God's Country-And the Woman Part 29

Half a mile away a light stood out like a glowing star in the darkness.

It was a campfire.

"It is a fire at the Forks," spoke Jean above the wind. "Mon Dieu, M'sieur--is it not something to have friends like that!"

He led the way a short distance along the face of the ridge, and then they plunged down the valley of deeper gloom. The forest was thick and low, and Philip guessed that they were pa.s.sing through a swamp. When they came out of it the fire was almost in their faces. The howling of dogs greeted them. As they dashed into the light half a dozen men had risen and were facing them, their rifles in the crooks of their arms.

From out of the six there strode a tall, thin, smooth-shaven man toward them, and from Jean's lips there fell words which he tried to smother.

"Mother of Heaven, it is Father George, the Missioner from Baldneck!"

he gasped.

In another moment the Missioner was wringing the half-breed's mittened hand. He was a man of sixty. His face was of cadaverous thinness, and there was a feverish glow in his eyes.

"Jean Croisset!" he cried. "I was at Ladue's when Pierre came with the word. Is it true? Has the purest soul in all this world been stolen by those G.o.dless men at Th.o.r.eau's? I cannot believe it! But if it is so, I have come to fight!"

"It is true, Father," replied Jean. "They have stolen her as the wolves of white men stole Red Fawn from her father's tepee three years ago.

And to-morrow--"

"The vengeance of the Lord will descend upon them," interrupted the Missioner. "And this, Jean, your friend?"

"Is M'sieur Philip Darcambal, the husband of Josephine," said Jean.

As the Missioner gripped Philip's hand his thin fingers had in them the strength of steel.

"Ladue told me that she had found her man," he said. "May G.o.d bless you, my son! It was I, Father George, who baptized her years and years ago. For me she made Adare House a home from the time she was old enough to put her tiny arms about my neck and lisp my name. I was on my way to see you when night overtook me at Ladue's. I am not a fighting man, my son. G.o.d does not love their kind. But it was Christ who flung the money-changers from the temple--and so I have come to fight."

The others were close about them now, and Jean was telling of the ambush in the forest. Purple veins grew in the Missioner's forehead as he listened. There were no questions on the lips of the others. With dark, tense faces and eyes that burned with slumbering fires they heard Jean. There were the grim and silent Foutelles, father and son, from the Caribou Swamp. Tall and ghostlike in the firelight, more like spectre than man, was Janesse, a white beard falling almost to his waist, a thick marten skin cap shrouding his head, and armed with a long barrelled smooth-bore that shot powder and ball. From the fox grounds out on the Barren had come "Mad" Joe Horn behind eight huge malemutes that pulled with the strength of oxen. And with the Missioner had come Ladue, the Frenchman, who could send a bullet through the head of a running fox at two hundred yards four times out of five. Kaskisoon and his Crees had not arrived, and Philip knew that Jean was disappointed.

"I heard three days ago of a big caribou herd to the west," said Janesse in answer to the half-breed's inquiry. "It may be they have gone for meat."

They drew close about the fire, and the Foutelles dragged in a fresh birch log for the flames. "Mad" Joe Horn, with hair and beard as red as copper, hummed the Storm Song under his breath. Janesse stood with his back to the heat, facing darkness and the west. He raised a hand, and all listened. For sixty years his world had been bounded by the four walls of the forests. It was said that he could hear the padded footfall of the lynx--and so all listened while the hand was raised, though they heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, the crackling of the fire, and the unrest of the dogs in the timber behind them. For many seconds Janesse did not lower his hand; and then, still unheard by the others, there came slowly out of the gloom a file of dusky-faced, silent, shadowy forms. They were within the circle of light before Jean or his companions had moved, and at their head was Kaskisoon, the Cree: tall, slender as a spruce sapling, and with eyes that went searchingly from face to face with the uneasy glitter of an ermine's. They fell upon Jean, and with a satisfied "Ugh!" and a hunch of his shoulders he turned to his followers. There were seven. Six of them carried rifles.

In the hands of the seventh was a shotgun.

After this, one by one, and two by two, there were added others to the circle of waiting men about the fire. By two o'clock there were twenty.

They came faster after that. With Bernard, from the south, came Renault, who had gone to the end of his run. From the east, west, and south they continued to come--but from out of the northwest there led no trail. Off there was Th.o.r.eau's place. Pack after pack was added to the dogs in the timber. Their voices rose above and drowned all other sound. Teams strained at their leashes to get at the throats of rival teams, and from the black shelter in which they were fastened came a continuous snarling and gnashing of fangs. Over the coals of a smaller fire simmered two huge pots of coffee from which each arrival helped himself; and on long spits over the larger fire were dripping chunks of moose and caribou meat from which they cut off their own helpings.

In the early dawn there were forty who gathered about Father George to listen to the final words he had to say. He raised his hands. Then he bowed his head, and there was a strange silence. Words of prayer fell solemnly from his lips. Partly it was in Cree, partly in French, and when he had finished a deep breath ran through the ranks of those who listened to him. Then he told them, beginning with Cree, in the three languages of the wilderness, that they were to be led that day by Jean Jacques Croisset and Philip Darcambal, the husband of Josephine. Two of the Indians were to remain behind to care for the camp and dogs. Beyond that they needed no instructions.

They were ready, and Jean was about to give the word to start when there was an interruption. Out of the forest and into their midst came a figure--the form of a man who rose above them like a giant, and whose voice as it bellowed Jean's name had in it the wrath of thunder.

It was the master of Adare!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

For a moment John Adare stood like an avenging demon in the midst of the startled faces of the forest men. His s.h.a.ggy hair blew out from under his gray lynx cap. His eyes were red and glaring with the lights of the hunting wolf. His deep chest rose and fell in panting breaths.

