The Promise Part 35

"Luck! Happiness!" he repeated dully, with bowed head. "For me there can be no happiness."

With a low cry the girl was at his side and two tiny, white-brown hands clutched at the fringed arm of his buckskin shirt. The beautiful face was flushed, the bosom heaved, and from between the red lips poured a torrent of words:

"You _shall_ find happiness! You, who are great and strong and brave above all men! You, who are good, and whom the Great Spirit sent to me from the waters of the river!

"You, The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die, shall turn from your own kind, and shall find your happiness beside the rivers, and in the forests of my people!

Together we will journey to some far place, and in our lodge will dwell love and great happiness.

"And you shall become a mighty hunter, and in all the North you shall be feared and loved."

The girl paused and gazed wildly into the eyes of the man. His face was drawn and pale, and in his eyes she read deep pain. Gently his hand closed over the slender fingers that gripped his sleeve, and at the touch the girl trembled and leaned closer, until her warm body rested lightly against his arm. Bill's lips moved and the words of his toneless voice fell upon her ears like the dry rustle of dead husks.

"Jeanne--little girl--you do not understand. These things cannot be.

Only unhappiness would come to us. There is nothing in the world I would not do for you.

"To you I owe my life--to you and Wa-ha-ta-na-ta. But, love cannot be ordered. It is written--and, far away, in the great city of the white men, is a girl--a woman of my own people----"

The girl sprang from his side and faced him with blazing eyes.

"A woman of your people!" she almost hissed. "In your sleep you talked of her, while the fever-spirit was upon you. I _hate_ her--this Ethel!

She does not love you, for she will marry another! Ah, in the darkness I have listened, and listening, have learned to _hate_! She sent you away from her--for, in your eyes she could not read the goodness of your heart!"

Bill raised his hand.

"You do not understand," he repeated, patiently. "I was not good--I was a bad man!"

"Who, then, among white men is good? The men of the logs, who drink whisky, and fight among themselves, and kill one another? Is it these men that are good in the sight of your woman? And are you, who scorn these things--are you bad?"

"I, too, drank whisky--and for that reason she sent me away."

"But, you cannot return to her! She is the wife of another! Over and over again you said it, in the voice of the fever-spirit."

"No," replied the man softly. "To her I cannot return. But, listen; I start to-morrow for the white man's country. To find the man for whom I work, and tell him of the bird's-eye.

"Soon I shall come again into the woods. I cannot marry you, for only evil would come of it. I will bring you many presents, and always we shall be friends--and more than friends, for you shall be to me a sister and I shall be your brother, and shall keep you from harm.

"To-morrow I go, and you shall promise me that whenever you are in trouble of whatsoever kind you will send for me--and I shall come to you--be it far or near, in the night-time or in the daytime, I will come--Jeanne, look into my eyes--will you promise?"

The girl looked up, and a ray of hope lightened the pain in her eyes.

"You will surely return into the North?"

"I will surely return."

"I will promise," she whispered, and, side by side, in the silence of the twilight, they left the clearing.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE ONE GOOD WHITE MAN

The following morning Bill parted from his friends. As he was about to step into the canoe Jeanne appeared at the water's edge bearing the mackinaw which he had worn when they drew him from the river.

Without meeting his glance she extended it toward him, speaking in a low, tense voice.

"In the lining I have sewed them--the papers that fell dripping from your pocket--and the picture. Many times I have looked upon the face of this woman, who has caused you pain. And I have hated! Oh, how I have hated! So that I could have torn her in pieces.

"And many times I would have burned them, that you might forget. But, instead, I sewed them from sight in the lining of the coat--and here is the coat."

Bill tossed the mackinaw into the bottom of the canoe.

"Thank you, Jeanne," he said. "And until we meet again, good-by!"

With a push of the paddle he shot the light canoe far out into the current of the stream.

Bill paddled leisurely, camping early and sitting late over his camp-fire smoking many pipefuls of tobacco. And, as he smoked, his thoughts drifted over the events of the past year, and the people who comprised his little world.

Appleton, who had offered him the chance to make good; whole-hearted Fallon; devoted old Daddy Dunnigan; Stromberg, in whom was much to admire; Creed, the craven tool of Moncrossen; the boss himself, crooked, brutal, vicious; Blood River Jack, his friend; Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the sinister old squaw, who believed all white men to be bad; and Jeanne, the beautiful, half-wild girl, within whose breast a great soul fluttered against the restraint of her environment.

To this girl he owed his life, and he had repaid the debt by trampling roughshod upon her heart. Bitterly he reproached himself for not seeing how things were going. For not until the day she told him in the clearing had he guessed that she loved him.

And yet now as he looked backward he could remember a hundred little things that ought to have warned him--a word here, a look, a touch of the hand--little things, insignificant in themselves, but in the light of his present understanding, looming large as the danger signals of a well-ordered block system--signals he had blindly disregarded, to the wrecking of a heart. Well, he would make all amends in his power; would look after her as best he could, and in time she would forget.

"They _all_ forget," he muttered aloud with a short, bitter laugh, as the memory of certain staring head-lines flashed through his brain. "I wish to G.o.d I could forget--_her!_"

But the old wound would not heal, and far into the night he sat staring into the fire.

"It's a man's game," he murmured as he spread his blankets, "and I will win out; but why?"

Beyond the fire came the sound of a snapping twig. The man started, staring into the gloom, when suddenly into the soft light of the dying embers stepped Jeanne Lacombie. He stared at her speechless.

There, in the uncertain glow, she stood, a Diana of flesh and blood, whose open hunting-shirt fell away from her rounded throat in soft, fringed folds. Her short skirt of heavy drilling came only to her knees; she wore no stockings, and her tiny feet were incased in heavily beaded moccasins.

And so she stood there in the midnight, smiling down upon the man who gazed speechless from his blanket upon the opposite side of the dying fire; and then she spoke:

"I have come," she said simply.

"Jeanne!" cried the man, "why have you done this thing?"

"I love you, and I will go with you."

"But, girl, don't you realize what it means? This is the third night since I left the camp of Jacques----" The girl interrupted him with a laugh:

"And I, too, have been gone three nights; have struck straight through the forest, and because the river makes a great bend of many miles I came to this place before you, and have waited for you here a night and a day.

"And now I'm hungry. I will eat first, and then we will sleep, and to-morrow we will start together for the land of the white men."