Charlie Madden of the Canadian Mining Company wasn't the man to squander time which might be valuable in idle surmises. Ten minutes after leaving Drennen he had sent a man on horseback scurrying down the hundred miles of trail to Lebarge. The man carried a letter to the General Manager. The letter ran in part:
"…I don't know whether the man is crazy or not. Having seen his specimens I'm rather inclined to think he's not. But he's fool enough to have shown the stuff before filing on his claim. Send me Luke and Berry and Jernigan on the run. Drennen is laid up with a couple of bullet holes in him. I'll keep him from filing as long as I can; the rest is up to the men you send me."
Then, his eyes filled with the glint of his purpose, his jaw seeming to grow lean with the determination upon him, Madden made himself as comfortable as conditions permitted in MacLeod's Settlement and settled down to a period of unsleeping watchfulness. He took a room at Père Marquette's.
Before the crowd in the camp had thronged Joe's Lunch Counter toward evening the fever of excitement had grown into a delirium. Madden hadn't talked; Drennen hadn't talked. And yet the word flew about mysteriously that Drennen had asked ten per cent of the stock of his mine and a hundred thousand dollars cash! "God! He had driven his pick into the mother lode of the world!" That was the thing which many men said in many ways, over and over and over again. The Canadian Mining Company was trying to frame a deal with him; Madden had rushed a man to Lebarge with some sort of message; two other big mining concerns had their representatives in town. And Drennen hadn't filed on his claim; the gold lay somewhere in the mountains offering itself to whatever man might find it. A man who could not buy his own grubstake to-day might "own the earth" to-morrow.
Before darkness came MacLeod's Settlement, seething with restless humanity for a few hours, was again pouring itself out into the wilderness in many erratic streams. And no man left who had not first gone by Père Marquette's and seen the nuggets which the old man had put into his one glass-topped show case, and no man but carried the picture of them dancing before his eyes as he went. Kootanie George, who had had no word for Ernestine Dumont since she had shamed him, went with them. Ramon Garcia, having kissed Ernestine Dumont's hand, went with them. And, oddly enough, Kootanie George and Ramon Garcia went together as trail pardners.
The one man who evinced no concern at what was going on was David Drennen. His calm was like that of a chip caught and held motionless for a little in the centre of a whirlpool while scores of other chips gyrated madly about him; himself the pivot about which all rotated while he seemed unmoved. There were hundreds of sharp-eyed old prospectors looking for the thing he had found; if they in turn found it it would become theirs and be lost to him.
The Settlement saw more strangers in a week than it had ever seen in the days of its existence before. The rare opportunity was given to take stock first hand of men of whom it had talked many times, men whose names meant something. Such a man was Charlie Madden with the fresh cheeks and the way of an old captain of industry. Such was the man who came in behalf of the northwestern company. A man between fifty and sixty, big bodied, stalwart, stern faced, silent tongued. An old prospector from the outside put an end to much speculation by informing a knot of men that this was old Marshall Sothern; the name carried weight and brought fresh interest. Such a man was Ben Hasbrook, little and dried up and nervous mannered, a power in the network of ramifications of a big corporation having its head in Quebec, its tail in Vancouver, its claws everywhere throughout Canada. These men spelled big interests; these were the lions come to wrest away the prey which the pack of wolves was ravening for.
Ben Hasbrook trod almost in Charlie Madden's footsteps going to Drennen; he came away almost immediately, tugging at his beard, hot-eyed and wrathful. Marshall Sothern, having had a word with Père Marquette, a word with Lunch Counter Joe, having seen Hasbrook's retreat, frowned thoughtfully and postponed any interview he may have desired with No-luck Drennen. He paid for a room at Joe's for a week in advance, went into solitary session, smoking his blackened pipe thoughtfully, his powerful fingers beating a long tattoo upon the sill of the window through which his eyes could find Drennen's dugout. With full square beard, iron grey hair, massive countenance, there was something leonine about Marshall Sothern. It appeared reasonable that if he were going into the battle against Madden and Hasbrook, then Madden and Hasbrook would need their wits about them. He seemed at once gifted with infinite patience and unalterable will. He did not move from his window until he had seen David Drennen come out of his dugout, making his slow way to supper at Joe's. Sothern's eyes, as keen as knife blades, studied the dark face, probing deep for a knowledge of the man himself. It was as though he were making his first move in the game from ambush, as though he felt that the most important thing in the world just now were a thorough understanding of the man with whom he must deal. He had had Marquette's estimate and Joe's … now he sought to form his own.…
There was a hard smile upon Sothern's face as Drennen passed on, a smile not without a strange sort of satisfaction, flashing a quick light into the eyes.
"By God, I like him!" he burst out softly. "So you're David Drennen, are you? Well, my boy, the hounds of hell are after you … that's in your face. But it's in your face, too, that you can stand on your own feet. Hm. In this game I'm going to keep an eye on Madden and Hasbrook, and both eyes on you."
But, despite the dynamic possibilities of action and strife and history making, the days went by without event. Drennen came his three times daily to Joe's for his meals, spent the major part of his time in his dugout or taking short, lonely walks up and down the river, coaxing back his strength. He saw much of Lemarc and Sefton upon the street, noting that they, like himself, had stayed behind, letting the other fools go on their fools' errands, sensing that their craft bade them linger to watch him. He saw Ygerne several rimes, always from a distance, and made no attempt to speak with her. He saw Madden, Ben Hasbrook and Marshall Sothern, grew accustomed to the knowledge that they were playing their waiting game, not unlike Sefton and Marc Lemarc, and gave them little attention. They didn't interest him; when he was ready he would deal with them and until that time came need not waste his thoughts upon them.