Then he saw Jean and Philip, side by side. Toward them he came, as if to crush them, and Philip sprang toward him, so that he was ahead of Jean. Adare stopped. The wind rattled in his throat.

"And you came WITHOUT ME--"

His voice was a rumble, deep, tense, like the muttering vibration before an explosion. Philip's hands gripped his arms, and those arms were as hard as oak. In one hand Adare held a gun. His other fist was knotted, heavy.

"Yes, Mon Pere, we came without you," said Philip. "It is terrible. We did not want you two to suffer. We did not want you to know until it was all over, and Josephine was back in your arms. We thought it drive her mother mad. And you, Mon Pere, we wanted to save you!"

Adare's face relaxed. His arm dropped. His red eyes shifted to the faces about him, and he said, as he looked:

"It was Breuil. He said you and Josephine were not at his cabin. He came to tell Mignonne the child was so much better. I cornered Metoosin, and he told me. I have been coming fast, running."

He drew in a deep breath. Then suddenly he became like a tiger. He sprang among the men, and threw up his great arms. His voice rose more than human, fierce and savage, above the growing tumult of the dogs and the wailing of the wind.

"Ye are with me, men?"

A rumble of voice answered him.

"Then come!"

He had seen that they were ready, and he strode on ahead of them. He was leader now, and Philip saw Father George close at his side, clutching his arm, talking. In Jean's face there was a great fear. He spoke low to Philip.

"If he meets Lang, if he fights face to face with Th.o.r.eau, or if they call upon us to parley, all is lost! M'sieur, for the love of G.o.d, hold your fire for those two! We must kill them. If a parley is granted, they will come to us. We will kill them--even as they come toward us with a white flag, if we must!"

"No truce will be granted!" cried Philip.

As if John Adare himself had heard his words, he stopped and faced those behind him. They were in the shelter of the forest. In the gray gloom of dawn they were only a sea of shifting shadows.

"Men, there is to be no mercy this day!" he said, and his voice rumbled like an echo through the aisles of the forest. "We are not on the trail of men, but of beasts and murderers. The Law that is three hundred miles away has let them live in our midst. It has let them kill. It said nothing when they stole Red Fawn from her father's tepee and ravaged her to death. It has said: 'Give us proof that Th.o.r.eau killed Reville, and that his wife did not die a natural death.' We are our own law. In these forests we are masters. And yet with this brothel at our doors we are not safe, our wives and daughters are within the reach of monsters. To-day it is my daughter--her husband's wife. To-morrow it may be yours. There can be no mercy. We must kill--kill and burn! Am I right, men?"

This time it was not a murmur but a low thunder of voice that answered.

Philip and Jean forged ahead to his side. Shoulder to shoulder they led the way.

From the camp at the Forks it was eighteen miles to the Devil's Nest, where hung on the edge of a chasm the log buildings that sheltered Lang and his crew. To these men of the trails those eighteen miles meant nothing. White-bearded Janesse's trapline was sixty miles long, and he covered it in two days, stripping his pelts as he went. Renault had run sixty miles with his dogs between daybreak and dusk, and "Mad" Joe Horn had come down one hundred and eighty miles from the North in five days.

These were not records. They were the average. Those who followed the master of Adare were thin-legged, small-footed, narrow-waisted--but their sinews were like rawhide, and their lungs filled chests that were deep and wide.

With the break of day the wind fell, the sky cleared, and it grew colder. In silence John Adare, Jean, and Philip broke the trail. In silence followed close behind them the Missioner with his smooth-bore.

In silence followed the French and half-breeds and Crees. Now and then came the sharp clink of steel as rifle barrel struck rifle barrel.

Voices were low, monosyllabic; breaths were deep, the throbbing of hearts like that of engines. Here were friends who were meeting for the first time in months, yet they spoke no word of each other, of the fortunes of the "line," of wives or children. There was but one thought in their brains, pumping the blood through their veins, setting their dark faces in lines of iron, filling their eyes with the feverish fires of excitement. Yet this excitement, the tremendous pa.s.sion that was working in them, found no vent in wild outcry.

It was like the deadly undertow of the maelstroms in the spring floods.

It was there, unseen--silent as death. And this thought, blinding them to all else, insensating them to all emotions but that of vengeance, was thought of Josephine.

John Adare himself seemed possessed of a strange madness. He said no word to Jean or Philip. Hour after hour he strode ahead, until it seemed that tendons must snap and legs give way under the strain. Not once did he stop for rest until, hours later, they reached the summit of a ridge, and he pointed far off into the plain below. They could see the smoke rising up from the Devil's Nest. A breath like a great sigh swept through the band.

And now, silently, there slipped away behind a rock Kaskisoon and his Indians. From under his blanket-coat the chief brought forth the thing that had bulged there, a tom-tom. Philip and the waiting men heard then the low Te-dum--Te-dum--Te-dum of it, as Kaskisoon turned his face first to the east and then the west, north and then south, calling upon Iskootawapoo to come from out of the valley of Silent Men and lead them to triumph. And the waiting men were silent--deadly silent--as they listened. For they knew that the low Te-dum was the call to death.

Their hands gripped harder at the barrels of their guns, and when Kaskisoon and his braves came from behind the rock they faced the smoke above the Devil's Nest, wiped their eyes to see more clearly, and followed John Adare down into the plain.

And to other ears than their own the medicine-drum had carried the Song of Death. Down in the thick spruce of the plain a man on the trail of a caribou had heard. He looked up, and on the cap of the ridge he saw. He was old in the ways and the unwritten laws of the North, and like a deer he turned and sped back unseen in the direction of the Devil's Nest. And as the avengers came down into the plain Kaskisoon chanted in a low monotone:

Our fathers--come!