The Huntress Part 37

CHAPTER XIV

AT JOHNNY GAGNON'S

Sam, tied hand and foot, was confined in the bunk-house at Gagnon's.

All the heavy hours of his imprisonment were charged up against Bela, and by morning the score was a heavy one.

Big Jack, or one of the other men, was always in the room or at the door, and Bela had no opportunity to approach the prisoner.

Bela slept in the main house with the Gagnon girls. Before the general turning in that night Big Jack and Black Shand each contrived to separate her from the others long enough to make a proposal similar to Joe's. In each case Bela returned the same answer.

Next morning they were all early astir. The Gagnon boys put on clean blue-gingham shirts and red woollen sashes, and the girls tied their sable locks with orange and cerise ribbons. The cheeks of both boys and girls bore a high polish.

Squaw Gagnon tacked up lace window curtains for a final touch and brought out a square of carpet for the bishop to rest his reverend feet upon. To this household it was the greatest day in the year, and the sun was shining like the shiniest-cheeked Gagnon of them all. The younger children kept careful watch on Sam. He was an attraction fortuitously added to the big show.

Johnny Gagnon himself was the most excited of the family.

"You come jus' right!" he was continually exclaiming to Jack. "They stop all day now. Have trial in my house. Maybe stay to-night, too. I wish we had a fiddle. We could dance. But we can slap and sing any'ow."

The girls giggled delightedly at this suggestion.

Each one of the white men thought: "Dance at my wedding, maybe!" and glanced covertly at Bela. Bela looked out of the window.

"What! dance with the bishop here?" said Jack, affecting to be scandalized.

"Sure!" cried Johnny. "Bishop Lajeunesse no long-chin _religieux_.

Bishop say let yo'ng folks have a good time. Laugh and mak' fun wherever he go. He is a man!"

Early as they were they no sooner finished breakfast than they heard a shrill hail from down river. Every soul about the place excepting Sam dropped what he was about and scampered down to the water's edge.

Presently around the bend below appeared the tracking crew, slipping in the ooze, scrambling over fallen trunks, plunging through willows.

Behind them trailed the long, thin line that must be kept taut, whatever the obstruction. Finally the York boat poked its nose lazily into view like a gigantic duck.

The other four of the crew stood upon the cargo with long poles to fend her off the sh.o.r.e, and the steersman was mounted on a little platform astern wielding an immense sweep. In the waist stood the pa.s.sengers. As the celebrities were recognized a shout went up from the sh.o.r.e.

There was the bishop with red b.u.t.tons, and the ordinary priests with black. There were the police in their gay, scarlet tunics; the Indian agent with his bag of money, and the doctor with his bag of tools.

Finally there was the blue hat with ostrich feathers that was already famous in the country.

Before the summer was out, news of that hat travelled all the way to the Arctic Ocean. Any one of these pa.s.sengers would have made a gala day for Johnny Gagnon's family. To have them all at once was almost more than they could take in.

The tracking crew was on the opposite bank. Coiling up their line and jumping aboard, all hands poled her across. The bishop, gathering his ca.s.sock around his waist, was the first to leap ash.o.r.e.

He was a little man, radiating goodness and fun. He had round, ruddy cheeks, looking as if the half of an apple had been glued to each side of his face, and a spreading, crinkly brown beard.

"_Bienvenue! Bienvenue!_" Cried Johnny Gagnon with sweeping obeisances.

"Well, Johnny, have you got a new one for me?" asked his lordship with a twinkle.

The river bank became a scene of delightful confusion; black ca.s.socks, red tunics, orange ribbons, and blue ostrich feathers all mingled. The two slender boy priests showed strange hirsute adornments. One had a face like a round white doily with brown fringe; the other was spotted with hair like new gra.s.s.

The agent and the doctor were ordinary looking men. They did not add to the picturesqueness of the scene, but each carried a bag which was charged with romance for the natives.

The two policemen were almost as young as the boy-priests, but bigger and redder and clean-shaven. Here the eyes of the Gagnon girls lingered longest.

The greatest sensation, naturally, was created by the blue hat. It was the last to come ash.o.r.e. It lingered on the gunwale with an appealing turn manwards until a red arm was offered on one side, a black arm on the other, whereupon it hopped ash.o.r.e with a coy wag to the right and to the left. It was not hard to see why the boatmen had christened her the "chicadee-woman."

Young Joe, catching a glimpse of the face beneath, muttered "School-marm!" impolitely.

The natives, however, made no such distinctions. To them she was just a white woman, only the second they had ever seen. They had no means of knowing whether they came more beautiful than this.

Miss Mackall, booted, hatted, and corseted in town, was the headliner of the show.

The experience to one all her life lost in a crowd of women was novel and a little intoxicating. The blue hat waggled and c.o.c.ked alarmingly.

The wearer, exulting in the consciousness that everybody was looking at her, saw nothing of this strange land she was in.

As soon as the general hand-shaking was over, Big Jack addressed himself to Sergeant Coulson. "I've got a prisoner for you, sergeant."

Coulson instantly stiffened into an arm of the law. "What charge?" he asked.

"I don't know exactly the legal name of it. He carried off a girl against her will. This girl!"--pointing to Bela. "Regularly tied her up and carried her off in a canoe, and kept her prisoner on an island in the lake."

The policeman was startled under his military air. "Is this true?" he asked Bela.

Bela, without saying anything, allowed him to suppose that it was.

"We'll have a hearing at once," said Coulson. "Gagnon, can we use your shack?"

Could he use it!

"Aristide! Michel! Maria!" shrieked Johnny. "Run, you turtles! Carry ever't'ing outside. Tak' down the stove!"

Bishop Lajeunesse went to Bela with kind eyes.

"My poor girl!" he said in her own tongue. "Have you had a bad time?"

"Wait," murmured Bela deprecatingly. "I tell everything in there."

"Mercy! Abducted!" cried Miss Mackall with an inquisitive stare.

"She's bold enough about it. Not a trace of shame!"

"I'm afraid this will hardly be suitable for you to hear," murmured the doctor, who had const.i.tuted himself one of Miss Mackall's gallants. "Will you wait in the boat?"

"A trial! I wouldn't miss it for worlds," she retorted. "Which is the criminal? One of her own sort, I suppose. Fancy! carrying her off!"

Within a few minutes the Gagnon household effects were heaped out of doors, and the stage set for the "trial." It was strange how the squatty little shack with its crooked windows and doors instantly took on the look of a court.