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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Forest, by James Oliver Curwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Flaming Forest
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Posting Date: September 6, 2009 [EBook #4702]
+Release Date: December, 2003
+First Posted: March 3, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAMING FOREST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAMING FOREST
+
+
+BY
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN, THE COUNTRY BEYOND, THE ALASKAN,
+ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAMING FOREST
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+An hour ago, under the marvelous canopy of the blue northern sky, David
+Carrigan, Sergeant in His Most Excellent Majesty's Royal Northwest
+Mounted Police, had hummed softly to himself, and had thanked God that
+he was alive. He had blessed McVane, superintendent of "N" Division at
+Athabasca Landing, for detailing him to the mission on which he was
+bent. He was glad that he was traveling alone, and in the deep forest,
+and that for many weeks his adventure would carry him deeper and deeper
+into his beloved north. Making his noonday tea over a fire at the edge
+of the river, with the green forest crowding like an inundation on
+three sides of him, he had come to the conclusion--for the hundredth
+time, perhaps--that it was a nice thing to be alone in the world, for
+he was on what his comrades at the Landing called a "bad assignment."
+
+"If anything happens to me," Carrigan had said to McVane, "there isn't
+anybody in particular to notify. I lost out in the matter of family a
+long time ago."
+
+He was not a man who talked much about himself, even to the
+superintendent of "N" Division, yet there were a thousand who loved
+Dave Carrigan, and many who placed their confidences in him.
+Superintendent Me Vane had one story which he might have told, but he
+kept it to himself, instinctively sensing the sacredness of it. Even
+Carrigan did not know that the one thing which never passed his lips
+was known to McVane.
+
+Of that, too, he had been thinking an hour ago. It was the thing which,
+first of all, had driven him into the north. And though it had twisted
+and disrupted the earth under his feet for a time, it had brought its
+compensation. For he had come to love the north with a passionate
+devotion. It was, in a way, his God. It seemed to him that the time had
+never been when he had lived any other life than this under the open
+skies. He was thirty-seven now. A bit of a philosopher, as philosophy
+comes to one in a sun-cleaned and unpolluted air, A good-humored
+brother of humanity, even when he put manacles on other men's wrists;
+graying a little over the temples--and a lover of life. Above all else
+he was that. A lover of life. A worshiper at the shrine of God's
+Country.
+
+So he sat, that hour ago, deep in the wilderness eighty miles north of
+Athabasca Landing, congratulating himself on the present conditions of
+his existence. A hundred and eighty miles farther on was Fort McMurray,
+and another two hundred beyond that was Chipewyan, and still beyond
+that the Mackenzie and its fifteen-hundred-mile trail to the northern
+sea. He was glad there was no end to this world of his. He was glad
+there were few people in it. But these people he loved. That hour ago
+he had looked out on the river as two York boats had forged up against
+the stream, craft like the long, slim galleys of old, brought over
+through the Churchill and Clearwater countries from Hudson's Bay. There
+were eight rowers in each boat. They were singing. Their voices rolled
+between the walls of the forests. Their naked arms and shoulders
+glistened in the sun. They rowed like Vikings, and to him they were
+symbols of the freedom of the world. He had watched them until they
+were gone up-stream, but it was a long time before the chanting of
+their voices had died away. And then he had risen from beside his tiny
+fire, and had stretched himself until his muscles cracked. It was good
+to feel the blood running red and strong in one's veins at the age of
+thirty-seven. For Carrigan felt the thrill of these days when strong
+men were coming out of the north--days when the glory of June hung over
+the land, when out of the deep wilderness threaded by the Three Rivers
+came romance and courage and red-blooded men and women of an almost
+forgotten people to laugh and sing and barter for a time with the
+outpost guardians of a younger and more progressive world. It was north
+of Fifty-Four, and the waters of a continent flowed toward the Arctic
+Sea. Yet soon would the strawberries be crushing red underfoot; the
+forest road was in bloom, scarlet fire-flowers reddened the trail, wild
+hyacinths and golden-freckled violets played hide-and-seek with the
+forget-me-nots in the meadows, and the sky was a great splash of
+velvety blue. It was the north triumphant--at the edge of civilization;
+the north triumphant, and yet paying its tribute. For at the other end
+were waiting the royal Upper Ten Thousand and the smart Four Hundred
+with all the beau monde behind them, coveting and demanding that
+tribute to their sex--the silken furs of a far country, the life's
+blood and labor of a land infinitely beyond the pale of drawing-rooms
+and the whims of fashion.
+
+Carrigan had thought of these things that hour ago, as he sat at the
+edge of the first of the Three Rivers, the great Athabasca. From down
+the other two, the Slave and the Mackenzie, the fur fleets of the
+unmapped country had been toiling since the first breakups of ice.
+Steadily, week after week, the north had been emptying itself of its
+picturesque tide of life and voice, of muscle and brawn, of laughter
+and song--and wealth. Through, long months of deep winter, in ten
+thousand shacks and tepees and cabins, the story of this June had been
+written as fate had written it each winter for a hundred years or more.
+A story of the triumph of the fittest. A story of tears, of happiness
+here and there, of hunger and plenty, of new life and quick death; a
+story of strong men and strong women, living in the faith of their
+forefathers, with the best blood of old England and France still
+surviving in their veins.
+
+Through those same months of winter, the great captains of trade in the
+city of Edmonton had been preparing for the coming of the river
+brigades. The hundred and fifty miles of trail between that last city
+outpost of civilization and Athabasca Landing, the door that opened
+into the North, were packed hard by team and dog-sledge and packer
+bringing up the freight that for another year was to last the forest
+people of the Three River country--a domain reaching from the Landing
+to the Arctic Ocean. In competition fought the drivers of Revillon
+Brothers and Hudson's Bay, of free trader and independent adventurer.
+Freight that grew more precious with each mile it advanced must reach
+the beginning of the waterway. It started with the early snows. The
+tide was at full by midwinter. In temperature that nipped men's lungs
+it did not cease. There was no let-up in the whip-hands of the masters
+of trade at Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, and London across the sea. It
+was not a work of philanthropy. These men cared not whether Jean and
+Jacqueline and Pierre and Marie were well-fed or hungry, whether they
+lived or died, so far as humanity was concerned. But Paris, Vienna,
+London, and the great capitals of the earth must have their furs--and
+unless that freight went north, there would be no velvety offerings for
+the white shoulders of the world. Christmas windows two years hence
+would be bare. A feminine wail of grief would rise to the skies. For
+woman must have her furs, and in return for those furs Jean and
+Jacqueline and Pierre and Marie must have their freight. So the
+pendulum swung, as it had swung for a century or two, touching, on the
+one side, luxury, warmth, wealth, and beauty; on the other, cold and
+hardship, deep snows and open skies--with that precious freight the
+thing between.
+
+And now, in this year before rail and steamboat, the glory of early
+summer was at hand, and the wilderness people were coming up to meet
+the freight. The Three Rivers--the Athabasca, the Slave, and the
+Mackenzie, all joining in one great two-thousand-mile waterway to the
+northern sea--were athrill with the wild impulse and beat of life as
+the forest people lived it. The Great Father had sent in his treaty
+money, and Cree song and Chipewyan chant joined the age-old melodies of
+French and half-breed. Countless canoes drove past the slower and
+mightier scow brigades; huge York boats with two rows of oars heaved up
+and down like the ancient galleys of Rome; tightly woven cribs of
+timber, and giant rafts made tip of many cribs were ready for their
+long drift into a timberless country. On this two-thousand-mile
+waterway a world had gathered. It was the Nile of the northland, and
+each post and gathering place along its length was turned into a
+metropolis, half savage, archaic, splendid with the strength of red
+blood, clear eyes, and souls that read the word of God in wind and tree.
+
+And up and down this mighty waterway of wilderness trade ran the
+whispering spirit of song, like the voice of a mighty god heard under
+the stars and in the winds.
+
+But it was an hour ago that David Carrigan had vividly pictured these
+things to himself close to the big river, and many things may happen in
+the sixty minutes that follow any given minute in a man's life. That
+hour ago his one great purpose had been to bring in Black Roger
+Audemard, alive or dead--Black Roger, the forest fiend who had
+destroyed half a dozen lives in a blind passion of vengeance nearly
+fifteen years ago. For ten of those fifteen years it had been thought
+that Black Roger was dead. But mysterious rumors had lately come out of
+the North. He was alive. People had seen him. Fact followed rumor. His
+existence became certainty. The Law took up once more his hazardous
+trail, and David Carrigan was the messenger it sent.
+
+"Bring him back, alive or dead," were Superintendent McVane's last
+words.
+
+And now, thinking of that parting injunction, Carrigan grinned, even as
+the sweat of death dampened his face in the heat of the afternoon sun.
+For at the end of those sixty minutes that had passed since his midday
+pot of tea, the grimly, atrociously unexpected had happened, like a
+thunderbolt out of the azure of the sky.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Huddled behind a rock which was scarcely larger than his body,
+groveling in the white, soft sand like a turtle making a nest for its
+eggs, Carrigan told himself this without any reservation. He was, as he
+kept repeating to himself for the comfort of his soul, in a deuce of a
+fix. His head was bare--simply because a bullet had taken his hat away.
+His blond hair was filled with sand. His face was sweating. But his
+blue eyes were alight with a grim sort of humor, though he knew that
+unless the other fellow's ammunition ran out he was going to die.
+
+For the twentieth time in as many minutes he looked about him. He was
+in the center of a flat area of sand. Fifty feet from him the river
+murmured gently over yellow bars and a carpet of pebbles. Fifty feet on
+the opposite side of him was the cool, green wall of the forest. The
+sunshine playing in it seemed like laughter to him now, a whimsical
+sort of merriment roused by the sheer effrontery of the joke which fate
+had inflicted upon him.
+
+Between the river and the balsam and spruce was only the rock behind
+which he was cringing like a rabbit afraid to take to the open. And his
+rock was a mere up-jutting of the solid floor of shale that was under
+him. The wash sand that covered it like a carpet was not more than four
+or five inches deep. He could not dig in. There was not enough of it
+within reach to scrape up as a protection. And his enemy, a hundred
+yards or so away, was a determined wretch--and the deadliest shot he
+had ever known.
+
+Three times Carrigan had made experiments to prove this, for he had in
+mind a sudden rush to the shelter of the timber. Three times he had
+raised the crown of his hat slightly above the top of the rock, and
+three times the marksmanship of the other had perforated it with
+neatness and dispatch. The third bullet had carried his hat a dozen
+feet away. Whenever he showed a patch of his clothing, a bullet replied
+with unerring precision. Twice they had drawn blood. And the humor
+faded out of Carrigan's eyes.
+
+Not long ago he had exulted in the bigness and glory of this country of
+his, where strong men met hand to hand and eye to eye. There were the
+other kind in it, the sort that made his profession of manhunting a
+thing of reality and danger, but he expected these--forgot them--when
+the wilderness itself filled his vision. But his present situation was
+something unlike anything that had ever happened in his previous
+experience with the outlawed. He had faced dangers. He had fought.
+There were times when he had almost died. Fanchet, the half-breed who
+had robbed a dozen wilderness mail sledges, had come nearest to
+trapping him and putting him out of business. Fanchet was a desperate
+man and had few scruples. But even Fanchet--before he was caught--would
+not have cornered a man with such bloodthirsty unfairness as Carrigan
+found himself cornered now. He no longer had a doubt as to what was in
+the other's mind. It was not to wound and make merely helpless. It was
+to kill. It was not difficult to prove this. Careful not to expose a
+part of his arm or shoulder, he drew a white handkerchief from his
+pocket, fastened it to the end of his rifle, and held the flag of
+surrender three feet above the rock. And then, with equal caution, he
+slowly thrust up a flat piece of shale, which at a distance of a
+hundred yards might appear as his shoulder or even his head. Scarcely
+was it four inches above the top of the rock before there came the
+report of a rifle, and the shale was splintered into a hundred bits.
+
+Carrigan lowered his flag and gathered himself in tighter. The accuracy
+of the other's marksmanship was appalling. He knew that if he exposed
+himself for an instant to use his own rifle or the heavy automatic in
+his holster, he would be a dead man before he could press a trigger.
+And that time, he felt equally sure, would come sooner or later. His
+muscles were growing cramped. He could not forever double himself up
+like a four-bladed jackknife behind the altogether inefficient shelter
+of the rock.
+
+His executioner was hidden in the edge of the timber, not directly
+opposite him, but nearly a hundred yards down stream. Twenty times he
+had wondered why the fiend with the rifle did not creep up through that
+timber and take a good, open pot-shot at him from the vantage point
+which lay at the end of a straight line between his rock and the
+nearest spruce and balsam. From that angle he could not completely
+shelter himself. But the man a hundred yards below had not moved a foot
+from his ambush since he had fired his first shot. That had come when
+Carrigan was crossing the open space of soft, white sand. It had left a
+burning sensation at his temple--half an inch to the right and it would
+have killed him. Swift as the shot itself, he dropped behind the one
+protection at hand, the up-jutting shoulder of shale.
+
+For a quarter of an hour he had been making efforts to wriggle himself
+free from his bulky shoulder-pack without exposing himself to a
+coup-de-grace. At last he had the thing off. It was a tremendous relief
+when he thrust it out beside the rock, almost doubling the size of his
+shelter. Instantly there came the crash of a bullet in it, and then
+another. He heard the rattle of pans, and wondered if his skillet would
+be any good after today.
+
+For the first time he could wipe the sweat from his face and stretch
+himself. And also he could think. Carrigan possessed an unalterable
+faith in the infallibility of the mind. "You can do anything with the
+mind," was his code. "It is better than a good gun."
+
+Now that he was physically more at ease, he began reassembling his
+scattered mental faculties. Who was this stranger who was pot-shotting
+at him with such deadly animosity from the ambush below? Who--
+
+Another crash of lead in tinware and steel put an unpleasant emphasis
+to the question. It was so close to his head that it made him wince,
+and now--with a wide area within reach about him--he began scraping up
+the sand for an added protection. There came a long silence after that
+third clatter of distress from his cooking utensils. To David Carrigan,
+even in his hour of deadly peril, there was something about it that for
+an instant brought back the glow of humor in his eyes. It was hot,
+swelteringly hot, in that packet of sand with the unclouded sun almost
+straight overhead. He could have tossed a pebble to where a bright-eyed
+sandpiper was cocking itself backward and forward, its jerky movements
+accompanied by friendly little tittering noises. Everything about him
+seemed friendly. The river rippled and murmured in cooling song just
+beyond the sandpiper. On the other side the still cooler forest was a
+paradise of shade and contentment, astir with subdued and hidden life.
+It was nesting season. He heard the twitter of birds. A tiny, brown
+wood warbler fluttered out to the end of a silvery birch limb, and it
+seemed to David that its throat must surely burst with the burden of
+its song. The little fellow's brown body, scarcely larger than a
+butternut, was swelling up like a round ball in his effort to vanquish
+all other song.
+
+"Go to it, old man," chuckled Carrigan. "Go to it!"
+
+The little warbler, that he might have crushed between thumb and
+forefinger, gave him a lot of courage.
+
+Then the tiny chorister stopped for breath. In that interval Carrigan
+listened to the wrangling of two vivid-colored Canada jays deeper in
+the timber. Chronic scolds they were, never without a grouch. They were
+like some people Carrigan had known, born pessimists, always finding
+something to complain about, even in their love days.
+
+And these were love days. That was the odd thought that came to
+Carrigan as he lay half on his face, his fingers slowly and cautiously
+working a loophole between his shoulder-pack and the rock. They were
+love days all up and down the big rivers, where men and women sang for
+joy, and children played, forgetful of the long, hard days of winter.
+And in forest, plain, and swamp was this spirit of love also triumphant
+over the land. It was the mating season of all feathered things. In
+countless nests were the peeps and twitters of new life; mothers of
+first-born were teaching their children to swim and fly; from end to
+end of the forest world the little children of the silent places,
+furred and feathered, clawed and hoofed, were learning the ways of
+life. Nature's yearly birthday was half-way gone, and the doors of
+nature's school wide open. And the tiny brown songster at the end of
+his birch twig proclaimed the joy of it again, and challenged all the
+world to beat him in his adulation.
+
+Carrigan found that he could peer between his pack and the rock to
+where the other warbler was singing--and where his enemy lay watching
+for the opportunity to kill. It was taking a chance. If a movement
+betrayed his loophole, his minutes were numbered. But he had worked
+cautiously, an inch at a time, and was confident that the beginning of
+his effort to fight back was, up to the present moment, undiscovered.
+He believed that he knew about where the ambushed man was concealed. In
+the edge of a low-hanging mass of balsam was a fallen cedar. From
+behind the butt of that cedar he was sure the shots had come.
+
+And now, even more cautiously than he had made the tiny opening, he
+began to work the muzzle of his rifle through the loophole. As he did
+this he was thinking of Black Roger Audemard. And yet, almost as
+quickly as suspicion leaped into his mind, he told himself that the
+thing was impossible. It could not be Black Roger, or one of Black
+Roger's friends, behind the cedar log. The idea was inconceivable, when
+he considered how carefully the secret of his mission had been kept at
+the Landing. He had not even said goodby to his best friends. And
+because Black Roger had won through all the preceding years, Carrigan
+was stalking his prey out of uniform. There had been nothing to betray
+him. Besides, Black Roger Audemard must be at least a thousand miles
+north, unless something had tempted him to come up the rivers with the
+spring brigades. If he used logic at all, there was but one conclusion
+for him to arrive at. The man in ambush was some rascally half-breed
+who coveted his outfit and whatever valuables he might have about his
+person.
+
+A fourth smashing eruption among his comestibles and culinary
+possessions came to drive home the fact that even that analysis of the
+situation was absurd. Whoever was behind the rifle fire had small
+respect for the contents of his pack, and he was surely not in grievous
+need of a good gun or ammunition. A sticky mess of condensed cream was
+running over Carrigan's hand. He doubted if there was a whole tin in
+his kit.
+
+For a few moments he lay quietly on his face after the fourth shot. His
+eyes were turned toward the river, and on the far side, a quarter of a
+mile away, three canoes were moving swiftly up the slow current of the
+stream. The sunlight flashed on their wet sides. The gleam of dripping
+paddles was like the flutter of silvery birds' wings, and across the
+water came an unintelligible shout in response to the rifle shot. It
+occurred to David that he might make a trumpet of his hands and shout
+back, but the distance was too great for his voice to carry its message
+for help. Besides, now that he had the added protection of the pack, he
+felt a certain sense of humiliation at the thought of showing the white
+feather. A few minutes more, if all went well, and he would settle for
+the man behind the log.
+
+He continued again the slow operation of worming his rifle barrel
+between the pack and the rock. The near-sighted little sandpiper had
+discovered him and seemed interested in the operation. It had come a
+dozen feet nearer, and was perking its head and seesawing on its long
+legs as it watched with inquisitive inspection the unusual
+manifestation of life behind the rock. Its twittering note had changed
+to an occasional sharp and querulous cry. Carrigan wanted to wring its
+neck. That cry told the other fellow that he was still alive and moving.
+
+It seemed an age before his rifle was through, and every moment he
+expected another shot. He flattened himself out, Indian fashion, and
+sighted along the barrel. He was positive that his enemy was watching,
+yet he could make out nothing that looked like a head anywhere along
+the log. At one end was a clump of deeper foliage. He was sure he saw a
+sudden slight movement there, and in the thrill of the moment was
+tempted to send a bullet into the heart of it. But he saved his
+cartridge. He felt the mighty importance of certainty. If he fired
+once--and missed--the advantage of his unsuspected loophole would be
+gone. It would be transformed into a deadly menace. Even as it was, if
+his enemy's next bullet should enter that way--
+
+He felt the discomfort of the thought, and in spite of himself a tremor
+of apprehension ran up his spine. He felt an even greater desire to
+wring the neck of the inquisitive little sandpiper. The creature had
+circled round squarely in front of him and stood there tilting its tail
+and bobbing its head as if its one insane desire was to look down the
+length of his rifle barrel. The bird was giving him away. If the other
+fellow was only half as clever as his marksmanship was good--
+
+Suddenly every nerve in Carrigan's body tightened. He was positive that
+he had caught the outline of a human head and shoulders in the foliage.
+His finger pressed gently against the trigger of his Winchester. Before
+he breathed again he would have fired. But a shot from the foliage beat
+him out by the fraction of a second. In that precious time lost, his
+enemy's bullet entered the edge of his kit--and came through. He felt
+the shock of it, and in the infinitesimal space between the physical
+impact and the mental effect of shock his brain told him the horrible
+thing had happened. It was his head--his face. It was as if he had
+plunged them suddenly into hot water, and what was left of his skull
+was filled with the rushing and roaring of a flood. He staggered up,
+clutching his face with both hands. The world about him was twisted and
+black, a dizzily revolving thing--yet his still fighting mental vision
+pictured clearly for him a monstrous, bulging-eyed sandpiper as big as
+a house. Then he toppled back on the white sand, his arms flung out
+limply, his face turned to the ambush wherein his murderer lay.
+
+His body was clear of the rock and the pack, but there came no other
+shot from the thick clump of balsam. Nor, for a time, was there
+movement. The wood warbler was cheeping inquiringly at this sudden
+change in the deportment of his friend behind the shoulder of shale.
+The sandpiper, a bit startled, had gone back to the edge of the river
+and was running a race with himself along the wet sand. And the two
+quarrelsome jays had brought their family squabble to the edge of the
+timber.
+
+It was their wrangling that roused Carrigan to the fact that he was not
+dead. It was a thrilling discovery--that and the fact that he made out
+clearly a patch of sunlight in the sand. He did not move, but opened
+his eyes wider. He could see the timber. On a straight line with his
+vision was the thick clump of balsam. And as he looked, the boughs
+parted and a figure came out. Carrigan drew a deep breath. He found
+that it did not hurt him. He gripped the fingers of the hand that was
+under his body, and they closed on the butt of his service automatic.
+He would win yet, if God gave him life a few minutes longer.
+
+His enemy advanced. As he drew nearer, Carrigan closed his eyes more
+and more. They must be shut, and he must appear as if dead, when the
+other came up. Then, when the scoundrel put down his gun, as he
+naturally would--his chance would be at hand. If a quiver of his eyes
+betrayed him--
+
+He closed them tight. Dizziness began to creep over him, and the fire
+in his brain grew hot again. He heard footsteps, and they stopped in
+the sand close beside him. Then he heard a human voice. It did not
+speak in words, but gave utterance to a strange and unnatural cry. With
+a mighty effort Carrigan assembled his last strength. It seemed to him
+that he brought himself up quickly, but his movement was slow,
+painful--the effort of a man who might be dying. The automatic hung
+limply in his hand, its muzzle pointing to the sand. He looked up,
+trying to swing into action that mighty weight of his weapon. And then
+from his own lips, even in his utter physical impotence, fell a cry of
+wonder and amazement.
+
+His enemy stood there in the sunlight, staring down at him with big,
+dark eyes that were filled with horror. They were not the eyes of a
+man. David Carrigan, in this most astounding moment of his life, found
+himself looking up into the face of a woman.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+For a matter of twenty seconds--even longer it seemed to Carrigan--the
+life of these two was expressed in a vivid and unforgettable tableau.
+One half of it David saw--the blue sky, the dazzling sun, the girl in
+between. The pistol dropped from his limp hand, and the weight of his
+body tottered on the crook of his under-elbow. Mentally and physically
+he was on the point of collapse, and yet in those few moments every
+detail of the picture was painted with a brush of fire in his brain.
+The girl was bareheaded. Her face was as white as any face he had ever
+seen, living or dead; her eyes were like pools that had caught the
+reflection of fire; he saw the sheen of her hair, the poise of her
+slender body--its shock, stupefaction, horror. He sensed these things
+even as his brain wobbled dizzily, and the larger part of the picture
+began to fade out of his vision. But her face remained to the last. It
+grew clearer, like a cameo framed in an iris--a beautiful, staring,
+horrified face with shimmering tresses of jet-black hair blowing about
+it like a veil. He noticed the hair, that was partly undone as if she
+had been in a struggle of some sort, or had been running fast against
+the breeze that came up the river.
+
+He fought with himself to hold that picture of her, to utter some word,
+make some movement. But the power to see and to live died out of him.
+He sank back with a queer sound in his throat. He did not hear the
+answering cry from the girl as she flung herself, with a quick little
+prayer for help, on her knees in the soft, white sand beside him. He
+felt no movement when she raised his head in her arm and with her bare
+hand brushed back his sand-littered hair, revealing where the bullet
+had struck him. He did not know when she ran back to the river.
+
+His first sensation was of a cool and comforting something trickling
+over his burning temples and his face. It was water. Subconsciously he
+knew that, and in the same way he began to think. But it was hard to
+pull his thoughts together. They persisted in hopping about, like a lot
+of sand-fleas in a dance, and just as he got hold of one and reached
+for another, the first would slip away from him. He began to get the
+best of them after a time, and he had an uncontrollable desire to say
+something. But his eyes and his lips were sealed tight, and to open
+them, a little army of gnomes came out of the darkness in the back of
+his head, each of them armed with a lever, and began prying with all
+their might. After that came the beginning of light and a flash of
+consciousness.
+
+The girl was working over him. He could feel her and hear her movement.
+Water was trickling over his face. Then he heard a voice, close over
+him, saying something in a sobbing monotone which he could not
+understand.
+
+With a mighty effort he opened his eyes.
+
+"Thank LE BON DIEU, you live, m'sieu," he heard the voice say, as if
+coming from a long distance away. "You live, you live--"
+
+"Tryin' to," he mumbled thickly, feeling suddenly a sense of great
+elation. "Tryin'--"
+
+He wanted to curse the gnomes for deserting him, for as soon as they
+were gone with their levers, his eyes and his lips shut tight again, or
+at least he thought they did. But he began to sense things in a curious
+sort of way. Some one was dragging him. He could feel the grind of sand
+under his body. There were intervals when the dragging operation
+paused. And then, after a long time, he seemed to hear more than one
+voice. There were two--sometimes a murmur of them. And odd visions came
+to him. He seemed to see the girl with shining black hair and dark
+eyes, and then swiftly she would change into a girl with hair like
+blazing gold. This was a different girl. She was not like Pretty Eyes,
+as his twisted mind called the other. This second vision that he saw
+was like a radiant bit of the sun, her hair all aflame with the fire of
+it and her face a different sort of face. He was always glad when she
+went away and Pretty Eyes came back.
+
+To David Carrigan this interesting experience in his life might have
+covered an hour, a day, or a month. Or a year for that matter, for he
+seemed to have had an indefinite association with Pretty Eyes. He had
+known her for a long time and very intimately, it seemed. Yet he had no
+memory of the long fight in the hot sun, or of the river, or of the
+singing warblers, or of the inquisitive sandpiper that had marked out
+the line which his enemy's last bullet had traveled. He had entered
+into a new world in which everything was vague and unreal except that
+vision of dark hair, dark eyes, and pale, beautiful face. Several times
+he saw it with marvelous clearness, and each time he drifted away into
+darkness again with the sound of a voice growing fainter and fainter in
+his ears.
+
+Then came a time of utter chaos and soundless gloom. He was in a pit,
+where even his subconscious self was almost dead under a crushing
+oppression. At last a star began to glimmer in this pit, a star pale
+and indistinct and a vast distance away. But it crept steadily up
+through the eternity of darkness, and the nearer it came, the less
+there was of the blackness of night. From a star it grew into a sun,
+and with the sun came dawn. In that dawn he heard the singing of a
+bird, and the bird was just over his head. When Carrigan opened his
+eyes, and understanding came to him, he found himself under the silver
+birch that belonged to the wood warbler.
+
+For a space he did not ask himself how he had come there. He was
+looking at the river and the white strip of sand. Out there were the
+rock and his dunnage pack. Also his rifle. Instinctively his eyes
+turned to the balsam ambush farther down. That, too, was in a blaze of
+sunlight now. But where he lay, or sat, or stood--he was not sure what
+he was doing at that moment--it was shady and deliciously cool. The
+green of the cedar and spruce and balsam was close about him, inset
+with the silver and gold of the thickly-leaved birch. He discovered
+that he was bolstered up partly against the trunk of this birch and
+partly against a spruce sapling. Between these two, where his head
+rested, was a pile of soft moss freshly torn from the earth. And within
+reach of him was his own kit pail filled with water.
+
+He moved himself cautiously and raised a hand to his head. His fingers
+came in contact with a bandage.
+
+For a minute or two after that he sat without moving while his amazed
+senses seized upon the significance of it all. In the first place he
+was alive. But even this fact of living was less remarkable than the
+other things that had happened. He remembered the final moments of the
+unequal duel. His enemy had got him. And that enemy was a woman!
+Moreover, after she had blown away a part of his head and had him
+helpless in the sand, she had--in place of finishing him there--dragged
+him to this cool nook and tied up his wound. It was hard for him to
+believe, but the pail of water, the moss behind his shoulders, the
+bandage, and certain visions that were reforming themselves in his
+brain convinced him. A woman had shot him. She had worked like the very
+devil to kill him. And afterward she had saved him! He grinned. It was
+final proof that his mind hadn't been playing tricks on him. No one but
+a woman would have been quite so unreasonable. A man would have
+completed the job.
+
+He began to look for her up and down the white strip of sand. And in
+looking he saw the gray and silver flash of the hard-working sandpiper.
+He chuckled, for he was exceedingly comfortable, and also
+exhilaratingly happy to know that the thing was over and he was not
+dead. If the sandpiper had been a man, he would have called him up to
+shake hands with him. For if it hadn't been for the bird getting
+squarely in front of him and giving him away, there might have been a
+more horrible end to it all. He shuddered as he thought of the mighty
+effort he had made to fire a shot into the heart of the balsam
+ambush--and perhaps into the heart of a woman!
+
+He reached for the pail and drank deeply of the water in it. He felt no
+pain. His dizziness was gone. His mind had grown suddenly clear and
+alert. The warmth of the water told him almost instantly that it had
+been taken from the river some time ago. He observed the change in sun
+and shadows. With the instinct of a man trained to note details, he
+pulled out his watch. It was almost six o'clock. More than three hours
+had passed since the sandpiper had got in front of his gun. He did not
+attempt to rise to his feet, but scanned with slower and more careful
+scrutiny the edge of the forest and the river. He had been mystified
+while cringing for his life behind the rock, but he was infinitely more
+so now. Greater desire he had never had than this which thrilled him in
+these present minutes of his readjustment--desire to look upon the
+woman again. And then, all at once, there came back to him a mental
+flash of the other. He remembered, as if something was coming back to
+him out of a dream, how the whimsical twistings of his sick brain had
+made him see two faces instead of one. Yet he knew that the first
+picture of his mysterious assailant, the picture painted in his brain
+when he had tried to raise his pistol, was the right one. He had seen
+her dark eyes aglow; he had seen the sunlit sheen of her black hair
+rippling in the wind; he had seen the white pallor in her face, the
+slimness of her as she stood over him in horror--he remembered even the
+clutch of her white hand at her throat. A moment before she had tried
+to kill him. And then he had looked up and had seen her like that! It
+must have been some unaccountable trick in his brain that had flooded
+her hair with golden fire at times.
+
+His eyes followed a furrow in the white sand which led from where he
+sat bolstered against the tree down to his pack and the rock. It was
+the trail made by his body when she had dragged him up to the shelter
+and coolness of the timber. One of his laws of physical care was to
+keep himself trained down to a hundred and sixty, but he wondered how
+she had dragged up even so much as that of dead weight. It had taken a
+great deal of effort. He could see distinctly three different places in
+the sand where she had stopped to rest.
+
+Carrigan had earned a reputation as the expert analyst of "N" Division.
+In delicate matters it was seldom that McVane did not take him into
+consultation. He possessed an almost uncanny grip on the working
+processes of a criminal mind, and the first rule he had set down for
+himself was to regard the acts of omission rather than the one
+outstanding act of commission. But when he proved to himself that the
+chief actor in a drama possessed a normal rather than a criminal mind,
+he found himself in the position of checkmate. It was a thrilling game.
+And he was frankly puzzled now, until--one after another--he added up
+the sum total of what had been omitted in this instance of his own
+personal adventure. Hidden in her ambush, the woman who had shot him
+had been in both purpose and act an assassin. Her determination had
+been to kill him. She had disregarded the white flag with which he had
+pleaded for mercy. Her marksmanship was of fiendish cleverness. Up to
+her last shot she had been, to all intent and purpose, a murderess.
+
+The change had come when she looked down upon him, bleeding and
+helpless, in the sand. Undoubtedly she had thought he was dying. But
+why, when she saw his eyes open a little later, had she cried out her
+gratitude to God? What had worked the sudden transformation in her? Why
+had she labored to save the life she had so atrociously coveted a
+minute before?
+
+If his assailant had been a man, Carrigan would have found an answer.
+For he was not robbed, and therefore robbery was not a motif. "A case
+of mistaken identity," he would have told himself. "An error in visual
+judgment."
+
+But the fact that in his analysis he was dealing with a woman made his
+answer only partly satisfying. He could not disassociate himself from
+her eyes--their beauty, their horror, the way they had looked at him.
+It was as if a sudden revulsion had come over her; as if, looking down
+upon her bleeding handiwork, the woman's soul in her had revolted, and
+with that revulsion had come repentance--repentance and pity.
+
+"That," thought Carrigan, "would be just like a woman--and especially a
+woman with eyes like hers."
