It was at dusk of that same day that McElroy, as near sullen anger as one of his temperament could be, sat alone on the log step of the factory, his pipe unlighted in his lips and his moody eyes on the beaten ground worn hard by the passing feet of moccasined Indians from the four winds.
Edmonton Ridgar, with that keenness which gave him such tact, had shut himself in the living-room, and the two clerks were off among the maids at the cabins.
Once again McElroy had made himself ridiculous by that abrupt turning away because of a small red flower sent a maid by a man he now knew to be his foe and rival in all things of a man's life.
Down by the southern wall an old fiddle squeaked dolefully, and from beyond the stockade came the drowsy call of a bird deep in the forest depths.
On the river bank young Marc Dupre sang as he fumbled at a canoe awaiting the morn when he was to set off up-stream for any word that he might pick up of the coming of the Nakonkirhirinons. There was no moon and the twilight had deepened softly, covering the post with a soft mantle of dreams, when there was a step on the hard earth and the factor turned sharply to behold a little figure in a red kirtle, its curly head hanging a bit as if in shame, and at its side the shadowy form of the great dog Loup.
“M'sieu,” said Francette timidly, and the tone was new to that audacious slip of impudence; “M'sieu.”
“What is it, little one?” said McElroy gently, his own disgust of his morning's quickness softening his voice that he might not again play the hasty fool, and Francette crept nearer until she stood close to the log step.
The small hands were twisting nervously and the little breast lifting swiftly with an agitation entirely new to her.
Presently she seemed to find the voice that eluded her.
“Oh, M'sieu!” she cried at last, breaking out as if the words were thick crowded in her throat; “a heavy burden has fallen upon me! Is it right, M'sieu, for a maid to die for love of a man, waiting, waiting, waiting for the look, the word that shall crown her bondage? Love lives all round in the post save in the heart that is all the world to Francette! Why should there be happiness everywhere but here?”
With a gesture pathetically dramatic the little maid threw her hands across her heaving breast and gazed at McElroy with big eyes, starry in the dusk.
Her emotion was genuine he could not help but see, even through his astonishment, and he stared at her with awaking sympathy.
“Is there some one who is so much to you, little one?” he asked. “I thought there wasn't a youth in the post—no, nor in any other this side the Red River-who did not pay homage to France Moline's little daughter. Who is of such poor taste? Tell me, and what I can do I will do to remedy the evil.”
He was smiling at the little maid's pretty daring in coming straight to the very head of De Seviere with her trouble, and he reached out a hand to draw her down on the step beside him. There was never a woman in distress who did not pull at the strings of his heart, and he longed to soothe her, even while he smiled to himself at her childishness.
But Francette was not so childish, and he was one day to marvel at her artless skill.
At the touch of his hand she came down, not upon the step beside him as he meant, but upon her knees before him, with her two little hands upon his knees and her face of elfin beauty upheld to him in the starlight.
“Oh, M'sieu, there is one who is so much,—oui, even more than all the world, more than life itself,—more than heaven or hell, for whose sake I would die a thousand deaths! One at whose feet I worship, scorning all those youths of the settlement and the posts. See, M'sieu,” she leaned forward so close that the fragrance of her curls blew into the man's nostrils and he could see that the little face was pale with a passion that caused him wonder; “see! Today came one from the forest bringing love's message to that tall woman of Grand Portage,—the little red flower in the birchbark case. It spoke its tale and she knew,”—subtle Francette!—“she knew its meaning by the eye of love itself. So would I, who have no words and am a woman, send my message by a flower.”
The hands on the factor's knees were trembling with a rigour that shook the whole small form before him.
“See, M'sieu!” she cried, with the sudden sound of tears in the low voice; “read the heart of the little Francette!”
She took from her bosom a fragile object and laid it in his palm, then clasped her hands over her face and bowed until the little head with its running curls was low to the log step.
McElroy strained his eyes to see what he held.
It was a dried spray of the blossoms of the saskatoon.
For a moment he sat in stupid wonder. Then swiftly, more by intuition and that strange sense which recalls a previous happening by a touch, or a smell, than by actual memory, he saw that golden morning when he had stopped by the Molines' cabin and watched the great husky balance on his shaky legs. He had twirled in his fingers the first little spray of the saskatoon, brought in by Henri Corlier to show how the woods were answering the call of the spring.
