Nomads of the North Part 11

So the day pa.s.sed until mid-afternoon, when Nanette cleared away all signs of the celebration and locked Miki in his cage. It was fortunate she was ahead of time, for scarcely was she done when Le Beau came into the edge of the clearing, and with him was Durant, his acquaintance and rival from the edge of the Barrens farther north. Durant had sent his outfit on to Port O' G.o.d by an Indian, and had struck south and west with two dogs and a sledge to visit a cousin for a day or two. He was on his way to the Post when he came upon Le Beau on his trapline.

Thus much Le Beau told Nanette, and Nanette looked at Durant with startled eyes. They were a good pair, Jacques and his guest, only that Durant was older. She had become somewhat accustomed to the brutality in Le Beau's face, but she thought that Durant was a monster. He made her afraid, and she was glad when they went from the cabin.

"Now I will show you the BETE that is going to kill your POOS as easily as your lead-whelp killed that rabbit to-day, m'sieu," exulted Jacques.

"I have told you but you have not seen!"

And he took with him the club and the whip.

Like a tiger fresh out of the jungles Miki responded to the club and the whip to-day, until Durant himself stood aghast, and exclaimed under his breath: "MON DIEU! he is a devil!"

From the window Nanette saw what was happening, and out of her rose a cry of anguish. Sudden as a burst of fire there arose in her--triumphant at last and unafraid--that thing which for years The Brute had crushed back: her womanhood resurrected! Her soul broken free of its shackles! Her faith, her strength, her courage! She turned from the window and ran to the door, and out over the snow to the cage; and for the first time in her life she struck at Le Beau, and beat fiercely at the arm that was wielding the club.

"You beast!" she cried. "I tell you, you SHALL NOT! Do you hear? You SHALL NOT!"

Paralyzed with amazement, The Brute stood still. Was this Nanette, his slave? This wonderful creature with eyes that were glowing fire and defiance, and a look in her face that he had never seen in any woman's face before? NON--impossible! Hot rage rose in him, and with a single sweep of his powerful arm he flung her back so that she fell to the earth. With a wild curse he lifted the bar of the cage door.

"I will kill him, now; I will KILL him!" he almost shrieked. "And it is YOU--YOU--you she-devil! who shall eat his heart alive! I will force it down your throat: I will--"

He was dragging Miki forth by the chain. The club rose as Miki's head came through. In another instant it would have beaten his head to a pulp--but Nanette was between it and the dog like a flash, and the blow went wild. It was with his fist that Le Beau struck out now, and the blow caught Nanette on the shoulder and sent her frail body down with a crash. The Brute sprang upon her. His fingers gripped in her thick, soft hair.

And then--

From Durant came a warning cry. It was too late. A lean gray streak of vengeance and retribution, Miki was at the end of his chain and at Le Beau's throat. Nanette HEARD! Through dazed eyes she SAW! She reached out gropingly and struggled to her feet, and looked just once down upon the snow. Then, with a terrible cry, she staggered toward the cabin.

When Durant gathered courage to drag Le Beau out of Miki's reach Miki made no movement to harm him. Again, perhaps, it was the Beneficent Spirit that told him his duty was done. He went back into his cage, and lying there on his belly looked forth at Durant.

And Durant, looking at the blood-stained snow and the dead body of The Brute, whispered to himself again:

"MON DIEU! he is a devil!"

In the cabin, Nanette was upon her knees before the crucifix.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There are times when death is a shock, but not a grief. And so it was with Nanette Le Beau. With her own eyes she had looked upon the terrible fate of her husband, and it was not in her gentle soul to weep or wish him alive again. At last there had overtaken him what LE BON DIEU had intended him to receive some day: justice. And for the baby's sake more than her own Nanette was not sorry. Durant, whose soul was only a little less wicked than the dead man's, had not even waited for a prayer--had not asked her what to do. He had chopped a hole in the frozen earth and had buried Le Beau almost before his body was cold.