But all of the stubborn will of a David Drennen could not keep his mind away from Ygerne Bellaire though he held his feet back from taking him to her, though he drove his eyes away from her. He had let down the bars once for her to come into his life as he had let them down for no man or other woman in years. He had yielded to a mood, thinking that it was only a mood and that so far as he was concerned she would cease to exist when he willed it. He found himself, however, seeking to explain her presence here, companioned by such men as Marc Lemarc and Captain Sefton; he sought to construct the story of her life before she had come into this land where women from her obvious station in life did not come; he wrestled with the enigma of her character, unconsciously striving to find extenuation for the evil he deemed was in her.
"We are a bad lot here," he muttered once after long puzzling. "A bad lot. Some of us are bad because we are weak and the world has tempted. Some of us are bad because we are strong and the world has driven. Some of us are cruel, like steel; some of us are treacherous, like poison. Where do you fit in, Ygerne Bellaire?"
Once only had he met her face to face on the street, many men marking their meeting. Coming unexpectedly upon her he had been tugged two ways by his emotions, a division and sign of weakness which was no usual thing in him. But he had caught a quick expression upon her face in time, and had seen that she was going to pass him with no sign of recognition. He had deliberately turned his back upon her. He had heard a man laugh, and a little spurt of venomous pleasure leaped up in his heart as he knew that she too had heard and as he pictured the blood whipped into her face.
And now again he came upon her all unexpectedly; this time she was alone and there were no men near to see. He stopped, staring down at her insolently. She was sitting upon a fallen log, a mile from the Settlement down the Little MacLeod, her eyes fixed upon the racing water with that expression which tells that they see nothing of what is before them. She had not heard him until he came quite close to her. She started as she looked up, ready upon the instant to leap to her feet. Then she settled back quite calmly, an insolence in her eyes not unlike his. She waited for him to speak, and presently, again conscious of the tugging two ways, he did so.
"There's a man in camp named Charlie Madden," he said with a viciousness which evidently puzzled her until he had gone on. "You've met him, I dare say?"
"Yes," she answered coolly. "He asked me to have dinner with him last night."
Drennen's laugh jeered at her.
"You don't burn daylight, do you?" he sneered. "The man has money; he is young; he looks quite the pink-cheeked, impressionable pup, as good as a gilded youth on Broadway. How did he accept the wonder tale of the virgin purity of your red lips, Ygerne?"
"I didn't accept his invitation," she retorted as coolly as before.
"Why not?" he said sharply, a little hotly. "Couldn't you tell that the fool has money?"
"I didn't like him," she said.
"Ho, you didn't like him!" His tone drove a little higher colour into her face, but she kept the serene indifference in her half-smile. "But you did dine with me … because you liked me, no doubt!"
"Let us say," she replied a trifle wearily, her eyes going back to the river, "that I was lonely; and that I was prepared to like you, Mr. Drennen."
He found himself in a sudden flaring anger. The anger was unreasonable, but it but burned the hotter for all that. He had sought to take a joy out of being brutal to the girl, just why he was very far from understanding. Now the joy did not come as he had expected it. In his anger there was a sense of insane resentment against her that she was just a girl, not a man as he would have her now so that he might give her the lie and make her suffer physically by beating at her with his hard fists. In the blind rage upon him he blamed her for having come into his life at all even though she were merely a passing figure through a little corner of it. The years, while they had brought no happiness to him, had at least given him a calm indifference to all things; now for many days and nights she had broken that calm. In his heart he cursed her, his emotion rising toward a fierce, passionate hatred.
"In hell's name," he cried abruptly, his voice ringing with a new menace in it, "what are you doing here? Why don't you go on? What are you staying here for? Is the world so damned small that you've got to come and preen yourself under my eyes?"
For a moment she did not answer. The expression in the eyes turned upon him changed swiftly. There was a quick fear, gone in a flash in pure wonder. All this he saw clearly as too he saw a flicker of amusement. And back of the amusement which maddened him were other things, emotions hinted darkly, baffling him.
"The other day," she said steadily in the face of his rage, "you contented yourself by commanding me to take myself off of the mountain back there. Now you request me to get out of Canada? Or out of America? Or the western hemisphere, which is it? And, kind sir,whyis it?"
Looking up at him, to show him how little he moved her, to make him doubt if he had read aright when he had thought it was fear in her eyes, she laughed. The laughter, welling up softly, musically, from deep in the round white throat, the defiant posture, head thrown back, something of the vague, sweet intimacy in it, affected him strangely. His face reddened. His hands shut spasmodically, clenching hard, lifting a little from his sides. Instinctively she drew back, her own hand slipping into her bosom, a quick flutter of fear in her heart that he was actually going to strike her.