“Why,” he said, astounded beyond measure, “why, Francette,—little one, what does this mean?”
But Francette had lost her tongue and there was no answer from the bowed figure at his knees.
He put out a hand and laid it on her shoulder and it was shaken with sobs,—the sobs of a woman who has cast her all on the throw of the die and in a panic would have it back.
Off in the forest a night bird called to its mate and the squeaky fiddle whined dolorously and a profound pity began to well in the factor's heart. She was such a little maid, such a childish thing, a veritable creature of the sunlight, like those great golden butterflies that danced in the flowered glades of the woods, and she had brought her one great gift to him unasked.
Some thought of Maren Le Moyne and of that reckless cavalier with his curls and his red flowers crept into his voice and made it wondrously tender with sympathy.
“Sh, little one,” he comforted, as he had comforted that day on the river bank when she had wept over Loup; “come up and let us talk of this.” He lifted her as one would lift a child and strove to raise the weeping eyes from the shelter of her hands, but the small head drooped toward him so near that it was but a step until it lay in the shelter of his shoulder, and he was rocking a bit, unconsciously, as the sobbing grew less pitiful.
“Sh-sh-little one,” he said gently; “sh—sh.”
Meanwhile Maren Le Moyne sat in the doorway of her sister's cabin with her chin on her hands and stared into the night. Marie and Henri were at the cabin of the Bordoux, laughing and chattering in the gay abandon of youth. She could hear their snatches of songs, their quips and laughter rising now and again in shrill gusts. Also the wailing fiddle seemed a part of the warm night, and the bird that called in the forest.
All the little homely things of the post and the woods crept into her heart, that seemed to her to be opening to a vague knowledge, to be looking down sweet vistas of which she had never dreamed among her other dreams of forest and lake and plain, and, at each distant focus where appeared a new glory of light, there was always the figure of the young factor with his anxious eyes. Strange new thrills raced hotly through her heart and dyed her cheeks in the darkness. She tingled from head to foot at the memory of that day in the glade, and for the first time in her life she read the love-signs in a man. That change in his eyes when he had looked upon De Courtenay's red flower was jealousy. With the thought came a greater fulness of the unexplainable joy that had flooded her all these days. Aye, verily, that red flower had caused him pain,—him,—with his laughing blue eyes and his fair head tilted back ever ready for mirth, with his tender mouth and his strong hands. The very thought of that killed the joy of the other. If love was jealousy, and jealousy was pain, the one must be healed for sake of the other. With this girl to think was to do, and with that last discovery she was upon her feet, straight and lithe as a young animal beside the door. She would go to this man and tell him that the red flower was less than nothing to her, its giver less than it.
At that moment a figure came out of the dusk and stopped before her.
It was her leader, Prix Laroux, silent, a shadow of the shadows.
“Maren,” he said, in that deep confidence of trusted friends, “Maren, is all well with you?”
“All is well, Prix,” said the girl, her voice tremulous with pleasure, “most assuredly. Thought you aught was wrong?”
“Nay,—only I felt the desire to know.”
“Friend,” said Maren, reaching out a hand which the man took strongly in both his own; “good, good friend! Ever you are at my back.”
“Where you may easily reach me when you will.”
“I know. 'Tis you alone have made possible the long trail. Ah! how long until another spring?”
But, when Prix had lounged away into the dusk and the girl had stepped into the soft dust of the roadway, she fell to wondering how it was that mention of the year's wait brought no longer its impatience, its old dissatisfaction.
She was thinking of this as she neared the factory, her light tread muffled in the dust.
“Foolish Francette! What should I do with a gay little girl like you? Play in the sunshine years yet, little one, and think not of the bonds and cares of marriage. How could these little hands lift the heavy kettles, wash the blankets, and do the thousand tasks of a household? You are mistaken, child. It is not love you feel, but the changing fancies of maidenhood. Play in the sun with Loup and wait for the real prince. He will come some day with great beauty and you will give no more thought to me. He must be young, little one, a youth of twenty; not one like me, nearer the mark of another decade. It would not be fitting. Youth to youth, and those of a riper age to each other.” He was thinking of a tall form, full and round with womanhood, whose eyes held knowledge of the earth, and yet, had he been able to define their charm, were younger even than Francette's.
