The Law of the North Part 5

Macleod's habitually active brain seemed slow in comprehending the statement. The tight lines of his mouth relaxed, and his jaws jarred apart in an att.i.tude of sheer amazement.

"Stern Father," Running Wolf hastened to add, "it is my wish and the White Squaw's wish that she remain in my lodge. As for the sun and the stars and the south wind is my worship for her. I have come for your consent." He bowed in his brief oratorical delivery and smoothed his medicine-maker's dress.

"Consent!--Squaw!" boomed Macleod, blank astonishment giving way under the swift rush of his tremendous rage. "You d--d Cree demiG.o.d--that's my consent!" And his strong hands hurled Running Wolf headlong from the veranda steps almost to the rim of the gaping crowd.

The old warrior picked himself up in a frenzy of spirit and, forgetting all traditions and restraints, rushed insanely at the Factor. But Dunvegan blocked his path and grasped the uplifted hand.

"Don't do that, Running Wolf," he warned. "You can only work your own ruin. A blow would mean your death!"

Chest heaving, eyes blazing, the Cree chieftain strained a moment after his insulter. Dunvegan's strength forced him back and instilled some substance of sanity. When he found his voice, his speech trembled with hate.

"You are Stern Father now," he hissed in Cree, "but I can change it to Soft Father----"

Macleod took a step forward as if on sudden impulse to crush once for all a defiance flung in his teeth, but he caught the look of entreaty for lenience in the chief trader's eyes. He halted. Yet Running Wolf was not to be appeased. He glared vindictively into the very face of the lord of Oxford House.

"Soft Father you shall be," he declared. "I go to the French Hearts. We will meet again before many moons. Then my hands shall hurl. My words shall curse. You shall be as the broken pot of clay, as the water of melting ice, as the pool of blood where the big moose falls."

The chief's momentarily-lost stoicism was regained. His dignity, which the red man seldom loses, had returned.

Dunvegan, his hands still upon the Cree's arms, felt the change in him, felt him straighten with pride. He released his grip.

Running Wolf stepped quietly back. "I go," he announced without emotion.

"I go, but when the French Hearts are climbing stockades and burning posts about your ears, I will be with them. Then when I have rolled you stiff in your blanket will I take the White Squaw to my wigwam!"

He whirled at the last word and stalked to the beach. Flora Macleod looked upon him with eyes that lightened.

"You old fire-eater," she laughed hysterically, "I almost love you for those words." Her glance shifted to Dunvegan who had grasped her arm that she might not follow the Cree chieftain if she were so inclined.

"Don't you?" she asked.

"He is to be admired," the chief trader admitted.

But Malcolm Macleod swore a fearful oath in which there was no semblance of admiration as they watched Running Wolf glide out upon Oxford Lake in a canoe borrowed from some Crees formerly of his tribe on the Katchawan.

"Let the cursed traitor go over to the side of the Nor'westers!" he cried. "Let him help Black Ferguson and his sneaking dogs! I have no fear of them. I'm not afraid of man or devil. And why should I trouble myself about a picket of ragged Frenchmen! Bah! I can handle them as I handled the Cree. I'm lord of this country. Every man knows it. Every man _must_ know it!"

As everyone at this and all the other northern posts understood, Malcolm Macleod was ruled by twin pa.s.sions: pride and hate. He paid homage to no other emotion, idol, or deity. Fear could not touch his heart. Love was long ago crushed out. The tentacles of greed never held him. He had no dread of the evil machinations of h.e.l.l. Neither did he recognize such a thing as divine providence. His Bible that in his half-forgotten past had been fingered nightly lay upon an unused upper shelf in his council room, sepulchred in twenty years of dust.

Fallen into silent brooding, the Factor stared at the disappearing speck upon the vast water, the speck which was Running Wolf and his craft.

Dunvegan had to arouse him.

"The woman and the child," he prompted. "What is to be done with them?"

Macleod wheeled. "See that she gets no canoe to leave the post," was his curt order. "She goes out with Abbe DuCerne to the nunnery at Montreal before the frost closes in."

