The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 17

Then the shining head sank into the ma.s.s and she heard no more.

She was conscious only of a giant form lurching, red-eyed and yelling, out of the turmoil, of brown hands that clutched her arms, and of another form which shot past her. For the second time in a few moments one man had reached for her and another flung himself to her rescue. She saw the Indian reel back with a red line spurting across his eyes, felt herself lifted and flung across a shoulder, and knew that the gate behind was swinging open. The next instant she slid down to her feet with her face in the buckskin shirt of Marc Dupre, who leaned shaking against the stockade wall and held her in a grip like steel, while Henri Corlier shot the bolts into place.

Huddled in white groups were the women, some of them already raising their voices in weeping, others silent with the training of the women of the wilderness. The men faced each other with lips drawn tight and breath that came swiftly. Prix Laroux, his dark eyes cool and sharp, looked swiftly over the populace as they stood, for with that first shot every man in Fort de Seviere had rushed to the gate, and in that first moment of getting breath he calculated their strength and their ability.

A leader born himself, he was looking for a leader among McElroy's men; but, with that intrepid factor himself gone and Edmonton Ridgar also, there was nowhere a man with the signs of leadership upon him.

Through Prix's mind this went while they stood listening to the death-wail that was beginning to rise from the tepees without.

Then he quietly took command, knowing himself to be best fitted.

"Corlier," he said quietly, "leave the gate to Cif Bordoux. Take one man and get to the southwest bastion. You, Gifford," turning to that young clerk who worked in the sorting-room, "man the northwest. Garcon and Dupre will take the forward two. The rest will stand ready with guns and ammunition along the four walls and at the gates. We know not what will transpire."

As if their factor spoke, the men of De Seviere turned to obey, feeling that strange compelling which causes men to follow one man to death on the field of battle, and which is surely the gift of G.o.d.

Out of his shaking arms Marc Dupre loosed Maren, the trembling lessening as the danger pa.s.sed. That sight of the defenceless girl among the Indians had shaken him like a leaf in the wind, had nerved his arms with iron, had worked in him both with strength and weakness.

Now he looked into her eyes and said never a word, for once again he saw that they were dazed and void of knowledge.

As he set her upon her own strength, she swayed. Her eyes went round the hushed groups of faces with wild searching. At last they found the face of her leader, and clung there, dark and dull.

"Prix!" she cried. "Prix! Open the gate!"

"I cannot, Maren," he said quietly; "'twould be but madness."

"But they are without!"

All horror was in the cry.

"They are among the Indians!"

"Aye,--and may the good G.o.d have mercy on them!"

Laroux hastily made the sign of the cross.

"We must guard the post, Maren."

"But--" She turned her eyes slowly around from face to face and not a woman there but read her secret plain, the open script of love,--but for which man?

"But-they-will--be--" She did not finish the sentence, staring at Laroux. Once she moistened her lips.

"They will--Prix,--as I am your leader, open that gate!"

With sudden reviving the daze went out of her features and the old light came back to her eyes, the far-seeing, undaunted light that had beaconed the long way from Grand Portage. She was every inch the leader again, tall, straight against the logs, her brown arm pointing imperiously to the closed gate.

"Open, I say!"

For a moment Laroux faced her squarely, the man who had tied himself to her hand, pledged himself to forge the way to the Whispering Hills, who followed her compelling leadership as these lesser men had turned to follow his but now. Then he set his will to hers.

"I will not," he said quietly.

With no more words she flung herself upon the gate and tore at the chains, her strong hands able as a man's. As the sight of her in peril had worked for both weakness and strength in Dupre, so had McElroy's plight affected her. That helpless moment was the one defection of her dauntless life.

Now again she was herself, reaching for the thing of the moment, and the roar outside the palisade, constantly rising in volume, in menace and savagery, brushed out of her brain every cloud of shock. Laroux caught her from behind, pinioning her arms.

"Maren," he said quietly, "hear me. Out there are five hundred warriors wild as the heart of the Pays d'en Haut, howling over the body of their dying chief. What would be the opening of the gate but the ma.s.sacre of all within? Could forty men take the factor from them? There would be but as many more scalps on their belts as there are heads within the post. See you not, Maren?"

In his iron grip the girl stood still, breathing heavily. As he ceased speaking a great sigh came from her lips, a sigh like a sob.

"Aye," she said brokenly, "I see,--I see! Mary Mother! Let me go, Prix.

I see."

Laroux loosed her, knowing that the moment was past, and went at once about his duties of throwing the post into a state of defence.

Once more strong and quiet, Maren went to the cabin by the gate. Here Marie knelt at her bed with a crucifix grasped in her shaking hands, her face white as milk and prayers on her trembling lips.

"Maren!" she gasped, with the child's appeal to the stronger nature.

"Oh, Maren, what will befall? For love of G.o.d, what will befall?"

"Hush, Marie," answered Maren; "'tis but a tragedy of the wild. Naught will befall us of the post."

"But those without? What is that roaring of many throats? Little Jean Bleaureau but now ran past crying that the Nakonkirhirinons were killing the factor"

"No!" Marie jumped at the word like one shot, so wild and sudden it was.

"No! No! Not yet!"

Even in the stress of the moment Marie stared open-mouthed at her sister.

"Holy Mother! It is love,--that cry! You love the factor!"

"Hush!" whispered Maren, dry-lipped.

The roar from the river bank had sharpened itself into one point of utterance which pierced the calm heavens in a mingling of native speech, French and broken English from Nakonkirhirinon and halfbreed, and, worse than both, dissolute "white Indian," and its burden was,

"A skin for a skin!"

CHAPTER XIV FELLOW CAPTIVES

After that tense moment of hush following the shot, McElroy had no distinct recollection of what occurred. He was conscious of a sickening knowledge of Negansahima with his banded brown arms stretching into the evening light, of the tepees, of the river beyond, of the face of Edmonton Ridgar, and of all these etched distinctly in that effect of sun and shade which picks out each smallest detail sometimes of a rare evening in early summer. Then the whole scene went out in a smother as an avalanche of bodies descended upon him. He could smell the heavy odour of flesh half-naked, the scent of the hidden paint, he felt arms that fought to grip him and fingers that clutched like talons. Under it all he went down in the gra.s.s of the slope, fighting with all his strength, but powerless as a gnat in a pond. Above the turmoil of cries and guttural yells, even while he felt himself crushed at the bottom of that boiling ma.s.s, he heard the light voice of De Courtenay ringing clear in his whimsical farewell to Maren Le Moyne. Then he was wrenched up through the ma.s.s, something struck him on the head with a sharp blow, a shower of stars fell like a cataract, and the sickening scents in his nostrils faded away.

When he again opened his eyes it was to behold real stars shining down from a velvet sky, to hear the river lapping gently at the landing, and the night birds calling in the forest. From the prairie beyond the fringe of woods to the east there came the yapping of the coyotes, and far to the north a wolf howled.

At first a sense of bewilderment held him. Then in a rush came back the memory of what had happened. He listened intently. Back and forth, back and forth somewhere near went a soft footstep, the swish and glide of a moccasin. He strained his eyes, which smarted terribly, into the darkness, and presently descried a tall form pacing slowly up against the skyline of his vision and back again into the shadows. A single feather slanted against the stars. A guard pacing the place of captives.

With a slight movement McElroy tried to lift a hand.