The little maid had ceased her weeping long since and the face on McElroy's shoulder, turned out toward the night, was drawn and hard. The black eyes were no longer starry with passion, but glittering with failure. And the man, stupid and good of heart as are all men of his type, congratulated himself that he had talked the nonsense out of her little head.
Suddenly he felt the slender figure shiver in his arms and the curly head brushed his cheek as she raised her face.
“Aye, M'sieu,” she whispered, “it is as you say, but only one thing remains. Kiss me, M'sieu, and I go to—forget.”
The factor hesitated.
He felt again his one passionate avowal on the lips of his one woman.
This was against the grain.
“Please, M'sieu,” begged the childish voice, with a world of coaxing; and, thinking to finish his gentle cure, he bent his head and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“And now—” he started to admonish, when she threw her arms about his neck, stiffling the words in her garments.
At the corner of the factory Maren Le Moyne stood looking through the twilight at the scene.
When Francette released him there were only they two and he had heard no step nor seen the silent beholder.
When the little French maid slipped away with the husky she fingered the carved toy of a knife in her sash and tossed her short curls in triumph.
Her failure had taken on a hue of victory.
“M'sieu,” said Marc Dupre, coming up the slope from the river, his buckskins much tattered, showing a swift cross-country run, “I have news of the great tribe. Like the forest leaves in fall in point of numbers they are, and they wear a wealth of wampum and elk teeth, so much that they are rich beyond any other tribe. Their young men are tall and heavy of stature and wonderful in the casting of their great carven spears. Also do they excel in the use of the bow. Warlike and suspicious, scouting every inch of country before them, they come down by way of Dear Lake,—and the young Nor'wester at Fort Brisac has already sent forth his messengers to meet them.”
McElroy frowned.
Double anger swelled suddenly within him. In two ways had De Courtenay crossed his plane at opposing angles. It was evidently war that the adventurer wanted, the hot war of the two fur companies coupled to that of man and man for a maid. He stood a while and thought. Then he turned to Dupre.
“You have done well, Dupre,” he said shortly. “Get you to your cabin and rest, for I may want your wit again. Only, on the way, send Pierre Garqon to me.”
The young man touched his red toque, symbol of safety to all trappers in a land where the universal law is “kill,” for no wild animal of the woods bears a crimson head save that animal man who is the greatest killer of all, and turned away. He was draggled and stained from a forced march through forest and up-stream, over portage and rapid, carrying his tiny birchbark craft on his head, snatching a short sleep on a bed of moss, hurrying on that he might learn of the Nakonkirhirinons travelling slowly down from that unknown land to the far north, even many leagues beyond York factory on the shores of the great bay.
As he went toward his own cabin he glanced swiftly at the open door of the Baptistes. Always these days he glanced that way with a sick feeling in the region of his heart. Who was he, Marc Dupre, trapper of the big woods, that he should dare think so often of that woman from Grand Portage, with her wondrous beauty and her tongue that could be like a cold knife-blade or the petal of a lily for softness? And yet he was conscious of a mighty change that had come over him with that day on the flat rock by the stockade when she had talked to him of the trapping,—a change like that which comes to one when he is so fortunate as to be in distant Montreal and sits in the dusk of the great church there among the saints and the incense.
There was no longer pleasure in flipping jests and love words with the red-cheeked maids, and something had happened to the dashing spirit of the youth. All through those long days in the forest, those short blue nights under the velvet sky, one image had stood before him, calm, smiling, quivering with that illusive light which held men's hearts. Never a day that he could win forgetfulness of the face of Maren Le Moyne, and now he glanced toward her doorway. It lay in the sunlight without a foot upon its sill, and Marc sighed unconsciously. He was not to see her, perhaps, to-day.
But suddenly, as he rounded a corner among the cabins, he came full upon her, and his flippant tongue clove to the roof of his mouth without speech.
She came toward him with a bread-pan in her hands and her eyes were cast down. The heart in him ran to water at sight of her, and he stopped.
Once more thought of his unworthiness abased him.