+
+This left him but two conclusions to choose from. Either there had been
+a mistake, and the woman had shown both horror and desire to amend when
+she discovered it, or a too tender-hearted agent of Black Roger
+Audemard had waylaid him in the heart of the white strip of sand.
+
+The sun was another hour lower in the sky when Carrigan assured himself
+in a series of cautious experiments that he was not in a condition to
+stand upon his feet. In his pack were a number of things he wanted--his
+blankets, for instance, a steel mirror, and the thermometer in his
+medical kit. He was beginning to feel a bit anxious about himself.
+There were sharp pains back of his eyes. His face was hot, and he was
+developing an unhealthy appetite for water. It was fever and he knew
+what fever meant in this sort of thing, when one was alone. He had
+given up hope of the woman's return. It was not reasonable to expect
+her to come back after her furious attempt to kill him. She had
+bandaged him, bolstered him up, placed water beside him, and had then
+left him to work out the rest of his salvation alone. But why the deuce
+hadn't she brought up his pack?
+
+On his hands and knees he began to work himself toward it slowly. He
+found that the movement caused him pain, and that with this pain, if he
+persisted in movement, there was a synchronous rise of nausea. The two
+seemed to work in a sort of unity. But his medicine case was important
+now, and his blankets, and his rifle if he hoped to signal help that
+might chance to pass on the river. A foot at a time, a yard at a time,
+he made his way down into the sand. His fingers dug into the footprints
+of the mysterious gun-woman. He approved of their size. They were small
+and narrow, scarcely longer than the palm and fingers of his hand--and
+they were made by shoes instead of moccasins.
+
+It seemed an interminable time to him before he reached his pack. When
+he got there, a pendulum seemed swinging back and forth inside his
+head, beating against his skull. He lay down with his pack for a
+pillow, intending to rest for a spell. But the minutes added themselves
+one on top of another. The sun slipped behind clouds banking in the
+west. It grew cooler, while within him he was consumed by a burning
+thirst. He could hear the ripple of running water, the laughter of it
+among pebbles a few yards away. And the river itself became even more
+desirable than his medicine case, or his blankets, or his rifle. The
+song of it, inviting and tempting him, blotted thought of the other
+things out of his mind. And he continued his journey, the swing of the
+pendulum in his head becoming harder, but the sound of the river
+growing nearer. At last he came to the wet sand, and fell on his face,
+and drank.
+
+After this he had no great desire to go back. He rolled himself over,
+so that his face was turned up to the sky. Under him the wet sand was
+soft, and it was comfortingly cool. The fire in his head died out. He
+could hear new sounds in the edge of the forest evening sounds. Only
+weak little twitters came from the wood warblers, driven to silence by
+thickening gloom in the densely canopied balsams and cedars, and
+frightened by the first low hoots of the owls. There was a crash not
+far distant, probably a porcupine waddling through brush on his way for
+a drink; or perhaps it was a thirsty deer, or a bear coming out in the
+hope of finding a dead fish. Carrigan loved that sort of sound, even
+when a pendulum was beating back and forth in his head. It was like
+medicine to him, and he lay with wide-open eyes, his ears picking up
+one after another the voices that marked the change from day to night.
+He heard the cry of a loon, its softer, chuckling note of honeymoon
+days. From across the river came a cry that was half howl, half bark.
+Carrigan knew that it was coyote, and not wolf, a coyote whose breed
+had wandered hundreds of miles north of the prairie country.
+
+The gloom gathered in, and yet it was not darkness as the darkness of
+night is known a thousand miles south. It was the dusky twilight of day
+where the sun rises at three o'clock in the morning and still throws
+its ruddy light in the western sky at nine o'clock at night; where the
+poplar buds unfold themselves into leaf before one's very eyes; where
+strawberries are green in the morning and red in the afternoon; where,
+a little later, one could read newspaper print until midnight by the
+glow of the sun--and between the rising and the setting of that sun
+there would be from eighteen to twenty hours of day. It was evening
+time in the wonderland of the north, a wonderland hard and frozen and
+ridden by pain and death in winter, but a paradise upon earth in this
+month of June.
+
+The beauty of it filled Carrigan's soul, even as he lay on his back in
+the damp sand. Far south of him steam and steel were coming, and the
+world would soon know that it was easy to grow wheat at the Arctic
+Circle, that cucumbers grew to half the size of a man's arm, that
+flowers smothered the land and berries turned it scarlet and black. He
+had dreaded these days--days of what he called "the great
+discovery"--the time when a crowded civilization would at last
+understand how the fruits of the earth leaped up to the call of twenty
+hours of sun each day, even though that earth itself was eternally
+frozen if one went down under its surface four feet with a pick and
+shovel.
+
+Tonight the gloom came earlier because of the clouds in the west. It
+was very still. Even the breeze had ceased to come from up the river.
+And as Carrigan listened, exulting in the thought that the coolness of
+the wet sand was drawing the fever from him, he heard another sound. At
+first he thought it was the splashing of a fish. But after that it came
+again, and still again, and he knew that it was the steady and rhythmic
+dip of paddles.
+
+A thrill shot through him, and he raised himself to his elbow. Dusk
+covered the river, and he could not see. But he heard low voices as the
+paddles dipped. And after a little he knew that one of these was the
+voice of a woman.
+
+His heart gave a big jump. "She is coming back," he whispered to
+himself. "She is coming back!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Carrigan's first impulse, sudden as the thrill that leaped through him,
+was to cry out to the occupants of the unseen canoe. Words were on his
+lips, but he forced them back. They could not miss him, could not get
+beyond the reach of his voice--and he waited. After all, there might be
+profit in a reasonable degree of caution. He crept back toward his
+rifle, sensing the fact that movement no longer gave him very great
+distress. At the same time he lost no sound from the river. The voices
+were silent, and the dip, dip, dip of paddles was approaching softly
+and with extreme caution. At last he could barely hear the trickle of
+them, yet he knew the canoe was coming steadily nearer. There was a
+suspicious secretiveness in its approach. Perhaps the lady with the
+beautiful eyes and the glistening hair had changed her mind again and
+was returning to put an end to him.
+
+The thought sharpened his vision. He saw a thin shadow a little darker
+than the gloom of the river; it grew into shape; something grated
+lightly upon sand and pebbles, and then he heard the guarded plash of
+feet in shallow water and saw some one pulling the canoe up higher. A
+second figure joined the first. They advanced a few paces and stopped.
+In a moment a voice called softly,
+
+"M'sieu! M'sieu Carrigan!"
+
+There was an anxious note in the voice, but Carrigan held his tongue.
+And then he heard the woman say,
+
+"It was here, Bateese! I am sure of it!"
+
+There was more than anxiety in her voice now. Her words trembled with
+distress. "Bateese--if he is dead--he is up there close to the trees."
+
+"But he isn't dead," said Carrigan, raising himself a little. "He is
+here, behind the rock again!"
+
+In a moment she had run to where he was lying, his hand clutching the
+cold barrel of the pistol which he had found in the sand, his white
+face looking up at her. Again he found himself staring into the glow of
+her eyes, and in that pale light which precedes the coming of stars and
+moon the fancy struck him that she was lovelier than in the full
+radiance of the sun. He heard a throbbing note in her throat. And then
+she was down on her knees at his side, leaning close over him, her
+hands groping at his shoulders, her quick breath betraying how swiftly
+her heart was beating.
+
+"You are not hurt--badly?" she cried.
+
+"I don't know," replied David. "You made a perfect shot. I think a part
+of my head is gone. At least you've shot away my balance, because I
+can't stand on my feet!"
+
+Her hand touched his face, remaining there for an instant, and the palm
+of it pressed his forehead. It was like the touch of cool velvet, he
+thought. Then she called to the man named Bateese. He made Carrigan
+think of a huge chimpanzee as he came near, because of the shortness of
+his body and the length of his arms. In the half light he might have
+been a huge animal, a hulking creature of some sort walking upright.
+Carrigan's fingers closed more tightly on the butt of his automatic.
+The woman began to talk swiftly in a patois of French and Cree. David
+caught the gist of it. She was telling Bateese to carry him to the
+canoe, and to be very careful, because m'sieu was badly hurt. It was
+his head, she emphasized. Bateese must be careful of his head.
+
+David slipped his pistol into its holster as Bateese bent over him. He
+tried to smile at the woman to thank her for her solicitude--after
+having nearly killed him. There was an increasing glow in the night,
+and he began to see her more plainly. Out on the middle of the river
+was a silvery bar of light. The moon was coming up, a little pale as
+yet, but triumphant in the fact that clouds had blotted out the sun an
+hour before his time. Between this bar of light and himself he saw the
+head of Bateese. It was a wild, savage-looking head, bound
+pirate-fashion round the forehead with a huge Hudson's Bay kerchief.
+Bateese might have been old Jack Ketch himself bending over to give the
+final twist to a victim's neck. His long arms slipped under David.
+Gently and without effort he raised him to his feet. And then, as
+easily as he might have lifted a child, he trundled him up in his arms
+and walked off with him over the sand.
+
+Carrigan had not expected this. He was a little shocked and felt also
+the impropriety of the thing. The idea of being lugged off like a baby
+was embarrassing, even in the presence of the one who had deliberately
+put him in his present condition. Bateese did the thing with such
+beastly ease. It was as if he was no more than a small boy, a runt with
+no weight whatever, and Bateese was a man. He would have preferred to
+stagger along on his own feet or creep on his hands and knees, and he
+grunted as much to Bateese on the way to the canoe. He felt, at the
+same time, that the situation owed him something more of discussion and
+explanation. Even now, after half killing him, the woman was taking a
+rather high-handed advantage of him. She might at least have assured
+him that she had made a mistake and was sorry. But she did not speak to
+him again. She said nothing more to Bateese, and when the half-breed
+deposited him in the midship part of the canoe, facing the bow, she
+stood back in silence. Then Bateese brought his pack and rifle, and
+wedged the pack in behind him so that he could sit upright. After that,
+without pausing to ask permission, he picked up the woman and carried
+her through the shallow water to the bow, saving her the wetting of her
+feet.
+
+As she turned to find her paddle her face was toward David, and for a
+moment she was looking at him.
+
+"Do you mind telling me who you are, and where we are going?" he asked.
+
+"I am Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain," she said. "My brigade is down the
+river, M'sieu Carrigan."
+
+He was amazed at the promptness of her confession, for as one of the
+working factors of the long arm of the police he accepted it as that.
+He had scarcely expected her to divulge her name after the cold-blooded
+way in which she had attempted to kill him. And she had spoken quite
+calmly of "my brigade." He had heard of the Boulain Brigade. It was a
+name associated with Chipewyan, as he remembered it--or Fort McMurray.
+He was not sure just where the Boulain scows had traded freight with
+the upper-river craft. Until this year he was positive they had not
+come as far south as Athabasca Landing. Boulain--Boulain--The name
+repeated itself over and over in his mind. Bateese shoved off the
+canoe, and the woman's paddle dipped in and out of the water beginning
+to shimmer in moonlight. But he could not, for a time, get himself
+beyond the pounding of that name in his brain. It was not merely that
+he had heard the name before. There was something significant about it.
+Something that made him grope back in his memory of things. Boulain! He
+whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman
+ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her
+hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation swept
+over him, disgust at his own mental impotency. And the dizzying
+sickness was brewing in his head again.
+
+"I have heard that name--somewhere--before," he said. There was a space
+of only five or six feet between them, and he spoke with studied
+distinctness.
+
+"Possibly you have, m'sieu."
+
+Her voice was exquisite, clear as the note of a bird, yet so soft and
+low that she seemed scarcely to have spoken. And it was, Carrigan
+thought, criminally evasive--under the circumstances. He wanted her to
+turn round and say something. He wanted, first of all, to ask her why
+she had tried to kill him. It was his right to demand an explanation.
+And it was his duty to get her back to the Landing, where the law would
+ask an accounting of her. She must know that. There was only one way in
+which she could have learned his name, and that was by prying into his
+identification papers while he was unconscious. Therefore she not only
+knew his name, but also that he was Sergeant Carrigan of the Royal
+Northwest Mounted Police. In spite of all this she was apparently not
+very deeply concerned. She was not frightened, and she did not appear
+to be even slightly excited.
+
+He leaned nearer to her, the movement sending a sharp pain between his
+eyes. It almost drew a cry from him, but he forced himself to speak
+without betraying it.
+
+"You tried to murder me--and almost succeeded. Haven't you anything to
+say?"
+
+"Not now, m'sieu--except that it was a mistake, and I am sorry. But you
+must not talk. You must remain quiet. I am afraid your skull is
+fractured."
+
+Afraid his skull was fractured! And she expressed her fear in the
+casual way she might have spoken of a toothache. He leaned back against
+his dunnage sack and closed his eyes. Probably she was right. These
+fits of dizziness and nausea were suspicious. They made him top-heavy
+and filled him with a desire to crumple up somewhere. He was
+clear-mindedly conscious of this and of his fight against the weakness.
+But in those moments when he felt better and his head was clear of
+pain, he had not seriously thought of a fractured skull. If she
+believed it, why did she not treat him a bit more considerately?
+Bateese, with that strength of an ox in his arms, had no use for her
+assistance with the paddle. She might at least have sat facing him,
+even if she refused to explain matters more definitely.
+
+A mistake, she called it. And she was sorry for him! She had made those
+statements in a matter-of-fact way, but with a voice that was like
+music. She had spoken perfect English, but in her words were the
+inflection and velvety softness of the French blood which must be
+running red in her veins. And her name was Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain!
+
+With eyes closed, Carrigan called himself an idiot for thinking of
+these things at the present time. Primarily he was a man-hunter out on
+important duty, and here was duty right at hand, a thousand miles south
+of Black Roger Audemard, the wholesale murderer he was after. He would
+have sworn on his life that Black Roger had never gone at a killing
+more deliberately than this same Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had gone
+after him behind the rock!
+
+Now that it was all over, and he was alive, she was taking him
+somewhere as coolly and as unexcitedly as though they were returning
+from a picnic. Carrigan shut his eyes tighter and wondered if he was
+thinking straight. He believed he was badly hurt, but he was as
+strongly convinced that his mind was clear. And he lay quietly with his
+head against the pack, his eyes closed, waiting for the coolness of the
+river to drive his nausea away again.
+
+He sensed rather than felt the swift movement of the canoe. There was
+no perceptible tremor to its progress. The current and a perfect
+craftsmanship with the paddles were carrying it along at six or seven
+miles an hour. He heard the rippling of water that at times was almost
+like the tinkling of tiny bells, and more and more bell-like became
+that sound as he listened to it. It struck a certain note for him. And
+to that note another added itself, until in the purling rhythm of the
+river he caught the murmuring monotone of a name
+Boulain--Boulain--Boulain. The name became an obsession. It meant
+something. And he knew what it meant--if he could only whip his memory
+back into harness again. But that was impossible now. When he tried to
+concentrate his mental faculties, his head ached terrifically.
+
+He dipped his hand into the water and held it over his eyes. For half
+an hour after that he did not raise his head. In that time not a word
+was spoken by Bateese or Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. For the forest
+people it was not an hour in which to talk. The moon had risen swiftly,
+and the stars were out. Where there had been gloom, the world was now a
+flood of gold and silver light. At first Carrigan allowed this to
+filter between his fingers; then he opened his eyes. He felt more
+evenly balanced again.
+
+Straight in front of him was Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. The curtain of
+dusk had risen from between them, and she was full in the radiance of
+the moon. She was no longer paddling, but was looking straight ahead.
+To Cardigan her figure was exquisitely girlish as he saw it now. She
+was bareheaded, as he had seen tier first, and her hair hung down her
+back like a shimmering mass of velvety sable in the star-and-moon glow.
+Something told Carrigan she was going to turn her face in his
+direction, and he dropped his hand over his eyes again, leaving a space
+between the fingers. He was right in his guess. She fronted the moon,
+looking at him closely--rather anxiously, he thought. She even leaned a
+little toward him that she might see more clearly. Then she turned and
+resumed her paddling.
+
+Carrigan was a bit elated. Probably she had looked at him a number of
+times like that during the past half-hour. And she was disturbed. She
+was worrying about him. The thought of being a murderess was beginning
+to frighten her. In spite of the beauty of her eyes and hair and the
+slim witchery of her body he had no sympathy for her. He told himself
+that he would give a year of his life to have her down at Barracks this
+minute. He would never forget that three-quarters of an hour behind the
+rock, not if he lived to be a hundred. And if he did live, she was
+going to pay, even if she was lovelier than Venus and all the Graces
+combined. He felt irritated with himself that he should have observed
+in such a silly way the sable glow of her hair in the moonlight. And
+her eyes. What the deuce did prettiness matter in the present
+situation? The sister of Fanchet, the mail robber, was beautiful, but
+her beauty had failed to save Fanchet. The Law had taken him in spite
+of the tears in Carmin Fanchet's big black eyes, and in that particular
+instance he was the Law. And Carmin Fanchet was pretty--deucedly
+pretty. Even the Old Man's heart had been stirred by her loveliness.
+
+"A shame!" he had said to Carrigan. "A shame!" But the rascally Fanchet
+was hung by the neck until he was dead.
+
+Carrigan drew himself up slowly until he was sitting erect. He wondered
+what Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain would say if he told her about Carmin.
+But there was a big gulf between the names Fanchet and Boulain. The
+Fanchets had come from the dance halls of Alaska. They were bad, both
+of them. At least, so they had judged Carmin Fanchet--along with her
+brother. And Boulain--
+
+His hand, in dropping to his side, fell upon the butt of his pistol.
+Neither Bateese nor the girl had thought of disarming him. It was
+careless of them, unless Bateese was keeping a good eye on him from
+behind.
+
+A new sort of thrill crept into Carrigan's blood. He began to see where
+he had made a huge error in not playing his part more cleverly. It was
+this girl Jeanne who had shot him. It was Jeanne who had stood over him
+in that last moment when he had made an effort to use his pistol. It
+was she who had tried to murder him and who had turned faint-hearted
+when it came to finishing the job. But his knowledge of these things he
+should have kept from her. Then, when the proper moment came, he would
+have been in a position to act. Even now it might be possible to cover
+his blunder. He leaned toward her again, determined to make the effort.
+
+"I want to ask your pardon," he said. "May I?"
+
+His voice startled her. It was as if the stinging tip of a whip-lash
+had touched her bare neck. He was smiling when she turned. In her face
+and eyes was a relief which she made no effort to repress.
+
+"You thought I might be dead," he laughed softly. "I'm not, Miss
+Jeanne. I'm very much alive again. It was that accursed fever--and I
+want to ask your pardon! I think--I know--that I accused you of
+shooting me. It's impossible. I couldn't think of it--In my clear mind.
+I am quite sure that I know the rascally half-breed who pot-shotted me
+like that. And it was you who came in time, and frightened him away,
+and saved my life. Will you forgive me--and accept my gratitude?"
+
+There came into the glowing eyes of the girl a reflection of his own
+smile. It seemed to him that he saw the corners of her mouth tremble a
+little before she answered him.
+
+"I am glad you are feeling better, m'sieu."
+
+"And you will forgive me for--for saying such beastly things to you?"
+
+She was lovely when she smiled, and she was smiling at him now. "If you
+want to be forgiven for lying, yes," she said. "I forgive you that,
+because it is sometimes your business to lie. It was I who tried to
+kill you, m'sieu. And you know it."
+
+"But--"
+
+"You must not talk, m'sieu. It is not good for you: Bateese, will you
+tell m'sieu not to talk?"
+
+Carrigan heard a movement behind him.
+
+"M'sieu, you will stop ze talk or I brak hees head wit' ze paddle in my
+han'!" came the voice of Bateese close to his shoulder. "Do I mak' ze
+word plain so m'sieu compren'?"
+
+"I get you, old man," grunted Carrigan. "I get you--both!"
+
+And he leaned back against his dunnage-sack, staring again at the
+witching slimness of the lovely Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as she calmly
+resumed her paddling in the bow of the canoe.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+In the few minutes following the efficient and unexpected warning of
+Bateese an entirely new element of interest entered into the situation
+for David Carrigan. He had more than once assured himself that he had
+made a success of his profession of man-hunting not because he was
+brighter than the other fellow, but largely because he possessed a
+sense of humor and no vanities to prick. He was in the game because he
+loved the adventure of it. He was loyal to his duty, but he was not a
+worshipper of the law, nor did he covet the small monthly stipend of
+dollars and cents that came of his allegiance to it. As a member of the
+Scarlet Police, and especially of "N" Division, he felt the pulse and
+thrill of life as he loved to live it. And the greatest of all thrills
+came when he was after a man as clever as himself, or cleverer.
+
+This time it was a woman--or a girl! He had not yet made up his mind
+which she was. Her voice, low and musical, her poise, and the tranquil
+and unexcitable loveliness of her face had made him, at first, register
+her as a woman. Yet as he looked at the slim girlishness of her figure
+in the bow of the canoe, accentuated by the soft sheen of her partly
+unbraided hair, he wondered if she were eighteen or thirty. It would
+take the clear light of day to tell him. But whether a girl or a woman,
+she had handled him so cleverly that the unpleasantness of his earlier
+experience began to give way slowly to an admiration for her capability.
+
+He wondered what the superintendent of "N" Division would say if he
+could see Black Roger Audemard's latest trailer propped up here in the
+center of the canoe, the prisoner of a velvety-haired but dangerously
+efficient bit of feminine loveliness--and a bull-necked,
+chimpanzee-armed half-breed!
+
+Bateese had confirmed the suspicion that he was a prisoner, even though
+this mysterious pair were bent on saving his life. Why it was their
+desire to keep life in him when only a few hours ago one of them had
+tried to kill him was a. question which only the future could answer.
+He did not bother himself with that problem now. The present was
+altogether too interesting, and there was but little doubt that other
+developments equally important were close at hand. The attitude of both
+Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain and her piratical-looking henchman was
+sufficient evidence of that. Bateese had threatened to knock his head
+off, and he could have sworn that the girl--or woman--had smiled her
+approbation of the threat. Yet he held no grudge against Bateese. An
+odd sort of liking for the man began to possess him, just as he found
+himself powerless to resist an ingrowing admiration for Marie-Anne. The
+existence of Black Roger Audemard became with him a sort of indefinite
+reality. Black Roger was a long way off. Marie-Anne and Bateese were
+very near. He began thinking of her as Marie-Anne. He liked the name.
+It was the Boulain part of it that worked in him with an irritating
+insistence.
+
+For the first time since the canoe journey had begun, he looked beyond
+the darkly glowing head and the slender figure in the bow. It was a
+splendid night. Ahead of him the river was like a rippling sheet of
+molten silver. On both sides, a quarter of a mile apart, rose the walls
+of the forest, like low-hung, oriental tapestries. The sky seemed near,
+loaded with stars, and the moon, rising with almost perceptible
+movement toward the zenith, had changed from red to a mellow gold.
+Carrigan's soul always rose to this glory of the northern light. Youth
+and vigor, he told himself, must always exist under those unpolluted
+lights of the upper worlds, the unspeaking things which had told him
+more than he had ever learned from the mouths of other men. They stood
+for his religion, his faith, his belief in the existence of things
+greater than the insignificant spark which animated his own body. He
+appreciated them most when there was stillness. And tonight it was
+still. It was so quiet that the trickling of the paddles was like
+subdued music. From the forest there came no sound. Yet he knew there
+was life there, wide-eyed, questing life, life that moved on velvety
+wing and padded foot, just as he and Marie-Anne and the half-breed
+Bateese were moving in the canoe. To have called out in this hour would
+have taken an effort, for a supreme and invisible Hand seemed to have
+commanded stillness upon the earth.
+
+And then there came droning upon his ears a break in the stillness, and
+as he listened, the shores closed slowly in, narrowing the channel
+until he saw giant masses of gray rock replacing the thick verdure of
+balsam, spruce, and cedar. The moaning grew louder, and the rocks
+climbed skyward until they hung in great cliffs. There could be but one
+meaning to this sudden change. They were close to LE SAINT-ESPRIT
+RAPIDE--the Holy Ghost Rapids. Carrigan was astonished. That day at
+noon he had believed the Holy Ghost to be twenty or thirty miles below
+him. Now they were at its mouth, and he saw that Bateese and Jeanne
+Marie-Anne Boulain were quietly and unexcitedly preparing to run that
+vicious stretch of water. Unconsciously he gripped the gunwales of the
+canoe with both hands as the sound of the rapids grew into low and
+sullen thunder. In the moonlight ahead he could see the rock walls
+closing in until the channel was crushed between two precipitous
+ramparts, and the moon and stars, sending their glow between those
+walls, lighted up a frothing path of water that made Carrigan hold his
+breath. He would have portaged this place even in broad day.
+
+He looked at the girl in the bow. The slender figure Was a little more
+erect, the glowing head held a little higher. In those moments he would
+have liked to see her face, the wonderful something that must be in her
+eyes as she rode fearlessly into the teeth of the menace ahead. For he
+could see that she was not afraid, that she was facing this thing with
+a sort of exultation, that there was something about it which thrilled
+her until every drop of blood in her body was racing with the impetus
+of the stream itself. Eddies of wind puffing out from between the chasm
+walls tossed her loose hair about her back in a glistening veil. He saw
+a long strand of it trailing over the edge of the canoe into the water.
+It made him shiver, and he wanted to cry out to Bateese that he was a
+fool for risking her life like this. He forgot that he was the one
+helpless individual in the canoe, and that an upset would mean the end
+for him, while Bateese and his companion might still fight on. His
+thought and his vision were focused on the girl--and what lay straight
+ahead. A mass of froth, like a windrow of snow, rose up before them,
+and the canoe plunged into it with the swiftness of a shot. It
+spattered in his face, and blinded him for an instant. Then they were
+out of it, and he fancied he heard a note of laughter from the girl in
+the bow. In the next breath he called himself a fool for imagining
+that. For the run was dead ahead, and the girl became vibrant with
+life, her paddle flashing in and out, while from her lips came sharp,
+clear cries which brought from Eateese frog-like bellows of response.
+The walls shot past; inundations rose and plunged under them; black
+rocks whipped with caps of foam raced up-stream with the speed of
+living things; the roar became a drowning voice, and then--as if
+outreached by the wings of a swifter thing--dropped suddenly behind
+them. Smoother water lay ahead. The channel broadened. Moonlight filled
+it with a clearer radiance, and Carrigan saw the girl's hair glistening
+wet, and her arms dripping.
+
+For the first time he turned about and faced Bateese. The half-breed
+was grinning like a Cheshire cat!
+
+"You're a confoundedly queer pair!" grunted Carrigan, and he turned
+about again to find Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as unconcerned as though
+running the Holy Ghost Rapids in the glow of the moon was nothing more
+than a matter of play.
+
+It was impossible for him to keep his heart from beating a little
+faster as he watched her, even though he was trying to regard her in a
+most professional sort of way. He reminded himself that she was an
+iniquitous little Jezebel who had almost murdered him. Carmin Fanchet
+had been like her, an AME DAMNEE--a fallen angel--but his business was
+not sympathy in such matters as these. At the same time he could not
+resist the lure of both her audacity and her courage, and he found
+himself all at once asking himself the amazing question as to what her
+relationship might be to Bateese. It occurred to him rather
+unpleasantly that there had been something distinctly proprietary in
+the way the half-breed had picked her up on the sand, and that Bateese
+had shown no hesitation a little later in threatening to knock his head
+off unless he stopped talking to her. He wondered if Bateese was a
+Boulain.
+
+The two or three minutes of excitement in the boiling waters of the
+Holy Ghost had acted like medicine on Carrigan. It seemed to him that
+something had given way in his head, relieving him of an oppression
+that had been like an iron hoop drawn tightly about his skull. He did
+not want Bateese to suspect this change in him, and he slouched lower
+against the dunnage-pack with his eyes still on the girl. He was
+finding it increasingly difficult to keep from looking at her. She had
+resumed her paddling, and Bateese was putting mighty efforts in his
+strokes now, so that the narrow, birchbark canoe shot like an arrow
+with the down-sweeping current of the river. A few hundred yards below
+was a twist in the channel, and as the canoe rounded this, taking the
+shoreward curve with dizzying swiftness, a wide, still straight-water
+lay ahead. And far down this Carrigan saw the glow of fires.
+
+The forest had drawn back from the river, leaving in its place a broken
+tundra of rock and shale and a wide strip of black sand along the edge
+of the stream itself. Carrigan knew what it was--an upheaval of the
+tar-sand country so common still farther north, the beginning of that
+treasure of the earth which would some day make the top of the American
+continent one of the Eldorados of the world. The fires drew nearer, and
+suddenly the still night was broken by the wild chanting of men. David
+heard behind him a choking note in the throat of Bateese. A soft word
+came from the lips of the girl, and it seemed to Carrigan that her head
+was held higher in the moon glow. The chant increased in volume, a
+rhythmic, throbbing, savage music that for a hundred and fifty years
+had come from the throats of men along the Three Rivers. It thrilled
+Carrigan as they bore down upon it. It was not song as civilization
+would have counted song. It was like an explosion, an exultation of
+human voice unchained, ebullient with the love of life, savage in its
+good-humor. It was LE GAITE DE COEUR of the rivermen, who thought and
+sang as their forefathers did in the days of Radisson and good Prince
+Rupert; it was their merriment, their exhilaration, their freedom and
+optimism, reaching up to the farthest stars. In that song men were
+straining their vocal muscles, shouting to beat out their nearest
+neighbor, bellowing like bulls in a frenzy of sudden fun. And then, as
+suddenly as it had risen in the night, the clamor of voices died away.
+A single shout came up the river. Carrigan thought he heard a low
+rumble of laughter. A tin pan banged against another. A dog howled. The
+flat of an oar played a tattoo for a moment on the bottom of a boat.
+Then one last yell from a single throat--and the night was silent again.
+
+And that was the Boulain Brigade--singing at this hour of the night,
+when men should have been sleeping if they expected to be up with the
+sun. Carrigan stared ahead. Shortly his adventure would take a new
+twist. Something was bound to happen when they got ashore. The peculiar
+glow of the fires had puzzled him. Now he began to understand. Jeanne
+Marie-Anne Boulain's men were camped in the edge of the tar-sands and
+had lighted a number of natural gas-jets that came up out of the earth.
+Many times he had seen fires like these burning up and down the Three
+Rivers. He had lighted fires of his own; he had cooked over them and
+had afterward had the fun and excitement of extinguishing them with
+pails of water. But he had never seen anything quite like this that was
+unfolding itself before his eyes now. There were seven of the fires
+over an area of half an acre--spouts of yellowish flame burning like
+giant torches ten or fifteen feet in the air. And between them he very
+soon made out great bustle and activity. Many figures were moving
+about. They looked like dwarfs at first, gnomes at play in a little
+world made out of witchcraft. But Bateese was sending the canoe nearer
+with powerful strokes, and the figures grew taller, and the spouts of
+flame higher. Then he knew what was happening. The Boulain men were
+taking advantage of the cool hours of the night and were tarring up.
+
+He could smell the tar, and he could see the big York boats drawn up in
+the circle of yellowish light. There were half a dozen of them, and men
+stripped to the waist were smearing the bottoms of the boats with
+boiling tar and pitch. In the center was a big, black cauldron steaming
+over a gas-jet, and between this cauldron and the boats men were
+running back and forth with pails. Still nearer to the huge kettle
+other men were filling a row of kegs with the precious black GOUDRON
+that oozed up from the bowels of the earth, forming here and there
+jet-black pools that Carrigan could see glistening in the flare of the
+gas-lamps. He figured there were thirty men at work. Six big York boats
+were turned keel up in the black sand. Close inshore, just outside the
+circle of light, was a single scow.
+
+Toward this scow Bateese sent the canoe. And as they drew nearer, until
+the laboring men ashore were scarcely a stone's throw away, the
+weirdness of the scene impressed itself more upon Carrigan. Never had
+he seen such a crew. There were no Indians among them. Lithe,
+quick-moving, bare-headed, their naked arms and shoulders gleaming in
+the ghostly illumination, they were racing against time with the
+boiling tar and pitch in the cauldron. They did not see the approach of
+the canoe, and Bateese did not draw their attention to it. Quietly he
+drove the birchbark under the shadow of the big bateau. Hands were
+waiting to seize and steady it. Carrigan caught but a glimpse of the
+faces. In another instant the girl was aboard the scow, and Bateese was
+bending over him. A second time he was picked up like a child in the
+chimpanzee-like arms of the half-breed. The moonlight showed him a scow
+bigger than he had ever seen on the upper river, and two-thirds of it
+seemed to be cabin. Into this cabin Bateese carried him, and in
+darkness laid him upon what Carrigan thought must be a cot built
+against the wall. He made no sound, but let himself fall limply upon
+it. He listened to Bateese as he moved about, and closed his eyes when
+Bateese struck a match. A moment later he heard the door of the cabin
+close behind the half-breed. Not until then did he open his eyes and
+sit up.
+
+He was alone. And what he saw in the next few moments drew an
+exclamation of amazement from him. Never had he seen a cabin like this
+on the Three Rivers. It was thirty feet long if an inch, and at least
+eight feet wide. The walls and ceiling were of polished cedar; the
+floor was of cedar closely matched. It was the exquisite finish and
+craftsmanship of the woodwork that caught his eyes first. Then his
+astonished senses seized upon the other things. Under his feet was a
+soft rug of dark green velvet. Two magnificent white bearskins lay
+between him and the end of the room. The walls were hung with pictures,
+and at the four windows were curtains of ivory lace draped with damask.