"Why?" His lips were drawn back from his teeth; his face was more evil in the grip of the passion upon him than she had ever seen it before; his voice harsh and ugly. "Because you come when you do now, a thousand years too soon or a dozen years too late! Because I hate you as I have never learned how to hate a man no matter what thing he had done! I don't know what there is in me that is stronger than I am and that makes me keep my hands off your throat. Do you know what you have done, Ygerne, with the infernal witchery of you? You have made me love you, me, David Drennen, who knows there is no such thing as love in a rotten world! I want you in my arms; I want to kiss that red mouth of yours; I want to kill any man who so much as looks at you! My life was as I would have it; in a few days I would be a rich man with all of the power of a rich man; … and then you came. Why do I hate you, your eyes, your mouth, your body and your brain? Why?" He broke off in a laugh which showed what his wounds, his sickness, his passion had done for him, and she drew still further back from him, shuddering. "I hate you.… By God! because you've made of me a fool like the others! because you have made me love you!"
A frenzy of delirium was upon him. She did not know whether the man were sane or not; he did not care. But he knew that he spoke the truth. Twice had he yielded to her, and he was not the man to yield easily. Once, and he had thought it a passing light mood, when he had let down the bars for her to come in. Now that recklessly he flung open the flood gates which had dammed his own emotions, allowing the headlong torrent to sweep away everything with it. It was madness; it was folly; it was insanity for a man like David Drennen to let his heart be snared out of him by the girl upon whom he had looked so few times. And yet, be it what else it might be, it was the simple truth.
"Laugh at me, why don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't know. Are you loyal and stanch and true—or treacherous and contemptible? I don't know. I don't know a thing about you, and yet I let you slip into my life one day and the next rile up all of the mud which was settling to the bottom. Go and brag of it to your two hangdogs. But, by heaven," and his fist smashed down into an open palm, "you and your dogs keep out of my way. If the three of you are here another twenty-four hours I'll drive them out and with them any other man you so much as look at!"
He stared at her for a moment, grown suddenly silent and white faced. He lifted his arms as though he would sweep her up into them. Then he dropped them so that they fell to his side like dead weights and swung about, turning his back upon her, going swiftly upstream toward the Settlement.
Across the river came the call of a robin. A splash of blue fire in the willows was a blue bird's wing. A solitary butterfly made a half circle about him, passing close to him as though to beat him back with its delicate, diaphanous wings. The pale yellowish buds everywhere were changing to a lusty verdant. Air and grass were filled with questing insect life thrilling upward with little voices. The snows were slipping, slipping from the mountainsides, the waters rising in river and lake. The sap was astir in shrub and tree, bursting upward joyously. Nature had breathed her soft command to all of the North Woods; every creature and thing of life in the North Woods had heard the call.
Ygerne, sitting very still, watched Drennen until he had passed around a bend in the river and was lost to her sight behind a clump of willows. His impassioned outburst had been too frenzied not to have moved her powerfully. But the expression in the eyes which followed him was too complex to give any key to the one emotion standing above the others in her breast. When she could see him no longer she rose and followed slowly.
Because the course of the Little MacLeod is full of twists and kinks, spine of ridge and depression of ravine thrusting the stream aside or welcoming it closer, she had no further view of him until they were both near the Settlement, Drennen himself already abreast of the first building at this end of the camp, his own dugout. She thought that he was going to stop at his cabin; then she saw that he had passed on. She had suspected that the man was delirious with the fever upon him; that his brain had reeled from the impact of the blows showered upon it and had staggered from its throne. Now the suspicion came to her that Drennen had come to her in his cups; that the thing which had loosened his tongue and distorted his vision was nothing more nor less than whiskey.
He was lurching as he walked, but bearing on swiftly. She had not been mistaken when she had thought that he had turned in toward his cabin. But in this his action had been involuntary. He had reeled, had paused as he caught and steadied himself, had gone on drunkenly.
There were a score of men up and down the short street. Already some of them had marked his coming. Ygerne turned hurriedly to the left, put the line of houses between her and the street, passing back doors quickly on her way to Père Marquette's.
Only once did Drennen stop. He ran his hand across his eyes as though to brush away some filmy fogginess of vision. There was impatience in the gesture. With a little grunt of satisfaction he went on. He had seen both Lemarc and Sefton talking with other men half way up the street.
As he passed Joe's he was lurching more and more, his walk grown markedly unsteady. His eyes were flaming and growing red; his face was splotched with colour, hot, angry colour; he was muttering to himself, little broken, feverish, illogical outpourings of the seething passion within him. He passed three men who were lounging and smoking. He did not turn his eyes toward them. They were the three big mining men, Madden and Hasbrook and Sothern. They saw him, their eyes following him quickly, each man with his own personal interest.
"Drunk, eh?" laughed Charlie Madden. "Suppose we draw straws to see who takes him in tow!"
Hasbrook's sharp featured face grew shrewd in speculation, his tongue clicking nervously. Marshall Sothern's shaggy brows lowered a bit; Madden and Hasbrook had looked from Drennen to each other and to him; he alone kept his eyes hard upon the man making his way with unsteady stubbornness up the street.
When a man stood in his way Drennen thrust out his arm, pushing him aside. His eyes grew ever the more terrible with the madness of the rage upon him, bloodshot and menacing. They lost Lemarc and Sefton, wandered uncertainly across the blurr of faces, glowered triumphantly as again they found the men he sought.
He drew up with a little jerk, not ten steps from the two men who as usual were standing close together. Such had been the strange impressiveness of his approach that now he was greeted by a deep silence. The only sound was his own hard breathing, then his words when he burst out violently.
As though his tongue were a poisoned whip he lashed them with it. Burning denunciation exploding within his heated brain was flung off in words to bite like spraying vitriol. His voice rose higher, shriller, grown more and more discordant. He cursed them until the blood ran into Lemarc's cheeks and seeped out of Sefton's. And when at last words failed and he choked a moment he flung himself upon them, bellowing inarticulate, half-smothered wrath.
