The Maid of the Whispering Hills Part 9

"Madame," he stammered, "I would--" and got no further.

Sudden embarra.s.sment took him and he grew angry with himself.

What could he say, how dared he do what he had done?

He could have thrown the white garment into the river in his sudden vexation. Factor of the post, he had made of himself a stammering youth, all for sake of the compelling beauty of a woman's eyes.

But at that moment, while Marie stood blankly on the sill holding to the doorside and the silence grew unbearable, there was a step within the cabin and Maren Le Moyne came from the inner room.

In one moment, so keen was the perception of her, she had seen the red blood in McElroy's face, the wonder on Marie's, and she, too, stood in the open door.

"Ah, M'sieu!" she said quickly, "do some of them, by chance, come from the west?"

The tone of her deep voice broke the spell, so subtly natural was it, and McElroy found his tongue.

"No, Ma'amselle," he smiled, the ease coming back to his blue eyes, "but I have found something very beautiful among them which I wish you to have. It is more beautiful than a red flower."

He held up to her the doeskin garment and his eyes were very anxious.

For a moment Maren stared as she had stared at De Courtenay and a curious expression of perplexity spread on her face.

Truly men were different here in this wilderness from those who lived at the Grand Portage, and for a moment she drew herself up and the straight brows began to frown. But as she had felt the whimsical charm of De Courtenay, so now she felt the eagerness, the taut anxiety of this man, and she noticed that there was no smile on his face as she hesitated.

Moreover, Marie was watching, sharp as a little hawk.

"Why, M'sieu," she said, and there was a baffling note to the voice this time, "why,--you wish me to have this?"

"Yes, Ma'amselle," said McElroy simply.

The girl stooped and took it from him, and for a moment her hand lay against his palm, a smooth warm hand.

"And you wish me to wear it?" she asked.

"If it shall please you."

"Then it shall please me," she said quite easily, "and I thank you."

McElroy turned away and walked back to the factory, and all the way he did not know what he had done. It had been an impulse, and he had rushed to its fulfilling without a thought. Had he bungled in giving her a garment where De Courtenay had played on a wind-harp in giving her a little red flower?

He was hot and cold alternately, and the memory of that momentary frown came turn and turn with that of the gentle manner in which she had reached down for the lifted gift.

And Maren Le Moyne?

Within the cabin she had turned to that portion which was her own, the while Marie's sharp eyes followed her with questions that were ripe on her tongue.

"Maren," she cried, as the girl pa.s.sed the inner door, unable to longer hold herself, "know you the factor well?"

But Maren only shook her head and closed the slab door between.

Once alone she laid the gift on the bed, covered with a patchwork quilt made from the worn garments that had seen the long trail, and stood bending above, looking closely at each beauty of colour, of softness and design.

She spread the straight sleeves apart, smoothing out the dangling fringe, and her hand lingered with a strange gentleness a-down the glowing plastron of bright beads.

This was the first gift a man had ever given her, other than De Courtenay's red flower, and somehow it pleased her vastly.

She fell to thinking of the factor, of his open face, his light head forever tilted back with the square chin lifted, of the mouth above and of the eyes, clear as the new day and anxious as a child's the while she halted above his offering, and unconsciously she began within her mind to compare him with all other men she had ever known.

There was Prix Laroux. Not like. Also Jean Folliere and Anthon Brisbee of Grand Portage, who came to the wilderness each year. Neither were they like this man, nor Cif and Pierre Bordoux, nor Franz LeClede, nor yet her brother Henri. These she knew and they were of a different pattern.

Also there was that venturer of the great beauty and the silken curls who had spoken so prettily. With all his grace, he was unlike this strong young man whose tongue faltered and whose eyes were anxious.

Verily, for the first time; this maid of the wilderness was thinking of men.

And it was because he had seemed so ill-beset that she had taken the gift so readily.

She would not have him stumble longer under the sharp eyes of Marie.

And then thought of him faded from her mind and she fell to contemplation of the doeskin garment again. Things of its like she had seen at Grand Portage, but nothing of its great beauty, and for the first time she gave thought to self-adornment. She was strong, this woman, and given to serious dreams, and the small things of womanhood had left her wide apart in a land of her own wherein there were only visions of afar country, of travel and of conquest, and perhaps of a man, old and rugged and kindly, who had followed the long trail, and this small new thought lodged wonderingly in her mind.

For the first time she was conscious of the plainness of the garment that folded her form, and she held up her arms and looked at them, brown beneath the up-rolled sleeves.

Yes, some day she would put it on, this gorgeous thing of white fringe and sparkling colour, because she had told that man she would.

Unlike most women, she did not hold it up to her, pointing a foot beneath its pretty edge, gathering it into her waist, trying its effect.

She was content to run a hand along its length, to feel the caress of its softness.

Yet even as she touched it she thought of the pretty creature which had worn it first, the slim-legged doe bounding in the forest depth, and a little sigh lifted her breast.

But this had been the quick and merciful death of the bullet, the legitimate death. That she could understand.

More quick and merciful than that which would come in the natural life of the forest. Therefore this pelt held no such repugnance as those stacked on the river bank.

Suddenly, as she bent above the bed, she felt the presence of another, the peculiar power of eyes, upon her, and, turning quickly, she saw a black head, black as her own and running with curls, that dipped from the window.

There was no little head in all the post like that save one, and it belonged to little Francette, the pretty maid who had run by the factor's side that day of the meeting of Bois DesCaut by the river. With the drop of that head from the sill there pa.s.sed over Maren a strange feeling, a prescience of evil, a thrill of fear in a heart that had never known fear.

She left the tiny room with the gift of the factor still outspread, and joined Marie in the outer s.p.a.ce, where yawned a wide fireplace with its dogs on the hearth, its swinging crane made from a rod of iron, its bed and its hand-made table.

Here had come Anon Bordoux and Mora Le-Clede, drawn by the sight of the factor at the Baptistes' door, their tongues flying in eager question.

"--of such gorgeousness," Marie was saying, "such softness of white doeskin, such wealth of the beading--"

"Marie," said Maren sharply, "is there naught to do save gossip?"

Anon and Mora fell into confused silence, the habit of the trail where this girl's word had been the law falling upon them, but Marie, saucy and not to be daunted, was not so easily hushed.

"Is it not true," she cried, "that the factor brought it but now to the door in plain sight of all?"