+The lamp which Bateese had lighted was fastened to the wall close to
+him. It was of polished silver and threw a brilliant light softened by
+a shade of old gold. There were three other lamps like this, unlighted.
+The far end of the room was in deep shadow, but Carrigan made out the
+thing he was staring at--a piano. He rose to his feet, disbelieving his
+eyes, and made his way toward it. He passed between chairs. Near the
+piano was another door, and a wide divan of the same soft, green
+upholstery. Looking back, he saw that what he had been lying upon was
+another divan. And dose to this were book-shelves, and a table on which
+were magazines and papers and a woman's workbasket, and in the
+workbasket--sound asleep--a cat!
+
+And then, over the table and the sleeping cat, his eyes rested upon a
+triangular banner fastened to the wall. In white against a background
+of black was a mighty polar bear holding at bay a horde of Arctic
+wolves. And suddenly the thing he had been fighting to recall came to
+Carrigan--the great bear--the fighting wolves--the crest of St. Pierre
+Boulain!
+
+He took a quick step toward the table--then caught at the back of a
+chair. Confound his head! Or was it the big bateau rocking under his
+feet? The cat seemed to be turning round in its basket. There were half
+a dozen banners instead of one; the lamp was shaking in its bracket;
+the floor was tilting, everything was becoming hideously contorted and
+out of place. A shroud of darkness gathered about him, and through that
+darkness Carrigan staggered blindly toward the divan. He reached it
+just in time to fall upon it like a dead man.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+For what seemed to be an interminable time after the final breakdown of
+his physical strength David Carrigan lived in a black world where a
+horde of unseen little devils were shooting red-hot arrows into his
+brain. He did not sense the fact of human presence; nor that the divan
+had been changed into a bed and the four lamps lighted, and that
+wrinkled, brown hands with talon-like fingers were performing a miracle
+of wilderness surgery upon him. He did not see the age-old face of
+Nepapinas--"The Wandering Bolt of Lightning"--as the bent and tottering
+Cree called upon all his eighty years of experience to bring him back
+to life. And he did not see Bateese, stolid-faced, silent, nor the
+dead-white face and wide-open, staring eyes of Jeanne Marie-Anne
+Boulain as her slim, white fingers worked with the old medicine man's.
+He was in a gulf of blackness that writhed with the spirits of torment.
+He fought them and cried out against them, and his fighting and his
+cries brought the look of death itself into the eyes of the girl who
+was over him. He did not hear her voice nor feel the soothing of her
+hands, nor the powerful grip of Bateese as he held him when the
+critical moments came. And Nepapinas, like a machine that had looked
+upon death a thousand times, gave no rest to his claw-like fingers
+until the work was done--and it was then that something came to drive
+the arrow-shooting devils out of the darkness that was smothering
+Carrigan.
+
+After that Carrigan lived through an eternity of unrest, a life in
+which he seemed powerless and yet was always struggling for supremacy
+over things that were holding him down. There were lapses in it, like
+the hours of oblivion that come with sleep, and there were other times
+when he seemed keenly alive, yet unable to move or act. The darkness
+gave way to flashes of light, and in these flashes he began to see
+things, curiously twisted, fleeting, and yet fighting themselves
+insistently upon his senses. He was back in the hot sand again, and
+this time he heard the voices of Jeanne Marie-Anne and Golden-Hair, and
+Golden-Hair flaunted a banner in his face, a triangular pennon of black
+on which a huge bear was fighting white Arctic wolves, and then she
+would run away from him, crying out--"St. Pierre Boulain--St. Pierre
+Boulain--" and the last he could see of her was her hair flaming like
+fire in the sun. But it was always the other--the dark hair and dark
+eyes--that came to him when the little devils returned to assault him
+with their arrows. From somewhere she would come out of darkness and
+frighten them away. He could hear her voice like a whisper in his ears,
+and the touch of her hands comforted him and quieted his pain. After a
+time he grew to be afraid when the darkness swallowed her up, and in
+that darkness he would call for her, and always he heard her voice in
+answer.
+
+Then came a long oblivion. He floated through cool space away from the
+imps of torment; his bed was of downy clouds, and on these clouds he
+drifted with a great shining river under him; and at last the cloud he
+was in began to shape itself into walls and on these walls were
+pictures, and a window through which the sun was shining, and a black
+pennon--and he heard a soft, wonderful music that seemed to come to him
+faintly from another world. Other creatures were at work in his brain
+now. They were building up and putting together the loose ends of
+things. Carrigan became one of them, working so hard that frequently a
+pair of dark eyes came out of the dawning of things to stop him, and
+quieting hands and a voice soothed him to rest. The hands and the voice
+became very intimate. He missed them when they were not near,
+especially the hands, and he was always groping for them to make sure
+they had not gone away.
+
+Only once after the floating cloud transformed itself into the walls of
+the bateau cabin did the chaotic darkness of the sands fully possess
+him again. In that darkness he heard a voice. It was not the voice of
+Golden-Hair, or of Bateese, or of Jeanne Marie-Anne. It was close to
+his ears. And in that darkness that smothered him there was something
+terrible about it as it droned slowly the
+words--"HAS-ANY-ONE-SEEN-BLACK-ROGER-AUDEMARD?" He tried to answer, to
+call back to it, and the voice came again, repeating the words,
+emotionless, hollow, as if echoing up out of a grave. And still harder
+he struggled to reply to it, to say that he was David Carrigan, and
+that he was out on the trail of Black Roger Audemard, and that Black
+Roger was far north. And suddenly it seemed to him that the voice
+changed into the flesh and blood of Black Roger himself, though he
+could not see in the darkness--and he reached out, gripping fiercely at
+the warm substance of flesh, until he heard another voice, the voice of
+Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain, entreating him to let his victim go. It was
+this time that his eyes shot open, wide and seeing, and straight over
+him was the face of Jeanne Marie-Anne, nearer him than it had been even
+in the visionings of his feverish mind. His fingers were clutching her
+shoulders, gripping like steel hooks.
+
+"M'sieu--M'sieu David!" she was crying.
+
+For a moment he stared; then his hands and fingers relaxed, and his
+arms dropped limply. "Pardon--I--I was dreaming," he struggled weakly.
+"I thought--"
+
+He had seen the pain in her face. Now, changing swiftly, it lighted up
+with relief and gladness. His vision, cleared by long darkness, saw the
+change come in an instant like a flash of sunshine. And then--so near
+that he could have touched her--she was smiling down into his eyes. He
+smiled back. It took an effort, for his face felt stiff and unnatural.
+
+"I was dreaming--of a man--named Roger Audemard," he continued to
+apologize. "Did I--hurt you?"
+
+The smile on her lips was gone as swiftly as it had come. "A little,
+m'sieu. I am glad you are better. You have been very sick."
+
+He raised a hand to his face. The bandage was there, and also a stubble
+of beard on his cheeks. He was puzzled. This morning he had fastened
+his steel mirror to the side of a tree and shaved.
+
+"It was three days ago you were hurt," she said quietly. "This is the
+afternoon of the third day. You have been in a great fever. Nepapinas,
+my Indian doctor, saved your life. You must lie quietly now. You have
+been talking a great deal."
+
+"About--Black Roger?" he said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And--Golden--Hair?"
+
+"Yes, of Golden--Hair."
+
+"And--some one else--with dark hair--and dark eyes--"
+
+"It may be, m'sieu."
+
+"And of little devils with bows and arrows, and of polar bears, and
+white wolves, and of a great lord of the north who calls himself St.
+Pierre Boulain?"
+
+"Yes, of all those."
+
+"Then I haven't anything more to tell you," grunted David. "I guess
+I've told you all I know. You shot me, back there. And here I am. What
+are you going to do next?"
+
+"Call Bateese," she answered promptly, and she rose swiftly from beside
+him and moved toward the door.
+
+He made no effort to call her back. His wits were working slowly,
+readjusting themselves after a carnival in chaos, and he scarcely
+sensed that she was gone until the cabin door closed behind her. Then
+again he raised a hand to his face and felt his beard. Three days! He
+turned his head so that he could take in the length of the cabin. It
+was filled with subdued sunlight now, a western sun that glowed softly,
+giving depth and richness to the colors on the floor and walls,
+lighting up the piano keys, suffusing the pictures with a warmth of
+life. David's eyes traveled slowly to his own feet. The divan had been
+opened and transformed into a bed. He was undressed. He had on
+somebody's white nightgown. And there was a big bunch of wild roses on
+the table where three days ago the cat had been sleeping in the
+work-basket. His head cleared swiftly, and he raised himself a little
+on one elbow, with extreme caution, and listened. The big bateau was
+not moving. It was still tied up, but he could hear no voices out where
+the tar-sands were.
+
+He dropped back on his pillow, and his eyes rested on the black pennon.
+His blood stirred again as he looked at the white bear and the fighting
+wolves. Wherever men rode the waters of the Three Rivers that pennon
+was known. Yet it was not common. Seldom was it seen, and never had it
+come south of Chipewyan. Many things came to Carrigan now, things that
+he had heard at the Landing and up and down the rivers. Once he had
+read the tail-end of a report the Superintendent of "N" Division had
+sent in to headquarters.
+
+"We do not know this St. Pierre. Few men have seen him out of his own
+country, the far headwaters of the Yellowknife, where he rules like a
+great overlord. Both the Yellowknives and the Dog Ribs call him KICHEOO
+KIMOW, or King, and the same rumors say there is never starvation or
+plague in his regions; and it is fact that neither the Hudson's Bay nor
+Revillon Brothers in their cleverest generalship and trade have been
+able to uproot his almost dynastic jurisdiction. The Police have had no
+reason to investigate or interfere."
+
+At least that was the gist of what Carrigan had read in McVane's
+report. But he had never associated it with the name of Boulain. It was
+of St. Pierre that he had heard stories, St. Pierre and his black
+pennon with its white bear and fighting wolves. And so--it was St.
+Pierre BOULAIN!
+
+He closed his eyes and thought of the long winter weeks he had passed
+at Hay River Post, watching for Fanchet, the mail robber. It was there
+he had heard most about this St. Pierre, and yet no one he had talked
+with had ever seen him; no one knew whether he was old or young, a
+pigmy or a giant. Some stories said that he was strong, that he could
+twist a gun-barrel double in his hands; others said that he was old,
+very old, so that he never set forth with his brigades that brought
+down each year a treasure of furs to be exchanged for freight. And
+never did a Dog Rib or a Yellowknife open his mouth about KICHEOO KIMOW
+St. Pierre, the master of their unmapped domains. In that great country
+north and west of the Great Slave he remained an enigma and a sphinx.
+If he ever came out with his brigades, he did not disclose his
+identity, so that if one saw a fleet of boats or canoes with the St.
+Pierre pennon, one had to make his own guess whether St. Pierre himself
+was there or not. But these things were known--that the keenest,
+quickest, and strongest men in the northland ran the St. Pierre
+brigades, that they brought out the richest cargoes of furs, and that
+they carried back with them into the secret fastnesses of their
+wilderness the greatest cargoes of freight that treasure could buy. So
+much the name St. Pierre dragged out of Carrigan's memory. It came to
+him now why the name "Boulain" had pounded so insistently in his brain.
+He had seen this pennon with its white bear and fighting wolves only
+once before, and that had been over a Boulain scow at Chipewyan. But
+his memory had lost its grip on that incident while retaining vividly
+its hold on the stories and rumors of the mystery-man, St. Pierre.
+
+Carrigan pulled himself a little higher on his pillow and with a new
+interest scanned the cabin. He had never heard of Boulain women. Yet
+here was the proof of their existence and of the greatness that ran in
+the red blood of their veins. The history of the great northland,
+hidden in the dust-dry tomes and guarded documents of the great
+company, had always been of absorbing interest to him. He wondered why
+it was that the outside world knew so little about it and believed so
+little of what it heard. A long time ago he had penned an article
+telling briefly the story of this half of a great continent in which
+for two hundred years romance and tragedy and strife for mastery had
+gone on in a way to thrill the hearts of men. He had told of huge forts
+with thirty-foot stone bastions, of fierce wars, of great warships that
+had fired their broadsides in battle in the ice-filled waters of
+Hudson's Bay. He had described the coming into this northern world of
+thousands and tens of thousands of the bravest and best-blooded men of
+England and France, and how these thousands had continued to come,
+bringing with them the names of kings, of princes, and of great lords,
+until out of the savagery of the north rose an aristocracy of race
+built up of the strongest men of the earth. And these men of later days
+he had called Lords of the North--men who had held power of life and
+death in the hollow of their hands until the great company yielded up
+its suzerainty to the Government of the Dominion in 1870; men who were
+kings in their domains, whose word was law, who were more powerful in
+their wilderness castles than their mistress over the sea, the Queen of
+Britain.
+
+And Carrigan, after writing of these things, had stuffed his manuscript
+away in the bottom of his chest at barracks, for he believed that it
+was not in his power to do justice to the people of this wilderness
+world that he loved. The powerful old lords were gone. Like dethroned
+monarchs, stripped to the level of other men, they lived in the
+memories of what had been. Their might now lay in trade. No more could
+they set out to wage war upon their rivals with powder and ball. Keen
+wit, swift dogs, and the politics of barter had taken the place of
+deadlier things. LE FACTEUR could no longer slay or command that others
+be slain. A mightier hand than his now ruled the destinies of the
+northern people--the hand of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
+
+It was this thought, the thought that Law and one of the powerful
+forces of the wilderness had met in this cabin of the big bateau, that
+came to Carrigan as he drew himself still higher against his pillow. A
+greater thrill possessed him than the thrill of his hunt for Black
+Roger Audemard. Black Roger was a murderer, a wholesale murderer and a
+fiend, a Moloch for whom there could be no pity. Of all men the Law
+wanted Black Roger most, and he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to
+consummate its desire. Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the
+strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger.
+It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him,
+rousing his faculties from the slough into which they had fallen
+because of his wound and sickness. It was, after all, the most vital of
+all things, a matter of his own life. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had
+tried to kill him deliberately, with malice and intent. That she had
+saved him afterward only added to the necessity of an explanation, and
+he was determined that he would have that explanation and settle the
+present matter before he allowed another thought of Black Roger to
+enter his head.
+
+This resolution reiterated itself in his mind as the machine-like voice
+of duty. He was not thinking of the Law, and yet the consciousness of
+his accountability to that Law kept repeating itself. In the very face
+of it Carrigan knew that something besides the moral obligation of the
+thing was urging him, something that was becoming deeply and
+dangerously personal. At least--he tried to think of it as dangerous.
+And that danger was his unbecoming interest in the girl herself. It was
+an interest distinctly removed from any ethical code that might have
+governed him in his experience with Carmin Fanchet, for instance.
+Comparatively, if they had stood together, Carmin would have been the
+lovelier. But he would have looked longer at Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain.
+
+He conceded the point, smiling a bit grimly as he continued to study
+that part of the cabin which he could see from his pillow. He had lost
+interest--temporarily at least--in Black Roger Audemard. Not long ago
+the one question to which, above all others, he had desired an answer
+was, why had Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain worked so desperately to kill
+him and so hard to save him afterward? Now, as he looked about him, the
+question which repeated itself insistently was, what relationship did
+she bear to this mysterious lord of the north, St. Pierre?
+
+Undoubtedly she was his daughter, for whom St. Pierre had built this
+luxurious barge of state. A fierce-blooded offspring, he thought, one
+like Cleopatra herself, not afraid to kill--and equally quick to make
+amends when there was a mistake.
+
+There came the quiet opening of the cabin door to break in upon his
+thought. He hoped it was Jeanne Marie-Anne returning to him. It was
+Nepapinas. The old Indian stood over him for a moment and put a cold,
+claw-like hand to his forehead. He grunted and nodded his head, his
+little sunken eyes gleaming with satisfaction. Then he put his hands
+under David's arms and lifted him until he was sitting upright, with
+three or four pillows at his back.
+
+"Thanks," said Carrigan. "That makes me feel better. And--if you don't
+mind--my last lunch was three days ago, boiled prunes and a piece of
+bannock--"
+
+"I have brought you something to eat, M'sieu David," broke in a soft
+voice behind him.
+
+Nepapinas slipped away, and Jeanne Marie-Anne stood in his place. David
+stared up at her, speechless. He heard the door close behind the old
+Indian. Then Jeanne Marie-Anne drew up a chair, so that for the first
+time he could see her clear eyes with the light of day full upon her.
+
+He forgot that a few days ago she had been his deadliest enemy. He
+forgot the existence of a man named Black Roger Audemard. Her slimness
+was as it had pictured itself to him in the hot sands. Her hair was as
+he had seen it there. It was coiled upon her head like ropes of spun
+silk, jet-black, glowing softly. But it was her eyes he stared at, and
+so fixed was his look that the red lips trembled a bit on the verge of
+a smile. She was not embarrassed. There was no color in the clear
+whiteness of her skin, except that redness of her lips.
+
+"I thought you had black eyes," he said bluntly. "I'm glad you haven't.
+I don't like them. Yours are as brown as--as--"
+
+"Please, m'sieu," she interrupted him, sitting down close beside him.
+"Will you eat--now?"
+
+A spoon was at his mouth, and he was forced to take it in or have its
+contents spilled over him. The spoon continued to move quickly between
+the bowl and his mouth. He was robbed of speech. And the girl's eyes,
+as surely as he was alive, were beginning to laugh at him. They were a
+wonderful brown, with little, golden specks in them, like the freckles
+he had seen in wood-violets. Her lips parted. Between their bewitching
+redness he saw the gleam of her white teeth. In a crowd, with her
+glorious hair covered and her eyes looking straight ahead, one would
+not have picked her out. But close, like this, with her eyes smiling at
+him, she was adorable.
+
+Something of Carrigan's thoughts must have shown in his face, for
+suddenly the girl's lips tightened a little, and the warmth went out of
+her eyes, leaving them cold and distant. He finished the soup, and she
+rose again to her feet.
+
+"Please don't go," he said. "If you do, I think I shall get up and
+follow. I am quite sure I am entitled to a little something more than
+soup."
+
+"Nepapinas says that you may have a bit of boiled fish for supper," she
+assured him.
+
+"You know I don't mean that. I want to know why you shot me, and what
+you think you are going to do with me."
+
+"I shot you by mistake--and--I don't know just what to do with you,"
+she said, looking at him tranquilly, but with what he thought was a
+growing shadow of perplexity in her eyes. "Bateese says to fasten a big
+stone to your neck and throw you in the river. But Bateese doesn't
+always mean what he says. I don't think he is quite as bloodthirsty--"
+
+"--As the young lady who tried to murder me behind the rock," Carrigan
+interjected.
+
+"Exactly, m'sieu. I don't think he would throw you into the
+river--unless I told him to. And I don't believe I am going to ask him
+to do that," she added, the soft glow flashing back into her eyes for
+an instant. "Not after the splendid work Nepapinas has done on your
+head. St. Pierre must see that. And then, if St. Pierre wishes to
+finish you, why--" She shrugged her slim shoulders and made a little
+gesture with her hands.
+
+In that same moment there came over her a change as sudden as the
+passing of light itself. It was as if a thing she was hiding had broken
+beyond her control for an instant and had betrayed her. The gesture
+died. The glow went out of her eyes, and in its place came a light that
+was almost fear--or pain. She came nearer to Carrigan again, and
+somehow, looking up at her, he thought of the little brush warbler
+singing at the end of its birch twig to give him courage. It must have
+been because of her throat, white and soft, which he saw pulsing like a
+beating heart before she spoke to him.
+
+"I have made a terrible mistake, m'sieu David," she said, her voice
+barely rising above a whisper. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I thought it was
+some one else behind the rock. But I can not tell you more than
+that--ever. And I know it is impossible for us to be friends." She
+paused, one of her hands creeping to her bare throat, as if to cover
+the throbbing he had seen there.
+
+"Why is it impossible?" he demanded, leaning away from his pillows so
+that he might bring himself nearer to her.
+
+"Because--you are of the police, m'sieu."
+
+"The police, yes," he said, his heart thrumming inside his breast. "I
+am Sergeant Carrigan. I am out after Roger Audemard, a murderer. But my
+commission has nothing to do with the daughter of St. Pierre Boulain.
+Please--let's be friends--"
+
+He held out his hand; and in that moment David Carrigan placed another
+thing higher than duty--and in his eyes was the confession of it, like
+the glow of a subdued fire. The girl's fingers drew more closely at her
+throat, and she made no movement to accept his hand.
+
+"Friends," he repeated. "Friends--in spite of the police."
+
+Slowly the girl's eyes had widened, as if she saw that new-born thing
+riding over all other things in his swiftly beating heart. And afraid
+of it, she drew a step away from him.
+
+"I am not St. Pierre Boulain's daughter," she said, forcing the words
+out one by one. "I am--his wife."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Afterward Carrigan wondered to what depths he had fallen in the first
+moments of his disillusionment. Something like shock, perhaps even more
+than that, must have betrayed itself in his face. He did not speak.
+Slowly his outstretched arm dropped to the white counterpane. Later he
+called himself a fool for allowing it to happen, for it was as if he
+had measured his proffered friendship by what its future might hold for
+him. In a low, quiet voice Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain was saying again
+that she was St. Pierre's wife. She was not excited, yet he understood
+now why it was he had thought her eyes were very dark. They had changed
+swiftly. The violet freckles in them were like little flecks of gold.
+They were almost liquid in their glow, neither brown nor black now, and
+with that threat of gathering lightning in them. For the first time he
+saw the slightest flush of color in her cheeks. It deepened even as he
+held out his hand again. He knew that it was not embarrassment. It was
+the heat of the fire back of her eyes. "It's--funny," he said, making
+an effort to redeem himself with a lie and smiling. "You rather amaze
+me. You see, I have been told this St. Pierre is an old, old man--so
+old that he can't stand on his feet or go with his brigades, and if
+that is the truth, it is hard for me to picture you as his wife. But
+that isn't a reason why we should not be friends. Is it?"
+
+He felt that he was himself again, except for the three days' growth of
+beard on his face. He tried to laugh, but it was rather a poor attempt.
+And St. Pierre's wife did not seem to hear him. She was looking at him,
+looking into and through him with those wide-open glowing eyes. Then
+she sat down, out of reach of the hand which he had held toward her.
+
+"You are a sergeant of the police," she said, the softness gone
+suddenly out of her voice. "You are an honorable man, m'sieu. Your hand
+is against all wrong. Is it not so?" It was the voice of an inquisitor.
+She was demanding an answer of him.
+
+He nodded. "Yes, it is so."
+
+The fire in her eyes deepened. "And yet you say you want to be the
+friend of a stranger who has tried to kill you. WHY, m'sieu?"
+
+He was cornered. He sensed the humiliation of it, the impossibility of
+confessing to her the wild impulse that had moved him before he knew
+she was St. Pierre's wife. And she did not wait for him to answer.
+
+"This--this Roger Audemard--if you catch him--what will you do with
+him?" she asked.
+
+"He will be hanged," said David. "He is a murderer."
+
+"And one who tries to kill--who almost succeeds--what is the penalty
+for that?" She leaned toward him, waiting. Her hands were clasped
+tightly in her lap, the spots were brighter in her cheeks.
+
+"From ten to twenty years," he acknowledged. "But, of course, there may
+be circumstances--"
+
+"If so, you do not know them," she interrupted him. "You say Roger
+Audemard is a murderer. You know I tried to kill you. Then why is it
+you would be my friend and Roger Audemard's enemy? Why, m'sieu?"
+
+Carrigan shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. "I shouldn't," he
+confessed. "I guess you are proving I was wrong in what I said. I ought
+to arrest you and take you back to the Landing as soon as I can. But,
+you see, it strikes me there is a big personal element in this. I was
+the man almost killed. There was a mistake,--must have been, for as
+soon as you put me out of business you began nursing me back to life
+again. And--"
+
+"But that doesn't change it," insisted St. Pierre's wife. "If there had
+been no mistake, there would have been a murder. Do you understand,
+m'sieu? If it had been some one else behind that rock, I am quite
+certain he would have died. The Law, at least, would have called it
+murder. If Roger Audemard is a criminal, then I also am a criminal. And
+an honorable man would not make a distinction because one of them is a
+woman!"
+
+"But--Black Roger was a fiend. He deserves no mercy. He--"
+
+"Perhaps, m'sieu!"
+
+She was on her feet, her eyes flaming down upon him. In that moment her
+beauty was like the beauty of Carmin Fanchet. The poise of her slender
+body, her glowing cheeks, her lustrous hair, her gold-flecked eyes with
+the light of diamonds in them, held him speechless.
+
+"I was sorry and went back for you," she said. "I wanted you to live,
+after I saw you like that on the sand. Bateese says I was indiscreet,
+that I should have left you there to die. Perhaps he is right. And
+yet--even Roger Audemard might have had that pity for you."
+
+She turned quickly, and he heard her moving away from him. Then, from
+the door, she said,
+
+"Bateese will make you comfortable, m'sieu."
+
+The door opened and closed. She was gone. And he was alone in the cabin
+again.
+
+The swiftness of the change in her amazed him. It was as if he had
+suddenly touched fire to an explosive. There had been the flare, but no
+violence. She had not raised her voice, yet he heard in it the tremble
+of an emotion that was consuming her. He had seen the flame of it in
+her face and eyes. Something he had said, or had done, had tremendously
+upset her, changing in an instant her attitude toward him. The thought
+that came to him made his face burn under its scrub of beard. Did she
+think he was a scoundrel? The dropping of his hand, the shock that must
+have betrayed itself in his face when she said she was St. Pierre's
+wife--had those things warned her against him? The heat went slowly out
+of his face. It was impossible. She could not think that of him. It
+must have been a sudden giving way under terrific strain. She had
+compared herself to Roger Audemard, and she was beginning to realize
+her peril--that Bateese was right--that she should have left him to die
+in the sand!
+
+The thought pressed itself heavily upon Carrigan. It brought him
+suddenly back to a realization of how small a part he had played in
+this last half hour in the cabin. He had offered to Pierre's wife a
+friendship which he had no right to offer and which she knew he had no
+right to offer. He was the Law. And she, like Roger Audemard, was a
+criminal. Her quick woman's instinct had told her there could be no
+distinction between them, unless there was a reason. And now Carrigan
+confessed to himself that there had been a reason. That reason had come
+to him with the first glimpse of her as he lay in the hot sand. He had
+fought against it in the canoe; it had mastered him in those thrilling
+moments when he had beheld this slim, beautiful creature riding
+fearlessly into the boiling waters of the Holy Ghost. Her eyes, her
+hair, the sweet, low voice that had been with him in his fever, had
+become a definite and unalterable part of him. And this must have shown
+in his eyes and face when he dropped his hand--when she told him she
+was St. Pierre's wife.
+
+And now she was afraid of him! She was regretting that she had not left
+him to die. She had misunderstood what she had seen betraying itself
+during those few seconds of his proffered friendship. She saw only a
+man whom she had nearly killed, a man who represented the Law, a man
+whose power held her in the hollow of his hand. And she had stepped
+back from him, startled, and had told him that she was not St. Pierre's
+daughter, but his wife!
+
+In the science of criminal analysis Carrigan always placed himself in
+the position of the other man. And he was beginning to see the present
+situation from the view-point of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. He was
+satisfied that she had made a desperate mistake and that until the last
+moment she had believed it was another man behind the rock. Yet she had
+shown no inclination to explain away her error. She had definitely
+refused to make an explanation. And it was simply a matter of common
+sense to concede that there must be a powerful motive for her refusal.
+There was but one conclusion for him to arrive at--the error which St.
+Pierre's wife had made in shooting the wrong man was less important to
+her than keeping the secret of why she had wanted to kill some other
+man.
+
+David was not unconscious of the breach in his own armor. He had
+weakened, just as the Superintendent of "N" Division had weakened that
+day four years ago when they had almost quarreled over Carmin Fanchet.
+
+"I'll swear to Heaven she isn't bad, no matter what her brother has
+been," McVane had said. "I'll gamble my life on that, Carrigan!"
+
+And because the Chief of Division with sixty years of experience behind
+him, had believed that, Carmin Fanchet had not been held as an
+accomplice in her brother's evildoing, but had gone back into her
+wilderness uncrucified by the law that had demanded the life of her
+brother. He would never forget the last time he had seen Carmin
+Fanchet's eyes--great, black, glorious pools of gratitude as they
+looked at grizzled old McVane; blazing fires of venomous hatred when
+they turned on him. And he had said to McVane,
+
+"The man pays, the woman goes--justice indeed is blind!"
+
+McVane, not being a stickler on regulations when it came to Carrigan,
+had made no answer.
+
+The incident came back vividly to David as he waited for the promised
+coming of Bateese. He began to appreciate McVane's point of view, and
+it was comforting, because he realized that his own logic was
+assailable. If McVane had been comparing the two women now, he knew
+what his argument would be. There had been no absolute proof of crime
+against Carmin Fanchet, unless to fight desperately for the life of her
+brother was a crime. In the case of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain there was
+proof. She had tried to kill. Therefore, of the two, Carmin Fanchet
+would have been the better woman in the eyes of McVane.
+
+In spite of the legal force of the argument which he was bringing
+against himself, David felt unconvinced. Carmin Fanchet, had she been
+in the place of St. Pierre's wife, would have finished him there in the
+sand. She would have realized the menace of letting him live and would
+probably have commanded Bateese to dump him in the river. St. Pierre's
+wife had gone to the other extreme. She was not only repentant, but was
+making restitution, for her mistake, and in making that restitution had
+crossed far beyond the dead-line of caution. She had frankly told him
+who she was; she had brought him into the privacy of what was
+undeniably her own home; in her desire to undo what she had done she
+had hopelessly enmeshed herself in the net of the Law--if that Law saw
+fit to act. She had done these things with courage and conviction. And
+of such a woman, Carrigan thought, St. Pierre must be very proud.
+
+He looked slowly about the cabin again and each thing that he saw was a
+living voice breaking up a dream for him. These voices told him that he
+was in a temple built because of a man's worship for a woman--and that
+man was St. Pierre. Through the two western windows came the last glow
+of the western sun, like a golden benediction finding its way into a
+sacred place. Here there was--or had been--a great happiness, for only
+a great pride and a great happiness could have made it as it was.
+Nothing that wealth and toil could drag up out of a civilization a
+thousand miles away had been too good for St. Pierre's wife. And about
+him, looking more closely, David saw the undisturbed evidences of a
+woman's contentment. On the table were embroidery materials with which
+she had been working, and a lamp-shade half finished. A woman's
+magazine printed in a city four thousand miles away lay open at the
+fashion plates. There were other magazines, and many books, and open
+music above the white keyboard of the piano, and vases glowing red and
+yellow with wild-flowers and silver birch leaves. He could smell the
+faint perfume of the fireglow blossoms, red as blood. In a pool of
+sunlight on one of the big white bear rugs lay the sleeping cat. And
+then, at the far end of the cabin, an ivory-white Cross of Christ
+glowed for a few moments in a last homage of the sinking sun.
+
+Uneasiness stole upon him. This was the woman's holy ground, her
+sanctuary and her home, and for three days his presence had driven her
+from it. There was no other room. In making restitution she had given
+up to him her most sacred of all things. And again there rose up in him
+that new-born thing which had set strange fires stirring in his heart,
+and which from this hour on he knew he must fight until it was dead.
+
+For an hour after the last of the sun was obliterated by the western
+mountains he lay in the gloom of coming darkness. Only the lapping of
+water under the bateau broke the strange stillness of the evening. He
+heard no sound of life, no voice, no tread of feet, and he wondered
+where the woman and her men had gone and if the scow was still tied up
+at the edge of the tar-sands. And for the first time he asked himself
+another question, Where was the man, St. Pierre?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was utterly dark in the cabin, when the stillness was broken by low
+voices outside. The door opened, and some one came in. A moment later a
+match flared up, and in the shifting glow of it Carrigan saw the dark
+face of Bateese, the half-breed. One after another he lighted the four
+lamps. Not until he had finished did he turn toward the bed. It was
+then that David had his first good impression of the man. He was not
+tall, but built with the strength of a giant. His arms were long. His
+shoulders were stooped. His head was like the head of a stone gargoyle
+come to life. Wide-eyed, heavy-lipped, with the high cheek-bones of an
+Indian and uncut black hair bound with the knotted red MOUCHOIR, he
+looked more than ever like a pirate and a cutthroat to David. Such a
+man, he thought, might make play out of the business of murder. And
+yet, in spite of his ugliness, David felt again the mysterious
+inclination to like the man.
+
+Bateese grinned. It was a huge grin, for his mouth was big. "You ver'
+lucky fellow," he announced. "You sleep lak that in nice sof' bed an'
+not back on san'-bar, dead lak ze feesh I bring you, m'sieu. That ees
+wan beeg mistake. Bateese say, 'Tie ze stone roun' hees neck an' mak'
+heem wan ANGE DE MER. Chuck heem in ze river, MA BELLE Jeanne!' An' she
+say no, mak heem well, an' feed heem feesh. So I bring ze feesh which
+she promise, an' when you have eat, I tell you somet'ing!"
+
+He returned to the door and brought back with him a wicker basket. Then
+he drew up the table beside Carrigan and proceeded to lay out before
+him the boiled fish which St. Pierre's wife had promised him. With it
+was bread and an earthen pot of hot tea.
+
+"She say that ees all you have because of ze fever. Bateese say, 'Stuff
+heem wit' much so that he die queek!'"