As some fierce interpreter of high-lat.i.tude laws he p.r.o.nounced the judgment, and Flora Macleod's spirit crumpled under its weight. It came suddenly--this most appalling thing that could happen to a lover of liberty. For once in her life she had no defiant retort for the man she accepted as her father. At the vision of veil, cowl, and white walls, things some people loved, her eyes dilated in horror. The woman's heart throbbed sickeningly. Her tongue refused its mission of protest. Her knees gave way, letting her slip to the ground. There she lay, sobbing, the boy clasped close in her arms.

"Don't lie there," the Factor commanded roughly. "Get that child ready for the morning ma.s.s. I'll see that it is christened and given my own name. There'll be no Fergusons among my kin."

Full of sympathy, Dunvegan raised Flora Macleod to her feet and urged her to go inside, but she stubbornly refused to enter the house.

"Let her stay out then," cried her father, with a fresh burst of anger.

"Or let her find a better house."

"There is Basil's," ventured the chief trader.

"Aye, there is Basil's, if it suits her." Macleod shrugged his mighty shoulders in bitter unconcern.

So Bruce told her to go to Dreaulond's cabin, where he knew she would be well cared for by the courier's gentle wife. Then he turned again to the moody Factor.

"I am afraid we have lost Running Wolf's trade," he observed.

"He will come back. He fears me, as they all do. And if he goes to the Nor'westers, remember, we shall soon crush them. When they are swept out of the country, where else can the old fool trade?"

"But he may fight with them," Bruce persisted.

"Perhaps. However, they will need more than Running Wolf's aid to rout the Ancient and Honorable, the Hudson's Bay Company."

CHAPTER V

DESIReE

The ma.s.s bell's solemn chime pealed forth from the squat tower of the Mission House, echoed against a thousand different rock peaks of the sh.o.r.eline and rolled resonantly over Oxford's bosom till distance killed the sound and the tone was lost in the splash of whitecaps jumping like silvery salmon beyond the Bay.

Since Carman, the Church of England missionary, had perished in the winter's last blizzard on Lone Wolf Lake and the Company had failed as yet to get a minister in his place, the spiritual welfare of Oxford House was entirely in the hands of Father Brochet. Protestant and Catholic, disciple and pagan, zealot and scorner alike attended the kindly priest's services and sought his generous aid in many private matters.

With the bell's summons they came singly, in twos or threes, and in groups of varying size to take part in, or view the morning ma.s.s as well as to see the christening of Flora Macleod's child.

Bruce Dunvegan left his business in the trading room of the Hudson's Bay Store and stepped out into the dewy sunshine. The auroral flame which had licked the waters of Oxford Lake was gone. He saw the horizon as a sheet of molten gold floating the coppery disc of the sun. From wet rocks the writhing mists twisted and uncoiled, while the breeze which crooned over the outer reach of the lake and raised the crested swells beat in with little darts and lanceolate charges, puffing the fog-smoke like the muzzle-jets of rifles.

As the chief trader contemplated the magnificent splendor of the watery vista before him, he thrilled with the indefinable magic of the outland.

He inhaled a huge breath and threw his arms wide, the action nearly upsetting the balance of Edwin Glyndon, the new clerk, who had emerged at his side.

"Ha! Your pardon!" exclaimed Dunvegan, laughing. "These northern sunrises get into my blood like wine. You'll feel it before you are very long here. Going over to the Mission?"

"I wouldn't mind," returned Glyndon. "It's all so new to me, and I wasn't at Norway long enough to see much. Do you attend?"

"We all drop in," the chief trader informed him. "Brochet's faith has many adherents, but of course you don't have to take part unless your inclinations run that way. You are a Church of England man, I suppose!"

"Oh, yes--quite an orthodox one," laughed Glyndon bitterly. "Didn't you know I drank myself and parents into disgrace at home? That's why they sent me out here--away from the evil ruts, you understand! And I fancy it might not be so hard to be a good Churchman in this wilderness. At any rate the chances are increased."

"This is the best opportunity that you will ever find," Dunvegan declared. "If you want to go straight and live clean, the way is easy.

It seems to me these lake breezes, these pine woods, these outdoor days are a long way removed from temptation."

He swung his hands ill.u.s.tratively from the sheen of Oxford's surface to the dark green of the Black Forest, which loomed in somber mystery on Caribou Point, and looked into the clerk's soft eyes. But Edwin Glyndon was staring over the chief trader's shoulder at someone coming up the path to the store.