The Law of the North Part 24

He still held the candle to one side, and his face was not clear. Even his figure remained shadowy in the sputtering gleam. That, he knew, accounted for Desiree's mistaking him for her husband.

Now deliberately and with a steady hand he moved his light to the front so that its glimmer yellowed his wind-tanned face.

"Bruce!" Her voice was pitched in the unnatural, hysterical scream of a person struggling with a nightmare.

The sense of the dramatic leaped through the blood of both. Dunvegan glowed with the hectic pulse of old desire, but his cold reserve was maintained by a nerve-wrenching effort.

"You do not dream," he ventured in a measured tone. "I am a strict reality, though an intruding one."

At the sound of his voice Desiree dropped her loaded pistol on the bed.

Her tense body shivered, as if at escape from menace or danger. She covered her face with her hands. The full bosom worked in a paroxysm of sobs.

"My G.o.d! My G.o.d!" she moaned, her words coming like a prayer.

Dunvegan set the candle on a nearby stool and leaned back with folded arms against the door jamb. Thus could he the better control himself, for Desiree's weeping tore his fibres. Irrelevantly he noted that she was not prepared for slumber, but wore a flowing, open-throated day dress. This fact added to Bruce's mystification.

Presently Desiree glanced up, an expression of fear succeeding the despair in her face. She rushed swiftly across the chamber to Dunvegan, her hands extended appealingly.

"Go," she pleaded. "Go before someone hears you! How you learned--how you got here is nothing. Only go! Do you know what danger you stand in?"

"No," Bruce answered grimly. "I am not aware of any."

Her beauty even in tears burned its image in his tortured soul. To clasp her tight would have given both physical and mental relief, but his fingers clenched hard on his flexed biceps; he did not unfold his arms.

"Are you mad?" she cried earnestly, tempestuously. "You enter a Nor'west fort! You force in the door of the factor's apartment! And why? How did you find out I was here--and alone?"

"I didn't find out. Till two minutes ago I thought you were in Fort La Roche."

"La Roche!" she echoed with astonishment. "Why there?"

"According to Black Ferguson's plan as I read it."

Desiree looked searchingly at the chief trader for a half-minute.

"What do you know?" was her suspicious question, barbed with a slight resentment of his curt words.

"I know, first, that Black Ferguson was informed by Gaspard Follet of your favoring Glyndon; second, that the clerk was approached through Follet, and bribed to join the Nor'west ranks with his wife; third, that the foregoing was but a design of Black Ferguson's to get you beyond the stockades of Oxford House and in a place where he could lay hands on you."

"But he can't," protested Desiree. "I am--you see, I was married."

"Can't!" Dunvegan exploded. The tone of the one word was eloquent conviction. He added darkly: "It is well that I have come in time."

"Ah! no," she cried, the fear for his safety, momentarily forgotten, returning. "You must leave instantly. I will lead you down in silence.

Come!"

Her hand was throbbing on his arm, her hot breath beating up against his cheeks. Bruce freed himself, fighting to keep his feelings in check.

"There is no need," he returned. "I shall not stir from here."

She scanned his face. No madness was visible in it. Bruce laughed.

"I am quite sane," he answered her.

"You are in Fort Brondel," Desiree announced severely. "A Nor'west fort----"

"Your pardon," Dunvegan interrupted. "A Hudson's Bay fort!"

"Now you are surely mad."

A slight timidity touched her. She drew back.

"Mad enough to have taken this post! I command forty-odd men in the rooms below."

Incredulity widened Desiree's eyes, but the chief trader's manner was convincing. She murmured a little in astonishment.

"We--of the post?" she stammered.

"Taken, too! The men become my prisoners--when I find them. You also are a captive!"

"Thank G.o.d!" Desiree cried, flushing to the temples. "Thank G.o.d!"

It was Bruce's turn for bewilderment. The ecstatic fervor of the woman's voice astounded him.

"What talk!" he exclaimed. "Prisoners don't generally rejoice. Yet this post seems the place of riddles to-night. Oddest of all to me is the fact that I have met with no opposition--except from yourself!"

He smiled, bowing courteously. Desiree smiled too, wanly and without the least approach to mirth.

"Come," she suggested. "I will show you why."

Taking the candle, she led the way across the living room, down the stairs, and through the great store which belonged to the Northwest Fur Company. Under the wondering gaze of the men they pa.s.sed and entered the pa.s.sage into which Bruce Dunvegan had glanced before. This pa.s.sageway extended for many paces. A closed door stopped their progress at the farther end. Desiree laid her finger tips against it.

"The garrison of Fort Brondel is in there," she murmured.

"The trading room?"

"Yes."

"I had better call my fighters. And you? Wouldn't it be well for you to go back? There may be violence, and----"

"No necessity whatever," Desiree interrupted cynically. "They will not strike a blow. I can vouch for that."

An instant she paused, as if summoning her will power to do a hateful thing. Then she swung the door sharply back and held her light inside.

"Look!" she commanded with bitter irony.

Dunvegan looked. The scene in the huge interior of the trading room struck him with disgust as well as surprise. Around the long, rough table over a score of men and halfbreed women lay in drunken stupor. A liquor barrel crowned the board. At the table's end one man's debauched face lay on the breast of his halfbreed Bacchante of the revel. Bruce recognized the features of Glyndon, enpurpled and drink-puffed. The rest of the revelers had fallen into every imaginable att.i.tude expressive of uncontrolled muscle and befuddled mind.

The stench of spirits was overpowering. Dunvegan drew Desiree back.