+
+"You want to see me dead. Is that it, Bateese?"
+
+"OUI. You mak' wan ver' good dead man, m'sieu!" Bateese was no longer
+grinning. He stood back and pointed at the food. "You eat--queek. An'
+when you have finish' I tell you somet'ing!"
+
+Now that he saw the luscious bit of whitefish before him, Carrigan was
+possessed of the hungering emptiness of three days and nights. As he
+ate, he observed that Bateese was performing curious duties. He
+straightened a couple of rugs, ran fresh water into the flower vases,
+picked up half a dozen scattered magazines, and then, to David's
+increasing interest, produced a dust-cloth from somewhere and began to
+dust. David finished his fish, the one slice of bread, and his cup of
+tea. He felt tremendously good. The hot tea was like a trickle of new
+life through every vein in his body, and he had the desire to get up
+and try out his legs. Suddenly Bateese discovered that his patient was
+laughing at him.
+
+"QUE DIABLE!" he demanded, coming up ferociously with the cloth in his
+great hand. "You see somet'ing ver' fonny, m'sieu?"
+
+"No, nothing funny, Bateese," grinned Carrigan. "I was just thinking
+what a handsome chambermaid you make. You are so gentle, so nice to
+look at, so--"
+
+"DIABLE!" exploded Bateese, dropping his dust cloth and bringing his
+huge hands down upon the table with a smash that almost wrecked the
+dishes. "You have eat, an' now you lissen. You have never hear' before
+of Concombre Bateese. An' zat ees me. See! Wit' these two hands I have
+choke' ze polar bear to deat'. I am strongest man w'at ees in all nort'
+countree. I pack four hundre' pound ovair portage. I crack ze caribou
+bones wit' my teeth, lak a dog. I run sixt' or hundre' miles wit'out
+stop for rest. I pull down trees w'at oder man cut wit' axe. I am not
+'fraid of not'ing. You lissen? You hear w'at I say?"
+
+"I hear you."
+
+"BIEN! Then I tell you w'at Concombre Bateese ees goin' do wit' you,
+M'sieu Sergent de Police! MA BELLE Jeanne she mak' wan gran' meestake.
+She too much leetle bird heart, too much pity for want you to die.
+Bateese say, 'Keel him, so no wan know w'at happen t'ree day ago behin'
+ze rock.' But MA BELLE Jeanne, she say, 'No, Bateese, he ees meestake
+for oder man, an' we mus' let heem live.' An' then she tell me to come
+an' bring you feesh, an' tell you w'at is goin' happen if you try go
+away from thees bateau. You COMPREN'? If you try run away, Bateese ees
+goin' keel you! See--wit' thees han's I br'ak your neck an' t'row you
+in river. MA BELLE Jeanne say do zat, an' she tell oder mans-twent',
+thirt', almos' hundre' GARCONS--to keel you if you try run away. She
+tell me bring zat word to you wit' ze feesh. You listen hard w'at I
+say?"
+
+If ever a worker of iniquity lived on earth, Carrigan might have judged
+Bateese as that man in these moments. The half-breed had worked himself
+up to a ferocious pitch. His eyes rolled. His wide mouth snarled in the
+virulence of its speech. His thick neck grew corded, and his huge hands
+clenched menacingly upon the table. Yet David had no fear. He wanted to
+laugh, but he knew laughter would be the deadliest of insults to
+Bateese just now. He remembered that the half-breed, fierce as a
+pirate, had a touch as gentle as a woman's. This man, who could choke
+an ox with his monstrous hands, had a moment before petted a cat,
+straightened out rugs, watered the woman's flowers, and had dusted. He
+was harmless--now. And yet in the same breath David sensed the fact
+that a single word from St. Pierre's wife would be sufficient to fire
+his brute strength into a blazing volcano of action. Such a henchman
+was priceless--under certain conditions! And he had brought a warning
+straight from the woman.
+
+"I think I understand what you mean, Bateese," he said. "She says that
+I am to make no effort to leave this bateau--that I am to be killed if
+I try to escape? Are you sure she said that?"
+
+"PAR LES MILLE CORNES DU DIABLE, you t'ink Bateese lie, m'sieu?
+Concombre Bateese, who choke ze w'ite bear wit' hees two ban', who pull
+down ze tree--"
+
+"No, no, I don't think you lie. But I am wondering why she didn't tell
+me that when she was here."
+
+"Becaus' she have too much leetle bird heart, zat ees w'y. She say:
+'Bateese, you tell heem he mus' wait for St. Pierre. An' you tell heem
+good an' hard, lak you choke ze w'ite bear an' lak you pull down ze
+tree, so he mak' no meestake an' try get away.' An' she tell zat before
+all ze BATELIERS--all ze St. Pierre mans gathered 'bout a beeg
+fire--an' they shout up lak wan gargon that they watch an' keel you if
+you try get away."
+
+Carrigan reached out a hand. "Let's shake, Bateese. I'll give you my
+word that I won't try to escape--not until you and I have a good
+stand-up fight with the earth under our feet, and I've whipped you. Is
+it a go?"
+
+Bateese stared for a moment, and then his face broke into a wide grin.
+"You lak ze fight, m'sieu?"
+
+"Yes. I love a scrap with a good man like you."
+
+One of Bateese's huge hands crawled slowly over the table and engulfed
+David's. Joy shone on his face.
+
+"An' you promise give me zat fight, w'en you are strong?"
+
+"If I don't, I'll let you tie a stone around my neck and drop me into
+the river."
+
+"You are brave GARCON," cried the delighted Bateese. "Up an' down ze
+rivers ees no man w'at can whip Concombre Bateese!" Suddenly his face
+grew clouded. "But ze head, m'sieu?" he added anxiously.
+
+"It will get well quickly if you will help me, Bateese. Right now I
+want to get up. I want to stretch my legs. Was my head bad?"
+
+"NON. Ze bullet scrape ze ha'r off--so--so--an' turn ze brain seek. I
+t'ink you be good fighting man in week!"
+
+"And you will help me up?"
+
+Bateese was a changed man. Again David felt that mighty but gentle
+strength of his arms as he helped him to his feet. He was a trifle
+unsteady for a moment. Then, with the half-breed close at his side,
+ready to catch him if his legs gave way, he walked to one of the
+windows and looked out. Across the river, fully half a mile away, he
+saw the glow of fires.
+
+"Her camp?" he asked.
+
+"OUI, m'sieu."
+
+"We have moved from the tar-sands?"
+
+"Yes, two days down ze river."
+
+"Why are they not camping over here with us?"
+
+Bateese gave a disgusted grunt. "Becaus' MA BELLE Jeanne have such
+leetle bird heart, m'sieu. She say you mus' not have noise near, lak ze
+talk an' laugh an' ZE CHANSONS. She say it disturb, an' zat it mak you
+worse wit' ze fever. She ees mak you lak de baby, Bateese say to her.
+But she on'y laugh at zat an' snap her leetle w'ite finger. Wait St.
+Pierre come! He brak yo'r head wit' hees two fists. I hope we have ze
+fight before then, m'sieu!"
+
+"We'll have it anyway, Bateese. Where is St. Pierre, and when shall we
+see him?"
+
+Bateese shrugged his shoulders. "Mebby week, mebby more. He long way
+off."
+
+"Is he an old man?"
+
+Slowly Bateese turned David about until he was facing him. "You ask
+not'ing more about St. Pierre," he warned. "No mans talk 'bout St.
+Pierre. Only wan--MA BELLE Jeanne. You ask her, an' she tell you shut
+up. W'en you don't shut up she call Bateese to brak your head."
+
+"You're a--a sort of all-round head-breaker, as I understand it,"
+grunted David, walking slowly back to his bed. "Will you bring me my
+pack and clothes in the morning? I want to shave and dress."
+
+Bateese was ahead of him, smoothing the pillows and straightening out
+the rumpled bed-clothes. His huge hands were quick and capable as a
+woman's, and David could not keep himself from chuckling at this
+feminine ingeniousness of the powerful half-breed. Once in the crush of
+those gorilla-like arms that were working over his bed now, he thought,
+and it would be all over with the strongest man in "N" Division.
+Bateese heard the chuckle and looked up.
+
+"Somet'ing ver' funny once more, is eet--w'at?" he demanded.
+
+"I was thinking, Bateese--what will happen to me if you get me in those
+arms when we fight? But it isn't going to happen. I fight with my
+fists, and I'm going to batter you up so badly that nobody will
+recognize you for a long time."
+
+"You wait!" exploded Bateese, making a horrible grimace. "I choke you
+lak w'ite bear, I t'row you ovair my should'r, I mash you lak leetle
+strawberr', I--" He paused in his task to advance with a formidable
+gesture.
+
+"Not now," warned Carrigan. "I'm still a bit groggy, Bateese." He
+pointed down at the bed. "I'm driving HER from that," he said. "I don't
+like it. Is she sleepin' over there--in the camp?"
+
+"Mebby--an' mebby not, m'sieu," growled Bateese. "You mak' guess, eh?"
+
+He began extinguishing the lights, until only the one nearest the door
+was left burning. He did not turn toward Carrigan or speak to him
+again. When he Went out, David heard the click of a lock in the door.
+Bateese had not exaggerated. It was the intention of St. Pierre's wife
+that he should consider himself a prisoner--at least for tonight.
+
+He had no desire to lie down again. There was an unsteadiness in his
+legs, but outside of that the evil of his sickness no longer oppressed
+him. The staff doctor at the Landing would probably have called him a
+fool for not convalescing in the usual prescribed way, but Carrigan was
+already beginning to feel the demand for action. In spite of what
+physical effort he had made, his head did not hurt him, and his mind
+was keenly alive. He returned to the window through which he could see
+the fires on the western shore, and found no difficulty in opening it.
+A strong screen netting kept him from thrusting out his head and
+shoulders. Through it came the cool night breeze of the river. It
+seemed good to fill his lungs with it again and smell the fresh aroma
+of the forest. It was very dark, and the fires across the river were
+brighter because of the deep gloom. There was no promise of the moon in
+the sky. He could not see a star. From far in the west he caught the
+low intonation of thunder.
+
+Carrigan turned from the window to the end of the cabin in which the
+piano stood. Here, too, was the second divan, and he saw the meaning
+now of two close-tied curtains, one at each side of the cabin. Drawn
+together on a taut wire stretched two inches under the ceiling, they
+shut off this end of the bateau and turned at least a third of the
+cabin into the privacy of the woman's bedroom. With growing uneasiness
+David saw the evidences that this had been her sleeping apartment. At
+each side of the piano was a small door, and he opened one of these
+just enough to discover that it was a wardrobe closet. A third door
+opened on the shore side of the bateau, but this was locked. Shut out
+from the view of the lower end of the cabin by a Japanese screen were a
+small dresser and a mirror. In the dim illumination that came from the
+distant lamp David bent over the open sheet of music on the piano. It
+was Mascagni's AVE MARIA.
+
+His blood tingled. His brain was stirred by a new emotion, a growing
+thing that made him uneasy and filled him with a strange restlessness.
+He felt as though he had come suddenly to the edge of a great danger;
+somewhere within him an intelligence seized upon it and understood. Yet
+it was not physical enough for him to fight. It was a danger which
+crept up and about him, something which he could not see or touch and
+yet which made his heart beat faster and the blood come into his face.
+It drew him, triumphed over him, dragged his hand forth until his
+fingers closed upon a lacy, crumpled bit of a handkerchief that lay on
+the edge of the piano keys. It was the woman's handkerchief, and like a
+thief he raised it slowly. It smelled faintly of crushed violets; it
+was as if she were bending over him in his sickness again, and it was
+her breath that came to him. He was not thinking of her as St. Pierre's
+wife. And then sharply he caught himself and placed the handkerchief
+back on the piano keys. He tried to laugh at himself, but there was an
+emptiness where a moment before there had been that thrill of which he
+was now ashamed.
+
+He turned back to the window. The thunder had come nearer. It was
+coming up fast out of the west, and with it a darkness that was like
+the blackness of a pit. A dead stillness was preceding it now, and in
+that stillness it seemed to Carrigan that he could hear the soapy,
+slitting sound of the streaming flashes of electrical fire that
+blazoned the advance of the storm. The camp-fires across the river were
+dying down. One of them went out as he looked at it, and he stared into
+the darkness as if trying to pierce distance and gloom to see what sort
+of a shelter it was that St. Pierre's wife had over there. And there
+came over him in these moments a desire that was almost cowardly. It
+was the desire to escape, to leave behind him the memory of the rock
+and of St. Pierre's wife, and to pursue once more his own great
+adventure, the quest of Black Roger Audemard.
+
+He heard the rain coming. At first the sound of it was like the
+pattering of ten million tiny feet in dry leaves; then, suddenly, it
+was like the roar of an avalanche. It was an inundation, and with it
+came crash after crash of thunder, and the black skies were illumined
+by an almost uninterrupted glare of lightning. It had been a long time
+since Carrigan had felt the shock of such a storm. He closed the window
+to keep the rain out, and after that stood with his face flattened
+against the glass, staring over the river. The camp-fires were all gone
+now, blotted out like so many candles snuffed between thumb and
+forefinger, and he shuddered. No canvas ever made would keep that
+deluge out. And now there was growing up a wind with it. The tents on
+the other side would be beaten down like pegged sheets of paper, ripped
+up and torn to pieces. He imagined St. Pierre's wife in that tumult and
+distress--the breath blown out of her, half drowned, blinded by deluge
+and lightning, broken and beaten because of him. Thought of her
+companions did not ease his mind. Human hands were entirely inadequate
+to cope with a storm like this that was rocking the earth about him.
+
+Suddenly he went to the door, determined that if Bateese was outside he
+would get some satisfaction out of him or challenge him to a fight
+right there. He beat against it, first with one fist and then with
+both. He shouted. There was no response. Then he exerted his strength
+and his weight against the door. It was solid.
+
+He was half turned when his eyes discovered, in a corner where the
+lamplight struck dimly, his pack and clothes. In thirty seconds he had
+his pipe and tobacco. After that for half an hour he paced up and down
+the cabin, while the storm crashed and thundered as if bent upon
+destroying all life off the face of the earth.
+
+Comforted by the company of his pipe, Carrigan did not beat at the door
+again. He waited, and at the end of another half-hour the storm had
+softened down into a steady patter of rain. The thunder had traveled
+east, and the lightning had gone with it. David opened the window
+again. The air that came in was rain-sweet, soft, and warm. He puffed
+out a cloud of smoke and smiled. His pipe always brought his good humor
+to the surface, even in the worst places. St. Pierre's wife had
+certainly had a good soaking. And in a way the whole thing was a bit
+funny. He was thinking now of a poor little golden-plumaged partridge,
+soaked to the skin, with its tail-feathers dragging pathetically.
+Grinning, he told himself that it was an insult to think of her and a
+half-drowned partridge in the same breath. But the simile still
+remained, and he chuckled. Probably she was wringing out her clothes
+now, and the men were cursing under their breath while trying to light
+a fire. He watched for the fire. It failed to appear. Probably she was
+hating him for bringing all this discomfort and humiliation upon her.
+It was not impossible that tomorrow she would give Bateese permission
+to brain him. And St. Pierre? What would this man, her husband, think
+and do if he knew that his wife had given up her bedroom to this
+stranger? What complications might arise IF HE KNEW!
+
+It was late--past midnight--when Carrigan went to bed. Even then he did
+not sleep for a long time. The patter of the rain grew less and less on
+the roof of the bateau, and as the sound of it droned itself off into
+nothingness, slumber came. David was conscious of the moment when the
+rain ceased entirely. Then he slept. At least he must have been very
+close to sleep, or had been asleep and was returning for a moment close
+to consciousness, when he heard a voice. It came several times before
+he was roused enough to realize that it was a voice. And then,
+suddenly, piercing his slowly wakening brain almost with the shock of
+one of the thunder crashes, it came to him so distinctly that he found
+himself sitting up straight, his hands clenched, eyes staring in the
+darkness, waiting for it to come again.
+
+Somewhere very near him, in his room, within the reach of his hands, a
+strange and indescribable voice had cried out in the darkness the words
+which twice before had beat themselves mysteriously into David
+Carrigan's brain--"HAS ANY ONE SEEN BLACK ROGER AUDEMARD? HAS ANY ONE
+SEEN BLACK ROGER AUDEMARD?"
+
+And David, holding his breath, listened for the sound of another breath
+which he knew was in that room.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+For perhaps a minute Carrigan made no sound that could have been heard
+three feet away from him. It was not fear that held him quiet. It was
+something which he could not explain afterward, the sensation, perhaps,
+of one who feels himself confronted for a moment by a presence more
+potent than that of flesh and blood. BLACK ROGER AUDEMARD! Three times,
+twice in his sickness, some one had cried out that name in his ears
+since the hour when St. Pierre's wife had ambushed him on the white
+carpet of sand. And the voice was now in his room!
+
+Was it Bateese, inspired by some sort of malformed humor? Carrigan
+listened. Another minute passed. He reached out a hand and groped about
+him, very careful not to make a sound, urged by the feeling that some
+one was almost within reach of him. He flung back his blanket and stood
+out in the middle of the floor.
+
+Still he heard no movement, no soft footfalls of retreat or advance. He
+lighted a match and held it high above his head. In its yellow
+illumination he could see nothing alive. He lighted a lamp. The cabin
+was empty. He drew a deep breath and went to the window. It was still
+open. The voice had undoubtedly come to him through that window, and he
+fancied he could see where the screen netting was crushed a bit inward,
+as though a face had pressed heavily against it. Outside the night was
+beautifully calm. The sky, washed by storm, was bright with stars. But
+there was not a ripple of movement that he could hear.
+
+After that he looked at his watch. He must have been sleeping for some
+time when the voice roused him, for it was nearly three o'clock. In
+spite of the stars, dawn was close at hand. When he looked out of the
+window again they were paler and more distant. He had no intention of
+going back to bed. He was restless and felt himself surrendering more
+and more to the grip of presentiment.
+
+It was still early, not later than six o'clock, when Bateese came in
+with his breakfast. He was surprised, as he had heard no movement or
+sound of voices to give evidence of life anywhere near the bateau.
+Instantly he made up his mind that it was not Bateese who had uttered
+the mysterious words of a few hours ago, for the half-breed had
+evidently experienced a most uncomfortable night. He was like a rat
+recently pulled out of water. His clothes hung upon him sodden and
+heavy, his head kerchief dripped, and his lank hair was wet. He slammed
+the breakfast things down on the table and went out again without so
+much as nodding at his prisoner.
+
+Again a sense of discomfort and shame swept over David, as he sat down
+to breakfast. Here he was comfortably, even luxuriously, housed, while
+out there somewhere St. Pierre's lovely wife was drenched and even more
+miserable than Bateese. And the breakfast amazed him. It was not so
+much the caribou tenderloin, rich in its own red juice, or the potato,
+or the pot of coffee that was filling the cabin with its aroma, that
+roused his wonder, but the hot, brown muffins that accompanied the
+other things. Muffins! And after a deluge that had drowned every square
+inch of the earth! How had Bateese turned the trick?
+
+Bateese did not return immediately for the dishes, and for half an hour
+after he had finished breakfast Carrigan smoked his pipe and watched
+the blue haze of fires on the far side of the river. The world was a
+blaze of sunlit glory. His imagination carried him across the river.
+Somewhere over there, in an open spot where the sun was blazing, Jeanne
+Marie-Anne was probably drying herself after the night of storm. There
+was but little doubt in his mind that she was already heaping the
+ignominy of blame upon him. That was the woman of it.
+
+A knock at his door drew him about. It was a light, quick TAP, TAP,
+TAP--not like the fist of either Bateese or Nepapinas. In another
+moment the door swung open, and in the flood of sunlight that poured
+into the cabin stood St. Pierre's wife!
+
+It was not her presence, but the beauty of her, that held him
+spellbound. It was a sort of shock after the vivid imaginings of his
+mind in which he had seen her beaten and tortured by storm. Her hair,
+glowing in the sun and piled up in shining coils on the crown of her
+head, was not wet. She was not the rain-beaten little partridge that
+had passed in tragic bedragglement through his mind. Storm had not
+touched her. Her cheeks were soft with the warm flush of long hours of
+sleep. When she came in, her lips greeting him with a little smile, all
+that he had built up for himself in the hours of the night crumbled
+away in dust. Again he forgot for a moment that she was St. Pierre's
+wife. She was woman, and as he looked upon her now, the most adorable
+woman in all the world.
+
+"You are better this morning," she said. Real pleasure shone in her
+eyes. She had left the door open, so that the sun filled the room. "I
+think the storm helped you. Wasn't it splendid?"
+
+David swallowed hard. "Quite splendid," he managed to say. "Have you
+seen Bateese this morning?"
+
+A little note of laughter came into her throat. "Yes. I don't think he
+liked it. He doesn't understand why I love storms. Did you sleep well,
+M'sieu Carrigan?"
+
+"An hour or two, I think. I was worrying about you. I didn't like the
+thought that I had turned you out into the storm. But it doesn't seem
+to have touched you."
+
+"No. I was there--quite comfortable." She nodded to the forward
+bulkhead of the cabin, beyond the wardrobe closets and the piano.
+"There is a little dining-room and kitchenette ahead," she explained.
+"Didn't Bateese tell you that?"
+
+"No, he didn't. I asked him where you were, and I think he told me to
+shut up."
+
+"Bateese is very odd," said St. Pierre's wife. "He is exceedingly
+jealous of me, M'sieu David. Even when I was a baby and he carried me
+about in his arms, he was just that way. Bateese, you know, is older
+than he appears. He is fifty-one."
+
+She was moving about, quite as if his presence was in no way going to
+disturb her usual duties of the day. She rearranged the damask curtains
+which he had crumpled with his hands, placed two or three chairs in
+their usual places, and moved from this to that with the air of a
+housewife who is in the habit of brushing up a bit in the morning.
+
+She seemed not at all embarrassed because he was her prisoner, nor
+uncomfortably restrained because of the message she had sent to him by
+Bateese. She was warmly and gloriously human. In her apparent unconcern
+at his presence he found himself sweating inwardly. A bit nervously he
+struck a match to light his pipe, then extinguished it.
+
+She noticed what he had done. "You may smoke," she said, with that
+little note in her throat which he loved to hear, like the faintest
+melody of laughter that did not quite reach her lips. "St. Pierre
+smokes a great deal, and I like it."
+
+She opened a drawer in the dressing-table and came to him with a box
+half filled with cigars.
+
+"St. Pierre prefers these--on occasions," she said, "Do you?"
+
+His fingers seemed all thumbs as he took a cigar from the proffered
+box. He cursed himself because his tongue felt thick. Perhaps it was
+his silence, betraying something of his mental clumsiness, that brought
+a faint flush of color into her cheeks. He noted that; and also that
+the top of her shining head came just about to his chin, and that her
+mouth and throat, looking down on them, were bewitchingly soft and
+sweet.
+
+And what she said, when her eyes opened wide and beautiful on him
+again, was like a knife cutting suddenly into the heart of his thoughts.
+
+"In the evening I love to sit at St. Pierre's feet and watch him
+smoke," she said. "I am glad it doesn't annoy you, because--I like to
+smoke," he replied lamely.
+
+She placed the box on the little reading table and looked at his
+breakfast things. "You like muffins, too. I was up early this morning,
+making them for you!"
+
+"You made them?" he demanded, as if her words were a most amazing
+revelation to him.
+
+"Surely, M'sieu David. I make them every morning for St. Pierre. He is
+very fond of them. He says the third nicest thing about me is my
+muffins!"
+
+"And the other two?" asked David.
+
+"Are St. Pierre's little secrets, m'sieu," she laughed softly, the
+color deepening in her cheeks. "It wouldn't be fair to tell you, would
+it?"
+
+"Perhaps it wouldn't," he said slowly. "But there are one or two other
+things, Mrs.--Mrs. Boulain--"
+
+"You may call me Jeanne, or Marie-Anne, if you care to," she
+interrupted him. "It will be quite all right."
+
+She was picking up the breakfast dishes, not at all perturbed by the
+fact that she was offering him a privilege which had the effect of
+quickening his pulse for a moment or two.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "I don't mind telling you it is going to be
+difficult for me to do that--because--well, this is a most unusual
+situation, isn't it? In spite of all your kindness, including what was
+probably your good-intentioned endeavor to put an end to my earthly
+miseries behind the rock, I believe it is necessary for you to give me
+some kind of explanation. Don't you?"
+
+"Didn't Bateese explain to you last night?" she asked, facing him.
+
+"He brought a message from you to the effect that I was a prisoner,
+that I must make no attempt to escape, and that if I did try to escape,
+you had given your men instructions to kill me."
+
+She nodded, quite seriously. "That is right, M'sieu David."
+
+His face flamed. "Then I am a prisoner? You threaten me with death?"
+
+"I shall treat you very nicely if you make no attempt to escape, M'sieu
+David. Isn't that fair?"
+
+"Fair!" he cried, choking back an explosion that would have vented
+itself on a man. "Don't you realize what has happened? Don't you know
+that according to every law of God and man I should arrest you and give
+you over to the Law? Is it possible that you don't comprehend my own
+duty? What I must do?"
+
+If he had noticed, he would have seen that there was no longer the
+flush of color in her cheeks. But her eyes, looking straight at him,
+were tranquil and unexcited. She nodded.
+
+"That is why you must remain a prisoner, M'sieu David, It is because I
+do realize, I shall not tell you why that happened behind the rock, and
+if you ask me, I shall refuse to talk to you. If I let you go now, you
+would probably have me arrested and put in jail. So I must keep you
+until St. Pierre comes. I don't know what to do--except to keep you,
+and not let you escape until then. What would you do?"
+
+The question was so honest, so like a question that might have been
+asked by a puzzled child, that his argument for the Law was struck
+dead. He stared into the pale face, the beautiful, waiting eyes, saw
+the pathetic intertwining of her slim fingers, and suddenly he was
+grinning in that big, honest way which made people love Dave Carrigan.
+
+"You're--doing--absolutely--right," he said.
+
+A swift change came in her face. Her cheeks flushed. Her eyes filled
+with a sudden glow that made the little violet-freckles in them dance
+like tiny flecks of gold.
+
+"From your point of view you are right," he repeated, "and I shall make
+no attempt to escape until I have talked with St. Pierre. But I can't
+quite see--just now--how he is going to help the situation."
+
+"He will," she assured him confidently.
+
+"You seem to have an unlimited faith in St. Pierre," he replied a
+little grimly.
+
+"Yes, M'sieu David. He is the most wonderful man in the world. And he
+will know what to do."
+
+David shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps, in some nice, quiet place, he
+will follow the advice Bateese gave you--tie a stone round my neck and
+sink me to the bottom of the river."
+
+"Perhaps. But I don't think he will do that I should object to it."
+
+"Oh, you would!"
+
+"Yes. St. Pierre is big and strong, afraid of nothing in the world, but
+he will do anything for me. I don't think he would kill you if I asked
+him not to." She turned to resume her task of cleaning up the breakfast
+things.
+
+With a sudden movement David swung one of the' big chairs close to her.
+"Please sit down," he commanded. "I can talk to you better that way. As
+an officer of the law it is my duty to ask you a few questions. It
+rests in your power to answer all of them or none of them. I have given
+you my word not to act until I have seen St. Pierre, and I shall keep
+that promise. But when we do meet I shall act largely on the strength
+of what you tell me during the next tea minutes. Please sit down!"
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+In that big, deep chair which must have been St. Pierre's own,
+Marie-Anne sat facing Carrigan. Between its great arms her slim little
+figure seemed diminutive and out of place. Her brown eyes were level
+and clear, waiting. They were not warm or nervous, but so coolly and
+calmly beautiful that they disturbed Carrigan. She raised her hands,
+her slim fingers crumpling for a moment in the soft, thick coils of her
+hair. That little movement, the unconscious feminism of it, the way she
+folded her hands in her lap afterward, disturbed Carrigan even more.
+What a glory on earth it must be to possess a woman like that! The
+thought made him uneasy. And she sat waiting, a vivid, softly-breathing
+question-mark against the warm coloring of the upholstered chair.
+
+"When you shot me," he began, "I saw you, first, standing over me. I
+thought you had come to finish me. It was then that I saw something in
+your face--horror, amazement, as though you had done something you did
+not know you were doing. You see, I want to be charitable. I want to
+understand. I want to excuse you if I can. Won't you tell me why you
+shot me, and why that change came over you when you saw me lying there?"
+
+"No, M'sieu David, I shall not tell." She was not antagonistic or
+defiant. Her voice was not raised, nor did it betray an unusual
+emotion. It was simply decisive, and the unflinching steadiness of her
+eyes and the way in which she sat with her hands folded gave to it an
+unqualified definiteness.
+
+"You mean that I must make my own guess?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Or get it out of St. Pierre?"
+
+"If St. Pierre wishes to tell you, yes."
+
+"Well--" He leaned a little toward her. "After that you dragged me up
+into the shade, dressed my wound and made me comfortable. In a hazy
+sort of way I knew what was going on. And a curious thing happened. At
+times--" he leaned still a little nearer to her--"at times--there
+seemed to be two of you!"
+
+He was not looking at her hands, or he would have seen her fingers
+slowly tighten in her lap.
+
+"You were badly hurt," she said. "It is not strange that you should
+have imagined things, M'sieu David."
+
+"And I seemed to hear two voices," he went on.
+
+She made no answer, but continued to look at him steadily.
+
+"And the other had hair that was like copper and gold fire in the sun.
+I would see your face and then hers, again and again--and--since
+then--I have thought I was a heavy load for your hands to drag up
+through that sand to the shade alone."
+
+She held up her two hands, looking at them. "They are strong," she said.
+
+"They are small," he insisted, "and I doubt if they could drag me
+across this floor."
+
+For the first time the quiet of her eyes gave way to a warm fire. "It
+was hard work," she said, and the note in her voice gave him warning
+that he was approaching the dead-line again. "Bateese says I was a fool
+for doing it. And if you saw two of me, or three or four, it doesn't
+matter. Are you through questioning me, M'sieu David? If so, I have a
+number of things to do."
+
+He made a gesture of despair. "No, I am not through. But why ask you
+questions if you won't answer them?"
+
+"I simply can not. You must wait."
+
+"For your husband?"
+
+"Yes, for St. Pierre."
+
+He was silent for a moment, then said, "I raved about a number of
+things when I was sick, didn't I?"
+
+"You did, and especially about what you thought happened in the sand.
+You called this--this other person--the Fire Goddess. You were so near
+dying that of course it wasn't amusing. Otherwise it would have been.
+You see MY hair is black, almost!" Again, in a quick movement, her
+fingers were crumpling the lustrous coils on the crown of her head.
+
+"Why do you say 'almost'?" he asked.
+
+"Because St. Pierre has often told me that when I am in the sun there
+are red fires in it. And the sun was very bright that afternoon in the
+sand, M'sieu David."
+
+"I think I understand," he nodded. "And I'm rather glad, too. I like to
+know that it was you who dragged me up into the shade after trying to
+kill me. It proves you aren't quite so savage as--"
+
+"Carmin Fanchet," she interrupted him softly. "You talked about her in
+your sickness, M'sieu David. It made me terribly afraid of you--so much
+so that at times I almost wondered if Bateese wasn't right. It made me
+understand what would happen to me if I should let you go. What
+terrible thing did she do to you? What could she have done more
+terrible than I have done?"
+
+"Is that why you have given your men orders to kill me if I try to
+escape?" he asked. "Because I talked about this woman, Carmin Fanchet?"
+
+"Yes, it is because of Carmin Fanchet that I am keeping you for St.
+Pierre," she acknowledged. "If you had no mercy for her, you could have
+none for me. What terrible thing did she do to you, M'sieu?"
+
+"Nothing--to me," he said, feeling that she was putting him where the
+earth was unsteady under his feet again. "But her brother was a
+criminal of the worst sort. And I was convinced then, and am convinced
+now, that his sister was a partner in his crimes. She was very
+beautiful. And that, I think, was what saved her."
+
+He was fingering his unlighted cigar as he spoke. When he looked up, he
+was surprised at the swift change that had come into the face of St.
+Pierre's wife. Her cheeks were flaming, and there were burning fires
+screened behind the long lashes of her eyes. But her voice was
+unchanged. It was without a quiver that betrayed the emotion which had
+sent the hot flush into her face.
+
+"Then--you judged her without absolute knowledge of fact? You judged
+her--as you hinted in your fever--because she fought so desperately to
+save a brother who had gone wrong?"
+
+"I believe she was bad."
+
+The long lashes fell lower, like fringes of velvet closing over the
+fires in her eyes. "But you didn't know!"
+
+"Not absolutely," he conceded. "But investigations--"
+
+"Might have shown her to be one of the most wonderful women that ever
+lived, M'sieu David. It is not hard to fight for a good brother--but if
+he is bad, it may take an angel to do it!"
+
+He stared, thoughts tangling themselves in his head. A slow shame crept
+over him. She had cornered him. She had convicted him of unfairness to
+the one creature on earth his strength and his manhood were bound to
+protect--a woman. She had convicted him of judging without fact. And in
+his head a voice seemed to cry out to him, "What did Carmin Fanchet
+ever do to you?"
