The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 31

Fetch forth the spears, oh, Men of Wisdom!"

But in the midst of the excitement a figure walked slowly forth in the light and held up a hand for silence.

It was Edmonton Ridgar.

Reluctantly they obeyed, sullenly, as if bound by a bond against their will.

In the sudden hush he spoke.

"What do ye here, my brothers?" he asked, and waited.

There was no reply from the ma.s.s before him.

"Wherefore is the spirit of my Father vexed that it disturbs my watch inside the death-lodge?"

The small rustling of the excited crowd ceased in every quarter.

They stilled themselves in a peculiar manner.

"Oh, ye sachems and Men of Wisdom," he said, turning to the headmen gathered together, "come ye to the tepee of Negansahima and behold what ye have done!"

Slowly, as he had come, the chief trader of De Seviere turned about and pa.s.sed out of the light. One by one, in utter silence, their faces changed in a moment into masks of uneasiness, the sachems and medicine men rose and followed. In the wavering shadows thrown by the central fire the big tepee stood in awesome majesty. Ridgar raised the flap and entered, dropping it as the savages filed in to the number of all it would hold.

"See!" he said dramatically.

Over the bier of piled skins which held the wrapped and smoke-dried figure of the dead chief there danced upon the darkness, eerie in pale-green living fire, the ghost of the crested and sweeping head-dress that he had worn in life.

There was never a word among them, but, with one accord, after one awe-struck look at the ghostly thing, they fled the lodge in a ma.s.s.

For several moments Ridgar stood in the darkness as those outside peered fearfully in, and, when the last moccasin had slipped silently away, he reached up and took down the fearsome thing, folding it beside the chief.

"We were wise together, old friend," he said sadly; "would I had your knowledge and your power."

Outside the word was spreading wildly.

"The spirit of Negansahima rests not in the lodge! The medicine men have not dreamed true! Silence in the camp while They who Dream repair to the forest fastnesses and seek true wisdom!"

And while the sachems and the headmen, the beaters of the tom-toms, and those who tended the Sacred fires of the Dreamers formed into procession and slowly filed out into the forest, Edmonton Ridgar drew a long breath of relief. Maren had postponed the sure culmination of the tests by her clever feat, he had postponed it a little longer by his own. Full well he knew that the girl could not go on forever after the manner of her beginning. She knew the hatchet, but would she know the spear, the arrow, and the Test of the Flaming Ring? Sooner or later she would fail, and then would come the last orgy of the rites of a Skin for a Skin. He thought of the whimsical fate which so oddly gave the "Pro pelle cutem"

of the H. B. C. to this unknown tribe of the North, and flayed one with the other.

This night was the last wherein there lay one chance of help for the two men and this woman who had so strangely followed from the post, and he lay in the darkness of the death-lodge watching the hushing of the camp, the loosing of the captives, the carrying of his factor, a limp figure, to the lodge of captives on the edge, the leading thither of De Courtenay and Maren.

"Fool woman!" he said in his heart; "sweet, brave, loving fool with the woman's heart and the man's simple courage!"

CHAPTER XXIV THE STONE TO THE FOOT OF LOVE

Long Ridgar lay in the darkness listening to the hushed sounds that came from lodge and dying fire--vague, awed sounds, that presently died into silence as night took toll of humanity and sleep settled among the savages.

Here and there low gutturals droned into the stillness, and at the west there was oath and whispered comment where the Bois-Brules camped together. Not wholly under the spell of mystery were these half-breeds, but restless and suspicious under the conflicting promptings of their mixed blood. Slower than the Indians were they to obey the mandate of silence and peace that the Spirits of Dreams might descend upon the forest, but at last they were quiet, the tires burned down to red heaps of coals, then to white ashes, the great fire in the centre flamed and died and flamed again like some vindictive spirit striving for vengeance in the grip of death, and the utter stillness of the solitude fell thick as a garment on all the wilderness. It seemed to Ridgar that only himself in all the earth was awake and watching, save perhaps the two guards pacing without a sound the lodge of the captives, and those two within, so oddly brought near.

As for McElroy, his friend of friends, an aching fear tugged in his heart that he had waited too long for the chance to help, that the patient strength was sapped at last, that the end had come. He had seen the flight of the maul, the sagging of the st.u.r.dy figure.

Who had thrown it, if not that brute DesCaut? Who save DesCaut was so keen on the trail of the factor and the girl? True, De Courtenay was his latest master, and his spoiling of Maren's aim might as easily send the blade into the black as the red, but in either case he would cause her to decide the death she was trying so bravely to postpone.

DesCaut, surely.

The stars wheeled in their endless march, the well-known ones of the forenight giving place to strangers of the after hours, and Ridgar had begun to move with the caution of the hunted, inch by inch, out from the shelter of the lodge, when he felt a hand steal from the darkness and touch him with infinite care. He lay still and presently a voice whispered,

"M'sieu Ridgar?

"Aye?" breathed Ridgar.

"'Tis I,--Marc Dupre from De Seviere."

"Voila! Another! Are there more of you?"

"I would know first, M'sieu,--where is your heart, with savage or Hudson's Bay?"

"Fair question, truly. I but now am started for yonder lodge on quest of their deliverance, though without hope. Your appearance lends me that."

"Sacre! 'Tis done already. Listen, M'sieu, with all your ears. Just beyond earshot, up the river to the south there lies a big canoe, with at its nose for instant action two men of Mowbray's brigade, while a hundred yards inland another waits, armed and ready to cover a hurried flight. There needs but loosing of those yonder, M'sieu, and here are we. Two Indians pace the lodge.... You one, me one. What easier?

"Many things, my young hot-blood. Yet it is our only way. Here are death-mauls,--two. Take you,--they make no sound, provided a practised hand is behind. Strike near and ease the fall, there are those who sleep lightly here. Even the earth has ears to-night."

"Think you Ma'amselle is bound?" whispered Dupre next; "I could not see for the swinging of the factor's body."

"No," replied the trader; "both she and the Nor'wester walked free. But how, for love of Heaven, comes she here?" he added.

Dupre sighed softly in the darkness.

"For love," he said; "for love of a man."

"I had guessed as much,--how how did she pa.s.s the many miles of lake and stream and forest? And how overtake us?"

"I brought her. By day and night also, without camp, have we come, aided by canoe-men from Mr. Mowbray's brigade, which we met on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Winnipeg coming down from York, bound for the a.s.siniboine and c.u.mberland House."

"But for which man? She is unreadable, that woman, though love lives naked in her face."

But a sudden ache had gripped the throat of the young trapper and he did not answer.

"Let us be off, M'sieu," he whispered; "now is the time."

"Aye,--if ever."

Slowly, inch by inch, lifting their bodies that they might not rustle the loose earth and trampled leaves of the camp, Ridgar and Dupre drew forth into the shadows.

Meantime, within the skin tepee, where all three had been summarily placed, Maren Le Moyne sat with her head upon her arms and her arms crossed on her drawn-up knees. Across the opening, just inside the flap, the body of McElroy lay inert, though she knew that a low breath rose and fell within him, for she had laid a hand upon his breast. Beside her, close in the darkness, De Courtenay sat upright and alert, as if no forty hours of torture had hail their will of him. She could hear his quick breathing.