The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 13

He was smiling at the little maid's pretty daring in coming straight to the very head of De Seviere with her trouble, and he reached out a hand to draw her down on the step beside him. There was never a woman in distress who did not pull at the strings of his heart, and he longed to soothe her, even while he smiled to himself at her childishness.

But Francette was not so childish, and he was one day to marvel at her artless skill.

At the touch of his hand she came down, not upon the step beside him as he meant, but upon her knees before him, with her two little hands upon his knees and her face of elfin beauty upheld to him in the starlight.

"Oh, M'sieu, there is one who is so much,--oui, even more than all the world, more than life itself,--more than heaven or h.e.l.l, for whose sake I would die a thousand deaths! One at whose feet I worship, scorning all those youths of the settlement and the posts. See, M'sieu," she leaned forward so close that the fragrance of her curls blew into the man's nostrils and he could see that the little face was pale with a pa.s.sion that caused him wonder; "see! Today came one from the forest bringing love's message to that tall woman of Grand Portage,--the little red flower in the birchbark case. It spoke its tale and she knew,"--subtle Francette!--"she knew its meaning by the eye of love itself. So would I, who have no words and am a woman, send my message by a flower."

The hands on the factor's knees were trembling with a rigour that shook the whole small form before him.

"See, M'sieu!" she cried, with the sudden sound of tears in the low voice; "read the heart of the little Francette!"

She took from her bosom a fragile object and laid it in his palm, then clasped her hands over her face and bowed until the little head with its running curls was low to the log step.

McElroy strained his eyes to see what he held.

It was a dried spray of the blossoms of the saskatoon.

For a moment he sat in stupid wonder. Then swiftly, more by intuition and that strange sense which recalls a previous happening by a touch, or a smell, than by actual memory, he saw that golden morning when he had stopped by the Molines' cabin and watched the great husky balance on his shaky legs. He had twirled in his fingers the first little spray of the saskatoon, brought in by Henri Corlier to show how the woods were answering the call of the spring.

"Why," he said, astounded beyond measure, "why, Francette,--little one, what does this mean?"

But Francette had lost her tongue and there was no answer from the bowed figure at his knees.

He put out a hand and laid it on her shoulder and it was shaken with sobs,--the sobs of a woman who has cast her all on the throw of the die and in a panic would have it back.

Off in the forest a night bird called to its mate and the squeaky fiddle whined dolorously and a profound pity began to well in the factor's heart. She was such a little maid, such a childish thing, a veritable creature of the sunlight, like those great golden b.u.t.terflies that danced in the flowered glades of the woods, and she had brought her one great gift to him unasked.

Some thought of Maren Le Moyne and of that reckless cavalier with his curls and his red flowers crept into his voice and made it wondrously tender with sympathy.

"Sh, little one," he comforted, as he had comforted that day on the river bank when she had wept over Loup; "come up and let us talk of this." He lifted her as one would lift a child and strove to raise the weeping eyes from the shelter of her hands, but the small head drooped toward him so near that it was but a step until it lay in the shelter of his shoulder, and he was rocking a bit, unconsciously, as the sobbing grew less pitiful.

"Sh-sh-little one," he said gently; "sh--sh."

Meanwhile Maren Le Moyne sat in the doorway of her sister's cabin with her chin on her hands and stared into the night. Marie and Henri were at the cabin of the Bordoux, laughing and chattering in the gay abandon of youth. She could hear their s.n.a.t.c.hes of songs, their quips and laughter rising now and again in shrill gusts. Also the wailing fiddle seemed a part of the warm night, and the bird that called in the forest.

All the little homely things of the post and the woods crept into her heart, that seemed to her to be opening to a vague knowledge, to be looking down sweet vistas of which she had never dreamed among her other dreams of forest and lake and plain, and, at each distant focus where appeared a new glory of light, there was always the figure of the young factor with his anxious eyes. Strange new thrills raced hotly through her heart and dyed her cheeks in the darkness. She tingled from head to foot at the memory of that day in the glade, and for the first time in her life she read the love-signs in a man. That change in his eyes when he had looked upon De Courtenay's red flower was jealousy. With the thought came a greater fulness of the unexplainable joy that had flooded her all these days. Aye, verily, that red flower had caused him pain,--him,--with his laughing blue eyes and his fair head tilted back ever ready for mirth, with his tender mouth and his strong hands. The very thought of that killed the joy of the other. If love was jealousy, and jealousy was pain, the one must be healed for sake of the other.

