The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 24

CHAPTER XIX THE HUDSON'S BAY BRIGADE

The two days that followed were heavy ones to Maren.

No farther did they dare venture lest they pa.s.s to the west and miss the brigade coming down from the north and entering the lake at the northeast extremity.

So they waited on the sh.o.r.e in anxiety of spirit, watching the bright waters with eyes that ached with the intensity of the vigil, and Dupre hunted in the forest and over the sand dunes, among the high meadows that broke the heavy woods in this region, and down along the reaches of the water.

"Farther with each day!" thought Maren to herself. "Holy Mother, send the brigade!"

And Dupre echoed the thought in sadness of soul.

"More pain for her heart in each hour's delay. Would the trial were done!"

About three of the clock on the first day of waiting there came sounds of singing and a string of canoes rounded a bend of the sh.o.r.e at the south.

"M'sieu!" cried Maren swiftly; "who comes?"

Dupre, tinkering at the canoe overturned on the pebbly beach, straightened and looked in the direction she indicated.

He looked long with hand to eye, and presently turned quietly.

"Nor'westers, I think, Ma'amselle. They come from Fort William to the Wilderness."

Fort William!

Back along the trail went memory with mention of the post on the distant sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior. How oft had she peeped with fascinated eyes from behind her father's forge at st.u.r.dy men in buckskins who spoke with the blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she felt the old yearning for the unknown.

And this was it,--this gleaming stretch of inland sea, one man who stood by her and another who betrayed her with a kiss, yet who drew her after him as the helpless leaf, fallen to the stream, is whirled into the white destruction of the rapids.

Aye, verily, this was the unknown.

She was looking down the lake with the sun on her uncovered head, on the soft whiteness of the doeskin garment, and to young Dupre she had never seemed so near the divine, so far and unattainable.

"Ma'amselle," he said presently, "if these newcomers speak us, heed you not what I may say. There are times in the open ways when a man must lie for the good of himself--or others."

The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his face. It was grave and quiet.

"a.s.suredly," she said after a moment's scrutiny. "Had I best hide in the bushes, M'sieu?"

"No, they have seen us."

Sweeping forward, the brigade of the Nor'westers, for such it proved to be, headed near in a circle and the head canoe turned in to sh.o.r.e.

"Friend?" called a man in the prow; whom Dupre knew for a wintering partner by the name of McIntosh of none too savoury report.

"Hudson's Bay trapper, M'sieu," he said politely, going a step nearer the water. "I wait, with Madame my wife, the coming of our brigade from York, now one day overdue."

"Ah,--my mistake. I had thought the H. B. C.'s this fortnight gone down.

As ever, they are a trifle behind."

While he addressed Dupre his bold eyes were fastened on Maren, where she hung a dressed fish on a split p.r.o.ng.

"Not behind, M'sieu," said the young man gently. "They but take the time of certainty. A Saulteur pa.s.sing this way at daylight reported them as at McMillan's Landing."

"Then your waiting is short. I am glad,--for Madame. So lone a camp must be hard for a woman."

With the words the Nor'wester scanned the girl's face with a glance that pierced her consciousness, though her eyes were fixed on her task. Not a tinge of deeper colour came to her cheeks. There was no betrayal of the part Dupre had a.s.signed her, and with a word of parting the canoe swung out to its place, though McIntosh's eyes clung boldly to her beauty so long as he could see her.

"Ah-h,--a close shave!" thought the trapper as he picked up a splinter and once more fell to upon the boat.

Twenty-four hours later there came out of the north the thrice blessed brigade of the H. B. C., bound down the lake to Grand Rapids, where the canoes would separate into two parties, one going up the Saskatchewan to c.u.mberland House, the other down to the country of the a.s.siniboine.

Eager as a hound for the quarry Maren stood forth beside Dupre to hail them.

Head of the brigade was Mr. Thomas Mowbray, a gentleman of fine presence and of gentle manners.

In answer to the hail from sh.o.r.e he came to, and presently he stood in the prow of his boat listening to an appeal that lightened his grave eyes.

"Men we must have, M'sieu," Maren was saying pa.s.sionately; "men of the Hudson's Bay. Against all odds we go of a truth, but strategy and wit accomplish much, and the Nakonkirhirinons have no thought of rescue.

Besides, the farther north they get the less keen will be their vigilance. With men, M'sieu, we may retake, by strategy alone of course, the factor of Fort de Seviere. Therefore have we come across your way, In the Name of Mary, M'sieu, I beg that you refuse me not!"

She was like some young priestess as she stood in the westering light on the green-fringed sh.o.r.e, one hand caught in the buckskin fringe at her throat and her eyes on Mr. Mowbray's upright face.

"Upon my word, Madame--?" he said when she had finished.

"Ma'amselle, M'sieu," she corrected simply.

"Ma'amselle,--your pardon,--upon my word, have I never seen such appalling courage! Do you not know that you go upon a quest as hopeless as death? This tribe,--I have heard a deal too much about them, and once they came to York two seasons back,--are unlike any others of the Indians of the country. Ruled by a peculiar justice which takes 'a skin for a skin'--not ten or an hundred as do the Blackfeet or the Sioux,--they yet surpa.s.s all others in the cruelty of that taking. Have you not heard tales of this surpa.s.sing cruelty, Ma'amselle?"

"Aye, we have heard. It hastens our going. M'sieu the factor awaits that cruelty in its extremest manner with the reaching of the Pays d'en Haut."

"Mother of G.o.d!" said Mr. Mowbray wonderingly. "And yet,--I see!"

"And he is Hudson's Bay, M'sieu," said the girl sharply; "a good factor.

Would the Company not make an effort to save such, think you?"

Mr. Mowbray stood a moment, many moments, thinking with a line drawn deep between his eyes. Out on the burnished water the canoes lay idly, the red kerchiefs of the trappers making bright points of colour against the blue background.

Presently he said slowly

"What you ask is against all precedent, Ma'amselle, and I may lose my head for tampering with my orders,--but I will see what can be done."

The brigade drew in, and when dusk fell upon the wilderness a dozen fires kept company with the lone little spiral from Dupre's camp.

Sitting upon the shingle with her hands clasped hard on her knees, Maren shook her head when the young trapper brought her the breast of a grouse, roasted brown, along with tea and pemmican from the packs of the H. B. men.

"I thank you, my friend," she said uncertainly; "but I cannot--not now.