A Romany of the Snows Part 21

She was watching a little knot of hors.e.m.e.n coming over a swell of the prairie far off. She withdrew her eyes and fixed them on Pierre. "Do you throw your life away if you do what is the only thing you are told to do?"

She placed her hand on her heart--that had been her one guide.

Pierre got to his feet, came over, and touched her on the shoulder.

"You have the great secret," he said quietly. "The thing may be all wrong to others, but if it's right to yourself--that's it--mais oui! If he comes," he added "if he comes back, think of him as well as Marcey.

Marcey is sleeping--what does it matter? If he is awake, he has better times, for he was a man to make another world sociable. Think of Laforce, for he has his life to live, and he is a man to make this world sociable.

'The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home-- (Why should the door be shut?)'"

Her eyes had been following the group of hors.e.m.e.n on the plains. She again fixed them on Pierre, and stood up.

"It is a beautiful legend--that," she said.

"But?--but?" he asked.

She would not answer him. "You will come again," she said; "you will--help me?"

"Surely, p't.i.te Lucille, surely, I will come. But to help--ah, that would sound funny to the Missionary at the Fort and to others!"

"You understand life," she said, "and I can speak to you."

"It's more to you to understand you than to be good, eh?"

"I guess it's more to any woman," she answered. They both pa.s.sed out of the house. She turned towards the broken shutter. Then their eyes met. A sad little smile hovered at her lips.

"What is the use?" she said, and her eyes fastened on the hors.e.m.e.n.

He knew now that she would never shudder again at the sight of it, or at the remembrance of Marcey's death.

"But he will come," was the reply to her, and her smile almost settled and stayed.

They parted, and as he went down the hill he saw far over, coming up, a woman in black, who walked as if she carried a great weight. "Every shot that kills ricochets," he said to himself:

"His mother dead--her mother like that!"

He pa.s.sed into the Fort, renewing acquaintances in the Company's store, and twenty minutes after he was one to greet the hors.e.m.e.n that Lucille had seen coming over the hills. They were five, and one had to be helped from his horse. It was Stroke Laforce, who had been found near dead at the Metal River by a party of men exploring in the north.

He had rescued the Englishman and his party, but within a day of the finding the Englishman died, leaving him his watch, a ring, and a cheque on the H. B. C. at Winnipeg. He and the two survivors, one of whom was Brickney, started south. One night Brickney robbed him and made to get away, and on his seizing the thief he was wounded. Then the other man came to his help and shot Brickney: after that weeks of wandering, and at last rescue and Fort Ste. Anne.

A half-hour after this Pierre left Laforce on the crest of the hill above the Fort, and did not turn to go down till he had seen the other pa.s.s within the house with the broken shutter. And later he saw a little bonfire on the hill. The next evening he came to the house again himself. Lucille rose to meet him.

"'Why should the door be shut?"' he quoted smiling.

"The door is open," she answered quickly and with a quiet joy.

He turned to the motion of her hand, and saw Laforce asleep on a couch.

Soon afterwards, as he pa.s.sed from the house, he turned towards the window. The broken shutter was gone.

He knew now the meaning of the bonfire the night before.

THE FINDING OF FINGALL

"Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!"

A grey mist was rising from the river, the sun was drinking it delightedly, the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r's beak on a hickory tree.

It was a sweet, fresh autumn morning in Lonesome Valley. Before night the deer would bellow reply to the hunters' rifles, and the mountain-goat call to its unknown G.o.ds; but now there was only the wild duck skimming the river, and the high hilltop rising and fading into the mist, the ardent sun, and again that strange cry--

"Fingall!--Oh, Fingall! Fingall!"

Two men, lounging at a fire on a ledge of the hills, raised their eyes to the mountain-side beyond and above them, and one said presently:

"The second time. It's a woman's voice, Pierre." Pierre nodded, and abstractedly stirred the coals about with a twig.

"Well, it is a pity--the poor Cynthie," he said at last.

"It is a woman, then. You know her, Pierre--her story?"

"Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!"

Pierre raised his head towards the sound; then after a moment, said:

"I know Fingall."

"And the woman? Tell me."

"And the girl. Fingall was all fire and heart, and devil-may-care.

She--she was not beautiful except in the eye, but that was like a flame of red and blue. Her hair, too--then--would trip her up, if it hung loose. That was all, except that she loved him too much. But women--et puis, when a woman gets a man between her and the heaven above and the earth beneath, and there comes the great hunger, what is the good! A man cannot understand, but he can see, and he can fear. What is the good! To play with life, that is not much; but to play with a soul is more than a thousand lives. Look at Cynthie."

He paused, and Lawless waited patiently. Presently Pierre continued:

Fingall was gentil; he would take off his hat to a squaw. It made no difference what others did; he didn't think--it was like breathing to him. How can you tell the way things happen? Cynthie's father kept the tavern at St. Gabriel's Fork, over against the great saw-mill. Fingall was foreman of a gang in the lumberyard. Cynthie had a brother--Fenn.

Fenn was as bad as they make, but she loved him, and Fingall knew it well, though he hated the young skunk. The girl's eyes were like two little fire-flies when Fingall was about.

"He was a gentleman, though he had only half a name--Fingall--like that. I think he did not expect to stay; he seemed to be waiting for something--always when the mail come in he would be there; and afterwards you wouldn't see him for a time. So it seemed to me that he made up his mind to think nothing of Cynthie, and to say nothing."

"Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!"

The strange, sweet, singing voice sounded nearer. "She's coming this way, Pierre," said Lawless.

"I hope not to see her. What is the good!"

"Well, let us have the rest of the story."