Men drew back from before him. It was not their fight and they knew how and when to shrug their shoulders and watch. Lemarc, running his hand under his coat for his knife, was struck down before the hand could come in sight again. Drennen's searching fist had found the man's forehead and the sound of the blow was like a hammer beating against rock. Either Sefton had no arms upon him or had not the time to draw. He could only oppose his physical strength against the physical strength of a man who was an Antaeus from the madness and blood lust upon him. Sefton's white face went whiter, chalky and sick as Drennen's long arms encircled his body. Lemarc was rising slowly, his knife at last in his hand when Sefton's body, hurled far out, struck the ground.
Drennen was not fighting as a man fights. Rather were his actions those of some enraged, cautionless beast. Rushing at Lemarc he beat fiercely at a man who chanced to stand in his way, and the man went down. Lemarc was on his feet now, his knife lifted. And yet Drennen, bare handed, was rushing on at him. Sefton was up too, and there was a revolver in his hand. But Drennen, snarling, his fury blind and raging higher, took no heed of the weapon's menace. The thing in Lemarc's eyes, in Sefton's, was the thing a man must know when he sees it; and yet Drennen came on.
But another man saw and understood before it was too late. Marshall Sothern who had followed Drennen with long strides, was now close to his side. The old man's stalwart form moved swiftly, coming between Drennen and Sefton. With a quickness which men did not look for in a man of his age, with a strength which drove up from those who saw a little grunt of wonder, he put out his great arms so that they were about Drennen's body, below his shoulders, catching his arms and holding them tight against his ribs.
"Stop!" burst out Sothern's deep-lunged roar. "Can't you see the man is sick? By God, I'll kill any man who lays a hand on him!"
Speaking he hurled his greater weight against Drennen, driving him back. Perhaps just then the strength began to run out of the younger man's body; or perhaps some kindred frenzy was upon Marshall Sothern. Drennen, struggling and cursing, gave back; back another step; and then, wilting like a cut flower, went down, the old man falling with and upon him. As they fell Drennen lay still, his eyes roving wonderingly from face to face of the men crowding over him. Then his gaze came curiously to the face so near his own, the stern, powerful face of Sothern. An odd smile touched Drennen's lips fleetingly; he put out a freed arm so that it fell about Sothern's shoulders, his eyes closed and consciousness went out of him with a sigh.
"Bring him over to Marquette's."
It was Charlie Madden's voice. Madden and Hasbrook were crowding their way close to the two men in the centre of the group, but little behind Sothern in keeping their eyes upon the man because of whom they were here, for whom they were prepared to fight jealously.
"Stand back!"
Sothern's answer. He had risen, stooped a little, gathered Drennen up in his arms. After the way of men at such a time there was no giving back, rather a growing denseness of the packed throng.
"Don't you hear me?" boomed Sothern angrily. "I say stand back!"
Those directly in front of him, under his eyes, drew hesitantly aside, stepping obediently to right or left. Carrying his burden with a strength equal to that of a young Kootanie George, Marshall Sothern made his way through the narrow lane they made for him. But he did not turn toward Père Marquette's.
"Where are you taking him?" demanded Madden suspiciously, again forcing his way to Sothern's elbow. "That's not the way …"
"I'm taking him to his own home," said Sothern calmly. "The only home he's got, his dugout."
"Oho," cried Madden, suspicion giving place to certainty and open accusation, while Hasbrook, combing at his beard, was muttering in a like tone. "You'll take him off to yourself, will you? Where you can do as you damned please with him? Not much."
Marshall Sothern merely shook his head and moved on, thrusting Madden to one side with his heavy shoulder. He was carrying Drennen as one might carry a baby, an arm about the shoulders, an arm under the knees. Men offered to help him but he paid no heed to them. Leonine the man always looked; to-day he looked the lion bearing off a wounded whelp to its den.
Expostulating, Madden dogged his heels, the rest following. Lemarc and Sefton, speaking together, had dropped far behind; Hasbrook was close to Madden's elbow. So they passed down the street. Ygerne Bellaire, standing now in front of Marquette's, watched them wonderingly.
Sothern came first to the dugout. The door being open, he passed in without stopping. He laid the inert form down gently and came back to the door.
"Well?" he demanded, his steady eyes going to Madden.
Madden laughed sneeringly.
"If you think I'm going to stand for a high-handed play like this," he jeered, "you're damned well mistaken. You're not the only man who's got an interest in him. He doesn't belong to you, old man."
"They'd have killed him if it hadn't been for me," returned Sothern imperturbably. "Until he's on his feet and in his mind again he does belong to me. We haven't the pleasure of knowing each other very well, Charlie. But I can give you my word that when I say a thing I mean it. If you don't believe it … start something."
He stepped outside, closing the door after him softly. He brought out his pipe, knocked the dead tobacco from it and filled it afresh, lighting it before Madden and Hasbrook, consulting together in an undertone, had found anything to say. His eyes were calm and steady; there was even a hint of a smile in them as they rested upon Madden's eager, angry face. There had been no threat in his last words. But he had meant them.
There was but one door to the dugout; it was closed, and more than that, Marshall Sothern stood calmly in front of it. Drennen was inside and he was going to stay there. Madden muttered something; Sothern lifted his brows enquiringly and Madden did not repeat. The situation being neither without interest or humour, some of the men laughed. Madden considered swiftly: Drennen was unconscious; Sothern could do nothing with him immediately. He drew Hasbrook aside and the two went slowly up the street.