Then she felt his presence and raised her eyes, and the young trapper looked deep into them with that helplessness which draws the look of a child. Deep he looked and long, and the woman looked back, and in that moment there sprang into life the first thrill of that thing which was to lead to the great crisis which she had predicted that day by the stockade.
With it Marc Dupre found his tongue.
“Ma'amselle!” he cried sharply, “what is it? Mon Dieu! What is it?” For the dark eyes, with their light-behind-black-marble splendour, were quenched and dazed and all knowledge seemed stricken from them. The look of them cut to his very soul, quick and sensitive from the working of the great change, made ready as a wind-harp by the silent days of dreams, the nights of visions. To him alone was the devastation within them apparent. He stretched out a timid hand and touched her sleeve.
“What is it, Ma'amselle?” he begged abjectly. “I would heal it with my blood!”
Extravagant, impulsive, the boy was in deadly earnest, and Maren Le Moyne was conscious of it as simply as that she lived.
Just as simply she acknowledged to him what she would have to none other in De Seviere, that something had fallen from a clear sky.
“Nay,” she said, and the deep voice was lifeless, “I am beyond help.”
Dupre's fingers slipped, trembling, around her arm.
“But I am a stone to your foot, Ma'amselle,—always remember that. When the way becomes too hard there shall be a stone to your foot. I ask no better fate and you have said.”
The miserable eyes were not dead to everything. At his swift words they glowed a moment.
“Aye,—I have said, and I thank God, M'sieu, for such friendship. I am rich, indeed.”
“Oho! Marc Dupre does better at the lovemaking than at the trapping! His account at the factory suffers from les amours!”
A childish voice broke in upon them, and Francette's impish face peeped round the corner of the nearest cabin.
“Let it be, Marc Dupre,” as the youth dropped his and from Maren's arm. “Ma'amselle does not object,—a trapper or a cavalier, all are fish to Ma'amselle's net. Mon Dieu! If all were so attractive as Ma'amselle!”
The little maid sighed in exaggerated dolour.
Dupre flashed round on his moccasined heel and reached her in a stride.
“Aha! It is you, by all the saints!” he said beneath his breath, as he took her none too gently by the shoulder. “I know your tricks.”
Aloud he said, “Francette, children should keep from where they are not wanted. Get you back to your mother.”
“Children, you say, M'sieu Dupre? Is eighteen so far behind twenty-two? Grow a beard on your cheek before you give yourself the airs of a man. And, anyway, grown men of twice eighteen have been known to love children of that age.”
It was a dagger thrust, and it found its mark even as the girl glanced slily at her victim. Maren's full mouth twitched and she looked dully away to the fort gate. Dupre gave Francette an ungallant push. “Begone!” he cried angrily; “you little cat!”
With a ringing laugh the maid danced away in the sunshine, and Dupre faced Maren.
“It is that imp of le diable, Francette?” he asked. “What has she done to you, Ma'amselle?”
But Maren shook her head.
“The maid is not to blame. She is but a child in spirit and what le bon Dieu has seen fit to give her has gone to her head. That is all, save as your quick eye has detected, M'sieu, I have received a heavy hurt.”
Suddenly, with that whimsical youthfulness of soul which glimmered at times through her apparent strength, she looked at Dupre with a sort of fright.
“Merci, M'sieu! For what reason does the good God let some things befall?... But I have still a stone. Throughout I will remember that.”
In a moment she was gone, walking toward the cabin of Micene Bordoux, and Marc Dupre went on his quest of Pierre, wondering and all a-tremble with pity and thought of that promise.
Where Marc, with the revelation of adoration, had seen sharply, Micene with her good sense felt vaguely that something was wrong with the intrepid leader of the long trail.
“Maren,” she said this day, as she took the bread pan which had been borrowed, “I fear there is something troubling you. Is there bad news from Athabasca?”
Always there lay behind Maren's eagerness a fear, sleeping like a hidden fawn but ever ready to quiver into life, a fear of news from the Whispering Hills, news that should make the promise of the trail a sudden void.
“Nay, Micene,” smiled Maren, “these latest Indians come from the south.”
“And all is well with the plans?”
The vague uneasiness was not stilled in Micene.
“All is well with the plans. There is not a year now.”
The girl looked straight in her friend's eyes without a trace of the dazed misery which Marc Dupre had surprised in her own.