+
+He rose suddenly to his feet and stood at the back of his chair, his
+hands gripping the top of it. "Maybe you are right," he said. "Maybe I
+was wrong. I remember now that when I got Fanchet I manacled him, and
+she sat beside him all through that first night. I didn't intend to
+sleep, but I was tired--and did. I must have slept for an hour, and SHE
+roused me--trying to get the key to the handcuffs. She had the
+opportunity then--to kill me."
+
+Triumph swept over the face that was looking up at him. "Yes, she could
+have killed you--while you slept. But she didn't. WHY?"
+
+"I don't know. Perhaps she had the idea of getting the key and letting
+her brother do the job. Two or three days later I am convinced she
+would not have hesitated. I caught her twice trying to steal my gun.
+And a third time, late at night, when we were within a day or two of
+Athabasca Landing, she almost got me with a club. So I concede that she
+never did anything very terrible to me. But I am sure that she tried,
+especially toward the last."
+
+"And because she failed, she hated you; and because she hated you,
+something was warped inside you, and you made up your mind she should
+be punished along with her brother. You didn't look at it from a
+woman's viewpoint. A woman will fight, and kill, to save one she loves.
+She tried, perhaps, and failed. The result was that her brother was
+killed by the Law. Was not that enough? Was it fair or honest to
+destroy her simply because you thought she might be a partner in her
+brother's crimes?"
+
+"It is rather strange," he replied, a moment of indecision in his
+voice. "McVane, the superintendent, asked me that same question. I
+thought he was touched by her beauty. And I'm sorry--very sorry--that I
+talked about her when I was sick. I don't want you to think I am a bad
+sort--that way. I'm going to think about it. I'm going over the whole
+thing again, from the time I manacled Fanchet, and if I find that I was
+wrong--and I ever meet Carmin Fanchet again--I shall not be ashamed to
+get down on my knees and ask her pardon, Marie-Anne!"
+
+For the first time he spoke the name which she had given him permission
+to use. And she noticed it. He could not help seeing that--a flashing
+instant in which the indefinable confession of it was in her face, as
+though his use of it had surprised her, or pleased her, or both. Then
+it was gone.
+
+She did not answer, but rose from the big chair, and went to the
+window, and stood with her back toward him, looking out over the river.
+And then, suddenly, they heard a voice. It was the voice he had heard
+twice in his sickness, the voice that had roused him from his sleep
+last night, crying out in his room for Black Roger Audemard. It came to
+him distinctly through the open door in a low and moaning monotone. He
+had not taken his eyes from the slim figure of St. Pierre's wife, and
+he saw a little tremor pass through her now.
+
+"I heard that voice--again--last night," said David. "It was in this
+cabin, asking for Black Roger Audemard."
+
+She did not seem to hear him, and he also turned so that he was looking
+at the open door of the cabin.
+
+The sun, pouring through in a golden flood, was all at once darkened,
+and in the doorway--framed vividly against the day--was the figure of a
+man. A tense breath came to Carrigan's lips. At first he felt a shock,
+then an overwhelming sense of curiosity and of pity. The man was
+terribly deformed. His back and massive shoulders were so twisted and
+bent that he stood no higher than a twelve-year-old boy; yet standing
+straight, he would have been six feet tall if an inch, and splendidly
+proportioned. And in that same breath with which shock and pity came to
+him, David knew that it was accident and not birth that had malformed
+the great body that stood like a crouching animal in the open door. At
+first he saw only the grotesqueness of it--the long arms that almost
+touched the floor, the broken back, the twisted shoulders--and then,
+with a deeper thrill, he saw nothing of these things but only the face
+and the head of the man. There was something god-like about them,
+fastened there between the crippled shoulders. It was not beauty, but
+strength--the strength of rock, of carven granite, as if each feature
+had been chiseled out of something imperishable and everlasting, yet
+lacking strangely and mysteriously the warm illumination that comes
+from a living soul. The man was not old, nor was he young. And he did
+not seem to see Carrigan, who stood nearest to him. He was looking at
+St. Pierre's wife.
+
+The look which David saw in her face was infinitely tender. She was
+smiling at the misshapen hulk in the door as she might have smiled at a
+little child. And David, looking back at the wide, deep-set eyes of the
+man, saw the slumbering fire of a dog-like worship in them. They
+shifted slowly, taking in the cabin, questing, seeking, searching for
+something which they could not find. The lips moved, and again he heard
+that weird and mysterious monotone, as if the plaintive voice of a
+child were coming out of the huge frame of the man, crying out as it
+had cried last night, "HAS-ANY-ONE-SEEN-BLACK-ROGER-AUDEMARD?"
+
+In another moment St. Pierre's wife was at the deformed giant's side.
+She seemed tall beside him. She put her hands to his head and brushed
+back the grizzled black hair, laughing softly into his upturned face,
+her eyes shining and a strange glow in her cheeks. Carrigan, looking at
+them, felt his heart stand still. WAS THIS MAN ST. PIERRE? The thought
+came like a lightning flash--and went as quickly; it was impossible and
+inconceivable. And yet there was something more than pity in the voice
+of the woman who was speaking now.
+
+"No, no, we have not seen him, Andre--we have not seen Black Roger
+Audemard. If he comes, I will call you. I promise, Michiwan. I will
+call you!"
+
+She was stroking his bearded cheek, and then she put an arm about his
+twisted shoulders, and slowly she turned so that in a moment or two
+they were facing the sun--and it seemed to Carrigan that she was
+talking and sobbing and laughing in the same breath, as that great,
+broken hulk of a man moved out slowly from under the caress of her arm
+and went on his way. For a space she looked after him. Then in a swift
+movement she closed the door and faced Carrigan. She did not speak, but
+waited. Her head was high. She was breathing quickly. The tenderness
+that a moment before had filled her face was gone, and in her eyes was
+the blaze of fighting fires as she waited for him to speak--to give
+voice to what she knew was passing in his mind.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+For a space there was silence between Carrigan and St. Pierre's wife.
+He knew what she was thinking as she stood with her back to the door,
+waiting half defiantly, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes bright with
+the anticipation of battle. She was ready to fight for the broken
+creature on the other side of the door. She expected him to give no
+quarter in his questioning of her, to corner her if he could, to demand
+of her why the deformed giant had spoken the name of the man he was
+after, Black Roger Audemard. The truth hammered in David's brain. It
+had not been a delusion of his fevered mind after all; it was not a
+possible deception of the half-breed's, as he had thought last night.
+Chance had brought him face to face with the mystery of Black Roger.
+St. Pierre's wife, waiting for him to speak, was in some way associated
+with that mystery, and the cripple was asking for the man McVane had
+told him to bring in dead or alive! Yet he did not question her. He
+turned to the window and looked out from where Marie-Anne had stood a
+few moments before.
+
+The day was glorious. On the far shore he saw life where last night's
+camp had been. Men were moving about close to the water, and a York
+boat was putting out slowly into the stream. Close under the window
+moved a canoe with a single occupant. It was Andre, the Broken Man.
+With powerful strokes he was paddling across the river. His deformity
+was scarcely noticeable in the canoe. His bare head and black beard
+shone in the sun, and between his great shoulders his head looked more
+than ever to Carrigan like the head of a carven god. And this man, like
+a mighty tree stricken by lightning, his mind gone, was yet a thing
+that was more than mere flesh and blood to Marie-Anne Boulain!
+
+David turned toward her. Her attitude was changed. It was no longer one
+of proud defiance. She had expected to defend herself from something,
+and he had given her no occasion for defense. She did not try to hide
+the fact from him, and he nodded toward the window.
+
+"He is going away in a canoe. I am afraid you didn't want me to see
+him, and I am sorry I happened to be here when he came."
+
+"I made no effort to keep him away, M'sieu David. Perhaps I wanted you
+to see him. And I thought, when you did--" She hesitated.
+
+"You expected me to crucify you, if necessary, to learn the truth of
+what he knows about Roger Audemard," he said. "And you were ready to
+fight back. But I am not going to question you unless you give me
+permission."
+
+"I am glad," she said in a low voice. "I am beginning to have faith in
+you, M'sieu David. You have promised not to try to escape, and I
+believe you. Will you also promise not to ask me questions, which I can
+not answer--until St. Pierre comes?"
+
+"I will try."
+
+She came up to him slowly and stood facing him, so near that she could
+have reached out and put her hands on his shoulders.
+
+"St. Pierre has told me a great deal about the Scarlet Police," she
+said, looking at him quietly and steadily. "He says that the men who
+wear the red jackets never play low tricks, and that they come after a
+man squarely and openly. He says they are men, and many times he has
+told me wonderful stories of the things they have done. He calls it
+'playing the game.' And I'm going to ask you, M'sieu David, will you
+play square with me? If I give you the freedom of the bateau, of the
+boats, even of the shore, will you wait for St. Pierre and play the
+rest of the game out with him, man to man?"
+
+Carrigan bowed his head slightly. "Yes, I will wait and finish the game
+with St. Pierre."
+
+He saw a quick throb come and go in her white throat, and with a
+sudden, impulsive movement she held out her hand to him. For a moment
+he held it close. Her little fingers tightened about his own, and the
+warm thrill of them set his blood leaping with the thing he was
+fighting down. She was so near that he could feel the throb of her
+body. For an instant she bowed her head, and the sweet perfume of her
+hair was in his nostrils, the lustrous beauty of it close under his
+lips.
+
+Gently she withdrew her hand and stood back from him. To Carrigan she
+was like a young girl now. It was the loveliness of girlhood he saw in
+the flush of her face and in the gladness that was flaming unashamed in
+her eyes.
+
+"I am not frightened any more," she exclaimed, her voice trembling a
+bit. "When St. Pierre comes, I shall tell him everything. And then you
+may ask the questions, and he will answer. And he will not cheat! He
+will play square. You will love St. Pierre, and you will forgive me for
+what happened behind the rock!"
+
+She made a little gesture toward the door. "Everything is free to you
+out there now," she added. "I shall tell Bateese and the others. When
+we are tied up, you may go ashore. And we will forget all that has
+happened, M'sieu David. We will forget until St. Pierre comes."
+
+"St. Pierre!" he groaned. "If there were no St. Pierre!"
+
+"I should be lost," she broke in quickly. "I should want to die!"
+
+Through the open window came the sound of a voice. It was the weird
+monotone of Andre, the Broken Man. Marie-Anne went to the window. And
+David, following her, looked over her head, again so near that his lips
+almost touched her hair. Andre had come back. He was watching two York
+boats that were heading for the bateau.
+
+"You heard him asking for Black Roger Audemard," she said. "It is
+strange. I know how it must have shocked you when he stood like that in
+the door. His mind, like his body, is a wreck, M'sieu David. Years ago,
+after a great storm, St. Pierre found him in the forest. A tree had
+fallen on him. St. Pierre carried him in on his shoulders. He lived,
+but he has always been like that. St. Pierre loves him, and poor Andre
+worships St. Pierre and follows him about like a dog. His brain is
+gone. He does not know what his name is, and we call him Andre. And
+always, day and night, he is asking that same question, 'Has any one
+seen Black Roger Audemard?' Sometime--if you will, M'sieu David--I
+should like to have you tell me what it is so terrible that you know
+about Roger Audemard."
+
+The York boats were half-way across the river, and from them came a
+sudden burst of wild song. David could make out six men in each boat,
+their oars flashing in the morning sun to the rhythm of their chant.
+Marie-Anne looked up at him suddenly, and in her face and eyes he saw
+what the starry gloom of evening had half hidden from him in those
+thrilling moments when they shot through the rapids of the Holy Ghost.
+She was girl now. He did not think of her as woman. He did not think of
+her as St. Pierre's wife. In that upward glance of her eyes was
+something that thrilled him to the depth of his soul. She seemed, for a
+moment, to have dropped a curtain from between herself and him.
+
+Her red lips trembled, she smiled at him, and then she faced the river
+again, and he leaned a little forward, so that a breath of wind floated
+a shimmering tress of her hair against his cheek. An irresistible
+impulse seized upon him. He leaned still nearer to her, holding his
+breath, until his lips softly touched one of the velvety coils of her
+hair. And then he stepped back. Shame swept over him. His heart rose
+and choked him, and his fists were clenched at his side. She had not
+noticed what he had done, and she seemed to him like a bird yearning to
+fly out through the window, throbbing with the desire to answer the
+chanting song that came over the water. And then she was smiling up
+again into his face hardened with the struggle which he was making with
+himself.
+
+"My people are happy," she cried. "Even in storm they laugh and sing.
+Listen, m'sieu. They are singing La Derniere Domaine. That is our song.
+It is what we call our home, away up there in the lost wilderness where
+people never come--the Last Domain. Their wives and sweethearts and
+families are up there, and they are happy in knowing that today we
+shall travel a few miles nearer to them. They are not like your people
+in Montreal and Ottawa and Quebec, M'sieu David. They are like
+children. And yet they are glorious children!"
+
+She ran to the wall and took down the banner of St. Pierre Boulain.
+"St. Pierre is behind us," she explained. "He is coming down with a
+raft of timber such as we can not get in our country, and we are
+waiting for him. But each day we must float down with the stream a few
+miles nearer the homes of my people. It makes them happier, even though
+it is but a few miles. They are coming now for my bateau. We shall
+travel slowly, and it will be wonderful on a day like this. It will do
+you good to come outside, M'sieu David--with me. Would you care for
+that? Or would you rather be alone?"
+
+In her face there was no longer the old restraint. On her lips was the
+witchery of a half-smile; in her eyes a glow that flamed the blood in
+his veins. It was not a flash of coquetry. It was something deeper and
+warmer than that, something real--a new Marie-Anne Boulain telling him
+plainly that she wanted him to come. He did not know that his hands
+were still clenched at his side. Perhaps she knew. But her eyes did not
+leave his face, eyes that were repeating the invitation of her lips,
+openly asking him not to refuse.
+
+"I shall be happy to come," he said.
+
+The words fell out of him numbly. He scarcely heard them or knew what
+he was saying, yet he was conscious of the unnatural note in his voice.
+He did not know he was betraying himself beyond that, did not see the
+deepening of the wild-rose flush in the cheeks of St. Pierre's wife. He
+picked up his pipe from the table and moved to accompany her.
+
+"You must wait a little while," she said, and her hand rested for an
+instant upon his arm. Its touch was as light as the touch of his lips
+had been against her shining hair, but he felt it in every nerve of his
+body. "Nepapinas is making a special lotion for your hurt. I will send
+him in, and then you may come."
+
+The wild chant of the rivermen was near as she turned to the door. From
+it she looked back at him swiftly.
+
+"They are happy, M'sieu David," she repeated softly. "And I, too, am
+happy. I am no longer afraid. And the world is beautiful again. Can you
+guess why? It is because you have given me your promise, M'sieu David,
+and because I believe you!"
+
+And then she was gone.
+
+For many minutes he did not move. The chanting of the rivermen, a
+sudden wilder shout, the voices of men, and after that the grating of
+something alongside the bateau came to him like sounds from another
+world. Within himself there was a crash greater than that of physical
+things. It was the truth breaking upon him, truth surging over him like
+the waves of a sea, breaking down the barriers he had set up,
+inundating him with a force that was mightier than his own will. A
+voice in his soul was crying out the truth--that above all else in the
+world he wanted to reach out his arms to this glorious creature who was
+the wife of St. Pierre, this woman who had tried to kill him and was
+sorry. He knew that it was not desire for beauty. It was the worship
+which St. Pierre himself must have for this woman who was his wife. And
+the shock of it was like a conflagration sweeping through him, leaving
+him dead and shriven, like the crucified trees standing in the wake of
+a fire. A breath that was almost a cry came from him, and his fists
+knotted until they were purple. She was St. Pierre's wife! And he,
+David Carrigan, proud of his honor, proud of the strength that made him
+man, had dared covet her in this hour when her husband was gone! He
+stared at the closed door, beginning to cry out against himself, and
+over him there swept slowly and terribly another thing--the shame of
+his weakness, the hopelessness of the thing that for a space had eaten
+into him and consumed him.
+
+And as he stared, the door opened, and Nepapinas came in.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+During the next quarter of an hour David was as silent as the old
+Indian doctor. He was conscious of no pain when Nepapinas took off his
+bandage and bathed his head in the lotion he had brought. Before a
+fresh bandage was put on, he looked at himself for a moment in the
+mirror. It was the first time he had seen his wound, and he expected to
+find himself marked with a disfiguring scar. To his surprise there was
+no sign of his hurt except a slightly inflamed spot above his temple.
+He stared at Nepapinas, and there was no need of the question that was
+in his mind.
+
+The old Indian understood, and his dried-up face cracked and crinkled
+in a grin. "Bullet hit a piece of rock, an' rock, not bullet, hit um
+head," he explained. "Make skull almost break--bend um in--but
+Nepapinas straighten again with fingers, so-so." He shrugged his thin
+shoulders with a cackling laugh of pride as he worked his claw-like
+fingers to show how the operation had been done.
+
+David shook hands with him in silence; then Nepapinas put on the fresh
+bandage, and after that went out, chuckling again in his weird way, as
+though he had played a great joke on the white man whom his wizardry
+had snatched out of the jaws of death.
+
+For some time there had been a subdued activity outside. The singing of
+the boatmen had ceased, a low voice was giving commands, and looking
+through the window, David saw that the bateau was slowly swinging away
+from the shore. He turned from the window to the table and lighted the
+cigar St. Pierre's wife had given him.
+
+In spite of the mental struggle he had made during the presence of
+Nepapinas, he had failed to get a grip on himself. For a time he had
+ceased to be David Carrigan, the man-hunter. A few days ago his blood
+had run to that almost savage thrill of the great game of one against
+one, the game in which Law sat on one side of the board and Lawlessness
+on the other, with the cards between. It was the great gamble. The
+cards meant life or death; there was never a checkmate--one or the
+other had to lose. Had some one told him then that soon he would meet
+the broken and twisted hulk of a man who had known Black Roger
+Audemard, every nerve in him would have thrilled in anticipation of
+that hour. He realized this as he paced back and forth over the thick
+rugs of the bateau floor. And he knew, even as he struggled to bring
+them back, that the old thrill and the old desire were gone. It was
+impossible to lie to himself. St. Pierre, in this moment, was of more
+importance to him than Roger Audemard. And St. Pierre's wife,
+Marie-Anne--
+
+His eyes fell on the crumpled handkerchief on the piano keys. Again he
+was crushing it in the palm of his hand, and again the flood of
+humiliation and shame swept over him. He dropped the handkerchief, and
+the great law of his own life seemed to rise up in his face and taunt
+him. He was clean. That had been his greatest pride. He hated the man
+who was unclean. It was his instinct to kill the man who desecrated
+another man's home. And here, in the sacredness of St. Pierre's
+paradise, he found himself at last face to face with that greatest
+fight of all the ages.
+
+He faced the door. He threw back his shoulders until they snapped, and
+he laughed, as if at the thing that had risen up to point its finger at
+him. After all, it did not hurt a man to go through a bit of fire--if
+he came out of it unburned. And deep in his heart he knew it was not a
+sin to love, even as he loved, if he kept that love to himself. What he
+had done when Marie-Anne stood at the window he could not undo. St.
+Pierre would probably have killed him for touching her hair with his
+lips, and he would not have blamed St. Pierre. But she had not felt
+that stolen caress. No one knew--but himself. And he was happier
+because of it. It was a sort of sacred thing, even though it brought
+the heat of shame into his face.
+
+He went to the door, opened it, and stood out in the sunshine. It was
+good to feel the warmth of the sun in his face again and the sweet air
+of the open day in his lungs. The bateau was free of the shore and
+drifting steadily towards midstream. Bateese was at the great birchwood
+rudder sweep, and to David's surprise he nodded in a friendly way, and
+his wide mouth broke into a grin.
+
+"Ah, it is coming soon, that fight of ours, little coq de bruyere!" he
+chuckled gloatingly. "An' ze fight will be jus' lak that, m'sieu--you
+ze little fool-hen's rooster, ze partridge, an' I, Concombre Bateese,
+ze eagle!"
+
+The anticipation in the half-breed's eyes reflected itself for an
+instant in David's. He turned back into the cabin, bent over his pack,
+and found among his clothes two pairs of boxing gloves. He fondled them
+with the loving touch of a brother and comrade, and their velvety
+smoothness was more soothing to his nerves than the cigar he was
+smoking. His one passion above all others was boxing, and wherever he
+went, either on pleasure or adventure, the gloves went with him. In
+many a cabin and shack of the far hinterland he had taught white men
+and Indians how to use them, so that he might have the pleasure of
+feeling the thrill of them on his hands. And now here was Concombre
+Bateese inviting him on, waiting for him to get well!
+
+He went out and dangled the clumsy-looking mittens under the
+half-breed's nose.
+
+Bateese looked at them curiously. "Mitaines," he nodded. "Does ze
+little partridge rooster keep his claws warm in those in ze winter?
+They are clumsy, m'sieu. I can make a better mitten of caribou skin."
+Putting on one of the gloves, David doubled up his fist. "Do you see
+that, Concombre Bateese?" he asked. "Well, I will tell you this, that
+they are not mittens to keep your hands warm. I am going to fight you
+in them when our time comes. With these mittens I will fight you and
+your naked fists. Why? Because I do not want to hurt you too badly,
+friend Bateese! I do not want to break your face all to pieces, which I
+would surely do if I did not put on these soft mittens. Then, when you
+have really learned to fight--"
+
+The bull neck of Concombre Bateese looked as if it were about to burst.
+His eyes seemed ready to pop out of their sockets, and suddenly he let
+out a roar. "What!--You dare talk lak that to Concombre Bateese, w'at
+is great'st fightin' man on all T'ree River? You talk lak that to me,
+Concombre Bateese, who will kill ze bear wit' hees ban's, who pull down
+ze tree, who--who--"
+
+The word-flood of his outraged dignity sprang to his lips; emotion
+choked him, and then, looking suddenly over Carrigan's shoulder--he
+stopped. Something in his look made David turn. Three paces behind him
+stood Marie-Anne, and he knew that from the corner of the cabin she had
+heard what had passed between them. She was biting her lips, and behind
+the flash of her eyes he saw laughter.
+
+"You must not quarrel, children," she said. "Bateese, you are steering
+badly."
+
+She reached out her hands, and without a word David gave her the
+gloves. With her palm and fingers she caressed them softly, yet David
+saw little lines of doubt come into her white forehead.
+
+"They are pretty--and soft, M'sieu David. Surely they can not hurt
+much! Some day when St. Pierre comes, will you teach me how to use
+them?"
+
+"Always it is 'When St. Pierre comes,'" he replied. "Shall we be
+waiting long?"
+
+"Two or three days, perhaps a little longer. Are you coming with me to
+the proue, m'sieu?"
+
+She did not wait for his answer, but went ahead of him, dangling the
+two pairs of gloves at her side. David caught a last glimpse of the
+half-breed's face as he followed Marie-Anne around the end of the
+cabin. Bateese was making a frightful grimace and shaking his huge
+fist, but scarcely were they out of sight on the narrow footway that
+ran between the cabin and the outer timbers of the scow when a huge
+roar of laughter followed them. Bateese had not done laughing when they
+reached the proue, or bow-nest, a deck fully ten feet in length by
+eight in width, sheltered above by an awning, and comfortably arranged
+with chairs, several rugs, a small table, and, to David's amazement, a
+hammock. He had never seen anything like this on the Three Rivers, nor
+had he ever heard of a scow so large or so luxuriously appointed. Over
+his head, at the tip of a flagstaff attached to the forward end of the
+cabin, floated the black and white pennant of St. Pierre Boulain. And
+under this staff was a screened door which undoubtedly opened into the
+kitchenette which Marie-Anne had told him about. He made no effort to
+hide his surprise. But St. Pierre's wife seemed not to notice it. The
+puckery little lines were still in her forehead, and the laughter had
+faded out of her eyes. The tiny lines deepened as there came another
+wild roar of laughter from Bateese in the stern.
+
+"Is it true that you have given your word to fight Bateese?" she asked.
+
+"It is true, Marie-Anne. And I feel that Bateese is looking ahead
+joyously to the occasion."
+
+"He is," she affirmed. "Last night he spread the news among all my
+people. Those who left to join St. Pierre this morning have taken the
+news with them, and there is a great deal of excitement and much
+betting. I am afraid you have made a bad promise. No man has offered to
+fight Bateese in three years--not even my great St. Pierre, who says
+that Concombre is more than a match for him."
+
+"And yet they must have a little doubt, as there is betting, and it
+takes two to make a bet," chuckled David.
+
+The lines went out of Marie-Anne's forehead, and a half-smile trembled
+on her red lips. "Yes, there is betting. But those who are for you are
+offering next autumn's muskrat skins and frozen fish against lynx and
+fisher and marten. The odds are about thirty to one against you, M'sieu
+David!"
+
+The look of pity which was clearly in her eyes brought a rush of blood
+to David's face. "If only I had something to wager!" he groaned.
+
+"You must not fight. I shall forbid it!"
+
+"Then Bateese and I will steal off into the forest and have it out by
+ourselves."
+
+"He will hurt you badly. He is terrible, like a great beast, when he
+fights. He loves to fight and is always asking if there is not some one
+who will stand up to him. I think he would desert even me for a good
+fight. But you, M'sieu David--"
+
+"I also love a fight," he admitted, unashamed.
+
+St. Pierre's wife studied him thoughtfully for a moment. "With these?"
+she asked then, holding up the gloves.
+
+"Yes, with those. Bateese may use his fists, but I shall use those, so
+that I shall not disfigure him permanently. His face is none too
+handsome as it is."
+
+For another flash her lips trembled on the edge of a smile. Then she
+gave him the gloves, a bit troubled, and nodded to a chair with a deep,
+cushioned seat and wide arms. "Please make yourself comfortable, M'sieu
+David. I have something to do in the cabin and will return in a little
+while."
+
+He wondered if she had gone back to settle the matter with Bateese at
+once, for it was clear that she did not regard with favor the promised
+bout between himself and the half-breed. It was on the spur of a
+careless moment that he had promised to fight Bateese, and with little
+thought that it was likely to be carried out or that it would become a
+matter of importance with all of St. Pierre's brigade. He was evidently
+in for it, he told himself, and as a fighting man it looked as though
+Concombre Bateese was at least the equal of his braggadocio. He was
+glad of that. He grinned as he watched the bending backs of St.
+Pierre's men. So they were betting thirty to one against him! Even St.
+Pierre might be induced to bet--with HIM. And if he did--
+
+The hot blood leaped for a moment in Carrigan's veins. The thrill went
+to the tips of his fingers. He stared out over the river, unseeing, as
+the possibilities of the thing that had come into his mind made him for
+a moment oblivious of the world. He possessed one thing against which
+St. Pierre and St. Pierre's wife would wager a half of all they owned
+in the world! And if he should gamble that one thing, which had come to
+him like an inspiration, and should whip Bateese--
+
+He began to pace back and forth over the narrow deck, no longer
+watching the rowers or the shore. The thought grew, and his mind was
+consumed by it. Thus far, from the moment the first shot was fired at
+him from the ambush, he had been playing with adventure in the dark.
+But fate had at last dealt him a trump card. That something which he
+possessed was more precious than furs or gold to St. Pierre, and St.
+Pierre would not refuse the wager when it was offered. He would not
+dare refuse. More than that, he would accept eagerly, strong in the
+faith that Bateese would whip him as he had whipped all other fighters
+who had come up against him along the Three Rivers. And when Marie-Anne
+knew what that wager was to be, she, too, would pray for the gods of
+chance to be with Concombre Bateese!
+
+He did not hear the light footsteps behind him, and when he turned
+suddenly in his pacing, he found himself facing Marie-Anne, who carried
+in her hands the little basket he had seen on the cabin table. She
+seated herself in the hammock and took from the basket a bit of lace
+work. For a moment he watched her fingers flashing in and out with the
+needles.
+
+Perhaps his thought went to her. He was almost frightened as he saw her
+cheeks coloring under the long, dark lashes. He faced the rivermen
+again, and while he gripped at his own weakness, he tried to count the
+flashings of their oars. And behind him, the beautiful eyes of St.
+Pierre's wife were looking at him with a strange glow in their depths.
+
+"Do you know," he said, speaking slowly and still looking toward the
+flashing of the oars, "something tells me that unexpected things are
+going to happen when St. Pierre returns. I am going to make a bet with
+him that I can whip Bateese. He will not refuse. He will accept. And
+St. Pierre will lose, because I shall whip Bateese. It is then that
+these unexpected things will begin to happen. And I am wondering--after
+they do happen--if you will care so very much?"
+
+There was a moment of silence. And then, "I don't want you to fight
+Bateese," she said.
+
+The needles were working swiftly when he turned toward her again, and a
+second time the long lashes shadowed what a moment before he might have
+seen in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+The morning passed like a dream to Carrigan. He permitted himself to
+live and breathe it as one who finds himself for a space in the heart
+of a golden mirage. He was sitting so near Marie-Anne that now and then
+the faint perfume of her came to him like the delicate scent of a
+flower. It was a breath of crushed violets, sweet as the air he was
+breathing, violets gathered in the deep cool of the forest, a whisper
+of sweetness about her, as if on her bosom she wore always the living
+flowers. He fancied her gathering them last bloom-time, a year ago,
+alone, her feet seeking out the damp mosses, her little fingers
+plucking the smiling and laughing faces of the violet flowers to be
+treasured away in fragrant sachets, as gentle as the wood-thrush's
+note, compared with the bottled aromas fifteen hundred miles south. It
+seemed to be a physical part of her, a thing born of the glow in her
+cheeks, a living exhalation of her soft red lips--and yet only when he
+was near, very near, did the life of it reach him.
+
+She did not know he was thinking these things. There was nothing in his
+voice, he thought, to betray him. He was sure she was unconscious of
+the fight he was making. Her eyes smiled and laughed with him, she
+counted her stitches, her fingers worked, and she talked to him as she
+might have talked to a friend of St. Pierre's. She told him how St.
+Pierre had made the barge, the largest that had ever been on the river,
+and that he had built it entirely of dry cedar, so that it floated like
+a feather wherever there was water enough to run a York boat. She told
+him how St. Pierre had brought the piano down from Edmonton, and how he
+had saved it from pitching in the river by carrying the full weight of
+it on his shoulders when they met with an accident in running through a
+dangerous rapids bringing it down. St. Pierre was a very strong man,
+she said, a note of pride in her voice. And then she added,
+
+"Sometimes, when he picks me up in his arms, I feel that he is going to
+squeeze the life out of me!"
+
+Her words were like a sharp thrust into his heart. For an instant they
+painted a vision for him, a picture of that slim and adorable creature
+crushed close in the great arms of St. Pierre, so close that she could
+not breathe. In that mad moment of his hurt it was almost a living,
+breathing reality for him there on the golden fore-deck of the scow. He
+turned his face toward the far shore, where the wilderness seemed to
+reach off into eternity. What a glory it was--the green seas of spruce
+and cedar and balsam, the ridges of poplar and birch rising like
+silvery spume above the darker billows, and afar off, mellowed in the
+sun-mists, the guardian crests of Trout Mountains sentineling the
+country beyond! Into that mystery-land on the farther side of the
+Wabiskaw waterways Carrigan would have loved to set his foot four days
+ago. It was that mystery of the unpeopled places that he most desired,
+their silence, the comradeship of spaces untrod by the feet of man. And
+now, what a fool he was! Through vast distances the forests he loved
+seemed to whisper it to him, and ahead of him the river seemed to look
+back, nodding over its shoulder, beckoning to him, telling him the word
+of the forests was true. It streamed on lazily, half a mile wide, as if
+resting for the splashing and roaring rush it would make among the
+rocks of the next rapids, and in its indolence it sang the low and
+everlasting song of deep and slowly passing water. In that song David
+heard the same whisper, that he was a fool! And the lure of the
+wilderness shores crept in on him and gripped him as of old. He looked
+at the rowers in the two York boats, and then his eyes came back to the
+end of the barge and to St. Pierre's wife.
+
+Her little toes were tapping the floor of the deck. She, too, was
+looking out over the wilderness. And again it seemed to him that she
+was like a bird that wanted to fly.
+
+"I should like to go into those hills," she said, without looking at
+him. "Away off yonder!"
+
+"And I--I should like to go with you."
+
+"You love all that, m'sieu?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, madame!"
+
+"Why 'madame,' when I have given you permission to call me
+'Marie-Anne'?" she demanded.
+
+"Because you call me 'm'sieu'."
+
+"But you--you have not given me permission--"
+
+"Then I do now," he interrupted quickly.
+
+"Merci! I have wondered why you did not return the courtesy," she
+laughed softly. "I do not like the m'sieu. I shall call you 'David'!"
+
+She rose out of the hammock suddenly and dropped her needles and lace
+work into the little basket. "I have forgotten something. It is for you
+to eat when it comes dinner-time, m'sieu--I mean David. So I must turn
+fille de cuisine for a little while. That is what St. Pierre sometimes
+calls me, because I love to play at cooking. I am going to bake a pie!"
+
+The dark-screened door of the kitchenette closed behind her, and
+Carrigan walked out from under the awning, so that the sun beat down
+upon him. There was no longer a doubt in his mind. He was more than
+fool. He envied St. Pierre, and he coveted that which St. Pierre
+possessed. And yet, before he would take what did not belong to him, he
+knew he would put a pistol to his head and blow his life out. He was
+confident of himself there. Yet he had fallen, and out of the mire into
+which he had sunk he knew also that he must drag himself, and quickly,
+or be everlastingly lowered in his own esteem. He stripped himself
+naked and did not lie to that other and greater thing of life that was
+in him.
