The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 15

Too dull for sharp pain, she went about in a sort of apathy.

For several days McElroy watched uneasily for her, hoping for a chance meeting. He was anxious to speak about his boyish jealousy, to beg forgiveness for that abrupt leaving at the gate. So close did she stay at the cabin, however, that at last he was forced to go to her. It was twilight again, soft, filled with the breath of the forest, vibrant with the call of birds off in some marshy land to the south, and he found her alone, sitting upon the step, staring into the gathering dusk, listening to the laughter of the young married folk from the cabin next where Marie and Henri were loudest.

A lump rose in his throat as he caught the outline of the braided head bowed lower than he had ever seen it, saw the whole att.i.tude of the strong figure, every line relaxed as if in a great weariness.

"Maren," he said, with the wonder of love in his voice, "Maren--my maid!"

And he strode forward swiftly, stooped, and laid his hand on her shoulder.

With a jerk the drooped head came up. She drew from his touch as if it burned her.

"If you please, M'sieu," she said coldly, "go away."

McElroy sprang back.

"What? Go away! You wish that,--Ma'amselle?"

The tone more than the words drove out of him all daring of her sweet name, took away in a flash all the personal.

"Of a surety,--go away."

The factor stood a moment in amazed silence. Did the red flower mean so much to her, then? Had she accepted its message? And yet he knew in his heart that the look in her eyes, the smile on her lips had told their own tale of awakening to his touch. What but the red flower in its birchbark case had wrought the change?

He thought swiftly of De Courtenay's beauty, of his sparkling grace, his braided blue coat, his wide hat, and the long golden curls sweeping his shoulder. Truly a figure to turn a woman's head. But within him there rose a tide of rage, blind vent of the hurt of love, that boded ill for the dashing Nor'wester on the Saskatchewan.

Sick to the very bottom of his heart, he bowed ever so slightly to the tense figure on the step and strode away in the shadows.

So! Thus ended his one love.

For this he had kept himself from the common lot of the factors in their lonely posts; for this he had never looked with aught save friendly compa.s.sion upon the maids of the settlements, the half breed girls of the wilderness, the wild daughters of the forest.

Waiting for this one princess in his small kingdom, he had thrown himself on the out-bearing tide of love only to be stranded on some barren beach, to see her taken from him by some reckless courtier not fit to touch a woman's hand!

Thus they turned apart, these two meant for each other from the beginning, and in each love worked its will of pain.

Maren on the step stared dry-eyed into the night, uncomprehending, unrebelling, and McElroy strode ahead, blind with sudden anguish, scarce knowing which way his steps tended.

And, like a ghoul behind a stone, a small dark face peeped keenly from a corner.

Francette was watching her leaven work.

CHAPTER XII THE NAKONKIRHIRINONS

In the week that followed the waters of the a.s.siniboine grew black with myriads of canoes. Like the leaves in fall, truly, they came drifting out of the forest, long slim craft, made with a wondrous cunning of birchbark peeled from the tree in one piece, fitted to frames of ash fragile as c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l and strong as steel under the practised hand, and smeared in every crinkle and crease and creva.s.se with the resinous gum of the pine tree. By scores and hundreds and battalions, it seemed to the traders at De Seviere, they poured out of the wilderness, choking the river with their numbers, spilling their contents on the slope under the bastioned walls until a camp was made so vast that it stretched into the forest on each side the clearing of the post and even extended to the marsh at the south.

Half-naked braves stalked in countless numbers among the tepees that went rapidly up, tall fellows, mighty of build and fearless of carriage and of eagle eye, aloof, suspicious, watching the fort, guarding the rich piles of peltry and exchanging a word with none.

These were the great Nakonkirhirinons from that limitless region of the Pays Ten d'en Haut.

If McElroy's heart had not been so full of his own trouble he would have exulted mightily in their coming, for did it not prove one failure for that reckless Nor'wester on the Saskatchewan? They had come, past all his blandishments of trade, to Fort de Seviere, and their coming spelled a number of furs this season far in advance of any other for that small post. If he wondered at first how they had held out against De Courtenay it was all made plain when among the strangers he espied many a.s.siniboines and saw in the great canoe of the chief Negansahima, old Quamenoka, who had boasted of the coming of this tribe to De Seviere as his work.

