms rose up out of her dream of him and encircled his neck.
"Sakewawin," she murmured. "Is it morning?"
He gathered her in his arms.
"Yes, a glorious day, little comrade. Wake!"
THE END
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Courage of Captain PlumThe Honor of the Big SnowsThe Gold HuntersThe Wolf HuntersThe Danger TrailPhilip SteeleThe Great LakesFlower of the NorthIsobelKazanGod's Country—and the WomanThe Hunted WomanThe Grizzly KingBaree, Son of Kazan
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Punctuation normalized.
Corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text willappear.