And Nanette was not sorry for that. The Brute was gone. He was gone for ever. He would never strike her again. And because of the baby she offered up a prayer of grat.i.tude to G.o.d.

In his prison-cage of sapling bars Miki cringed on his belly at the end of his chain. He had scarcely moved since those terrible moments in which he had torn the life out of the man-brute's throat. He had not even growled at Durant when he dragged the body away. Upon him had fallen a fearful and overwhelming oppression. He was not thinking of his own brutal beatings, or of the death which Le Beau had been about to inflict upon him with the club; he did not feel the presence of pain in his bruised and battered body, nor in his bleeding jaws and whip-lashed eyes. He was thinking of Nanette, the woman. Why had she run away with that terrible cry when he killed the man-beast? Was it not the man-beast who had struck her down, and whose hands were at her white throat when he sprang the length of his chain and tore out his jugular? Then why was it that she ran away, and did not come back?

He whimpered softly.

The afternoon was almost gone, and the early gloom of mid-winter night in the Northland was settling thickly over the forests. In that gloom the dark face of Durant appeared at the bars of Miki's prison.

Instinctively Miki had hated this foxhunter from the edge of the Barrens, just as he had hated Le Beau, for in their brutish faces as well as in their hearts they were like brothers. Yet he did not growl at Durant as he peered through. He did not even move.

"UGH! LE DIABLE!" shuddered Durant.

Then he laughed. It was a low, terrible laugh, half smothered in his coa.r.s.e black beard, and it sent an odd chill through Miki.

He turned after that and went into the cabin.

Nanette rose to meet him, her great dark eyes glowing in a face dead white. She had not yet risen above the shock of Le Beau's tragic death, and yet in those eyes there was already something re-born. It had not been there when Durant came to the cabin with Le Beau that afternoon.

He looked at her strangely as she stood with the baby in her arms. She was another Nanette. He felt uneasy. Why was it that a few hours ago he had laughed boldly when her husband had cursed her and said vile things in her presence--and now he could not meet the steady gaze of her eyes?

DIEU! he had never before observed how lovely she was! He drew himself together, and stated the business in his mind.

"You will not want the dog," he said. "I will take him away."

Nanette did not answer. She seemed scarcely to be breathing as she looked at him. It seemed to him that she was waiting for him to explain; and then the inspiration to lie leapt into his mind.

"You know, there was to be the big fight between HIS dog and mine at Post Fort O' G.o.d at the New Year carnival," he went on, shuffling his heavy feet. "For that, Jacques--your husband--was training the wild dog. And when I saw that OOCHUN--that wolf devil--tearing at the bars of the cage I knew he would kill my dog as a fox kills a rabbit. So we struck a bargain, and for the two cross foxes and the ten red which I have outside I bought him." (The VRAISEMBLANCE of his lie gave him courage. It sounded like truth, and Jacques, the dead man, was not there to repudiate his claim.) "So he is mine," he finished a little exultantly, "and I will take him to the Post, and will fight him against any dog or wolf in all the North. Shall I bring in the skins, MADAME?"

"He is not for sale," said Nanette, the glow in her eyes deepening. "He is my dog--mine and the baby's. Do you understand, Henri Durant? HE IS NOT FOR SALE!"

"OUI," gasped Durant, amazed.

"And when you reach Post Fort O' G.o.d, m'sieu, you will tell LE FACTEUR that Jacques is dead, and how he died, and say that some one must be sent for the baby and me. We will stay here until then."

"OUI," said Durant again, backing to the door.

He had never seen her like that. He wondered how Jacques Le Beau could swear at her, and strike her. For himself, he was afraid. Standing there with those wonderful eyes and white face, with the baby in her arms, and her shining hair over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she made him think of a picture he had once seen of the Blessed Lady.

He went out through the door and back to the sapling cage where Miki lay. Softly he spoke through the bars.