Sothern beckoned a man he knew in the crowd, a little fellow named Jimmie Andrews.
"Get a horse," he said quietly. "I want you to carry a couple of letters to Lebarge for me. If you can't get a horse any other way buy one. Come back as soon as you're ready to start. I'll have the letters ready."
He turned back into the dugout, closed the door and dropped the wooden bar into place. Jimmie Andrews went hastily after a horse and twenty minutes later rode out of MacLeod's Settlement, headed for the railroad. He carried a letter to the Superintendent of the Northwestern. The second letter was addressed to Dr. Thos. Levitt.
During the two days which followed the Settlement went tip-toe. No man of them saw David Drennen except now and then through the door when Marshall Sothern had opened it for the warm midday air. There were men in the street who offered wagers that he was going to die and, what was more to the point, that he would die without telling where he had found gold. Sothern ministered to him day and night, letting no one in, having his own meals sent here, sitting by the bunk or at the doorstep, smoking. When a passer-by asked, "How's he gettin' along?" Sothern's answer was always the same: "Slowly."
Drennen had been through much privation and hardship before his discovery, severe bodily punishment and fatigue thereafter. On top of physical suffering had been imposed the mental stress, the veritable mad agony and strife of the dual emotions which Ygerne had inspired in him. It was in the cards that he should come near death; but that he should not die. A man's destiny is characterised at times by an instinct of savagery; it tortures him until his sense of pain is dulled and lost in unconsciousness; then it lets him grow strong again for fresh tortures.
After the forty-eight hours had passed Jimmie Andrews had returned bringing the physician with him. Dr. Levitt had stayed twenty-four hours and had gone again, saying that there was nothing for him to do that Sothern could not do as well. He rather thought that Drennen's beautiful physique would pull him through. But it would take time, careful attention, rest and properly administered nourishment.
"Can't you get a woman to help?" he asked as he was going. "I don't give a damn what kind she is. One fool of a woman is worth a dozen men at times like this." He pocketed his fee, bestowed upon Sothern a gratuitous wink with the words, "I guess it's a good investment for you, eh? Madden and Hasbrook look as sore as saddle boils."
Drennen slept much but restlessly. When he was awake he stared with clouded, troubled eyes at the smoke-blackened ceiling or out of the door at the willows or into Sothern's rugged face. His fever raged high, his body burning with it, his brain a turbulent melting pot wherein strange fancies passed through odd, vaporous forms. He confused events of a far-off childhood with occurrences of yesterday. He was a little boy, gone black-berrying, and Ygerne Bellaire went with him. His dugout was a cabin in the Yukon where he had lived a year, or it was a speeding train carrying him away from an old home and into the wilderness. There were times when Marshall Sothern, bending over him, was an enemy, torturing him. Times when the old man was his own father and Drennen put out his hands to him, his face alight. Times when the sick man cursed and reviled him. Times when he broke into shouting song or laughter or raved of his gold. But most often did he speak the name Ygerne; now tenderly, now sneeringly, now with a love that yearned, now a hatred which shook him terribly and left him exhausted.
The doctor had gotten back to Lebarge before Marshall Sothern sent for Ygerne. She came without delay.
"This man is very sick," he told her, bending a searching look at her from under brows shaggy in thought. "He talks of you very much. Does he love you or does he hate you?"
She looked at him coolly, her gaze defying him to pry into matters which did not concern him. He understood the look and said calmly:
"I want him to get well. There are reasons why he has got to get well."
"I know," she laughed at him. "Good, golden reasons!"
"If he loves you, as I have a mind he does," Sothern went on quietly, "I think that you could do more to help him than any one else. If he hates you you might do more harm than good. That is why I asked."
"He is delirious?"
"A great deal of the time; not always."
Her brows puckered thoughtfully.
"I think," she said at last, "that he loves me and hates me … both! But I'll come in and see if I can be of any help. I, too, have good reasons for wanting him to live."
So the door to Drennen's dugout was opened to Ygerne Bellaire. But to no one else in the Settlement; Marshall Sothern saw to that. Madden came, Hasbrook came; but they did not get their feet across the rude threshold. They grumbled, Madden in particular. They accused Sothern of taking an unfair advantage; of keeping the delirious man under his own eye and ear that he might seek to steal his secret from him; of plotting with Ygerne to aid in the same end. But, say what they might outside, they did not come in.
"We'll see which is the greater, his love for me or his hate," the girl had said. She sat down by the bed, laying her hand softly upon the bared arm which Drennen had flung out. He turned, looking at her with frowning eyes. In silence she waited. Sothern, standing by the door, his eyes watchful as they passed back and forth from her face to Drennen's, was silent. For a score of seconds Drennen's gaze was unfaltering. Then, with a little sigh, he drew her hand close to him, rested his cheek against it and went to sleep. Sothern, looking now at the girl's face, saw it flush as though with pleasure.
Now she was at the dugout almost as much as Marshall Sothern. The long hours of the day she spent at the bedside, going to her own room only when it grew dark. And even in the night, once Sothern sent for her. Drennen had called for her; had grown violent when she was denied to him and would not be quieted when Sothern sought to reason with him. So Ygerne, dressing hurriedly, her sweater about her, came.
"Why do you come to me that way?"
