The Heart of Unaga Part 47

"You tell me--now?" she said, in the fashion of one who knows the value of food to her men folk's mood.

Marcel nodded with a ready smile.

"Any old thing you fancy," he cried. "What'll I tell you? About the darn outfit, the pelts we got? The woods? The rivers? The skitters? The----"

An-ina shook her head. His mood was what she desired.

"No. Marcel say the thing that please him. An-ina listen."

Marcel laughed. He had come home with the treasure hugged tight to his bosom. He had promised himself that this was his secret, to be imparted to no one--not even to Uncle Steve. An-ina had demanded that he should speak as he desired, and he knew that his one desire was to talk of Keeko. Now, he asked himself, why--why, for all his resolve, should he withhold the story of this greatest of all joys from the woman who was his second mother?

His laugh was his yielding.

"Oh, yes," he cried impulsively. "I'll tell you the thing that pleases me. I'll tell you the reason I was held up. And--it's the greatest ever!"

An-ina rose quickly from her seat.

"You tell An-ina--sure. It long. Oh, yes. An-ina say this thing--'the greatest ever.'"

She was gone and had returned again before Marcel had dragged himself back from his contemplation of the things which he desired to talk of.

It was a gentle hint from An-ina that roused him.

"Oh, yes? An-ina listen."

Marcel started. He stirred his great bulk, and re-lit the pipe he had failed to keep alight.

"I'd forgotten," he said, with another laugh that was not free from self-consciousness. "Say," he went on, "I've hit the greatest trail ever a feller struck in this queer darn country. Gee!" He breathed a profound sigh. "It was queer. I was trailing an old bull moose. I followed it days."

An-ina was watching him. She beheld the radiant light in his frank eyes.

She noted the almost feverish manner in which he was clouding the tobacco smoke about him. She even thought she detected an unsteadiness in the hand that held his pipe. She waited.

"Oh, yes," he went on. "I was in a territory I guess I've hunted plenty.

I kind of knew it all, as it's given to anyone to know this darn land. I followed the trail right up to the end, but--I didn't make a kill. No."

His tone had dropped to a soft, deep note that thrilled with some emotion An-ina had never before been aware of in him. A startled light shone in her eyes, and her work lay unheeded in her lap.

"No. I didn't make a kill, but I came right up to the end of that trail, and found----"

"A woman?"

Marcel sat up with a jolt. His wide, astonished eyes stared almost foolishly into the dark native eyes smiling back into his.

"How d'you know--that?" he demanded sharply.

He planted his elbows on the table, resting his square chin upon his hands.

An-ina laughed that almost silent laugh so peculiar to her.

"An-ina guess him. An-ina look and look. An-ina see Marcel all smiling--inside. She hear him voice all soft, like--like--Ah, An-ina not know what it like. So she think. She say, what mak' Marcel all like this?

Him find something. Him not scare. Oh, no. Marcel not scare nothing. No.

Him much please. Marcel boy? No. Him big man. What him mak' big man much please. An-ina know. It woman. So she say."

Marcel wanted to laugh. He wanted to shout his delight. He wanted to pour out the hot, pa.s.sionate feelings of his heart to a woman who could read and understand him like this. He did none of these things, however.

He simply smiled and nodded, while his whole face lit radiantly.

"That's a h.e.l.l of a good guess," he cried. "Yes. I found a--woman. A beautiful, blue-eyed white woman. And she called herself, 'Keeko.'"

An-ina swiftly rolled up the buckskin she was working. She laid it on the supper table beside her. Then she drew up her chair, and she, too, set her elbows on the table, and supported her handsome, smiling face in her hands. Again it was the woman, the mother in her. It was her boy's romance. The boy she had raised to manhood with so much love and devotion. And she was thirsting, as only a mother can, for the story of it.

"So. Marcel him say. An-ina listen."

CHAPTER XII

KEEKO RETURNS HOME

Keeko had beaten the winter where Marcel had failed. But then Keeko's journey had been southward towards the sun, where the forest sheltered, and the river pursued a deep-cut course to the westward of the great hills supporting the wind-swept plateau of Unaga.

For all these easier conditions, however, the journey was a hard beat up against the sluggish flow of the river. It permitted no relaxation, and only a minimum of rest. Then the portages up the rapids had been rendered doubly laborious by reason of cargoes such as the girl and her Indians had never been called upon to deal with before.

It should have been a happy enough journey. Was it not in the nature of a procession of great triumph? Had not Keeko's summer labours been crowned far beyond her dreams? Surely this was so. The ardent little feminine scheme, worked out on a sick bed, and executed with great strength and courage had been brought to a complete and successful issue. Oh, yes. The shadows which had threatened Keeko's future had been completely confounded. She knew beyond a doubt that she was independent, as her mother desired her to be. When the moment came she knew she was in the privileged position of being free to cut the bonds which had hitherto held her to the man whose brutality was surely enough driving her suffering mother to the grave.

But depression weighed the girl down. Look forward as she might, hope would not rise at her bidding. Marcel had been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of her life like a shadowy dream, and the future offered her little enough comfort.

Then there was her mother, and all that might have happened at the post in her long absence.

It was in such a mood that she emerged into the horseshoe loop of the river and beheld the dark walls of the old Fort Duggan. Her pretty face and serious eyes reflected her feelings as she piloted her boat towards the landing in the cold, crisp air of the brief daylight. Furthermore it was with no easing of her mood that she beheld the figure of her step-father on the landing awaiting her approach.

Just for a moment she wondered. Just for a moment she asked herself if he had had warning from some stray Shaunekuk of her coming. She realized a spasm of fear that perhaps prying eyes had witnessed her caching of the great bulk of her furs, that part which represented her own personal fortune. But the fear pa.s.sed. It could not be so. Her plans had been laid and executed far too carefully.

So she coldly awaited the man's greeting.

It came. And its tone was unusually modulated. It was almost gentle. The man's eyes were a reflection of his tone as he gazed down at her. The effect was startling, and a light of wonder crept into Keeko's eyes as she looked up into the bloated face with its beard and general air of brutishness.

"You've cut it fine, Keeko," he said, with a swift, calculating glance at the sky. "I was getting well-nigh scared. We'll be snowed under right away." Then he drew a deep breath as of relief. "I'm glad you got to home."

Keeko had her part to play and she never hesitated.

"I was held up, but--I've had a good catch," she said, without enthusiasm. She pointed at the bale of pelts in her canoe. "They're silver fox. There's two more bales in the other boat. Guess Lorson Harris'll hand you a thousand dollars."

"Silver fox?" The man's eyes lit with cupidity. For a moment his seriousness pa.s.sed out of them. "Why, that's great! You haven't got beyond grey fox and beaver ever before. It was a new territory?"

Keeko nodded. She was yearning to ask one question. One question only.

But she knew the value of her success with this creature whom she could not yet openly defy.

"Yes. It was that held me up. I made farther down the river. Right to its mouth. It's a great fox country. Next year----"