Micene smiled back, but that night she lay far into the dark hours thinking of the subtle change in the maid of the trail. With a woman's intuition she knew that the girl had lied, that all was not well with her.
And one other there was of that small party of venturers housed in the new cabins of De Seviere who knew vaguely that something had gone wrong-Prix Laroux, the sturdy prow of that little vessel of progress of which the girl was the beating heart, the unresting engine.
He had felt its coming even before it fell, that mighty shadow which blotted out the heavens and the earth, for to Maren, once given, there was no recalling the gift, and with that day in the glade she had lost possession of her soul and body forever.
Dazed in all the regions of her being, enshadowed in every vista of hope and scarce-tasted joy, she went quietly about the cabin, her mind a dark space in which there flashed sudden, reiterated visions,—now McElroy's blue eyes, anxious and eager as he held up the doeskin dress at the door-sill, burning with fire and truth and passion in the glade in the forest, again tender and diffident what time they walked together to the gate to meet De Courtenay's messenger, and again it was that scene at the factory steps that haunted her,—McElroy with his arms about Francette Moline, the grey husky crouching in the twilight. Throughout the whole sick tangle there went a twisting thread of wonder, of striving for understanding. What was this thing which had come clutching sweetly at her heart, which had stilled the very life in her with holy mystery, and whose swift passing had left her benumbed within as some old woman mumbling in the sun on a door-sill? Where was the glory of the spring? What had come upon the face of the waters, that the light had gone from them? What was this thing that the good God wished her to learn, where was the lesson?
Given to reason and plain judgment of all things, the girl tried to think out her problem, to fathom the meaning of this which had befallen her, and to find if there was any good in it. But everywhere she looked there was the laughing face of the factor with his sunburnt hair and his blue eyes. The spring days were heavy as those steel-grey stretches that pass for the days in winter.
Too dull for sharp pain, she went about in a sort of apathy.
For several days McElroy watched uneasily for her, hoping for a chance meeting. He was anxious to speak about his boyish jealousy, to beg forgiveness for that abrupt leaving at the gate. So close did she stay at the cabin, however, that at last he was forced to go to her. It was twilight again, soft, filled with the breath of the forest, vibrant with the call of birds off in some marshy land to the south, and he found her alone, sitting upon the step, staring into the gathering dusk, listening to the laughter of the young married folk from the cabin next where Marie and Henri were loudest.
A lump rose in his throat as he caught the outline of the braided head bowed lower than he had ever seen it, saw the whole attitude of the strong figure, every line relaxed as if in a great weariness.
“Maren,” he said, with the wonder of love in his voice, “Maren—my maid!”
And he strode forward swiftly, stooped, and laid his hand on her shoulder.
With a jerk the drooped head came up. She drew from his touch as if it burned her.
“If you please, M'sieu,” she said coldly, “go away.”
McElroy sprang back.
“What? Go away! You wish that,—Ma'amselle?”
The tone more than the words drove out of him all daring of her sweet name, took away in a flash all the personal.
“Of a surety,—go away.”
The factor stood a moment in amazed silence. Did the red flower mean so much to her, then? Had she accepted its message? And yet he knew in his heart that the look in her eyes, the smile on her lips had told their own tale of awakening to his touch. What but the red flower in its birchbark case had wrought the change?
He thought swiftly of De Courtenay's beauty, of his sparkling grace, his braided blue coat, his wide hat, and the long golden curls sweeping his shoulder. Truly a figure to turn a woman's head. But within him there rose a tide of rage, blind vent of the hurt of love, that boded ill for the dashing Nor'wester on the Saskatchewan.
Sick to the very bottom of his heart, he bowed ever so slightly to the tense figure on the step and strode away in the shadows.
So! Thus ended his one love.
For this he had kept himself from the common lot of the factors in their lonely posts; for this he had never looked with aught save friendly compassion upon the maids of the settlements, the half breed girls of the wilderness, the wild daughters of the forest.
Waiting for this one princess in his small kingdom, he had thrown himself on the out-bearing tide of love only to be stranded on some barren beach, to see her taken from him by some reckless courtier not fit to touch a woman's hand!
Thus they turned apart, these two meant for each other from the beginning, and in each love worked its will of pain.