+
+He was not only a fool, but a coward. Only a coward would have touched
+the hair of St. Pierre's wife with his lips; only a coward would have
+let live the thoughts that burned in his brain. She was St. Pierre's
+wife--and he was anxious now for the quick homecoming of the chief of
+the Boulains. After that everything would happen quickly. He thanked
+God that the inspiration of the wager had come to him. After the fight,
+after he had won, then once more would he be the old Dave Carrigan,
+holding the trump hand in a thrilling game.
+
+Loud voices from the York boats ahead and answering cries from Bateese
+in the stern drew him to the open deck. The bateau was close to shore,
+and the half-breed was working the long stern sweep as if the power of
+a steam-engine was in his mighty arms. The York boats had shortened
+their towline and were pulling at right angles within a few yards of a
+gravelly beach. A few strokes more, and men who were bare to the knees
+jumped out into shallow water and began tugging at the tow rope with
+their hands. David looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock. Never in
+his life had time passed so swiftly as that morning on the forward deck
+of the barge. And now they were tying up, after a drop of six or eight
+miles down the river, and he wondered how swiftly St. Pierre was
+overtaking them with his raft.
+
+He was filled with the desire to feel the soft crush of the earth under
+his feet again, and not waiting for the long plank that Bateese was
+already swinging from the scow to the shore, he made a leap that put
+him on the sandy beach, St. Pierre's wife had given him this
+permission, and he looked to see what effect his act had on the
+half-breed. The face of Concombre Bateese was like sullen stone. Not a
+sound came from his thick lips, but in his eyes was a deep and
+dangerous fire as he looked at Carrigan. There was no need for words.
+In them were suspicion, warning, the deadly threat of what would happen
+if he did not come back when it was time to return. David nodded. He
+understood. Even though St. Pierre's wife had faith in him, Bateese had
+not. He passed between the men, and to a man their faces turned on him,
+and in their quiet and watchful eyes he saw again that warning and
+suspicion, the unspoken threat of what would happen if he forgot his
+promise to Marie-Anne Boulain. Never, in a single outfit, had he seen
+such splendid men. They were not a mongrel assortment of the lower
+country. Slim, tall, clean-cut, sinewy--they were stock of the old
+voyageurs of a hundred years ago, and all of them were young. The older
+men had gone to St. Pierre. The reason for this dawned upon Carrigan.
+Not one of these twelve but could beat him in a race through the
+forest; not one that could not outrun him and cut him off though he had
+hours the start!
+
+Passing beyond them, he paused and looked back at the bateau. On the
+forward deck stood Marie-Anne, and she, too, was looking at him now.
+Even at that distance he saw that her face was quiet and troubled with
+anxiety. She did not smile when he lifted his hat to her, but gave only
+a little nod. Then he turned and buried himself in the green balsams
+that grew within fifty paces of the river. The old joy of life leaped
+into him as his feet crushed in the soft moss of the shaded places
+where the sun did not break through. He went on, passing through a vast
+and silent cathedral of spruce and cedar so dense that the sky was
+hidden, and came then to higher ground, where the evergreen was
+sprinkled with birch and poplar. About him was an invisible choir of
+voices, the low twittering of timid little gray-backs, the song of
+hidden--warblers, the scolding of distant jays. Big-eyed moose-birds
+stared at him as he passed, fluttering so close to his face that they
+almost touched his shoulders in their foolish inquisitiveness. A
+porcupine crashed within a dozen feet of his trail. And then he came to
+a beaten path, and other paths worn deep in the cool, damp earth by the
+hoofs of moose and caribou. Half a mile from the bateau he sat down on
+a rotting log and filled his pipe with fresh tobacco, while he listened
+to catch the subdued voice of the life in this land that he loved.
+
+It was then that the curious feeling came over him that he was not
+alone, that other eyes than those of beast and bird were watching him.
+It was an impression that grew on him. He seemed to feel their stare,
+seeking him out from the darkest coverts, waiting for him to shove on,
+dogging him like a ghost. Within him the hound-like instincts of the
+man-hunter rose swiftly to the suspicion of invisible presence.
+
+He began to note the changes in the cries of certain birds. A hundred
+yards on his right a jay, most talkative of all the forest things, was
+screeching with a new note in its voice. On the other side of him, in a
+dense pocket of poplar and spruce, a warbler suddenly brought its song
+to a jerky end. He heard the excited Pe-wee--Pe-wee--Pe-wee of a
+startled little gray-back giving warning of an unwelcome intruder near
+its nest. And he rose to his feet, laughing softly as he thumbed down
+the tobacco in his pipe. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain might believe in
+him, but Bateese and her wary henchmen had ways of their own of
+strengthening their faith.
+
+It was close to noon when he turned back, and he did not return by the
+moose path. Deliberately he struck out a hundred yards on either side
+of it, traveling where the moss grew thick and the earth was damp and
+soft. And five times he found the moccasin-prints of men.
+
+Bateese, with his sleeves up, was scrubbing the deck of the bateau when
+David came over the plank.
+
+"There are moose and caribou in there, but I fear I disturbed your
+hunters," said Carrigan, grinning at the half-breed. "They are too
+clumsy to hunt well, so clumsy that even the birds give them away. I am
+afraid we shall go without fresh meat tomorrow!"
+
+Concombre Bateese stared as if some one had stunned him with a blow,
+and he spoke no word as David went on to the forward deck. Marie-Anne
+had come out under the awning. She gave a little cry of relief and
+pleasure.
+
+"I am glad you have come back, M'sieu David!"
+
+"So am I, madame," he replied. "I think the woods are unhealthful to
+travel in!"
+
+Out of the earth he felt that a part of the old strength had returned
+to him. Alone they sat at dinner, and Marie-Anne waited on him and
+called him David again--and he found it easier now to call her
+Marie-Anne and look into her eyes without fear that he was betraying
+himself. A part of the afternoon he spent in her company, and it was
+not difficult for him to tell her something of his adventuring in the
+north, and how, body and soul, the northland had claimed him, and that
+he hoped to die in it when his time came. Her eyes glowed at that. She
+told him of two years she had spent in Montreal and Quebec, of her
+homesickness, her joy when she returned to her forests. It seemed, for
+a time, that they had forgotten St. Pierre. They did not speak of him.
+Twice they saw Andre, the Broken Man, but the name of Roger Audemard
+was not spoken. And a little at a time she told him of the hidden
+paradise of the Boulains away up in the unmapped wildernesses of the
+Yellowknife beyond the Great Bear, and of the great log chateau that
+was her home.
+
+A part of the afternoon he spent on shore. He filled a moosehide bag
+full of sand and suspended it from the limb of a tree, and for
+three-quarters of an hour pommeled it with his fists, much to the
+curiosity and amusement of St. Pierre's men, who could see nothing of
+man-fighting in these antics. But the exercise assured David that he
+had lost but little of his strength and that he would be in form to
+meet Bateese when the time came. Toward evening Marie-Anne joined him,
+and they walked for half an hour up and down the beach. It was Bateese
+who got supper. And after that Carrigan sat with Marie-Anne on the
+foredeck of the barge and smoked another of St. Pierre's cigars.
+
+The camp of the rivermen was two hundred yards below the bateau,
+screened between by a finger of hardwood, so that except when they
+broke into a chorus of laughter or strengthened their throats with
+snatches of song, there was no sound of their voices. But Bateese was
+in the stern, and Nepapinas was forever flitting in and out among the
+shadows on the shore, like a shadow himself, and Andre, the Broken Man,
+hovered near as night came on. At last he sat down in the edge of the
+white sand of the beach, and there he remained, a silent and lonely
+figure, as the twilight deepened. Over the world hovered a sleepy
+quiet. Out of the forest came the droning of the wood-crickets, the
+last twitterings of the day birds, and the beginning of night sounds. A
+great shadow floated out over the river close to the bateau, the first
+of the questing, blood-seeking owls adventuring out like pirates from
+their hiding-places of the day. One after another, as the darkness
+thickened, the different tribes of the people of the night answered the
+summons of the first stars. A mile down the river a loon gave its harsh
+love-cry; far out of the west came the faint trail-song of a wolf; in
+the river the night-feeding trout splashed like the tails of beaver;
+over the roof of the wilderness came the coughing, moaning challenge of
+a bull moose that yearned for battle. And over these same forest tops
+rose the moon, the stars grew thicker and brighter, and through the
+finger of hardwood glowed the fire of St. Pierre Boulain's men--while
+close beside him, silent in these hours of silence, David felt growing
+nearer and still nearer to him the presence of St. Pierre's wife.
+
+On the strip of sand Andre, the Broken Man, rose and stood like the
+stub of a misshapen tree. And then slowly he moved on and was swallowed
+up in the mellow glow of the night.
+
+"It is at night that he seeks," said St. Pierre's wife, for it was as
+if David had spoken the thought that was in his mind.
+
+David, for a moment, was silent. And then he said, "You asked me to
+tell you about Black Roger Audemard. I will, if you care to have me. Do
+you?"
+
+He saw the nodding of her head, though the moon and star-mist veiled
+her face.
+
+"Yes. What do the Police say about Roger Audemard?"
+
+He told her. And not once in the telling of the story did she speak or
+move. It was a terrible story at best, he thought, but he did not
+weaken it by smoothing over the details. This was his opportunity. He
+wanted her to know why he must possess the body of Roger Audemard, if
+not alive, then dead, and he wanted her to understand how important it
+was that he learn more about Andre, the Broken Man.
+
+"He was a fiend, this Roger Audemard," he began. "A devil in man shape,
+afterward called 'Black Roger' because of the color of his soul."
+
+Then he went on. He described Hatchet River Post, where the tragedy had
+happened; then told of the fight that came about one day between Roger
+Audemard and the factor of the post and his two sons. It was an unfair
+fight; he conceded that--three to one was cowardly in a fight. But it
+could not excuse what happened afterward. Audemard was beaten. He crept
+off into the forest, almost dead. Then he came back one stormy night in
+the winter with three strange friends. Who the friends were the Police
+never learned. There was a fight, but all through the fight Black Roger
+Audemard cried out not to kill the factor and his sons. In spite of
+that one of the sons was killed. Then the terrible thing happened. The
+father and his remaining son were bound hand and foot and fastened in
+the ancient dungeon room under the Post building. Then Black Roger set
+the building on fire, and stood outside in the storm and laughed like a
+madman at the dying shrieks of his victims. It was the season when the
+trappers were on their lines, and there were but few people at the
+post. The company clerk and one other attempted to interfere, and Black
+Roger killed them with his own hands. Five deaths that night--two of
+them horrible beyond description!
+
+Resting for a moment, Carrigan went on to tell of the long years of
+unavailing search made by the Police after that; how Black Roger was
+caught once and killed his captor. Then came the rumor that he was
+dead, and rumor grew into official belief, and the Police no longer
+hunted for his trails. Then, not long ago, came the discovery that
+Black Roger was still living, and he, Dave Carrigan, was after him.
+
+For a time there was silence after he had finished. Then St. Pierre's
+wife rose to her feet. "I wonder," she said in a low voice, "what Roger
+Audemard's own story might be if he were here to tell it?"
+
+She stepped out from under the awning, and in the full radiance of the
+moon he saw the pale beauty of her face and the crowning luster of her
+hair.
+
+"Good night!" she whispered.
+
+"Good night!" said David.
+
+He listened until her retreating footsteps died away, and for hours
+after that he had no thought of sleep. He had insisted that she take
+possession of her cabin again, and Bateese had brought out a bundle of
+blankets. These he spread under the awning, and when he drowsed off, it
+was to dream of the lovely face he had seen last in the glow of the
+moon.
+
+It was in the afternoon of the fourth day that two things happened--one
+that he had prepared himself for, and another so unexpected that for a
+space it sent his world crashing out of its orbit. With St. Pierre's
+wife he had gone again to the ridge-line for flowers, half a mile back
+from the river. Returning a new way, they came to a shallow stream, and
+Marie-Anne stood at the edge of it, and there was laughter in her
+shining eyes as she looked to the other side of it. She had twined
+flowers into her hair. Her cheeks were rich with color. Her slim figure
+was exquisite in its wild pulse of life.
+
+Suddenly she turned on him, her red lips smiling their witchery in his
+face. "You must carry me across," she said.
+
+He did not answer. He was a-tremble as he drew near her. She raised her
+arms a little, waiting. And then he picked her up. She was against his
+breast. Her two hands went to his shoulders as he waded into the
+stream; he slipped, and they clung a little tighter. The soft note of
+laughter was in her throat when the current came to his knees out in
+the middle of the stream. He held her tighter; and then stupidly, he
+slipped again, and the movement brought her lower in his arms, so that
+for a space her head was against his breast and his face was crushed in
+the soft masses of her hair. He came with her that way to the opposite
+shore and stood her on her feet again, standing back quickly so that
+she would not hear the pounding of his heart. Her face was radiantly
+beautiful, and she did not look at David, but away from him.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+And then, suddenly, they heard running feet behind them, and in another
+moment one of the brigade men came dashing through the stream. At the
+same time there came from the river a quarter of a mile away a
+thunderous burst of voice. It was not the voice of a dozen men, but of
+half a hundred, and Marie-Anne grew tense, listening, her eyes on fire
+even before the messenger could get the words out of his mouth.
+
+"It is St. Pierre!" he cried then. "He has come with the great raft,
+and you must hurry if you would reach the bateau before he lands!"
+
+In that moment it seemed to David that Marie-Anne forgot he was alive.
+A little cry came to her lips, and then she left him, running swiftly,
+saying no word to him, flying with the speed of a fawn to St. Pierre
+Boulain! And when David turned to the man who had come up behind them,
+there was a strange smile on the lips of the lithe-limbed forest-runner
+as his eyes followed the hurrying figure of St. Pierre's wife.
+
+Until she was out of sight he stood in silence and then he said:
+
+"Come, m'sieu. We, also, must meet St. Pierre!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+David moved slowly behind the brigade man. He had no desire to hurry.
+He did not wish to see what happened when Marie-Anne met St. Pierre
+Boulain. Only a moment ago she had been in his arms; her hair had
+smothered his face; her hands had clung to his shoulders; her flushed
+cheeks and long lashes had for an instant lain close against his
+breast. And now, swiftly, without a word of apology, she was running
+away from him to meet her husband.
+
+He almost spoke that word aloud as he saw the last of her slim figure
+among the silver birches. She was going to the man to whom she
+belonged, and there was no hesitation in the manner of her going. She
+was glad. And she was entirely forgetful of him, Dave Carrigan, in that
+gladness.
+
+He quickened his steps, narrowing the distance between him and the
+hurrying brigade man. Only the diseased thoughts in his brain had made
+the happening in the creek anything but an accident. It was all an
+accident, he told himself. Marie-Anne had asked him to carry her across
+just as she would have asked any one of her rivermen. It was his fault,
+and not hers, that he had slipped in mid-stream, and that his arms had
+closed tighter about her, and that her hair had brushed his face. He
+remembered she had laughed, when it seemed for a moment that they were
+going to fall into the stream together. Probably she would tell St.
+Pierre all about it. Surely she would never guess it had been nearer
+tragedy than comedy for him.
+
+Once more he was convinced he had proved himself a weakling and a fool.
+His business now was with St. Pierre, and the hour was at hand when the
+game had ceased to be a woman's game. He had looked ahead to this hour.
+He had prepared himself for it and had promised himself action that
+would be both quick and decisive. And yet, as he went on, his heart was
+still thumping unsteadily, and in his arms and against his face
+remained still the sweet, warm thrill of his contact with Marie-Anne.
+He could not drive that from him. It would never completely go. As long
+as he lived, what had happened in the creek would live with him. He did
+not deny that crying voice inside him. It was easy for his mouth to
+make words. He could call himself a fool and a weakling, but those
+words were purely mechanical, hollow, meaningless. The truth remained.
+It was a blazing fire in his breast, a conflagration that might easily
+get the best of him, a thing which he must fight and triumph over for
+his own salvation. He did not think of danger for Marie-Anne, for such
+a thought was inconceivable. The tragedy was one-sided. It was his own
+folly, his own danger. For just as he loved Marie-Anne, so did she love
+her husband, St. Pierre.
+
+He came to the low ridge close to the river and climbed up through the
+thick birches and poplars. At the top was a bald knob of sandstone,
+over which the riverman had already passed. David paused there and
+looked down on the broad sweep of the Athabasca.
+
+What he saw was like a picture spread out on the great breast of the
+river and the white strip of shoreline. Still a quarter of a mile
+upstream, floating down slowly with the current, was a mighty raft, and
+for a space his eyes took in nothing else. On the Mackenzie, the
+Athabasca, the Saskatchewan, and the Peace he had seen many rafts, but
+never a raft like this of St. Pierre Boulain. It was a hundred feet in
+width and twice and a half times as long, and with the sun blazing down
+upon it from out of a cloudless sky it looked to him like a little city
+swept up from out of some archaic and savage desert land to be
+transplanted to the river. It was dotted with tents and canvas
+shelters. Some of these were gray, and some were white, and two or
+three were striped with broad bands of yellow and red. Behind all these
+was a cabin, and over this there rose a slender staff from which
+floated the black and white pennant of St. Pierre. The raft was alive.
+Men were running between the tents. The long rudder sweeps were
+flashing in the sun. Rowers with naked arms and shoulders were
+straining their muscles in four York boats that were pulling like ants
+at the giant mass of timber. And to David's ears came a deep monotone
+of human voices, the chanting of the men as they worked.
+
+Nearer to him a louder response suddenly made answer to it. A dozen
+steps carried him round a projecting thumb of brush, and he could see
+the open shore where the bateau was tied. Marie-Anne had crossed the
+strip of sand, and Bateese was helping her into a waiting York boat.
+Then Bateese shoved it off, and the four men in it began to row. Two
+canoes were already half-way to the raft, and David recognized the
+occupant of one of them as Andre, the Broken Man. Then he saw
+Marie-Anne rise in the York boat and wave something white in her hand.
+
+He looked again toward the raft. The current and the sweeps and the
+tugging boats were drawing it steadily nearer. Standing at the very
+edge of it he saw now a solitary figure, and in the clear sunlight the
+man stood out clean-cut as a carven statue. He was a giant in size. His
+head and arms were bare, and he was looking steadily toward the bateau
+and the approaching York boat. He raised an arm, and a moment later the
+movement was followed by a voice that rose above all other voices. It
+boomed over the river like the rumble of a gun. In response to it
+Marie-Anne waved the white thing in her hand, and David thought he
+heard her voice in an answering cry. He stared again at the solitary
+figure of the man, seeing nothing else, hearing no other sound but the
+booming of the deep cry that came again over the river. His heart was
+thumping. In his eyes was a gathering fire. His body grew tense. For he
+knew that at last he was looking at St. Pierre, chief of the Boulains,
+and husband of the woman he loved.
+
+As the significance of the situation grew upon him, a flash of his old
+humor returned. It was the same grim humor that had possessed him
+behind the rock, when he had thought he was going to die. Fate had
+played him a dishonest turn then, and it was doing the same thing by
+him now. Unless he deliberately turned his face away, he was going to
+see the reunion of Marie-Anne and St. Pierre.
+
+Yesterday he had strapped his binoculars to his belt. Today Marie-Anne
+had looked through them a dozen times. They had been a source of
+pleasure and thrill to her. Now, David thought, they would be good
+medicine for him. He would see the whole thing through, and at close
+range. He would leave himself no room for doubt. He had laughed behind
+the rock, when bullets were zipping close to his head, and the same
+grim smile came to his lips now as he focused his glasses on the
+solitary figure at the head of the raft.
+
+The smile died away when he saw St. Pierre. It was as if he could reach
+out and touch him with his hand. And never, he thought, had he seen
+such a man. A moment before, a flashing vision had come to him from out
+of an Arabian desert; the multitude of colored tents, the half-naked
+men, the great raft floating almost without perceptible motion on the
+placid breast of the river had stirred his imagination until he saw a
+strange picture. But there was nothing Arabic, nothing desert-like, in
+this man his binoculars brought within a few feet of his eyes. He was
+more like a viking pirate who had roved the sea a few centuries ago.
+One great, bare arm was raised as David looked, and his booming voice
+was rolling over the river again. His hair was shaggy, and untrimmed,
+and red; he wore a short beard that glistened in the sun--he was
+laughing as he waved and shouted to Marie-Anne--a joyous, splendid
+giant of a man who seemed almost on the point of leaping into the water
+in his eagerness to clasp in his naked arms the woman who was coming to
+him.
+
+David drew a deep breath, and there came an unconscious tightening at
+his heart as he turned his glasses upon Marie-Anne. She was still
+standing in the bow of the York boat, and her back was toward him. He
+could see the glisten of the sun in her hair. She was waving her
+handkerchief, and the poise of her slim body told him that in her
+eagerness she would have darted from the bow of the boat had she
+possessed wings.
+
+Again he looked at St. Pierre. And this was the man who was no match
+for Concombre Bateese! It was inconceivable. Yet he heard Marie-Anne's
+voice repeating those very words in his ear. But she had surely been
+joking with him. She had been storing up this little surprise for him.
+She had wanted him to discover with his own eyes what a splendid man
+was this chief of the Boulains. And yet, as David stared, there came to
+him an unpleasant thought of the incongruity of this thing he was
+looking upon. It struck upon him like a clashing discord, the fact of
+matehood between these two--a condition inconsistent and out of tune
+with the beautiful things he had built up in his mind about the woman.
+In his soul he had enshrined her as a lovely wildflower, easily
+crushed, easily destroyed, a sweet treasure to be guarded from all that
+was rough and savage, a little violet-goddess as fragile as she was
+brave and loyal. And St. Pierre, standing there at the edge of his
+raft, looked as if he had come up out of the caves of a million years
+ago! There was something barbaric about him. He needed only a club and
+a shield and the skin of a beast about his loins to transform him into
+prehistoric man. At least these were his first impressions--impressions
+roused by thought of Marie-Anne's slim, beautiful body crushed close in
+the embrace of that laughing, powerful-lunged giant. Then the reaction
+swept over him. St. Pierre was not a monster, even though his disturbed
+mind unconsciously made an effort to conceive him as such. There were
+gladness and laughter in his face. There was the contagion of joy and
+good cheer in the voice that boomed over the water. Laughter and shouts
+answered it from the shore. The rowers in Marie-Anne's York boat burst
+into a wild and exultant snatch of song and made their oars fairly
+crack. There came a solitary yell from Andre, the Broken Man, who was
+close to the head of the raft now. And from the raft itself came a
+slowly swelling volume of sound, the urge and voice and exultation of
+red-blooded men a-thrill with the glory of this day and the wild
+freedom of their world. The truth came to David. St. Pierre Boulain was
+the beloved Big Brother of his people.
+
+He waited, his muscles tense, his jaws set tight. Good medicine, he
+called it again, a righteous sort of punishment set upon him for the
+moral cowardice he had betrayed in falling down in worship at the feet
+of another man's wife. The York boat was very close to the head of the
+raft now. He saw Marie-Anne herself fling a rope to St. Pierre. Then
+the boat swung alongside. In another moment St. Pierre had leaned over,
+and Marie-Anne was with him on the raft. For a space everything else in
+the world was obliterated for David. He saw St. Pierre's arms gather
+the slim form into their embrace. He saw Marie-Anne's hands go up
+fondly to the bearded face. And then--
+
+Carrigan cut the picture there. He turned his shoulder to the raft and
+snapped the binoculars in the case at his belt. Some one was coming in
+his direction from the bateau. It was the riverman who had brought to
+Marie-Anne the news of St. Pierre's arrival. David went down to meet
+him. From the foot of the ridge he again turned his eyes in the
+direction of the raft. St. Pierre and Marie-Anne were just about to
+enter the little cabin built in the center of the drifting mass of
+timber.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+It was easy for Carrigan to guess why the riverman had turned back for
+him. Men were busy about the bateau, and Concombre Bateese stood in the
+stern, a long pole in his hands, giving commands to the others. The
+bateau was beginning to swing out into the stream when he leaped
+aboard. A wide grin spread over the half-breed's face. He eyed David
+keenly and laughed in his deep chest, an unmistakable suggestiveness in
+the note of it.
+
+"You look seek, m'sieu," he said in an undertone, for David's ears
+alone, "You look ver' unhappy, an' pale lak leetle boy! Wat happen w'en
+you look t'rough ze glass up there, eh? Or ees it zat you grow frighten
+because ver' soon you stan' up an' fight Concombre Bateese? Eh, coq de
+bruyere? Ees it zat?"
+
+A quick thought came to David. "Is it true that St. Pierre can not whip
+you, Bateese?"
+
+Bateese threw out his chest with a mighty intake of breath. Then he
+exploded: "No man on all T'ree River can w'ip Concombre Bateese."
+
+"And St. Pierre is a powerful man," mused David, letting his eyes
+travel slowly from the half-breed's moccasined feet to the top of his
+head. "I measured him well through the glasses, Bateese. It will be a
+great fight. But I shall whip you!"
+
+He did not wait for the half-breed to reply, but went into the cabin
+and closed the door behind him. He did not like the taunting note of
+suggestiveness in the other's words. Was it possible that Bateese
+suspected the true state of his mind, that he was in love with the wife
+of St. Pierre, and that his heart was sick because of what he had seen
+aboard the raft? He flushed hotly. It made him uncomfortable to feel
+that even the half-breed might have guessed his humiliation.
+
+David looked through the window toward the raft. The bateau was
+drifting downstream, possibly a hundred feet from the shore, but it was
+quite evident that Concombre Bateese was making no effort to bring it
+close to the floating mass of timber, which had made no change in its
+course down the river. David's mind painted swiftly what was happening
+in the cabin into which Marie-Anne and St. Pierre had disappeared. At
+this moment Marie-Anne was telling of him, of the adventure in the hot
+patch of sand. He fancied the suppressed excitement in her voice as she
+unburdened herself. He saw St. Pierre's face darken, his muscles
+tighten--and crouching in silence, he seemed to see the misshapen hulk
+of Andre, the Broken Man, listening to what was passing between the
+other two. And he heard again the mad monotone of Andre's voice, crying
+plaintively, "HAS ANY ONE SEEN BLACK ROGER AUDEMARD?"
+
+His blood ran a little faster, and his old craft was a dominantly
+living thing within him once more. Love had dulled both his ingenuity
+and his desire. For a space a thing had risen before him that was
+mightier than the majesty of the Law, and he had TRIED to miss the
+bull's-eye--because of his love for the wife of St. Pierre Boulain. Now
+he shot squarely for it, and the bell rang in his brain. Two times two
+again made four. Facts assembled themselves like arguments in flesh and
+blood. Those facts would have convinced Superintendent McVane, and they
+now convinced David. He had set out to get Black Roger Audemard, alive
+or dead. And Black Roger, wholesale murderer, a monster who had painted
+the blackest page of crime known in the history of Canadian law, was
+closely and vitally associated with Marie-Anne and St. Pierre Boulain!
+
+The thing was a shock, but Carrigan no longer tried to evade the point.
+His business was no longer with a man supposed to be a thousand or
+fifteen hundred miles farther north. It was with Marie-Anne, St.
+Pierre, and Andre, the Broken Man. And also with Concombre Bateese.
+
+He smiled a little grimly as he thought of his approaching battle with
+the half-breed. St. Pierre would be astounded at the proposition he had
+in store for him. But he was sure that St. Pierre would accept. And
+then, if he won the fight with Bateese--
+
+The smile faded from his lips. His face grew older as he looked slowly
+about the bateau cabin, with its sweet and lingering whispers of a
+woman's presence. It was a part of her. It breathed of her fragrance
+and her beauty; it seemed to be waiting for her, crying softly for her
+return. Yet once had there been another woman even lovelier than the
+wife of St. Pierre. He had not hesitated then. Without great effort he
+had triumphed over the loveliness of Carmin Fanchet and had sent her
+brother to the hangman. And now, as he recalled those days, the truth
+came to him that even in the darkest hour Carmin Fanchet had made not
+the slightest effort to buy him off with her beauty. She had not tried
+to lure him. She had fought proudly and defiantly. And had Marie-Anne
+done that? His fingers clenched slowly, and a thickening came in his
+throat. Would she tell St. Pierre of the many hours they had spent
+together? Would she confess to him the secret of that precious moment
+when she had lain close against his breast, her arms about him, her
+face pressed to his? Would she speak to him of secret hours, of warm
+flushes that had come to her face, of glowing fires that at times had
+burned in her eyes when he had been very near to her? Would she reveal
+EVERYTHING to St. Pierre--her husband? He was powerless to combat the
+voice that told him no. Carmin Fanchet had fought him openly as an
+enemy and had not employed her beauty as a weapon. Marie-Anne had put
+in his way a great temptation. What he was thinking seemed to him like
+a sacrilege, yet he knew there could be no discriminating distinctions
+between weapons, now that he was determined to play the game to the
+end, for the Law.
+
+When Carrigan went out on deck, the half-breed was sweating from his
+exertion at the stern sweep. He looked at the agent de police who was
+going to fight him, perhaps tomorrow or the next day. There was a
+change in Carrigan. He was not the same man who had gone into the cabin
+an hour before, and the fact impressed itself upon Bateese. There was
+something in his appearance that held back the loose talk at the end of
+Concombre's tongue. And so it was Carrigan himself who spoke first.
+
+"When will this man St. Pierre come to see me?" he demanded. "If he
+doesn't come soon, I shall go to him."
+
+For an instant Concombre's face darkened. Then, as he bent over the
+sweep with his great back to David, he chuckled audibly, and said:
+
+"Would you go, m'sieu? Ah--it is le malade d'amour over there in the
+cabin. Surely you would not break in upon their love-making?"
+
+Bateese did not look over his shoulder, and so he did not see the hot
+flush that gathered in David's face. But David was sure he knew it was
+there and that Concombre had guessed the truth of matters. There was a
+sly note in his voice, as if he could not quite keep to himself his
+exultation that beauty and bright eyes had played a clever trick on
+this man who, if his own judgment had been followed, would now be
+resting peacefully at the bottom of the river. It was the final stab to
+Carrigan. His muscles tensed. For the first time he felt the desire to
+shoot a naked fist into the grinning mouth of Concombre Bateese. He
+laid a hand on the half-breed's shoulder, and Bateese turned about
+slowly. He saw what was in the other's eyes.
+
+"Until this moment I have not known what a great pleasure it will be to
+fight you, Bateese," said David quietly. "Make it tomorrow--in the
+morning, if you wish. Take word to St. Pierre that I will make him a
+great wager that I win, a gamble so large that I think he will be
+afraid to cover it. For I don't think much of this St. Pierre of yours,
+Bateese. I believe him to be a big-winded bluff, like yourself. And
+also a coward. Mark my word, he will be so much afraid that he will not
+accept my wager!"
+
+Bateese did not answer. He was looking over David's shoulder. He seemed
+not to have heard what the other had said, yet there had come a sudden
+gleam of exultation in his eyes, and he replied, still gazing toward
+the raft,
+
+"Diantre, m'sieu coq de bruyere may keep ze beeg word in hees mout'!
+See!--St. Pierre, he ees comin' to answer for himself. Mon Dieu, I hope
+he does not wring ze leetle rooster's neck, for zat would spoil wan
+great, gran' fight tomorrow!"
+
+David turned toward the big raft. At the distance which separated them
+he could make out the giant figure of St. Pierre Boulain getting into a
+canoe. The humped-up form already in that canoe he knew was the Broken
+Man. He could not see Marie-Anne.
+
+Very lightly Bateese touched his arm. "M'sieu will go into ze cabin,"
+he suggested softly. "If somet'ing happens, it ees bes' too many eyes
+do not see it. You understan', m'sieu agent de police?"
+
+Carrigan nodded. "I understand," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+In the cabin David waited. He did not look through the window to watch
+St. Pierre's approach. He sat down and picked up a magazine from the
+table upon which Marie-Anne's work-basket lay. He was cool as ice now.
+His blood flowed evenly and his pulse beat unhurriedly. Never had he
+felt himself more his own master, more like grappling with a situation.
+St. Pierre was coming to fight. He had no doubt of that. Perhaps not
+physically, at first. But, one way or another, something dynamic was
+bound to happen in the bateau cabin within the next half-hour. Now that
+the impending drama was close at hand, Carrigan's scheme of luring St.
+Pierre into the making of a stupendous wager seemed to him rather
+ridiculous. With calculating coldness he was forced to concede that St.
+Pierre would be somewhat of a fool to accept the wager he had in mind,
+when he was so completely in St. Pierre's power. For Marie-Anne and the
+chief of the Boulains, the bottom of the river would undoubtedly be the
+best and easiest solution, and the half-breed's suggestion might be
+acted upon after all.
+
+As his mind charged itself for the approaching struggle, David found
+himself staring at a double page in the magazine, given up entirely to
+impossibly slim young creatures exhibiting certain bits of illusive and
+mysterious feminine apparel. Marie-Anne had expressed her approbation
+in the form of pencil notes under several of them. Under a cobwebby
+affair that wreathed one of the slim figures he read, "St. Pierre will
+love this!" There were two exclamation points after that particular
+notation!
+
+David replaced the magazine on the table and looked toward the door.
+No, St. Pierre would not hesitate to put him at the bottom of the
+river, for her. Not if he, Dave Carrigan, made the solution of the
+matter a necessity. There were times, he told himself, when it was
+confoundedly embarrassing to force the letter of the law. And this was
+one of them. He was not afraid of the river bottom. He was thinking
+again of Marie-Anne.
