The Heart of Unaga Part 57

He sobered abruptly, as once before Keeko had sobered him.

"You can put up your gun," he cried savagely.

He waited. As the girl ignored his invitation he turned abruptly to the counter.

But he was not permitted to reach it. Keeko's voice rang stridently amongst the rafters of the place.

"Stop!"

Nicol stopped and turned.

"You can stop right there," the girl said coldly. "I'm going right out.

I'm quitting. You best understand that. I'm quitting, and I'm taking my outfit with me. I don't pa.s.s another night under this roof. You best remember I've all I need to fight you. If you get out after me you'll get shot like the dog you are. So you best think--hard."

Keeko moved towards the door. Not for one moment did she turn her back, or lower her gun. And the man's furious eyes followed her till the slam of the door shut her out from his view.

For awhile Nicol remained staring at the dark timbers of the closed door. For awhile it seemed as if his bemused brain failed to grasp the meaning of that which had happened. Then he turned swiftly. He reached the counter and drained the bottle of the last dregs of the spirit it contained. Then, reaching under the counter, he possessed himself of the gun that was always lying there, and made for the door and flung it open.

He stood in the doorway seeking a sight of the girl he had marked down for his own. But there was none. She was nowhere to be seen. Only he looked out upon, the snow, and the woods, and the ice-bound river. So, after awhile, he seemed to change his mind. He closed the door and returned to the stove and seated himself on the bench beside it.

Keeko was with her Indians at work. Snake Foot, and Med'cine Charlie, and Little One Man were working as they always worked for the white woman they loved.

The outfit with which they had returned from Seal Bay was changed. The dogs were fresh, and the long sled was laden with a canoe that was securely lashed to it. The blankets and stores were loaded in the frail body of the light vessel.

Keeko's plan was clear in her mind, and urgency was speeding her efforts and the efforts of her helpers. She had only one thought now. It was--Marcel. She knew. Oh, yes. There could be no doubt. For her there was only one Marcel. There could be no other. It was Nicol's purpose to murder him and his people. It was for her to defeat that purpose.

Daylight was at its last extremity when the work was completed. And, while Keeko enveloped herself in her heavy Arctic furs, and secured the lashings of her snow-shoes, Little One Man put the only question he had asked as to the journey about to begin.

"We mak' him--yes?" he said, his parchment-like eyelids blinking his enquiry.

"North." Keeko's answer came promptly. "Guess we follow the river till the ice breaks up. Then we camp, and I make the rest by the water."

"Oh, yes. Him moose head. Yes? And him big hunter--Marcel?"

Keeko smiled into the dusky face of her faithful ally.

"That's so--if G.o.d wills it."

CHAPTER XVII

THE DEVOTION OF A GREAT WOMAN

The daylight was lengthening. Very slowly the lolling sun was returning to life and power. A sense of revivifying was in the air. As yet the grip of winter still held. The snow was still spread to the depth of many feet upon the broad expanse of the valley of the Sleepers. But its perfect hue was smirched with the lateness of the season. It had a.s.sumed that pearly grey which denotes the coming of the great thaw.

Marcel was standing on the drifted bank of the little river, winding its way towards the Northern hills. He was there for the purpose of ascertaining the conditions prevailing. But his purpose had been forgotten.

Erect, motionless, superb in his physical greatness, he was gazing out at the wall of western hills, heedless of that which he looked upon. He was absorbed in thought that was reaching out far, far beyond the hills which barred his vision. It was somewhere out there where the eyeless sockets of an old moose looked down upon the great river coming up out of the south, cutting its way between the granite walls of the earth's foundations.

Keeko! He was thinking, dreaming of the girl who had come to him in the heart of the far-off woods, with all her woman's appeal to his youthful manhood. He was thinking of her wonderful blue eyes, her radiant smile, her amazing courage. They were the same thoughts which had lightened even the darkest moments of the howling storms of winter and transformed the deadly monotony of it all into something more than an endurance to which the life of the Northern world condemned him.

But there was more than all this stirring him now. He was moved to impatience, the impatience of headstrong youth. It was not new. He had had to battle against it from the moment of his return to the fort. More than all else in the world he desired to fling every caution, every responsibility to the winds, and set out for the meeting-place over which the old moose stood guard.

He knew it could not be. He knew it would be an act of the basest ingrat.i.tude and selfishness. Uncle Steve had not yet returned. He could not return for weeks yet. If he, Marcel, yielded to his desires An-ina must be left alone. His impatience was useless. He knew that. The Sleepers would awaken soon, and demand their trade. He could not fling the burden of it all on the willing shoulders of An-ina. He must wait.

He could do no less.

He turned away. It was an act of renunciation. The signs on the river had told him nothing, because he had asked no question. He knew it all without asking. He had known before he had sought his excuse. So he floundered through the snow back to the fort.

The silence was profound. The world at the moment was a desert, a frigid desert. There was no life anywhere. There were not even the voices of warring dogs to greet him, and yield him excuse to vent the impatience of his mood.

He pa.s.sed the gateway of the stockade where he had so often stood searching the distance in the long years. And so he approached the doorway of his home. A weight of depression clouded his handsome eyes.

He was weighted with a trouble which seemed to him the greatest in the world.

The door of the store opened before he reached it. Keen, watching, understanding eyes had been observing his approach. They were eyes that read him with an ease such as was denied them on the contemplation of the pages of an open book. An-ina had made up her mind, and she stood framed in the doorway to carry out her purpose.

The man's eyes lighted at sight of her. His trouble was lifted as though by some strong hand. This mother woman never failed in her comfort even in the simple fact of her presence. With his thought still filled with the white beauty of Keeko, the soft copper of An-ina's skin, the smiling gentleness of her dark eyes were things at all times to soften the roughness of Marcel's mood.

"Marcel come back? The ice all hold? Oh, yes. Bimeby the trail open and Marcel mak' him. An-ina know. But--not yet."

Marcel made no attempt to conceal his feelings from this woman. He had told her all. He had spread out before her all his hopes and fears, all the impatience of his youthful heart. She had endured the burden of it throughout the long winter not unwillingly, and her sympathy had been yielded abundantly.

Marcel laughed. It was not out of any feeling of joy. It was the self-consciousness of youth before the eyes of maturity.

He shook his head.

"Not yet," he said. "Uncle Steve isn't back anyway."

"No." An-ina sighed. For a moment her smile died out, and her wistful gaze was unconsciously turned towards the North. It only encountered the crude interior of the storage sheds where the canoes and trail gear were usually kept. One of the sheds was standing empty.

Presently her eyes came back to the man's face, and they were smiling confidently again.

"He come--bimeby. Yes."

Even in the midst of his own troubles Marcel could never be forgetful of this devoted creature.

"He certainly will," he said, in no doubtful fashion. "He'll be along before the Sleepers wake. Say, An-ina, I'm not wise to many things. But there's one I know, like--like nothing else. The North can't beat Uncle Steve."

The dark eyes lit with a feeling which even Marcel realized.

"Marcel good. But An-ina, too, know he come--sure."

The woman paused with her gaze again turned upon the sheds, and after a moment she looked deeply, earnestly into the eyes of the man who held her mother love.