Maren on the step stared dry-eyed into the night, uncomprehending, unrebelling, and McElroy strode ahead, blind with sudden anguish, scarce knowing which way his steps tended.
And, like a ghoul behind a stone, a small dark face peeped keenly from a corner.
Francette was watching her leaven work.
In the week that followed the waters of the Assiniboine grew black with myriads of canoes. Like the leaves in fall, truly, they came drifting out of the forest, long slim craft, made with a wondrous cunning of birchbark peeled from the tree in one piece, fitted to frames of ash fragile as cockleshell and strong as steel under the practised hand, and smeared in every crinkle and crease and crevasse with the resinous gum of the pine tree. By scores and hundreds and battalions, it seemed to the traders at De Seviere, they poured out of the wilderness, choking the river with their numbers, spilling their contents on the slope under the bastioned walls until a camp was made so vast that it stretched into the forest on each side the clearing of the post and even extended to the marsh at the south.
Half-naked braves stalked in countless numbers among the tepees that went rapidly up, tall fellows, mighty of build and fearless of carriage and of eagle eye, aloof, suspicious, watching the fort, guarding the rich piles of peltry and exchanging a word with none.
These were the great Nakonkirhirinons from that limitless region of the Pays Ten d'en Haut.
If McElroy's heart had not been so full of his own trouble he would have exulted mightily in their coming, for did it not prove one failure for that reckless Nor'wester on the Saskatchewan? They had come, past all his blandishments of trade, to Fort de Seviere, and their coming spelled a number of furs this season far in advance of any other for that small post. If he wondered at first how they had held out against De Courtenay it was all made plain when among the strangers he espied many Assiniboines and saw in the great canoe of the chief Negansahima, old Quamenoka, who had boasted of the coming of this tribe to De Seviere as his work.
He had spoken truly and had evidently made his word good by meeting the approaching columns and returning with them.
To him alone was due the failure of De Courtenay, McElroy felt at once, and determined in his mind on that present which he had promised for this zeal.
With the coming of the strangers Fort de Seviere was put under military rule. The half-moon to the right of the gate, with its small cannon, received a quota of men who strayed carelessly all day within reach of the low rampart; a guard lounged in the great gate, ready at a moment's notice to clang it shut, and seemingly matter-of-course precautions were taken throughout, for these Indians were as uncertain as the flickering north lights crackling in a frosty sky.
There was a scene not to be likened to any other outside the region of the Hudson Bay country, where strange relations existed between white trader and savage, when Edmonton Ridgar met the canoe of the chief at the landing.
Savage delight overspread the eagle features of Negansahima as he beheld the white man.
Towering mightily in the prow of his canoe, the sweeping head-dress of feathers crowning him with a certain majesty, he fixed his keen glance on Ridgar and came gliding toward him across the rippled water.
As the canoe cut cleanly up and stopped just short of scraping on the stones at the edge, obeying the paddles like a thoroughbred the bit, the chief trader of De Seviere stepped forward and held out his arms.
“Who art thou?” he called.
Deep and guttural as thunder from the broad chest, naked under the lines of elk teeth, came the reply,
“Thy father,”
“And master of my goods. The heart of thy son melts as the snow in spring. Wiskendjac has sent thee.”
McElroy, standing near, saw the face of his friend illumined with a real affection as the savage landed and, contrary to the custom of the Indians in the lower country, embraced with every sign of joy the lean white man whose skin was nearly as dark as his own and whose greying temples bespoke almost a as many years as the chief's black locks could boast.
In the eyes of both, as they regarded each other, were memories known to no one else. McElroy wondered what they were and what that year, of which Ridgar had spoken only once, had held.
The trader spoke their tongue as easily as he spoke any other that came to the post, naturally and with quiet fluency.
So deep was the apparent pleasure of the meeting that, when the interpreting was done and the ceremonies over, Ridgar went with the Indian among the tepees and no more did McElroy see him until he came to the factory at dusk.