"OW, BETE" he called; "she will not sell you. She keeps you because you fought for her, and killed MON AMI, Jacques Le Beau. And so I must take you my own way. In a little while the moon will be up, and then I will slip a noose over your head at the end of a pole, and will choke you so quickly she will not hear a sound. And who will know where you are gone, if the cage door is left open? And you will fight for me at Post Fort 0' G.o.d. MON DIEU! how you will fight! I swear it will do the ghost of Jacques Le Beau good to see what happens there."

He went away, to where he had left his light sledge and two dogs in the edge of the timber, and waited for the moon to rise.

Still Miki did not move, A light had appeared in the window of the cabin, and his eyes were fixed on it yearningly as the low whine gathered in his throat again. His world no longer lay beyond that window. The Woman and the baby had obliterated in him all desire but to be with them.

In the cabin Nanette was thinking of him--and of Durant. The man's words came to her again, vividly, significantly: "YOU WILL NOT WANT THE DOG." Yes, all the forest people would say that same thing--even LE FACTEUR himself, when he heard. SHE WOULD NOT WANT THE DOG! And why not? Because he had killed Jacques Le Beau, her husband, in defence of her? Because he had freed her from the bondage of The Brute? Because G.o.d had sent him to the end of his chain in that terrible moment that the baby Nanette might live, as the OTHER had not, and that she might grow up with laughter on her lips instead of sobs? In her there rose suddenly a thought that fanned the new flame in her heart. It MUST have been LE BON DIEU! Others might doubt, but she--never. She recalled all that Le Beau had told her about the wild dog--how for many days he had robbed the traps, and the terrific fight he had made when at last he was caught. And of all that The Brute had said there stood out most the words he had spoken one day.

"He is a devil, but he was not born of wolf. NON, some time, a long time ago, he was a white man's dog."

A WHITE MAN'S DOG!

Her soul thrilled. Once--a long time ago--he had known a master with a white heart, just as she had known a girlhood in which the flowers bloomed and the birds sang. She tried to look back, but she could not see very far. She could not vision that day, less than a year ago, when Miki, an angular pup, came down out of the Farther North with Challoner; she could not vision the strange comradeship between the pup and Neewa, the little black bear cub, nor that tragic day when they had fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the swift stream that had carried them over the waterfall and into the Great Adventure which had turned Neewa into a grown bear and Miki into a wild dog. But in her heart she FELT the things which she could not see. Miki had not come by chance.

Something greater than that had sent him.

She rose quietly, so that she would not waken the baby in the crib, and opened the door. The moon was just rising over the forest and through the glow of it she went to the cage. She heard the dog's joyous whine, and then she felt the warm caress of his tongue upon her bare hands as she thrust them between the sapling bars.

"NON, NON; you are not a devil," she cried softly, her voice filled with a strange tremble. "O-o-ee, my SOKETAAO, I prayed, PRAYED--and you came. Yes, on my knees each night I prayed to Our Blessed Lady that she might have mercy on my baby, and make the sun in heaven shine for her through all time. AND YOU CAME! And the dear G.o.d does not send devils in answer to prayer. NON; never!"

And Miki, as though some spirit had given him the power to understand, rested the weight of his bruised and beaten head on her hands.

From the edge of the forest Durant was watching. He had caught the flash of light from the door and had seen Nanette go to the cage, and his eyes did not leave her until she returned into the cabin. He laughed as he went to his fire and finished making the WAHGUN he was fastening to the end of a long pole. This WAHGUN and the pole added to his own cleverness were saving him twelve good fox skins, and he continued to chuckle there in the fireglow as he thought how easy it was to beat a woman's wits. Nanette was a fool to refuse the pelts, and Jacques was--dead. It was a most lucky combination of circ.u.mstances for him. Fortune had surely come his way. On LE BETE, as he called the wild dog, he would gamble all that he possessed in the big fight. And he would win.