When Wilderness Was King Part 12

"Are the outer gates ever opened at night?" I asked.

He glanced up at me in surprise, shading his eyes to be a.s.sured of my ident.i.ty before speaking.

"Scarcely either day or night now, sir," he replied, respectfully, "but between sunset and sunrise they are specially barred, and a double guard is set. No one can pa.s.s except on the order of Captain Heald."

"In which direction is the Kinzie house?"

He pointed toward the northeast corner of the stockade.

"It is just over there, sir, across the river. You might see the light from the platform; beyond the shed yonder is the ladder that leads up into the blockhouse."

Thanking him, I moved forward as directed, found the ladder, and pushed my way up through the narrow opening in the floor of the second story.

The small square room, feebly lighted by a single sputtering candle stuck in the shank of a bayonet, contained half a dozen men, most of them idling, although two were standing where they could readily peer out through the narrow slits between the logs. All of them were heavily armed, and equipped for service. They looked at me curiously as I first appeared, but the one who asked my business wore the insignia of a corporal, and was evidently in command.

"I wish to look out over the stockade, if there is no objection. I came in with Captain Wells's party this afternoon," I said, not knowing what their orders might be, or if I would be recognized.

"I remember you, sir," was the prompt response, "and you are at liberty to go out there if you desire. That is the door leading to the platform."

"The Indians appear to be very quiet to-night."

"The more reason to believe them plotting some fresh deviltry," he answered, rising to his feet, and facing me. "We never have much to disturb us upon this side, as it overhangs the river and is not easy of approach; but the guard on the south wall is kept pretty busy these last few nights, and has to patrol the stockade. The Indians have been holding some sort of a powwow out at their camp ever since dark, and that 's apt to mean trouble sooner or later."

"Then you keep no sentry posted on the platform?" I asked, a thought suddenly occurring to me.

"Not regularly, sir; only when something suspicious happens along the river. There 's n.o.body out there now excepting the French girl,--she seems to be fond of being out there all alone."

The French girl? Could it be possible that he meant Toinette? I was conscious of a strange fluttering of the heart, as I stepped forth upon the narrow footway and peered along it, searching for her. I could distinguish nothing, however; and as I slowly felt my way forward, testing the squared log beneath me with careful foot and keeping hold with one hand upon the sharpened palisades, I began to believe the corporal had been mistaken. The door, closing behind, shut off the last gleam of light, and I was left alone in utter darkness and silence, save for the low rumble of voices within the Fort enclosure, and the soft plashing below where the river current kissed the bank at the foot of the stockade.

I had gone almost the full length of that side, before I came where she was leaning against the logs, her chin resting upon one hand, her gaze turned northward. Indeed, so silent was she, so intent upon her own thought, I might have touched her unnoticed in the gloom, had not the stars broken through a rift in the cloud above us, and sent a sudden gleam of silver across her face.

"Mademoiselle," I said, striving to address her with something of the ease I thought De Croix would exercise at such a moment, "I meant not to intrude upon your privacy, yet I am most glad to meet with you once more."

She started slightly, as though aroused from reverie, and glanced inquiringly toward me.

"I supposed my visitor to be one of the guard," she said pleasantly; "and even now I am unable to distinguish your face, yet the sound of the voice reminds me of John Wayland."

"I am proud to know that it has not already been forgotten. You deserted me so suddenly this afternoon, I almost doubted my being welcome now."

She laughed lightly, tapping the ends of the logs with her finger-tips.

"Have you, then, never learned that a woman is full of whims, Monsieur?" she questioned. "Why, this afternoon your eyes were so big with wonder that they had forgotten to look at me. Truly, I spoke to you twice to aid me from the saddle; but you heard nothing, and in my desperation I was obliged to turn to the courtesy of Captain de Croix.

Ah, there is a soldier, my friend, who is never so preoccupied as to neglect his duty to a lady."

"It was indeed most ungallant of me," I stammered, scarce knowing whether she laughed at me or not. "Yet my surroundings were all new, and I have the training of De Croix in such matters."

"Pah! 't is just as well. I am inclined to like you as you are, my friend, and we shall not quarrel; yet, with all his love for lesser things, your comrade has always shown himself a truly gallant gentleman."

I made no answer to these flattering words, for I felt them to be true; yet no less this open praise of him, falling from her lips, racked me sorely, and I lacked the art to make light of it.

"The soldiers in the block-house tell me you come here often," I ventured at last, for the dead silence weighed upon me. "You have never seemed to me like one who would seek such loneliness."