“Mother of Heaven!” he ejaculated, flinging himself down at the table in the living-room where Rette's strong coffee tempted the nostril; “such furs! Beaver in countless packs, all the fat winter skins, no Bordeaux, no Mittain. Fox, also of the best only,—black fox, fine and shining, fox of those far-north regions where they hunt beyond the sun, white as the snow it runs on, and Mon Dieu, McElroy! Seven silvers as I hope for salvation! Verily are they a prize beyond price, these Indians that have come in to us, and I fancy that young Nor'wester is swearing at his luck in losing them. Old Quamenoka struts as if their wealth belonged to his meek Assiniboines.... But the furs! Ermine and nekik and sakwasew and wapistan, all the little fellows that, taken from those virgin north lands, are worth their weight in gold! Nowhere have I seen a common pelt. They are connoisseurs, these wild Nakonkirhirinons, and they carry a king's ransom in their long canoes. White bear and brown arctic wolf and everywhere the best of its kind! To-morrow's trade will be worth while—but keep the guns in evidence and quiet above all things.”
“Ah!” said McElroy, “what is there to fear, think you? Is not the chief bound to you by all ties of ceremony and regard?”
“Most assuredly,” returned Ridgar quietly, “but those young braves are strung like a singing wire and swift as a girl to take suspicious fright; and there are somewhere near five hundred of them, as near as I can make out from the numbers seething among the lodges. They are in a strange country and watching every leaf and shadow.”
Thus the sun went down on De Seviere, with the eager maids and women passing and repassing near the gate to peep out at the rustling throng, at the tepees with their fine skin coverings painted with all the wonders of battle and the chase, at the comely squaws and maidens, the chubby brown children, the dogs snarling and savage, for they had full complement of the grey northern huskies.
To a woman they peeped at the gate from all the cabins of the post, save only that one who had been most eager before when the Indians came, Maren Le Moyne, sitting in idle apathy on her sister's doorstep.
“Ma'amselle,” said Marc Dupre, stopping hesitant before her, “have you seen the Nakonkirhirinons?”
“Nay,” she said listlessly, “I care not, M'sieu.”
And the youth went gloomily away.
“Something there is which preys on her like the blood-sucker on the rabbit's throat. But what? Holy Mother, what?”
His handsome eyes were troubled.
By dawn on the following day the trading had begun. Up the main way passed a line of braves, each laden with his winter's catch of furs, to barter at the trading-room, haggle with the clerks by sign and pantomime, and pass down again with gun and hatchet and axe, kettle and bright blanket, beads, and, most eagerly sought of all, yards of crimson cloth.
There was babble of chatter among the squaws, shrill laughter, and comparison of purchases.
In the trading-room sat the chief with his headmen and old Quamenoka of the Assiniboines, smoking gravely many pipes and listening to the trading. Like some wild eagle of the peaks brought down to earth he seemed, ever alert and watchful behind his stately silence.
For two days the trading progressed finely, and McElroy had so far laid aside his doubts as to take delight in the quality of the rare furs.
Never before had such pelts stacked themselves in the sorting-room.
It was a sight for eyes tired by many springs of common trade.
Then, like a bomb in a peaceful city, came a running word of excitement.
The Nor'wester from the Saskatchewan was among the Nakonkirhirinons! Was at the very gates of De Seviere! When Pierre Garcon brought the news, McElroy flushed darkly to his fair hair and went on with his work.
This was unbearable insolence.
“An', M'sieu,” pursued Pierre, “not only the man from Montreal, but, like the treacherous dog he is, among the Nor'westers is that vagabond Bois DesCaut.”
“Turncoat?” said the factor.
“Aye.”
True enough. When McElroy, after trading hours, strolled down to the gate between the bastions, whom should he behold but the hulking figure of his erstwhile trapper, sulky of appearance, shifty eyes flitting everywhere but toward his old factor. And farther down the bank, among a group of warriors, a brown baby on his shoulder and his long curls shining in the sunset, was that incomparable adventurer, Alfred de Courtenay.
Apparently he had not come for barter, nor for anything save the love of the unusual, the thirst for adventure that had brought him primarily to the wilderness.
“A fine fit of apoplexy would he have, that peppery old uncle at Montreal, Elsworth McTavish, could he see his precious nephew following his whims up and down the land, leaving his post in the hands of his chief trader,” thought McElroy, as he looked at the scene before him.
While he stood so, there was a rustle of women behind him and voices that bespoke more eager eyes for the Indians, and he glanced over his shoulder.