Drennen had lifted himself upon his elbow, calling out angrily.
"What do you mean?" she asked wondering.
"In that miserable sweater!" he cried. "That's good enough for other women, not for you."
And he made her go back and put on the dress she had worn that night when she had dined with him. She argued with him but he insisted. He would have none of her in her sweater.
"Oh, well," she said, and went out. Sothern thought that she had gone for good. His eyes narrowed and stared speculatively when in a little she came in again. Drennen smiled, openly approved of the Ygerne whom he had sought to kiss, took her hands, kissed them and holding them grew quiet.
He grew stronger almost steadily after that. He had much fever and delirium, but his wounds healed and he ceased to lose ground as he had been doing. In his ravings he made much passionate love to Ygerne, his tones running from the gentleness of supplication to the flame of hot avowal. In lucid moments of sanity he accepted her presence as a quite natural condition, too utterly exhausted by the periods of delirium through which he had passed to ask questions. A few times, indeed, he railed at her as he had done when he had come upon her on the river bank. But for the most part his attitude answered over and over the question Ygerne had implied when first she had come to his side; his love was greater than his hate.
Then there came a day when David Drennen was the old David Drennen once more. He awoke with clear eyes and clear brain. He saw both Marshall Sothern and Ygerne Bellaire. He closed his eyes swiftly. He must think. As he thought, remembering a little, guessing more, a hard smile, the old bitter smile came to his lips. He opened his eyes again and lifted himself upon his elbow. The eyes which met Sothern's were as hard as steel; they ignored the girl entirely.
"I've been sick?" he said coolly. "Well, I'm not sick any longer. In a day or so I'll be around again. Then I'll pay you for your trouble."
And seeing from the look in Sothern's eyes that the rude insult had registered he laughed and turned his face away from them. Sothern and the girl stepped outside together, without a word.
"He is just plain brute!" the girl cried with passionate contempt.
The old man shook his head gravely. He laid his hand very gently upon her shoulder, his unexpected familiarity drawing a quick questioning look from her.
"Little girl," he said thoughtfully, "he's just plain man, that's all; man hammered and beaten awry by the vicious little gods of mischance. If there's anything good left in him it's his love for you. There is a time coming when I am going to wield the destinies of one of the greatest corporations in the West. My responsibility then, compared to yours now, will be as a grain of sand to Old Ironhead up yonder."
"The perfume of roses, of little red roses;(Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet,corazón!)The laugh of the water who falls in the fountain;(Thou art the fountain of love,corazón!)The brightness of stars, of little stars golden;(Estrella de mi vida! My little life star!)The shine of the moon through the magnolia tree;I am so sad till thou come,mi amor!Dios! It is sweet to be young and to love!More sweet than wine … to be young and to love!"
There was tenderness in the voice. Each note was like the pure sound of a little gold bell struck softly with a tiny golden hammer.
There had been determination in David Drennen's eye, in his carriage, in his stride which swiftly bore him onward through the early night from his own dugout toward the old Frenchman's store. Not fifty steps from Marquette's he stopped abruptly, listening to the soft singing. It was not so dark that he could not make out the slender, exquisite form of the young Mexican. Ramon Garcia, wrapped about in his long coat like a cavalier in a graceful cloak, his face lifted a little, his head bared, was close to a certain window of Père Marquette's. Drennen knew whose window.
With no conscious desire to eavesdrop, merely stopped by an unforeseen contingency, Drennen stood still. Garcia, his eyes upon a line of light under the window shade, did not see him. It was hardly more than an instant that Drennen stood there, watching; but the little drama was enacted before he moved on.
Slowly, while the last notes were fainting away plaintively, the window was raised. Drennen saw Ygerne Bellaire, half in light, half in shadow. She leaned out. She was laughing softly. Garcia, his bow carrying to the ground his hat which in the dim light appeared to Drennen's fancy to wear the black plume which would not have been misplaced there, came closer to the window. Upon the girl's face was a gaiety Drennen had not seen there until now; her lips curved to it, her eyes danced with it. She had a little meadow flower in her hand; Drennen wondered if she had been eagerly selecting it from a cluster of its fellows while Garcia sang.
"You are not real, señor," she said lightly. "I wonder if you know that?"
"It is you …" he began, his voice charged with the music about which the man's soul was builded.
"No, no," she laughed. "You are not real. You have just wandered out of an old romance like a ghost; when the sun comes up you'll have to creep back between dusty covers of a book a hundred years old."
He put out a hand towards hers on the window sill.
"Give me the little flower," he pleaded, southern lover-wise. "I shall never let it go away from its place on my heart, though I fear," and his hand crept a little closer, "that my heart will burst with the joy of it!"
The little meadow flower went from her fingers to his.
"A flower for your song, señor. A poor little flower which should have golden petals."
"Living," he murmured, no heights or depths of sentiment seeming beyond him, "it shall always be with me, a joy so sweet that it almost kills. Dead, I shall be happy just to wear it."
She laughed as he caught her hand and kissed it. The window closed softly, the shade was drawn down, and Ramon Garcia, hat still in one hand, the flower in the other, passed down the street, still singing in a gentle undertone. Drennen turned abruptly at right angles to the way he had come and passed out of the Settlement into the darkness under the trees.
Swiftness and determination had gone out of his stride. Unconsciously he allowed his feet to carry him along a well known trail which led along the flank of the wooded slope. Once or twice he stopped. Then again he moved on, always further, from the Settlement.