"I am one whom very few wholly comprehend, I fear, and surely not upon first acquaintance," she answered thoughtfully, "for I am full of strange moods, and perhaps dream more than other girls. This may have been born of my early convent training, and the mystic tales of the nuns; nor has it been lessened by the loneliness of the frontier. So, if I differ from other young women, you may know 't is my training, as well as my nature, that may account for it. I have led a strange life, Monsieur, and one that has known much of sadness. There are times when I seek my own thoughts, and find liking for no other company. Then I come here, and in some way the loneliness of water and plain soothe me as human speech cannot. I used to love to stand yonder by the eastern wall and gaze out over the Great Lake, watching the green surges chase each other until they burst in spray along the beach. But since I went adrift in the little boat, and felt the cruelty of the water, I have shrunk from looking out upon it. Monsieur, have you never known how restful it sometimes is to be alone?"

"My life has mostly been a solitary one," I answered, responding unconsciously to her mood, and, in doing so, forgetting my embarra.s.sment. "It is the birthright of all children of the frontier.

Indeed, I have seen so little of the great world and so much of the woods, that I scarcely realize what companionship means, especially that of my own age. I have made many a solitary camp leagues from the nearest settlement, and have tracked the forest alone for days together, so content with my own thought that possibly I understand your meaning better than if my life had been pa.s.sed among crowds."

"Ah! but I like the crowds," she exclaimed hastily, "and the glow and excitement of that brighter, fuller life, where people really live. It is so dull here,--the same commonplace faces, the tiresome routine of drill, the same blue sky, gray water, and green plains, to look upon day after day. Oh, but it is all so wearisome, and you cannot conceive how I have longed again for Montreal and the many little gaieties that brighten a woman's world. There are those here who have never known these happier things; their whole horizon of experience has been bounded by garrison palisades; but 't is not so with me,--I tasted of the sweet wine once, when I was a girl, and the memory never leaves me."

"Yet you are often happy?"

"'T is my nature, Monsieur, a legacy of my mother's people; but I am not always gay of heart when my lips smile."

"And the coming of the French gallant has doubtless freshened your remembrance of the past?" I said, a trifle bitterly.

"It has indeed," was her frank admission. "He represents a life we know so little about here on the far frontier. To you, with your code of border manliness, he may appear all affectation, mere shallow insincerity; but to me, Captain de Croix represents his cla.s.s, stands for the refinements of social order to which women can never be indifferent. Those were the happiest days of my life, Monsieur; and at Montreal he was only one among many."

She was gazing out into the black void as she spoke, and the slowly clearing skies permitted the starlight to gleam in her dark eyes and reveal the soft contour of her cheek.

"You do not understand that?" she questioned finally, as I failed to break the silence.

"I have no such pleasant memory to look back upon," I answered; "yet I can feel, though possibly in a different way, your longing after better things."

"You realize this sense of loneliness?--this absence of all that makes life beautiful and worth the living?"

"Perhaps not that,--for life, even here, is well worth living, and to my eyes the great sea yonder, and the dark forests, are of more interest than city streets. But in one sense I may enter into your meaning; my thought also is away from here,--it is with a home, scarcely less humble than are our present surroundings, yet it contains the one blessing worth striving after--love."

"Love!" she echoed the unexpected word almost scornfully. "'T is a phrase so lightly spoken that I scarce know what it may signify to you.

You love some one then, Monsieur?" and she looked up at me curiously.

"My mother, Mademoiselle."

I saw the expression upon her face change instantly. "Your pardon,"

she exclaimed, hastily. "'T was not the meaning I had thought. I know something of such love as that, and honor you for thus expressing it."

"I have often wondered, since first we met, at your being here, seemingly alone, at this outermost post of the frontier. It seems a strange home for one of your refinement and evident delight in social life."

"'T is not from choice, Monsieur. My mother died when I was but a child, as I have already told you. I scarce have memory of her, yet I bear her name, and, I am told, inherit many of her peculiarities. She was the daughter of a great merchant at Montreal, and the blood of a n.o.ble family of France flowed in her veins. She gave up all else to become my father's wife; nor did she ever live to regret it."

Her voice was so low and plaintive that I hesitated to speak; yet finally, as she ceased, and silence fell between us, I asked another question:

"And 't was then you voyaged into this wilderness with your father?"

"I have never since left him while he lived," she answered softly, her head resting upon her hand. "But he also has gone now, and I merely wait opportunity to journey eastward."

"He was a trader, you told me once?"

"A soldier first, Monsieur; a true and gallant soldier, but later he traded with the Indians for furs."

I felt that she was weeping softly, although I could see but little, and I leaned in silence against the rough logs, gazing out into the black night, hesitating to break in upon her grief. Then a voice spoke rapidly at the farther end of the stockade, and a sudden glow of light shot like an arrow along the platform. I turned quickly, and there in the open doorway, clearly outlined against the candle flame, stood De Croix.