He had spoken truly and had evidently made his word good by meeting the approaching columns and returning with them.

To him alone was due the failure of De Courtenay, McElroy felt at once, and determined in his mind on that present which he had promised for this zeal.

With the coming of the strangers Fort de Seviere was put under military rule. The half-moon to the right of the gate, with its small cannon, received a quota of men who strayed carelessly all day within reach of the low rampart; a guard lounged in the great gate, ready at a moment's notice to clang it shut, and seemingly matter-of-course precautions were taken throughout, for these Indians were as uncertain as the flickering north lights crackling in a frosty sky.

There was a scene not to be likened to any other outside the region of the Hudson Bay country, where strange relations existed between white trader and savage, when Edmonton Ridgar met the canoe of the chief at the landing.

Savage delight overspread the eagle features of Negansahima as he beheld the white man.

Towering mightily in the prow of his canoe, the sweeping head-dress of feathers crowning him with a certain majesty, he fixed his keen glance on Ridgar and came gliding toward him across the rippled water.

As the canoe cut cleanly up and stopped just short of sc.r.a.ping on the stones at the edge, obeying the paddles like a thoroughbred the bit, the chief trader of De Seviere stepped forward and held out his arms.

"Who art thou?" he called.

Deep and guttural as thunder from the broad chest, naked under the lines of elk teeth, came the reply,

"Thy father,"

"And master of my goods. The heart of thy son melts as the snow in spring. Wiskendjac has sent thee."

McElroy, standing near, saw the face of his friend illumined with a real affection as the savage landed and, contrary to the custom of the Indians in the lower country, embraced with every sign of joy the lean white man whose skin was nearly as dark as his own and whose greying temples bespoke almost a as many years as the chief's black locks could boast.

In the eyes of both, as they regarded each other, were memories known to no one else. McElroy wondered what they were and what that year, of which Ridgar had spoken only once, had held.

The trader spoke their tongue as easily as he spoke any other that came to the post, naturally and with quiet fluency.

So deep was the apparent pleasure of the meeting that, when the interpreting was done and the ceremonies over, Ridgar went with the Indian among the tepees and no more did McElroy see him until he came to the factory at dusk.

"Mother of Heaven!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, flinging himself down at the table in the living-room where Rette's strong coffee tempted the nostril; "such furs! Beaver in countless packs, all the fat winter skins, no Bordeaux, no Mittain. Fox, also of the best only,--black fox, fine and shining, fox of those far-north regions where they hunt beyond the sun, white as the snow it runs on, and Mon Dieu, McElroy! Seven silvers as I hope for salvation! Verily are they a prize beyond price, these Indians that have come in to us, and I fancy that young Nor'wester is swearing at his luck in losing them. Old Quamenoka struts as if their wealth belonged to his meek a.s.siniboines.... But the furs! Ermine and nekik and sakwasew and wapistan, all the little fellows that, taken from those virgin north lands, are worth their weight in gold! Nowhere have I seen a common pelt. They are connoisseurs, these wild Nakonkirhirinons, and they carry a king's ransom in their long canoes. White bear and brown arctic wolf and everywhere the best of its kind! To-morrow's trade will be worth while--but keep the guns in evidence and quiet above all things."

"Ah!" said McElroy, "what is there to fear, think you? Is not the chief bound to you by all ties of ceremony and regard?"

"Most a.s.suredly," returned Ridgar quietly, "but those young braves are strung like a singing wire and swift as a girl to take suspicious fright; and there are somewhere near five hundred of them, as near as I can make out from the numbers seething among the lodges. They are in a strange country and watching every leaf and shadow."

Thus the sun went down on De Seviere, with the eager maids and women pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing near the gate to peep out at the rustling throng, at the tepees with their fine skin coverings painted with all the wonders of battle and the chase, at the comely squaws and maidens, the chubby brown children, the dogs snarling and savage, for they had full complement of the grey northern huskies.

To a woman they peeped at the gate from all the cabins of the post, save only that one who had been most eager before when the Indians came, Maren Le Moyne, sitting in idle apathy on her sister's doorstep.

"Ma'amselle," said Marc Dupre, stopping hesitant before her, "have you seen the Nakonkirhirinons?"

"Nay," she said listlessly, "I care not, M'sieu."

And the youth went gloomily away.