+
+The scraping of a canoe against the side of the bateau recalled him
+suddenly to the moment at hand. He heard low voices, and one of them,
+he knew, was St. Pierre's. For an interval the voices continued,
+frequently so low that he could not distinguish them at all. For ten
+minutes he waited impatiently. Then the door swung open, and St. Pierre
+came in.
+
+Slowly and coolly David rose to meet him, and at the same moment the
+chief of the Boulains closed the door behind him. There was no greeting
+in Carrigan's manner. He was the Law, waiting, unexcited, sure of
+himself, impassive as a thing of steel. He was ready to fight. He
+expected to fight. It only remained for St. Pierre to show what sort of
+fight it was to be. And he was amazed at St. Pierre, without betraying
+that amazement. In the vivid light that shot through the western
+windows the chief of the Boulains stood looking at David. He wore a
+gray flannel shirt open at the throat, and it was a splendid throat
+David saw, and a splendid head above it, with its reddish beard and
+hair. But what he saw chiefly were St. Pierre's eyes. They were the
+sort of eyes he disliked to find in an enemy--a grayish, steely blue
+that reflected sunlight like polished flint. But there was no flash of
+battle-glow in them now. St. Pierre was neither excited nor in a bad
+humor. Nor did Carrigan's attitude appear to disturb him in the least.
+He was smiling; his eyes glowed with almost boyish curiosity as he
+stared appraisingly at David--and then, slowly, a low chuckle of
+laughter rose in his deep chest, and he advanced with an outstretched
+hand.
+
+"I am St. Pierre Boulain," he said. "I have heard a great deal about
+you, Sergeant Carrigan. You have had an unfortunate time!"
+
+Had the man advanced menacingly, David would have felt more
+comfortable. It was disturbing to have this giant come to him with an
+extended hand of apparent friendship when he had anticipated an
+entirely different sort of meeting. And St. Pierre was laughing at him!
+There was no doubt of that. And he had the colossal nerve to tell him
+that he had been unfortunate, as though being shot up by somebody's
+wife was a fairly decent joke!
+
+Carrigan's attitude did not change. He did not reach out a hand to meet
+the other. There was no responsive glimmer of humor in his eyes or on
+his lips. And seeing these things, St. Pierre turned his extended hand
+to the open box of cigars, so that he stood for a moment with his back
+toward him.
+
+"It's funny," he said, as if speaking to himself, and with only a
+drawling note of the French patois in his voice. "I come home, find my
+Jeanne in a terrible mix-up, a stranger in her room--and the stranger
+refuses to let me laugh or shake hands with him. Tonnerre, I say it is
+funny! And my Jeanne saved his life, and made him muffins, and gave him
+my own bed, and walked with him in the forest! Ah, the ungrateful
+cochon!"
+
+He turned, laughing openly, so that his deep voice filled the cabin.
+"Vous aves de la corde de pendu, m'sieu--yes, you are a lucky dog! For
+only one other man in the world would my Jeanne have done that. You are
+lucky because you were not ended behind the rock; you are lucky because
+you are not at the bottom of the river; you are lucky--"
+
+He shrugged his big shoulders hopelessly. "And now, after all our
+kindness and your good luck, you wait for me like an enemy, m'sieu.
+Diable, I can not understand!"
+
+For the life of him Carrigan could not, in these few moments, measure
+up his man. He had said nothing. He had let St. Pierre talk. And now
+St. Pierre stood there, one of the finest men he had ever looked upon,
+as if honestly overcome by a great wonder. And yet behind that apparent
+incredulity in his voice and manner David sensed the deep underflow of
+another thing. St. Pierre was all that Marie-Anne had claimed for him,
+and more. She had given him assurance of her unlimited confidence that
+her husband could adjust any situation in the world, and Carrigan
+conceded that St. Pierre measured up splendidly to that particular type
+of man. The smile had not left his face; the good humor was still in
+his eyes.
+
+David smiled back at him coldly. He recognized the cleverness of the
+other's play. St. Pierre was a man who would smile like that even as he
+fought, and Carrigan loved a smiling fighter, even when he had to slip
+steel bracelets over his wrists.
+
+"I am Sergeant Carrigan, of 'N' Division, Royal Northwest Mounted
+Police," he said, repeating the formula of the law. "Sit down, St.
+Pierre, and I will tell you a few things that have happened. And then--"
+
+"Non, non, it is not necessary, m'sieu. I have already listened for an
+hour, and I do not like to hear a story twice. You are of the Police. I
+love the Police. They are brave men, and brave men are my brothers. You
+are out after Roger Audemard, the rascal! Is it not so? And you were
+shot at behind the rock back there. You were almost killed. Ma foi, and
+it was my Jeanne who did the shooting! Yes, she thought you were
+another man." The chuckling, drum-like note of laughter came again out
+of St. Pierre's great chest. "It was bad shooting. I have taught her
+better, but the sun was blinding there in the hot, white sand. And
+after that--I know everything that has happened. Bateese was wrong. I
+shall scold him for wanting to put you at the bottom of the
+river--perhaps. Oui, ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut--that is it. A
+woman must have her way, and my Jeanne's gentle heart was touched
+because you were a brave and handsome man, M'sieu Carrigan. But I am
+not jealous. Jealousy is a worm that does not make friendship! And we
+shall be friends. Only as a friend could I take you to the Chateau
+Boulain, far up on the Yellowknife. And we are going there."
+
+In spite of what might have been the entirely proper thing to do at
+this particular moment, Carrigan's face broke into a smile as he drew a
+second chair up close to the table. He was swift to readjust himself.
+It came suddenly back to him how he had grinned behind the rock, when
+death seemed close at hand. And St. Pierre was like that now. David
+measured him again as the chief of the Boulains sat down opposite him.
+Such a man could not be afraid of anything on the face of the earth,
+even of the Law. The gleam that lay in his eyes told David that as they
+met his own over the table. "We are smiling now because it happens to
+please us," David read in them. "But in a moment, if it is necessary,
+we shall fight."
+
+Carrigan leaned a little over the table. "You know we are not going to
+the Chateau Boulain, St. Pierre," he said. "We are going to stop at
+Fort McMurray, and there you and your wife must answer for a number of
+things that have happened. There is one way out--possibly. That is
+largely up to you. Why did your wife try to kill me behind the rock?
+And what did you know about Black Roger Audemard?"
+
+St. Pierre's eyes did not for an instant leave Carrigan's face. Slowly
+a change came into them; the smile faded, the blue went out, and up
+from behind seemed to come another pair of eyes that were hard as steel
+and cold as ice. Yet they were not eyes that threatened, nor eyes that
+betrayed excitement or passion. And St. Pierre's voice, when he spoke,
+lacked the deep and vibrant note that had been in it. It was as if he
+had placed upon it the force of a mighty will, chaining it back, just
+as something hidden and terrible lay chained behind his eyes.
+
+"Why play like little children, M'sieu Carrigan?" he asked. "Why not
+come out squarely, honestly, like men? I know what has happened. Mon
+Dieu, it was bad! You were almost killed, and you heard that poor
+wreck, Andre, call for Roger Audemard. My Jeanne has told you about
+that--how I found him in the forest with his broken mind and body. And
+about my Jeanne--" St. Pierre's fists grew into knotted lumps on the
+table. "Non, I will die--I will kill you--before I will tell you why
+she shot at you behind the rock! We are men, both of us. We are not
+afraid. And you--in my place--what would YOU do, m'sieu?"
+
+In the moment's silence each man looked steadily at the other.
+
+"I would--fight," said David slowly. "If it was for her, I am pretty
+sure I would fight."
+
+He believed that he was drawing the net in now, that it would catch St.
+Pierre. He leaned a little farther over the table.
+
+"And I, too, must fight," he added. "You know our law, St. Pierre. We
+don't go back without our man--unless we happen to die. And I would be
+stupid if I did not understand the situation here. It would be quite
+easy for you to get rid of me. But I don't believe you are a murderer,
+even if your Jeanne tried to be." A flicker of a smile crossed his
+lips. "And Marie-Anne--I beg pardon!--your wife--"
+
+St. Pierre interrupted him. "It will please me to have you call her
+Marie-Anne. And it will please her also, m'sieu. Dieu, if we only had
+eyes that could see what is in a woman's heart! Life is funny, m'sieu.
+It is a great joke, I swear it on my soul!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, smiling again straight into David's eyes.
+"See what has happened! You set out for a murderer. My Jeanne makes a
+great mistake and shoots you. Then she pities you, saves your life,
+brings you here, and--ma foi! it is true--learns to care for you more
+than she should! But that does not make me want to kill you. Non, her
+happiness is mine. Dead men tell no tales, m'sieu, but there are times
+when living men also keep tales to themselves. And that is what you are
+going to do, M'sieu Carrigan. You are going to keep to yourself the
+thing that happened behind the rock. You are going to keep to yourself
+the mumblings of our poor mad Andre. Never will they pass your lips. I
+know. I swear it. I stake my life on it!" St. Pierre was talking slowly
+and unexcitedly. There was an immeasurable confidence in his deep
+voice. It did not imply a threat or a warning. He was sure of himself.
+And his eyes had deepened into blue again and were almost friendly.
+
+"You would stake your life?" repeated Carrigan questioningly. "You
+would do that?"
+
+St. Pierre rose to his feet and looked about the cabin with a shining
+light in his eyes that was both pride and exaltation. He moved toward
+the end of the room, where the piano stood, and for a moment his big
+fingers touched the keys; then, seeing the lacy bit of handkerchief
+that lay there, he picked it up--and placed it back again. Carrigan did
+not urge his question, but waited. In spite of his effort to fight it
+down he found himself in the grip of a mysterious and growing thrill as
+he watched St. Pierre. Never had the presence of another man had the
+same effect upon him, and strangely the thought came to him that he was
+matched--even overmatched. It was as if St. Pierre had brought with him
+into the cabin something more than the splendid strength of his body, a
+thing that reached out in the interval of silence between them, warning
+Carrigan that all the law in the world would not swerve the chief of
+the Boulains from what was already in his mind. For a moment the
+thought passed from David that fate had placed him up against the
+hazard of enmity with St. Pierre. His vision centered in the man alone.
+And as he, too, rose to his feet, an unconscious smile came to his lips
+as he recalled the boastings of Bateese.
+
+"I ask you," said he, "if you would really stake your life in a matter
+such as that? Of course, if your words were merely accidental, and
+meant nothing--"
+
+"If I had a dozen lives, I would stake them, one on top of the other,
+as I have said," interrupted St. Pierre. Suddenly his laugh boomed out
+and his voice became louder. "M'sieu Carrigan, I have come to offer you
+just that test! Oui, I could kill you now. I could put you at the
+bottom of the river, as Bateese thinks is right. Mon Dieu, how
+completely I could make you disappear! And then my Jeanne would be
+safe. She would not go behind prison bars. She would go on living, and
+laughing, and singing in the big forests, where she belongs. And Black
+Roger Audemard, the rascal, would be safe for a time! But that would be
+like destroying a little child. You are so helpless now. So you are
+going on to the Chateau Boulain with us, and if at the end of the
+second month from today you do not willingly say I have won my
+wager--why--m'sieu--I will go with you into the forest, and you may
+shoot out of me the life which is my end of the gamble. Is that not
+fair? Can you suggest a better way--between men like you and me?"
+
+"I can at least suggest a way that has the virtue of saving time,"
+replied David. "First, however, I must understand my position here. I
+am, I take it, a prisoner."
+
+"A guest, with certain restrictions placed upon you, m'sieu," corrected
+St. Pierre.
+
+The eyes of the two men met on a dead level.
+
+"Tomorrow morning I am going to fight Bateese," said David. "It is a
+little sporting event we have fixed up between us for the amusement
+of--your men. I have heard that Bateese is the best fighting man along
+the Three Rivers. And I--I do not like to have any other man claim that
+distinction when I am around."
+
+For the first time St. Pierre's placidity seemed to leave him. His brow
+became clouded, a moment's frown grew in his face, and there was a
+certain disconsolate hopelessness in the shrug of his shoulders. It was
+as if Carrigan's words had suddenly robbed the day of all its sunshine
+for the chief of the Boulains. His voice, too, carried an unhappy and
+disappointed note as he made a gesture toward the window.
+
+"M'sieu, on that raft out there are many of my men, and they have
+scarcely rested or slept since word was brought to them that a stranger
+was to fight Concombre Bateese. Tonnerre, they have gambled without
+ever seeing you until the clothes on their backs are in the hazard, and
+they have cracked their muscles in labor to overtake you! They have
+prayed away their very souls that it would be a good fight, and that
+Bateese would not eat you up too quickly. It has been a long time since
+we have seen a good fight, a long time since the last man dared to
+stand up against the half-breed. Ugh, it tears out my heart to tell you
+that the fight can not be!"
+
+St. Pierre made no effort to suppress his emotion. He was like a huge,
+disappointed boy. He walked to the window, peered forth at the raft,
+and as he shrugged his big shoulders again something like a groan came
+from him.
+
+The thrill of approaching triumph swept through David's blood. The
+flame of it was in his eyes when St. Pierre turned from the window.
+
+"And you are disappointed, St. Pierre? You would like to see that
+fight!"
+
+The blue steel in St. Pierre's eyes flashed back. "If the price were a
+year of my life, I would give it--if Bateese did not eat you up too
+quickly. I love to look upon a good fight, where there is no venom of
+hatred in the blows!"
+
+"Then you shall see a good fight, St. Pierre."
+
+"Bateese would kill you, m'sieu. You are not big. You are not his
+match."
+
+"I shall whip him, St. Pierre--whip him until he avows me his master."
+
+"You do not know the half-breed, m'sieu. Twice I have tried him in
+friendly combat myself and have been beaten."
+
+"But I shall whip him," repeated Carrigan. "I will wager you
+anything--anything in the world--even life against life--that I whip
+him!"
+
+The gloom had faded from the face of St. Pierre Boulain. But in a
+moment it clouded again.
+
+"My Jeanne has made me promise that I will stop the fight," he said.
+
+"And why--why should she insist in a matter such as this, which
+properly should be settled among men?" asked David.
+
+Again St. Pierre laughed; with an effort, it seemed, "She is
+gentle-hearted, m'sieu. She laughed and thought it quite a joke when
+Bateese humbled me. 'What! My great St. Pierre, with the blood of old
+France in his veins, beaten by a man who has been named after a
+vegetable!' she cried. I tell you she was merry over it, m'sieu! She
+laughed until the tears came into her eyes. But with you it is
+different. She was white when she entreated me not to let you fight
+Bateese. Yes, she is afraid you will be badly hurt. And she does not
+want to see you hurt again. But I tell you that I am not jealous,
+m'sieu! She does not try to hide things from me. She tells me
+everything, like a little child. And so--"
+
+"I am going to fight Bateese," said David. He wondered if St. Pierre
+could hear the thumping of his heart, or if his face gave betrayal of
+the hot flood it was pumping through his body. "Bateese and I have
+pledged ourselves. We shall fight, unless you tie one of us hand and
+foot. And as for a wager--"
+
+"Yes--what have you to wager?" demanded St. Pierre eagerly.
+
+"You know the odds are great," temporized Carrigan.
+
+"That I concede, m'sieu."
+
+"But a fight without a wager would be like a pipe without tobacco, St.
+Pierre."
+
+"You speak truly, m'sieu."
+
+David came nearer and laid a hand on the other's arm. "St. Pierre, I
+hope you--and your Jeanne--will understand what I am about to offer. It
+is this. If Bateese whips me, I will disappear into the forests, and no
+word shall ever pass my lips of what has passed since that hour behind
+the rock--and this. No whisper of it will ever reach the Law. I will
+forget the attempted murder and the suspicious mumblings of your Broken
+Man. You will be safe. Your Jeanne will be safe--if Bateese whips me."
+
+He paused, and waited. St. Pierre made no answer, but amazement came
+into his face, and after that a slow and burning fire in his eyes which
+told how deeply and vitally Carrigan's words had struck into his soul.
+
+"And if I should happen to win," continued David, turning a bit
+carelessly toward the window, "why, I should expect as large a payment
+from you. If I win, your fulfillment of the wager will be to tell me in
+every detail why your wife tried to kill me behind the rock, and you
+will also tell me all that you know about the man I am after, Black
+Roger Audemard. That is all. I am asking for no odds, though you
+concede the handicap is great."
+
+He did not look at St. Pierre. Behind him he heard the other's deep
+breathing. For a space neither spoke. Outside they could hear the soft
+swish of water, the low voices of men in the stern, and a shout and the
+barking of a dog coming from the raft far out on the river. For David
+the moment was one of suspense. He turned again, a bit carelessly, as
+if his proposition were a matter of but little significance to him. St.
+Pierre was not looking at him. He was staring toward the door, as if
+through it he could see the powerful form of Bateese bending over the
+stern sweep. And Carrigan could see that his face was flaming with a
+great desire, and that the blood in his body was pounding to the mighty
+urge of it.
+
+Suddenly he faced Carrigan.
+
+"M'sieu, listen to me," he said. "You are a brave man. You are a man of
+honor, and I know you will bury sacredly in your heart what I am going
+to tell you now, and never let a word of it escape--even to my Jeanne.
+I do not blame you for loving her. Non! You could not help that. You
+have fought well to keep it within yourself, and for that I honor you.
+How do I know? Mon Dieu, she has told me! A woman's heart understands,
+and a woman's ears are quick to hear, m'sieu. When you were sick, and
+your mind was wandering, you told her again and again that you loved
+her--and when she brought you back to life, her eyes saw more than once
+the truth of what your lips had betrayed, though you tried to keep it
+to yourself. Even more, m'sieu--she felt the touch of your lips on her
+hair that day. She understands. She has told me everything, openly,
+innocently--yet her heart thrills with that sympathy of a woman who
+knows she is loved. M'sieu, if you could have seen the light in her
+eyes and the glow in her cheeks as she told me these secrets. But I am
+not jealous! Non! It is only because you are a brave man, and one of
+honor, that I tell you all this. She would die of shame did she know I
+had betrayed her confidence. Yet it is necessary that I tell you,
+because if we make the big wager we must drop my Jeanne from the
+gamble. Do you comprehend me, m'sieu?
+
+"We are two men, strong men, fighting men. I--Pierre Boulain--can not
+feel the shame of jealousy where a woman's heart is pure and sweet, and
+where a man has fought against love with honor as you have fought. And
+you, m'sieu--David Carrigan, of the Police--can not strike with your
+hard man's hand that tender heart, that is like a flower, and which
+this moment is beating faster than it should with the fear that some
+harm is going to befall you. Is it not so, m'sieu? We will make the
+wager, yes. But if you whip Bateese--and you can not do that in a
+hundred years of fighting--I will not tell you why my Jeanne shot at
+you behind the rock. Non, never! Yet I swear I will tell you the other.
+If you win, I will tell you all I know about Roger Audemard, and that
+is considerable, m'sieu. Do you agree?"
+
+Slowly David held out a hand. St. Pierre's gripped it. The fingers of
+the two men met like bands of steel.
+
+"Tomorrow you will fight," said St. Pierre. "You will fight and be
+beaten so terribly that you may always show the marks of it. I am
+sorry. Such a man as you I would rather have as a brother than an
+enemy. And she will never forgive me. She will always remember it. The
+thought will never die out of her heart that I was a beast to let you
+fight Bateese. But it is best for all. And my men? Ah! Diable, but it
+will be great sport for them, m'sieu!"
+
+His hand unclasped. He turned to the door. A moment later it closed
+behind him, and David was alone. He had not spoken. He had not replied
+to the engulfing truths that had fallen quietly and without a betrayal
+of passion from St. Pierre's lips. Inwardly he was crushed. Yet his
+face was like stone, hiding his shame. And then, suddenly, there came a
+sound from outside that sent the blood through his cold veins again. It
+was laughter, the great, booming laughter of St. Pierre! It was not the
+merriment of a man whose heart was bleeding, or into whose life had
+come an unexpected pain or grief. It was wild and free, and filled with
+the joy of the sun-filled day.
+
+And David, listening to it, felt something that was more than
+admiration for this man growing within him. And unconsciously his lips
+repeated St. Pierre's words.
+
+"Tomorrow--you will fight."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+For many minutes David stood at the bateau window and watched the canoe
+that carried St. Pierre Boulain and the Broken Man back to the raft. It
+moved slowly, as if St. Pierre was loitering with a purpose and was
+thinking deeply of what had passed. Carrigan's fingers tightened, and
+his face grew tense, as he gazed out into the glow of the western sun.
+Now that the stress of nerve-breaking moments in the cabin was over, he
+no longer made an effort to preserve the veneer of coolness and
+decision with which he had encountered the chief of the Boulains. Deep
+in his soul he was crushed and humiliated. Every nerve in his body was
+bleeding.
+
+He had heard St. Pierre's big laugh a moment before, but it must have
+been the laugh of a man who was stabbed to the heart. And he was going
+back to Marie-Anne like that--drifting scarcely faster than the current
+that he might steal time to strengthen himself before he looked into
+her eyes again. David could see him, motionless, his giant shoulders
+hunched forward a little, his head bowed, and in the stern the Broken
+Man paddled listlessly, his eyes on the face of his master. Without
+voice David cursed himself. In his egoism he had told himself that he
+had made a splendid fight in resisting the temptation of a great love
+for the wife of St. Pierre. But what was his own struggle compared with
+this tragedy which St. Pierre was now facing?
+
+He turned from the window and looked about the cabin room again--the
+woman's room and St. Pierre's--and his face burned in its silent
+accusation. Like a living thing it painted another picture for him. For
+a space he lost his own identity. He saw himself in the place of St.
+Pierre. He was the husband of Marie-Anne, worshipping her even as St.
+Pierre must worship her, and he came, as St. Pierre had come, to find a
+stranger in his home, a stranger who had lain in his bed, a stranger
+whom his wife had nursed back to life, a stranger who had fallen in
+love with his most inviolable possession, who had told her of his love,
+who had kissed her, who had held her close, in his arms, whose presence
+had brought a warmer flush and a brighter glow into eyes and cheeks
+that until this stranger's coming had belonged only to him. And he
+heard her, as St. Pierre had heard her, pleading with him to keep this
+man from harm; he heard her soft voice, telling of the things that had
+passed between them, and he saw in her eyes--
+
+With almost a cry he swept the thought and the picture from him. It was
+an atrocious thing to conceive, impossible of reality. And yet the
+truth would not go. What would he have done in St. Pierre's place?
+
+He went to the window again. Yes, St. Pierre was a bigger man than he.
+For St. Pierre had come quietly and calmly, offering a hand of
+friendship, generous, smiling, keeping his hurt to himself, while he,
+Dave Carrigan, would have come with the murder of man in his heart.
+
+His eyes passed from the canoe to the raft, and from the big raft to
+the hazy billows of green and golden forest that melted off into
+interminable miles of distance beyond the river. He knew that on the
+other side of him lay that same distance, north, east, south, and west,
+vast spaces in an unpeopled world, the same green and golden forests,
+ten thousand plains and rivers and lakes, a million hiding-places where
+romance and tragedy might remain forever undisturbed. The thought came
+to him that it would not be difficult to slip out into that world and
+disappear. He almost owed it to St. Pierre. It was the voice of Bateese
+in a snatch of wild and discordant song that brought him back into grim
+reality. There was, after all, that embarrassing matter of justice--and
+the accursed Law!
+
+After a little he observed that the canoe was moving faster, and that
+Andre's paddle was working steadily and with force. St. Pierre no
+longer sat hunched in the bow. His head was erect, and he was waving a
+hand in the direction of the raft. A figure had come from the cabin on
+the huge mass of floating timber. David caught the shimmer of a woman's
+dress, something white fluttering over her head, waving back at St.
+Pierre. It was Marie-Anne, and he moved away from the window.
+
+He wondered what was passing between St. Pierre and his wife in the
+hour that followed. The bateau kept abreast of the raft, moving neither
+faster nor slower than it did, and twice he surrendered to the desire
+to scan the deck of the floating timbers through his binoculars. But
+the cabin held St. Pierre and Marie-Anne, and he saw neither of them
+again until the sun was setting. Then St. Pierre came out--alone.
+
+Even at that distance over the broad river he heard the booming voice
+of the chief of the Boulains. Life sprang up where there had been the
+drowse of inactivity aboard the raft. A dozen more of the great sweeps
+were swiftly manned by men who appeared suddenly from the shaded places
+of canvas shelters and striped tents. A murmur of voices rose over the
+water, and then the murmur was broken by howls and shouts as the
+rivermen ran to their places at the command of St. Pierre's voice, and
+as the sweeps began to flash in the setting sun, it gave way entirely
+to the evening chant of the Paddling Song.
+
+David gripped himself as he listened and watched the slowly drifting
+glory of the world that came down to the shores of the river. He could
+see St. Pierre clearly, for the bateau had worked its way nearer. He
+could see the bare heads and naked arms of the rivermen at the sweeps.
+The sweet breath of the forests filled his lungs, as that picture lay
+before him, and there came into his soul a covetousness and a yearning
+where before there had been humiliation and the grim urge of duty. He
+could breathe the air of that world, he could look at its beauty, he
+could worship it--and yet he knew that he was not a part of it as those
+others were a part of it. He envied the men at the sweeps; he felt his
+heart swelling at the exultation and joy in their song. They were going
+home--home down the big rivers, home to the heart of God's Country,
+where wives and sweethearts and happiness were waiting for them, and
+their visions were his visions as he stared wide-eyed and motionless
+over the river. And yet he was irrevocably an alien. He was more than
+that--an enemy, a man-hound sent out on a trail to destroy, an agent of
+a powerful and merciless force that carried with it punishment and
+death.
+
+The crew of the bateau had joined in the evening song of the rivermen
+on the raft, and over the ridges and hollows of the forest tops, red
+and green and gold in the last warm glory of the sun, echoed that
+chanting voice of men. David understood now what St. Pierre's command
+had been. The huge raft with its tented city of life was preparing to
+tie up for the night. A quarter of a mile ahead the river widened, so
+that on the far side was a low, clean shore toward which the efforts of
+the men at the sweeps were slowly edging the raft. York boats shot out
+on the shore side and dropped anchors that helped drag the big craft
+in. Two others tugged at tow-lines fastened to the shoreside bow, and
+within twenty minutes the first men were plunging up out of the water
+on the white strip of beach and were whipping the tie-lines about the
+nearest trees. David unconsciously was smiling in the thrill and
+triumph of these last moments, and not until they were over did he
+sense the fact that Bateese and his crew were bringing the bateau in to
+the opposite shore. Before the sun was quite down, both raft and
+house-boat were anchored for the night.
+
+As the shadows of the distant forests deepened, Carrigan felt impending
+about him an oppression of emptiness and loneliness which he had not
+experienced before. He was disappointed that the bateau had not tied up
+with the raft. Already he could see men building fires. Spirals of
+smoke began to rise from the shore, and he knew that the riverman's
+happiest of all hours, supper time, was close at hand. He looked at his
+watch. It was after seven o'clock. Then he watched the fading away of
+the sun until only the red glow of it remained in the west, and against
+the still thicker shadows the fires of the rivermen threw up yellow
+flames. On his own side, Bateese and the bateau crew were preparing
+their meal. It was eight o'clock when a man he had not seen before
+brought in his supper. He ate, scarcely sensing the taste of his food,
+and half an hour later the man reappeared for the dishes.
+
+It was not quite dark when he returned to his window, but the far shore
+was only an indistinct blur of gloom. The fires were brighter. One of
+them, built solely because of the rivermen's inherent love of light and
+cheer, threw the blaze of its flaming logs twenty feet into the air.
+
+He wondered what Marie-Anne was doing in this hour. Last night they had
+been together. He had marveled at the witchery of the moonlight in her
+hair and eyes, he had told her of the beauty of it, she had smiled, she
+had laughed softly with him--for hours they had sat in the spell of the
+golden night and the glory of the river. And tonight--now--was she with
+St. Pierre, waiting as they had waited last night for the rising of the
+moon? Had she forgotten? COULD she forget? Or was she, as he thought
+St. Pierre had painfully tried to make him believe, innocent of all the
+thoughts and desires that had come to him, as he sat worshipping her in
+their stolen hours? He could think of them only as stolen, for he did
+not believe Marie-Anne had revealed to her husband all she might have
+told him.
+
+He was sure he would never see her again as he had seen her then, and
+something of bitterness rose in him as he thought of that. St. Pierre,
+could he have seen her face and eyes when he told her that her hair in
+the moonlight was lovelier than anything he had ever seen, would have
+throttled him with his naked hands in that meeting in the cabin. For
+St. Pierre's code would not have had her eyes droop under their long
+lashes or her cheeks flush so warmly at the words of another man--and
+he could not take vengeance on the woman herself. No, she had not told
+St. Pierre all she might have told! There were things which she must
+have kept to herself, which she dared not reveal even to this
+great-hearted man who was her husband. Shame, if nothing more, had kept
+her silent.
+
+Did she feel that shame as he was feeling it? It was inconceivable to
+think otherwise. And for that reason, more than all others, he knew
+that she would not meet him face to face again--unless he forced that
+meeting. And there was little chance of that, for his pledge with St.
+Pierre had eliminated her from the aftermath of tomorrow's drama, his
+fight with Bateese. Only when St. Pierre might stand in a court of law
+would there be a possibility of her eyes meeting his own again, and
+then they would flame with the hatred that at another time had been in
+the eyes of Carmin Fanchet.
+
+With the dull stab of a thing that of late had been growing inside him,
+he wondered what had happened to Carmin Fanchet in the years that had
+gone since he had brought about the hanging of her brother. Last night
+and the night before, strange dreams of her had come to him in restless
+slumber. It was disturbing to him that he should wake up in the middle
+of the night dreaming of her, when he had gone to his bed with a mind
+filled to overflowing with the sweet presence of Marie-Anne Boulain.
+And now his mind reached out poignantly into mysterious darkness and
+doubt, even as the darkness of night spread itself in a thickening
+canopy over the river.
+
+Gray clouds had followed the sun of a faultless day, and the stars were
+veiled overhead. When David turned from the window, it was so dark in
+the cabin that he could not see. He did not light the lamps, but made
+his way to St. Pierre's couch and sat down in the silence and gloom.
+
+Through the open windows came to him the cadence of the river and the
+forests. There was silence of human voice ashore, but under him he
+heard the lapping murmur of water as it rustled under the stern and
+side of the bateau, and from the deep timber came the never-ceasing
+whisper of the spruce and cedar tops, and the subdued voice of
+creatures whose hours of activity had come with the dying out of the
+sun.
+
+For a long time he sat in this darkness. And then there came to him a
+sound that was different than the other sounds--a low monotone of
+voices, the dipping of a paddle--and a canoe passed close under his
+windows and up the shore. He paid small attention to it until, a little
+later, the canoe returned, and its occupants boarded the bateau. It
+would have roused little interest in him then had he not heard a voice
+that was thrillingly like the voice of a woman.
+
+He drew his hunched shoulders erect and stared through the darkness
+toward the door. A moment more and there was no doubt. It was almost
+shock that sent the blood leaping suddenly through his veins. The
+inconceivable had happened. It was Marie-Anne out there, talking in a
+low voice to Bateese!
+
+Then there came a heavy knock at his door, and he heard the door open.
+Through it he saw the grayer gloom of the outside night partly shut out
+a heavy shadow.
+
+"M'sieu!" called the voice of Bateese.
+
+"I am here," said David.
+
+"You have not gone to bed, m'sieu?"
+
+"No."
+
+The heavy shadow seemed to fade away, and yet there still remained a
+shadow there. David's heart thumped as he noted the slenderness of it.
+For a space there was silence. And then,
+
+"Will you light the lamps, M'sieu David?" a soft voice came to him. "I
+want to come in, and I am afraid of this terrible darkness!"
+
+He rose to his feet, fumbling in his pocket for matches.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+He did not turn toward Marie-Anne when he had lighted the first of the
+great brass lamps hanging at the side of the bateau. He went to the
+second, and struck another match, and flooded the cabin with light.
+
+She still stood silhouetted against the darkness beyond the cabin door
+when he faced her. She was watching him, her eyes intent, her face a
+little pale, he thought. Then he smiled and nodded. He could not see a
+great change in her since this afternoon, except that there seemed to
+be a little more fire in the glow of her eyes. They were looking at him
+steadily as she smiled and nodded, wide, beautiful eyes in which there
+was surely no revelation of shame or regret, and no very clear evidence
+of unhappiness. David stared, and his tongue clove to the roof of his
+mouth.
+
+"Why is it that you sit in darkness?" she asked, stepping within and
+closing the door. "Did you not expect me to return and apologize for
+leaving you so suddenly this afternoon? It was impolite. Afterward I
+was ashamed. But I was excited, M'sieu David. I--"
+
+"Of course," he hurried to interrupt her. "I understand. St. Pierre is
+a lucky man. I congratulate you--as well as him. He is splendid, a man
+in whom you can place great faith and confidence."
+
+"He scolded me for running away from you as I did, M'sieu David. He
+said I should have shown better courtesy than to leave like that one
+who was a guest in our--home. So I have returned, like a good child, to
+make amends."
+
+"It was not necessary."
+
+"But you were lonesome and in darkness!"
+
+He nodded. "Yes."
+
+"And besides," she added, so quietly and calmly that he was amazed,
+"you know my sleeping apartment is also on the bateau. And St. Pierre
+made me promise to say good night to you."