He was well again and strong. Rest and nature had done all they could for him in a handful of long, quiet days. He was still twenty pounds lighter than he should be normally, but he had both feet firmly set in a smooth highway of convalescence. The mental and spiritual roadways were not so smooth or straight.
He had seen much of Ygerne of late. He had come to know that, wise man or fool, he loved her. They had met frequently, at Joe's, upon the short street, in their walks up and down the river. They had not spoken of all that had gone before and there had been as much silence as talk between them. He continued to tell himself coolly that he knew nothing of her, that she might be good or bad, loyal or treacherous. But he knew that he did not hate her and that he did love her. He knew that he was not angry because she had come into his life but that he was glad.
He knew to-night that his whole spiritual being was made simply of two elements: of love, which is a white flame in a man like Drennen; of jealousy, which is a black shadow. He had been on his way to her, his mind made up that he would not sleep without telling her of his love. The sight of Garcia had halted him. Garcia's singing to her had awakened a fierce anger within him; his flesh had twitched and something had seemed to sear hot through it as Garcia's lips touched her hand.
Now he tried to look at these matters calmly. He knew that in the fury which had sent him at Lemarc and Sefton before Marshall Sothern had gathered up his limp body the driving force had been jealousy. He knew that even then, in his delirium, he wanted her all to himself.
Less than a month had passed since first he had seen her and he did not now know what manner of woman she was. But he did know that that does not matter. His fate had driven him into the North Woods ten years ago that he might be here when she came; her destiny had brought her to MacLeod's Settlement from New Orleans to him. Because the greatest of all laws lies hidden under a clutter of little things that law is none the less great or real. He had grown to see as a miraculous manifestation of this law even the fact that he and Ygerne Bellaire had been born in the same generation.… Stern-minded men of science, whose creed is to doubt all things until they are proven in such wise as an objective brain can accept them as incontrovertible, see no miracle in the fact that a certain female moth, left alone upon a mountain top, will draw to herself a male mate from mountainous miles away. Even in the insect world there is a silent call which is a voice of destiny. Omnipotence is not above concerning itself with the embrace of two tiny, fragile-winged creatures in the darkness of the solitudes. Surely there is an urge and yearning of human souls which knows not distance and obstacles, which brings together man and his mate.
These were strange, new thoughts to David Drennen and yet they came naturally as an old knowledge set aside, half forgotten, ultimately vividly recalled. He loved Ygerne; she must love him. Therein alone could lie the explanation of his presence here and of hers. When he had quitted his dugout this evening there had been more than determination in his heart; there had been confidence.
And now? He wandered aimlessly. Determination and confidence had both left him. Garcia had sung to her and the singing had pleased. Garcia had made love to her in his song and she had thrown open her window. Garcia had kissed her hand and she had given him a flower.
Deep in his troubled thoughts Drennen had stopped a third time. He was in thick shadow and saw two figures that had followed him. He made out that here were Lemarc and Sefton as they came on, cautiously and silently. This thing was to be expected; these men were plucking with greedy fingers as fortune's robe and for such as they he was one to be watched. He saw them pass on along the trail; his still form in the shadows was blotted out from them by the tall boles of the trees. His eyes followed them a moment, then lost them. Already he had forgotten them. His thoughts went back to Ygerne Bellaire, to the scene at the window.
The moon pushed a great golden disc up over the ridge. It was at the full and made glorious patterns of light through the forest. Little voices of the night which he had not heard until now began to thrill and quiver under the soft light. It was as though the North Woods were filled with a secret, pigmy people who were moon worshippers; as though now they greeted their goddess with an elfin chant of praise.
A strange sadness fastened itself upon the man. The beauty of the night touched him deeply. It brought with its stillness an unaccustomed emotion of melancholy. He was suddenly lonely. The night was rarely perfect and yet it wanted something. It was complete yet it was empty. The moonrise, the golden glory of stars set against the soft bosom of the sky, brought a sense of lack of something. It touched the soul and yet did not satisfy. It awoke a sort of soul thirst and hunger in him. Upon him was the old yearning, the yearning of the man for his mate, that longing experienced never so poignantly as in a spot like this where a man is alone with the woodland.
Dimly conscious of many emotions mingled and confused, David Drennen was keenly awake to the sweeping alteration which a few days had effected in him. Not that he fully understood that which he recognised. He was inclined to look upon himself as a different man; like many a man before him whom love or hate, a great joy or a great disaster, had appeared to make over, he was but experiencing the sensation resultant from the emancipation of a certain portion of his being which had existed always until now in a state of bondage, silent and hidden.
He stood a long time, very still. So motionless that when the moon had driven the shadows back and found him out he looked a brother to the inanimate objects about him. But when at last he moved, while slowly, it was without hesitation. He was going to Ygerne.
Marquette's store was closed, the doors locked. There was a light from Ygerne's window, another light from a second window, Madden's room. Drennen passed about the house and came to the door of the living room. There was no light shining under the door, but he knocked. In a little Mère Jeanne, a wrap thrown about her, came in answer.
"May I see Miss Bellaire?" he said simply. "Will you tell her that it is important?"
Mère Jeanne looked at him shrewdly, with little hesitation made up her mind that he came as a lover, left him at the door and went to the girl. A moment later Ygerne entered the little living room. Drennen stepped across the threshold.
"I wanted to talk with you," he said gravely.
The girl shot a quick, curious look at him and went to a chair.