With this girl to think was to do, and with that last discovery she was upon her feet, straight and lithe as a young animal beside the door.

She would go to this man and tell him that the red flower was less than nothing to her, its giver less than it.

At that moment a figure came out of the dusk and stopped before her.

It was her leader, Prix Laroux, silent, a shadow of the shadows.

"Maren," he said, in that deep confidence of trusted friends, "Maren, is all well with you?"

"All is well, Prix," said the girl, her voice tremulous with pleasure, "most a.s.suredly. Thought you aught was wrong?"

"Nay,--only I felt the desire to know."

"Friend," said Maren, reaching out a hand which the man took strongly in both his own; "good, good friend! Ever you are at my back."

"Where you may easily reach me when you will."

"I know. 'Tis you alone have made possible the long trail. Ah! how long until another spring?"

But, when Prix had lounged away into the dusk and the girl had stepped into the soft dust of the roadway, she fell to wondering how it was that mention of the year's wait brought no longer its impatience, its old dissatisfaction.

She was thinking of this as she neared the factory, her light tread m.u.f.fled in the dust.

"Foolish Francette! What should I do with a gay little girl like you?

Play in the sunshine years yet, little one, and think not of the bonds and cares of marriage. How could these little hands lift the heavy kettles, wash the blankets, and do the thousand tasks of a household?

You are mistaken, child. It is not love you feel, but the changing fancies of maidenhood. Play in the sun with Loup and wait for the real prince. He will come some day with great beauty and you will give no more thought to me. He must be young, little one, a youth of twenty; not one like me, nearer the mark of another decade. It would not be fitting.

Youth to youth, and those of a riper age to each other." He was thinking of a tall form, full and round with womanhood, whose eyes held knowledge of the earth, and yet, had he been able to define their charm, were younger even than Francette's.

The little maid had ceased her weeping long since and the face on McElroy's shoulder, turned out toward the night, was drawn and hard.

The black eyes were no longer starry with pa.s.sion, but glittering with failure. And the man, stupid and good of heart as are all men of his type, congratulated himself that he had talked the nonsense out of her little head.

Suddenly he felt the slender figure shiver in his arms and the curly head brushed his cheek as she raised her face.

"Aye, M'sieu," she whispered, "it is as you say, but only one thing remains. Kiss me, M'sieu, and I go to--forget."

The factor hesitated.

He felt again his one pa.s.sionate avowal on the lips of his one woman.

This was against the grain.

"Please, M'sieu," begged the childish voice, with a world of coaxing; and, thinking to finish his gentle cure, he bent his head and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"And now--" he started to admonish, when she threw her arms about his neck, stiffling the words in her garments.

At the corner of the factory Maren Le Moyne stood looking through the twilight at the scene.

When Francette released him there were only they two and he had heard no step nor seen the silent beholder.

When the little French maid slipped away with the husky she fingered the carved toy of a knife in her sash and tossed her short curls in triumph.

Her failure had taken on a hue of victory.

CHAPTER XI LEAVEN AT WORK

"M'sieu," said Marc Dupre, coming up the slope from the river, his buckskins much tattered, showing a swift cross-country run, "I have news of the great tribe. Like the forest leaves in fall in point of numbers they are, and they wear a wealth of wampum and elk teeth, so much that they are rich beyond any other tribe. Their young men are tall and heavy of stature and wonderful in the casting of their great carven spears.

Also do they excel in the use of the bow. Warlike and suspicious, scouting every inch of country before them, they come down by way of Dear Lake,--and the young Nor'wester at Fort Brisac has already sent forth his messengers to meet them."

McElroy frowned.

Double anger swelled suddenly within him. In two ways had De Courtenay crossed his plane at opposing angles. It was evidently war that the adventurer wanted, the hot war of the two fur companies coupled to that of man and man for a maid. He stood a while and thought. Then he turned to Dupre.