Micene Bordoux and Mora LeClede approached, and between them walked Maren Le Moyne. McElroy's heart pounded hard with a quick excitement as he saw the listless droop of the face under the black braids and stopped with a prescience of disaster. His glance went swiftly to the long-haired gallant in the braided coat. Surely were the elements brought together.
It seemed as if Fate was weaving these little threads of destiny, for no sooner did Maren Le Moyne step through the gate among the lodges than her very nearness drew round upon his heel De Courtenay.
His eyes lighted upon her and the sparkling smile lit up his features. With inimitable grace he swung the child from his shoulder, tossed it to a timid squaw watching like a hawk, and, shaking back his curls, came forward.
“Ah, Ma'amselle!” he said, bending before her with his courtly manner, “you see, as I said in the early spring,—I have come back to Fort de Seviere.”
“So I see, M'sieu,” smiled Maren, with a touch of whimsical amusement at the memory of that morning, and his venturesome spirit. “Have you by chance brought me a red flower?”
“Why else should I come?” he returned, and, with a flourish, brought from his bosom a second birchbark box which he held out to the girl.
Over her face there spread a crimson flood at this swift, literal proving of a secret pact and she stood hesitating, at loss.
The stretch of beach was alive with spectators. Near the wall a group of girls hugged together, with Francette Moline in the centre; down by the canoes Pierre Garcon and Marc Dupre stood, the dark eyes of the latter watching every move, while at the door of the chief's lodge, directly before the fort and between it and the river, Edmonton Ridgar talked in low tones with Negansahima. Indeed, like father and son seemed this strangely assorted pair. Maren remembered afterward how near together they had stood, the wild savage in his elk teeth and scant buckskin garments, an indiscreet band of yellow paint showing a corner above his blanket, and the dark, wiry trader with the grey eyes. Scattered, here and there among the braves were many Bois-Brules, lean Runners of the Burnt Woods, belonging she knew to the North-west Company. Also in that moment she saw the frowning face and ugly eyes of Bois DesCaut beneath the white lock on his temple. Long afterward was the girl to recall that evening scene.
For another moment she hesitated, and then, from sheer loss of poise, reached out her hand. The dancing eyes of the cavalier lit with all the daring of conquest.
“My heart, Ma'amselle,” he said gallantly, as he pressed the fragile thing in her palm; and in another second he had stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed many another woman, lightly, delicately, in the face of the populace, joying to the depths of his careless nature in the dare of the thing.
With a cry the girl sprang back, crushing the birchbark case with its red flower into shapeless ruin. There was a muffled word, the flash of a figure, and McElroy the factor had flung himself before her. She caught the thud of a blow upon flesh and in a moment there were two men locked in deadly combat before the post gate. In less time than the telling, a circle of faces drew round, dark faces of Indians and Bois-Brules, light faces of De Courtenay's men, and in all there leaped swift excitement as they saw the combatants. White with passion, his brilliant eyes flaming and dancing with fury, De Courtenay fought like a madman to avenge that blow in the face, while McElroy, flushed and calmer, took with his hands payment for all things,—slighted kindliness, Company thefts, and, above all else, the stolen heart of his one woman.
How it would have ended there is no telling, for these two were evenly matched—what De Courtenay lacked in weight he made up in swiftness and agility,—had it not been for the side arm that hung at his hip, one of those small pistols in use across the water where gentlemen fight at given paces and not across a frozen river or through a mile of brush.
Once, twice, he tried to reach it, and twice did McElroy snatch the groping hand away. Three times he passed swiftly for the inlaid handle and, as if there lay luck in the number, the weapon flashed in the red light.
Swift as was the draw, McElroy was swifter.
With an upward stroke he flung up the hand that held it. There was a shot, ringing down the Assiniboine and echoing in the woods, and little Francette by the stockade wall screamed. With the first flash of metal Maren Le Moyne had gripped her hands until the nails cut raw, standing where she had sprung at the stranger's kiss.
She could no more move than the bastioned wall behind her.
For a moment there was deathly silence after that shot. Then pandemonium broke loose as Negansahima, chief of the Nakonkirhirinons, flung up his arms, the dull metal bands with their inset stones catching the crimson light, and fell into the outstretched arms of Edmonton Ridgar.
A long cry broke from his lips, the death-cry of a warrior.