"Will you come outside with me?" he asked quietly. "It is quite a private matter. We can walk up and down in the moonlight, just outside."
A moment she seemed to hesitate. Then she shook her head.
"We are alone here," she replied. "What is it?"
"It is many things, Ygerne." He closed the outside door and stood with his back to it, his eyes very steady upon hers. A sudden pulsing of blood coursed through him but he held himself steady, forcing his voice to remain grave and quiet. "To begin with I want to apologise to you for having been a brute to you since I first saw you. If you can't find it in your heart to make any excuses for me at least you can know that I am both sorry and ashamed of myself."
Again she shot that quick, questioning glance at him. She felt as he had felt: "This is some new David Drennen."
"You know me pretty well," he went on. "Better than I know you, I think. I am a man whose name has been dragged through a lot of muck and mire. I am the son of a thief. My father was without honour. God knows how good or how bad I am. My life for ten years has been an ugly thing, a good deal more evil than good. If you are the sort of woman I like to think you are, then I suppose that my presence here is little less than an insult to you, though God knows I don't mean it to be."
He paused. She watched him as before, save that now a quick light of understanding had come into her eyes, a faint flush to her cheeks. Like Mère Jeanne, she had glimpsed the lover in the man—he couldn't know that already he had told her all that he had come to say; but she knew.
"I told you the truth the other day, Ygerne. That day when I went mad. I love you. I'd like to be another sort of man, a better sort, coming to tell you this. But if I were a better man I couldn't love you any better."
Despite the surety that the words were coming they must have brought a little shock to her. She rose swiftly, her hands coming up from her sides until they clasped each other in front of her.
"I didn't believe in love until you came, Ygerne. I have never seen such a thing in the life I have lived. You see, to begin with, I thought my father loved me and that I loved him. I was mistaken. I thought I had a friend once and again I was mistaken. But now I know there is such a thing. I want you and you are all that I want in the world. I want you, Ygerne, in a way I did not know a man could want anything. Through you I have come to look at all creation in a new way; it seems to me that there is a God. Am I talking like a madman again? Or just like a fool?… I feel sometimes that I love you because I was created for the sole purpose of loving you; that you must love me for the same reason. There are other times when that doesn't seem possible, when I can't conceive of your coming to me as I come to you. But in the end I had to know, Ygerne. Am I a fool? Or do you love me?"
He had made no movement toward her. He stood very still at the door. He had striven with his emotion so that outwardly he mastered it. His voice had remained calm and very steady.
"You said a moment ago," Ygerne answered him, and her voice too was cool almost to the point of indifference, "that you had been a brute to me. Knowing you as I do, is it likely that I should have come to love you?"
"No," he said.
"Then why do you come to me this way, now?"
"Because I had to come. Because it is not always the likely thing which happens. Because I have thought that we were made for each other, you and I. Because I must know."
He waited for her answer, an answer which he feared she had already given him. He hungered for her so that he could only wonder how he could hold himself back from taking her up into his arms. But he mastered himself so that the girl could not guess how hard he strove for the mastery.
"Is love a little thing or a big thing?" she said suddenly.
"A big thing. I think it is the biggest thing in the world."
"And still, believing that, you think that I am a girl to let you treat me as you have treated me since we first saw each other, and then to come to you when you decide to crook your finger to me, giving you my love? Is that it? Is that why you are here to-night?"
"Is that my answer, Ygerne?" he said, his tone more stern than it had yet been.
"That is no answer at all, Mr. Drennen. It is a question."
His face grew a little white as he stared at her.
"I think, Ygerne, that I shall tell you good night now. And in the morning, before you are up, I'll be gone. All my life I hope I shall never see you again. And you can know that every day of it I'll be mad to see you."
He bent his head to her, turning away, a dull agony in his heart. His hand was upon the knob of the door. Then she came toward him swiftly. Half way across the room she stopped. Suddenly her face was scarlet, her eyes were shining at him like stars. Her beauty was a new beauty, infinitely desirable.
"Were I the man," she said with a voice which shook with the passion in it, "I'd not want my woman to come to me! I'd want to go to her, to take her with my own strength, to hold her with it, to know that she was too proud to yield even when she was burning to be taken!"
"Ygerne!" he said sharply.
There was a sort of defiance in the sudden, tensity of her erect body, an imperiousness in the carriage of her head. Her eyes met his with something of the same defiance in them. But in them, too, was a great light.
Drennen came to her swiftly. His arms tightened about her, drawing her so close that each heart felt the other striking against it. She let him hold her so, but even yielding she seemed to resist. His lips, seeking her red mouth, found it this time. She gave back the passion of his kiss passionately. He felt a thrill through him like an electric current.
"By God, Ygerne," he cried joyously, "we'll make life over now!"
Suddenly she had wrenched herself free of him.
"I didn't love you yesterday," she said pantingly, holding him back at arm's length, her wide, half-frightened eyes upon his. "Will I love you to-morrow?… You must go now; go!"
He put out his arms for her but she had run back to the door through which she had come to him. He heard the door close, then another. She had gone to her own room.
Caught up between heaven and hell he made his way homeward. Passing her window he saw that it was dark. He hesitated, then moved on. Suddenly he stopped. He had heard her singing, her voice lilting gaily, quite as though no strong emotion had come into her life to-night. A swift anger vaguely tinged with dread leaped into Drennen's heart. She was humming a line of Garcia's little song:
"Dios! It is sweet to be young and to love!"