+
+"It is an imposition," cried David, the blood rushing to his face. "You
+have given up all this to me! Why not let me go into that little room
+forward, or sleep on the raft and you and St. Pierre--"
+
+"St. Pierre would not leave the raft," replied Marie-Anne, turning from
+him toward the table on which were the books and magazines and her
+work-basket. "And I like my little room forward."
+
+"St. Pierre--"
+
+He stopped himself. He could see a sudden color deepening in the cheek
+of St. Pierre's wife as she made pretense of looking for something in
+her basket. He felt that if he went on he would blunder, if he had not
+already blundered. He was uncomfortable, for he believed he had guessed
+the truth. It was not quite reasonable to expect that Marie-Anne would
+come to him like this on the first night of St. Pierre's homecoming.
+Something had happened over in the little cabin on the raft, he told
+himself. Perhaps there had been a quarrel--at least ironical
+implications on St. Pierre's part. And his sympathy was with St. Pierre.
+
+He caught suddenly a little tremble at the corner of Marie-Anne's mouth
+as her face was turned partly from him, and he stepped to the opposite
+side of the table so he could look at her fairly. If there had been
+unpleasantness in the cabin on the raft, St. Pierre's wife in no way
+gave evidence of it. The color had deepened to almost a blush in her
+cheeks, but it was not on account of embarrassment, for one who is
+embarrassed is not usually amused, and as she looked up at him her eyes
+were filled with the flash of laughter which he had caught her lips
+struggling to restrain. Then, finding a bit of lace work with the
+needles meshed in it, she seated herself, and again he was looking down
+on the droop of her long lashes and the seductive glow of her lustrous
+hair. Yesterday, in a moment of irresistible impulse, he had told her
+how lovely it was as she had dressed it, a bewitching crown of
+interwoven coils, not drawn tightly, but crumpled and soft, as if the
+mass of tresses were openly rebelling at closer confinement. She had
+told him the effect was entirely accidental, largely due to
+carelessness and haste in dressing it. Accidental or otherwise, it was
+the same tonight, and in the heart of it were the drooping red petals
+of a flower she had gathered with him early that afternoon.
+
+"St. Pierre brought me over," she said in a calmly matter-of-fact
+voice, as though she had expected David to know that from the
+beginning. "He is ashore talking over important matters with Bateese. I
+am sure he will drop in and say good night before he returns to the
+raft. He asked me to wait for him--here." She raised her eyes, so clear
+and untroubled, so quietly unembarrassed under his gaze, that he would
+have staked his life she had no suspicion of the confessions which St.
+Pierre had revealed to him.
+
+"Do you care? Would you rather put out the lights and go to bed?"
+
+He shook his head. "No. I am glad. I was beastly lonesome. I had an
+idea--"
+
+He was on the point of blundering again when he caught himself. The
+effect of her so near him was more than ever disturbing, in spite of
+St. Pierre. Her eyes, clear and steady, yet soft as velvet when they
+looked at him, made his tongue and his thoughts dangerously uncertain.
+
+"You had an idea, M'sieu David?"
+
+"That you would have no desire to see me again after my talk with St.
+Pierre," he said. "Did he tell you about it?"
+
+"He said you were very fine, M'sieu David--and that he liked you."
+
+"And he told you it is determined that I shall fight Bateese in the
+morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The one word was spoken with a quiet lack of excitement, even of
+interest--it seemed to belie some of the things St. Pierre had told
+him, and he could scarcely believe, looking at her now, that she had
+entreated her husband to prevent the encounter, or that she had
+betrayed any unusual emotion in the matter at all.
+
+"I was afraid you would object," he could not keep from saying. "It
+does not seem nice to pull off such a thing as that, when there is a
+lady about--"
+
+"Or LADIES." She caught him up quickly, and he saw a sudden little
+tightening of her pretty mouth as she turned her eyes to the bit of
+lace work again. "But I do not object, because what St. Pierre says is
+right--must be right."
+
+And the softness, he thought, went altogether out of the curve of her
+lips for an instant. In a flash their momentary betrayal of vexation
+was gone, and St. Pierre's wife had replaced the work-basket on the
+table and was on her feet, smiling at him. There was something of wild
+daring in her eyes, something that made him think of the glory of
+adventure he had seen flaming in her face the night they had run the
+rapids of the Holy Ghost.
+
+"Tomorrow will be very unpleasant, M'sieu David," she cried softly.
+"Bateese will beat you--terribly. Tonight we must think of things more
+agreeable."
+
+He had never seen her more radiant than when she turned toward the
+piano. What the deuce did it mean? Had St. Pierre been making a fool of
+him? She actually appeared unable to restrain her elation at the
+thought that Bateese would surely beat him up! He stood without moving
+and made no effort to answer her. Just before they had started on that
+thrilling adventure into the forest, which had ended with his carrying
+her in his arms, she had gone to the piano and had played for him. Now
+her fingers touched softly the same notes. A little humming trill came
+in her throat, and it seemed to David that she was deliberately
+recalling his thoughts to the things that had happened before the
+coming of St. Pierre. He had not lighted the lamp over the piano, and
+for a flash her dark eyes smiled at him out of the half shadow. After a
+moment she began to sing.
+
+Her voice was low and without effort, untrained, and subdued as if
+conscious and afraid of its limitations, yet so exquisitely sweet that
+to David it was a new and still more wonderful revelation of St.
+Pierre's wife. He drew nearer, until he stood close at her side, the
+dark luster of her hair almost touching his arm, her partly upturned
+face a bewitching profile in the shadows.
+
+Her voice grew lower, almost a whisper in its melody, as if meant for
+him alone. Many times he had heard the Canadian Boat Song, but never as
+its words came now from the lips of Marie-Anne Boulain.
+
+  "Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
+  Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time.
+  Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
+  We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn;
+  Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
+  The rapids are near, and the daylight's past."
+
+She paused. And David, staring down at her shining head, did not speak.
+Her fingers trembled over the keys, he could see dimly the shadow of
+her long lashes, and the spirit-like scent of crushed violets rose to
+him from the soft lace about her throat and her hair.
+
+"It is your music," he whispered. "I have never heard the Boat Song
+like that!"
+
+He tried to drag his eyes from her face and hair, sensing that he was a
+near-criminal, fighting a mighty impulse. The notes under her fingers
+changed, and again--by chance or design--she was stabbing at him;
+bringing him face to face with the weakness of his flesh, the iniquity
+of his desire to reach out his arms and crumple her in them. Yet she
+did not look up, she did not see him, as she began to sing "Ave Maria."
+
+  "Ave, Maria, hear my cry!
+  O, guide my path where no harm, no harm is nigh--"
+
+As she went on, he knew she had forgotten to think of him. With the
+reverence of a prayer the holy words came from her lips, slowly,
+softly, trembling with a pathos and sweetness that told David they came
+not alone from the lips, but from the very soul of St. Pierre's wife.
+And then--
+
+  "Oh, Mother, hear me where thou art,
+  And guard and guide my aching heart, my aching heart!"
+
+The last words drifted away into a whisper, and David was glad that he
+was not looking into the face of St. Pierre's wife, for there must have
+been something there now which it would have been sacrilege for him to
+stare at, as he was staring at her hair.
+
+No sound of opening door had come from behind them. Yet St. Pierre had
+opened it and stood there, watching them with a curious humor in eyes
+that seemed still to hold a glitter of the fire that had leaped from
+the half-breed's flaming birch logs. His voice was a shock to Carrigan.
+
+"PESTE, but you are a gloomy pair!" he boomed. "Why no light over there
+in the corner, and why sing that death-song to chase away the devil
+when there is no devil near?"
+
+Guilt was in David's heart, but there was no sting of venom in St.
+Pierre's words, and he was laughing at them now, as though what he saw
+were a pretty joke and amused him.
+
+"Late hours and shady bowers! I say it should be a love song or
+something livelier," he cried, closing the door behind him and coming
+toward them. "Why not En Roulant ma Boule, my sweet Jeanne? You know
+that is my favorite."
+
+He suddenly interrupted himself, and his voice rolled out in a wild
+chant that rocked the cabin.
+
+  "The wind is fresh, the wind is free,
+  En roulant ma boule!  The wind is fresh--my love waits me,
+  Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant!
+  Behind our house a spring you see,
+  In it three ducks swim merrily,
+  And hunting, the Prince's son went he,
+  With a silver gun right fair to see--"
+
+David was conscious that St. Pierre's wife had risen to her feet, and
+now she came out of shadow into light, and he was amazed to see that
+she was laughing back at St. Pierre, and that her two fore-fingers were
+thrust in her ears to keep out the bellow of her husband's voice. She
+was not at all discomfited by his unexpected appearance, but rather
+seemed to join in the humor of the thing with St. Pierre, though he
+fancied he could see something in her face that was forced and uneasy.
+He believed that under the surface of her composure she was suffering a
+distress which she did not reveal.
+
+St. Pierre advanced and carelessly patted her shoulder with one of his
+big hands, while he spoke to David.
+
+"Has she not the sweetest voice in the world, m'sieu? Did you ever hear
+a sweeter or as sweet? I say it is enough to get down into the soul of
+a man, unless he is already half dead! That voice--"
+
+He caught Marie-Anne's eyes. Her cheeks were flaming. Her look, for an
+instant, flashed lightning as she halted him.
+
+"Ma foi, I speak it from the heart," he persisted, with a shrug of his
+shoulders. "Am I not right, M'sieu Carrigan? Did you ever hear a
+sweeter voice?"
+
+"It is wonderful," agreed David, wondering if he was hazarding too much.
+
+"Good! It fills me with happiness to know I am right. And now, cherie,
+good-night! I must return to the raft."
+
+A shadow of vexation crossed Marie-Anne's face. "You seem in great
+haste."
+
+"Plagues and pests! You are right, Pretty Voice! I am most anxious to
+get back to my troubles there, and you--"
+
+"Will also bid M'sieu Carrigan good-night," she quickly interrupted
+him. "You will at least see me to my room, St. Pierre, and safely put
+away for the night."
+
+She held out her hand to David. There was not a tremor in it as it lay
+for an instant soft and warm in his own. She made no effort to withdraw
+it quickly, nor did her eyes hide their softness as they looked into
+his own.
+
+Mutely David stood as they went out. He heard St. Pierre's loud voice
+rumbling about the darkness of the night. He heard them pass along the
+side of the bateau forward, and half a minute later he knew that St.
+Pierre was getting into his canoe. The dip of a paddle came to him.
+
+For a space there was silence, and then, from far out in the black
+shadow of the river, rolled back the great voice of St. Pierre Boulain
+singing the wild river chant, "En Roulant ma Boule."
+
+At the open window he listened. It seemed to him that from far over the
+river, where the giant raft lay, there came a faint answer to the words
+of the song,
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+With the slow approach of the storm which was advancing over the
+wilderness, Carrigan felt more poignantly the growing unrest that was
+in him. He heard the last of St. Pierre's voice, and after that the
+fires on the distant shore died out slowly, giving way to utter
+blackness. Faintly there came to him the far-away rumbling of thunder.
+The air grew heavy and thick, and there was no sound of night-bird over
+the breast of the river, and out of the thick cedar and spruce and
+balsam there came no cry or whisper of the nocturnal life waiting in
+silence for the storm to break. In that stillness David put out the
+lights in the cabin and sat close to the window in darkness.
+
+He was more than sleepless. Every nerve in his body demanded action,
+and his brain was fired by strange thoughts until their vividness
+seemed to bring him face to face with a reality that set his blood
+stirring with an irresistible thrill. He believed he had made a
+discovery, that St. Pierre had betrayed himself. What he had visioned,
+the conclusion he had arrived at, seemed inconceivable, yet what his
+own eyes had seen and his ears had heard pointed to the truth of it
+all. The least he could say was that St. Pierre's love for Marie-Anne
+Boulain was a strange sort of love. His attitude toward her seemed more
+like that of a man in the presence of a child of whom he was fond in a
+fatherly sort of way. His affection, as he had expressed it, was
+parental and careless. Not for an instant had there been in it a
+betrayal of the lover, no suggestion of the husband who cared deeply or
+who might be made jealous by another man.
+
+Sitting in darkness thickening with the nearer approach of storm, David
+recalled the stab of pain mingled with humiliation that had come into
+the eyes of St. Pierre's wife when she had stood facing her husband. He
+heard again, with a new understanding, the low note of pathos in her
+voice as in song she had called upon the Mother of Christ to hear
+her--and help her. He had not guessed at the tragedy of it then. Now he
+knew, and he thought of her lying awake in the gloom beyond the
+bulkhead, her eyes were with tears. And St. Pierre had gone back to his
+raft, singing in the night! Where before there had been sympathy for
+him, there rose a sincere revulsion. There had been a reason for St.
+Pierre's masterly possession of himself, and it had not been, as he had
+thought, because of his bigness of soul. It was because he had not
+cared. He was a splendid hypocrite, playing his game well at the
+beginning, but betraying the lie at the end. He did not love Marie-Anne
+as he, Dave Carrigan, loved her. He had spoken of her as a child, and
+he had treated her as a child, and was serenely dispassionate in the
+face of a situation which would have roused the spirit in most men. And
+suddenly, recalling that thrilling hour in the white strip of sand and
+all that had happened since, it flashed upon David that St. Pierre was
+using his wife as the vital moving force in a game of his own--that
+under the masquerade of his apparent faith and bigness of character he
+was sacrificing her to achieve a certain mysterious something it the
+scheme of his own affairs.
+
+Yet he could not forget the infinite faith Marie-Anne Boulain had
+expressed in her husband. There had been no hypocrisy in her waiting
+and her watching for him, or in her belief that he would straighten out
+the tangles of the dilemma in which she had become involved. Nor had
+there been make-believe in the manner she had left him that day in her
+eagerness to go to St. Pierre. Adding these facts as he had added the
+others, he fancied he saw the truth staring at him out of the darkness
+of his cabin room. Marie-Anne loved her husband. And St. Pierre was
+merely the possessor, careless and indifferent, almost brutally
+dispassionate in his consideration of her.
+
+A heavy crash of thunder brought Carrigan back to a realization of the
+impending storm. He rose to his feet in the chaotic gloom, facing the
+bulkhead beyond which he was certain St. Pierre's wife lay wide awake.
+He tried to laugh. It was inexcusable, he told himself, to let his
+thoughts become involved in the family affairs of St. Pierre and
+Marie-Anne. That was not his business. Marie-Anne, in the final
+analysis, did not appear to be especially abused, and her mind was not
+a child's mind. Probably she would not thank him for his interest in
+the matter. She would tell him, like any other woman with pride, that
+it was none of his business and that he was presuming upon forbidden
+ground.
+
+He went to the window. There was scarcely a breath of air, and
+unfastening the screen, he thrust out his head and shoulders into the
+night. It was so black that he could not see the shadow of the water
+almost within reach of his hands, but through the chaos of gloom that
+lay between him and the opposite shore he made out a single point of
+yellow light. He was positive the light was in the cabin on the raft.
+And St. Pierre was probably in that cabin.
+
+A huge drop of rain splashed on his hand, and behind him he heard
+sweeping over the forest tops the quickening march of the deluge. There
+was no crash of thunder or flash of lightning when it broke. Straight
+down, in an inundation, it came out of a sky thick enough to slit with
+a knife. Carrigan drew in his head and shoulders and sniffed the sweet
+freshness of it. He tried again to make out the light on the raft, but
+it was obliterated.
+
+Mechanically he began taking off his clothes, and in a few moments he
+stood again at the window, naked. Thunder and lightning had caught up
+with the rain, and in the flashes of fire Carrigan's ghost-white face
+stared in the direction of the raft. In his veins was at work an
+insistent and impelling desire. Over there was St. Pierre, he was
+undoubtedly in the cabin, and something might happen if he, Dave
+Carrigan, took advantage of storm and gloom to go to the raft.
+
+It was almost a presentiment that drew his bare head and shoulders out
+through the window, and every hunting instinct in him urged him to the
+adventure. The stygian darkness was torn again by a flash of fire. In
+it he saw the river and the vivid silhouette of the distant shore. It
+would not be a difficult swim, and it would be good training for
+tomorrow.
+
+Like a badger worming his way out of a hole a bit too small for him,
+Carrigan drew himself through the window. A lightning flash caught him
+at the edge of the bateau, and he slunk back quickly against the cabin,
+with the thought that other eyes might be staring out into that same
+darkness. In the pitch gloom that followed he lowered himself quietly
+into the river, thrust himself under water, and struck out for the
+opposite shore.
+
+When he came to the surface again it was in the glare of another
+lightning flash. He flung the water from his face, chose a point
+several hundred yards above the raft, and with quick, powerful strokes
+set out in its direction. For ten minutes he quartered the current
+without raising his head. Then he paused, floating unresistingly with
+the slow sweep of the river, and waited for another illumination. When
+it came, he made out the tented raft scarcely a hundred yards away and
+a little below him. In the next darkness he found the edge of it and
+dragged himself up on the mass of timbers.
+
+The thunder had been rolling steadily westward, and David crouched low,
+hoping for one more flash to illumine the raft. It came at last from a
+mass of inky cloud far to the west, so indistinct that it made only dim
+shadows out of the tents and shelters, but it was sufficient to give
+him direction. Before its faint glare died out, he saw the deeper
+shadow of the cabin forward.
+
+For many minutes he lay where he had dragged himself, without making a
+movement in its direction. Nowhere about him could he see a sign of
+light, nor could he hear any sound of life. St. Pierre's people were
+evidently deep in slumber.
+
+Carrigan had no very definite idea of the next step in his adventure.
+He had swum from the bateau largely under impulse, with no preconceived
+scheme of action, urged chiefly by the hope that he would find St.
+Pierre in the cabin and that something might come of it. As for
+knocking at the door and rousing the chief of the Boulains from
+sleep--he had at the present moment no very good excuse for that. No
+sooner had the thought and its objection come to him than a broad shaft
+of light shot with startling suddenness athwart the blackness of the
+raft, darkened in another instant by an obscuring shadow. Swift as the
+light itself David's eyes turned to the source of the unexpected
+illumination. The door of St. Pierre's cabin was wide open. The
+interior was flooded with lampglow, and in the doorway stood St. Pierre
+himself.
+
+The chief of the Boulains seemed to be measuring the weather
+possibilities of the night. His subdued voice reached David, chuckling
+with satisfaction, as he spoke to some one who was behind him in the
+cabin.
+
+"Pitch and brimstone, but it's black!" he cried. "You could carve it
+with a knife, and stand it on end, AMANTE. But it's going west. In a
+few hours the stars will be out."
+
+He drew back into the cabin, and the door closed. David held his breath
+in amazement, staring at the blackness where a moment before the light
+had been. Who was it St. Pierre had called sweetheart? AMANTE! He could
+not have been mistaken. The word had come to him clearly, and there was
+but one guess to make. Marie-Anne was not on the bateau. She had played
+him for a fool, had completely hoodwinked him in her plot with St.
+Pierre. They were cleverer than he had supposed, and in darkness she
+had rejoined her husband on the raft! But why that senseless play of
+falsehood? What could be their object in wanting him to believe she was
+still aboard the bateau?
+
+He stood up on his feet and mopped the warm rain from his face, while
+the gloom hid the grim smile that came slowly to his lips. Close upon
+the thrill of his astonishment he felt a new stir in his blood which
+added impetus to his determination and his action. He was not disgusted
+with himself, nor was he embittered by what he had thought of a moment
+ago as the lying hypocrisy of his captors. To be beaten in his game of
+man-hunting was sometimes to be expected, and Carrigan always gave
+proper credit to the winners. It was also "good medicine" to know that
+Marie-Anne, instead of being an unhappy and neglected wife, had blinded
+him with an exquisitely clever simulation. Just why she had done it,
+and why St. Pierre had played his masquerade, it was his duty now to
+find out.
+
+An hour ago he would have cut off a hand before spying upon St.
+Pierre's wife or eavesdropping under her window. Now he felt no
+uneasiness of conscience as he approached the cabin, for Marie-Anne
+herself had destroyed all reason for any delicate discrimination on his
+part.
+
+The rain had almost stopped, and in one of the near tents he heard a
+sleepy voice. But he had no fear of chance discovery. The night would
+remain dark for a long time, and in his bare feet he made no sound the
+sharpest ears of a dog ten feet away might have heard. Close to the
+cabin door, yet in such a way that the sudden opening of it would not
+reveal him, he paused and listened.
+
+Distinctly he heard St. Pierre's voice, but not the words. A moment
+later came the soft, joyous laughter of a woman, and for an instant a
+hand seemed to grip David's heart, filling it with pain. There was no
+unhappiness in that laughter. It seemed, instead, to tremble in an
+exultation of gladness.
+
+Suddenly St. Pierre came nearer the door, and his voice was more
+distinct. "Chere-coeur, I tell you it is the greatest joke of my life,"
+he heard him say. "We are safe. If it should come to the worst, we can
+settle the matter in another way. I can not but sing and laugh, even in
+the face of it all. And she, in that very innocence which amuses me so,
+has no suspicion--"
+
+He turned, and vainly David keyed his ears to catch the final words.
+The voices in the cabin grew lower. Twice he heard the soft laughter of
+the woman. St. Pierre's voice, when he spoke, was unintelligible.
+
+The thought that his random adventure was bringing him to an important
+discovery possessed Carrigan. St. Pierre, he believed, had been on the
+very edge of disclosing something which he would have given a great
+deal to know. Surely in this cabin there must be a window, and the
+window would be open--
+
+Quietly he felt his way through the darkness to the shore side of the
+cabin. A narrow bar of light at least partly confirmed his judgment.
+There was a window. But it was almost entirely curtained, and it was
+closed. Had the curtain been drawn two inches lower, the thin stream of
+light would have been shut entirely out from the night.
+
+Under this window David crouched for several minutes, hoping that in
+the calm which was succeeding the storm it might be opened. The voices
+were still more indistinct inside. He scarcely heard St. Pierre, but
+twice again he heard the low and musical laughter of the woman. She had
+laughed differently with HIM--and the grim smile settled on his lips as
+he looked up at the narrow slit of light over his head. He had an
+overwhelming desire to look in. After all, it was a matter of
+professional business--and his duty.
+
+He was glad the curtain was drawn so low. From experiments of his own
+he knew there was small chance of those inside seeing him through the
+two-inch slit, and he raised himself boldly until his eyes were on a
+level with the aperture.
+
+Directly in the line of his vision was St. Pierre's wife. She was
+seated, and her back was toward him, so he could not see her face. She
+was partly disrobed, and her hair was streaming loose about her. Once,
+he remembered, she had spoken of fiery lights that came into her hair
+under certain illumination. He had seen them in the sun, but never as
+they revealed themselves now in that cabin lamp glow. He scarcely
+looked at St. Pierre, who was on his feet, looking down upon her--not
+until St. Pierre reached out and crumpled the smothering mass of
+glowing tresses in his big hands, and laughed. It was a laugh filled
+with the unutterable joy of possession. The woman rose to her feet. Up
+through her hair went her two white, bare arms, encircling St. Pierre's
+neck. The giant drew her close. Her slim form seemed to melt in his,
+and their lips met.
+
+And then the woman threw back her head, laughing, so that her glory of
+hair fell straight down, and she was out of reach of St. Pierre's lips.
+They turned. Her face fronted the window, and out in the night Carrigan
+stifled a cry that almost broke from his lips. For a flash he was
+looking straight into her eyes. Her parted lips seemed smiling at him;
+her white throat and bosom were bared to him. He dropped down, his
+heart choking him as he stumbled through the darkness to the edge of
+the raft. There, with the lap of the water at his feet, he paused. It
+was hard for him to get Breath. He stared through the gloom in the
+direction of the bateau. Marie-Anne Boulain, the woman he loved, was
+there! In her little cabin, alone, on the bateau, was St. Pierre's
+wife, her heart crushed.
+
+And in this cabin on the raft, forgetful of her degradation and her
+grief, was the vilest wretch he had ever known--St. Pierre Boulain. And
+with him, giving herself into his arms, caressing him with her lips and
+hair, was the sister of the man he had helped to hang--CARMIN FANCHET!
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The shock of the amazing discovery which Carrigan had made was as
+complete as it was unexpected. His eyes had looked upon the last thing
+in the world he might have guessed at or anticipated when they beheld
+through the window of St. Pierre's cabin the beautiful face and partly
+disrobed figure of Carmin Fanchet. The first effect of that shock had
+been to drive him away. His action had been involuntary, almost without
+the benefit of reason, as if Carmin had been Marie-Anne herself
+receiving the caresses which were rightfully hers, and upon which it
+was both insult and dishonor for him to spy. He realized now that he
+had made a mistake in leaving the window too quickly.
+
+But he did not move back through the gloom, for there was something too
+revolting in what he had seen, and with the revulsion of it a swift
+understanding of the truth which made his hands clench as he sat down
+on the edge of the raft with his feet and legs submerged in the
+slow-moving current of the river. The thing was not uncommon. It was
+the same monstrous story, as old as the river itself, but in this
+instance it filled him with a sickening sort of horror which gripped
+him at first even more than the strangeness of the fact that Carmin
+Fanchet was the other woman. His vision and his soul were reaching out
+to the bateau lying in darkness on the far side of the river, where St.
+Pierre's wife was alone in her unhappiness. His first impulse was to
+fling himself in the river and race to her--his second, to go back to
+St. Pierre, even in his nakedness, and call him forth to a reckoning.
+In his profession of man-hunting he had never had the misfortune to
+kill, but he could kill St. Pierre--now. His fingers dug into the
+slippery wood of the log under him, his blood ran hot, and in his eyes
+blazed the fury of an animal as he stared into the wall of gloom
+between him and Marie-Anne Boulain.
+
+How much did she know? That was the first question which pounded in his
+brain. He suddenly recalled his reference to the fight, his apology to
+Marie-Anne that it should happen so near to her presence, and he saw
+again the queer little twist of her mouth as she let slip the hint that
+she was not the only one of her sex who would know of tomorrow's fight.
+He had not noticed the significance of it then. But now it struck home.
+Marie-Anne was surely aware of Carmin Fanchet's presence on the raft.
+
+But did she know more than that? Did she know the truth, or was her
+heart filled only with suspicion and fear, aggravated by St. Pierre's
+neglect and his too-apparent haste to return to the raft that night?
+Again David's mind flashed back, recalling her defense of Carmin
+Fanchet when he had first told her his story of the woman whose brother
+he had brought to the hangman's justice. There could be but one
+conclusion. Marie-Anne knew Carmin Fanchet, and she also knew she was
+on the raft with St. Pierre.
+
+As cooler judgment returned to him, Carrigan refused to concede more
+than that. For any one of a dozen reasons Carmin Fanchet might be on
+the raft going down the river, and it was also quite within reason that
+Marie-Anne might have some apprehension of a woman as beautiful as
+Carmin, and possibly intuition had begun to impinge upon her a
+disturbing fear of a something that might happen. But until tonight he
+was confident she had fought against this suspicion, and had overridden
+it, even though she knew a woman more beautiful than herself was slowly
+drifting down the stream with her husband. She had betrayed no anxiety
+to him in the days that had passed; she had waited eagerly for St.
+Pierre; like a bird she had gone to him when at last he came, and he
+had seen her crushed close in St. Pierre's arms in their meeting. It
+was this night, with its gloom and its storm, that had made the
+shadowings of her unrest a torturing reality. For St. Pierre had
+brought her back to the bateau and had played a pitiably weak part in
+concealing his desire to return to the raft.
+
+So he told himself Marie-Anne did not know the truth, not as he had
+seen it through the window of St. Pierre's cabin. She had been hurt,
+for he had seen the sting of it, and in that same instant he had seen
+her soul rise up and triumph. He saw again the sudden fire that came
+into her eyes when St. Pierre urged the necessity of his haste, he saw
+her slim body grow tense, her red lips curve in a flash of pride and
+disdain. And as Carrigan thought of her in that way his muscles grew
+tighter, and he cursed St. Pierre. Marie-Anne might be hurt, she might
+guess that her husband's eyes and thoughts were too frequently upon
+another's face--but in the glory of her womanhood it was impossible for
+her to conceive of a crime such as he had witnessed through the cabin
+window. Of that he was sure.
+
+And then, suddenly, like a blinding sheet of lightning out of a dark
+sky, came back to him all that St. Pierre had said about Marie-Anne. He
+had pitied St. Pierre then; he had pitied this great cool-eyed giant of
+a man who was fighting gloriously, he had thought, in the face of a
+situation that would have excited most men. Frankly St. Pierre had told
+him Marie-Anne cared more for him than she should. With equal frankness
+he had revealed his wife's confessions to him, that she knew of his
+love for her, of his kiss upon her hair.
+
+In the blackness Carrigan's face burned hot. If he had in him the
+desire to kill St. Pierre now, might not St. Pierre have had an equally
+just desire to kill him? For he had known, even as he kissed her hair,
+and as his arms held her close to his breast in crossing the creek,
+that she was the wife of St. Pierre. And Marie-Anne--
+
+His muscles relaxed. Slowly he lowered himself into the cool wash of
+the river, and struck out toward the bateau. He did not breast the
+current with the same fierce determination with which he had crossed
+through the storm to the raft, but drifted with it and reached the
+opposite shore a quarter of a mile below the bateau. Here he waited for
+a time, while the thickness of the clouds broke, and a gray light came
+through them, revealing dimly the narrow path of pebbly wash along the
+shore. Silently, a stark naked shadow in the night, he came back to the
+bateau and crawled through his window.
+
+He lighted a lamp, and turned it very low, and in the dim glow of it
+rubbed his muscles until they burned. He was fit for tomorrow, and the
+knowledge of that fitness filled him with a savage elation. A
+good-humored love of sport had induced him to fling his first
+half-bantering challenge into the face of Concombre Bateese, but that
+sentiment was gone. The approaching fight was no longer an incident, a
+foolish error into which he had unwittingly plunged himself. In this
+hour it was the biggest physical thing that had ever loomed up in his
+life, and he yearned for the dawn with the eagerness of a beast that
+waits for the kill which comes with the break of day. But it was not
+the half-breed's face he saw under the hammering of his blows. He could
+not hate the half-breed. He could not even dislike him now. He forced
+himself to bed, and later he slept. In the dream that came to him it
+was not Bateese who faced him in battle, but St. Pierre Boulain.
+
+He awoke with that dream a thing of fire in his brain. The sun was not
+yet up, but the flush of it was painting the east, and he dressed
+quietly and carefully, listening for some sound of awakening beyond the
+bulkhead. If Marie-Anne was awake, she was very still. There was noise
+ashore. Across the river he could hear the singing of men, and through
+his window saw the white smoke of early fires rising above the
+tree-tops. It was the Indian who unlocked the door and brought in his
+breakfast, and it was the Indian who returned for the dishes half an
+hour later.
+
+After that Carrigan waited, tense with the desire for action to begin.
+He sensed no premonition of evil about to befall him. Every nerve and
+sinew in his body was alive for the combat. He thrilled with an
+overwhelming confidence, a conviction of his ability to win, an almost
+dangerous, self-conviction of approaching triumph in spite of the odds
+in weight and brute strength which were pitted against him. A dozen
+times he listened at the bulkhead between him and Marie-Anne, and still
+he heard no movement on the other side.
+
+It was eight o'clock when one of the bateau men appeared at the door
+and asked if he was ready. Quickly David joined him. He forgot his
+taunts to Concombre Bateese, forgot the softly padded gloves in his
+pack with which he had promised to pommel the half-breed into oblivion.
+He was thinking only of naked fists.
+
+Into a canoe he followed the bateau man, who turned his craft swiftly
+in the direction of the opposite shore. And as they went, David was
+sure he caught the slight movement of a curtain at the little window of
+Marie-Anne's forward cabin. He smiled back and raised his hand, and at
+that the curtain was drawn back entirely, and he knew that St. Pierre's
+wife was watching him as he went to the fight.
+
+The raft was deserted, but a little below it, on a wide strip of beach
+made hard and smooth by flood water, had gathered a crowd of men. It
+seemed odd to David they should remain so quiet, when he knew the
+natural instinct of the riverman was to voice his emotion at the top of
+his lungs. He spoke of this to the bateau man, who shrugged his
+shoulders and grinned.
+
+"Eet ees ze command of St. Pierre," he explained. "St. Pierre say no
+man make beeg noise at--what you call heem--funeral? An' theese goin'
+to be wan gran' fun-e-RAL, m'sieu!"
+
+"I see," David nodded. He did not grin back at the other's humor.
+
+He was looking at the crowd. A giant figure had appeared out of the
+center of it and was coming slowly down to the river. It was St.
+Pierre. Scarcely had the prow of the canoe touched shore when David
+leaped out and hurried to meet him. Behind St. Pierre came Bateese, the
+half-breed. He was stripped to the waist and naked from the knees down.
+His gorilla-like arms hung huge and loose at his sides, and the muscles
+of his hulking body stood out like carven mahogany in the glisten of
+the morning sun. He was like a grizzly, a human beast of monstrous
+power, something to look at, to back away from, to fear.
+
+Yet, David scarcely noticed him. He met St. Pierre, faced him, and
+stopped--and he had gone swiftly to this meeting, so that the chief of
+the Boulains was within earshot of all his men.
+
+St. Pierre was smiling. He held out his hand as he had held it out once
+before in the bateau cabin, and his big voice boomed out a greeting.
+
+Carrigan did not answer, nor did he look at the extended hand. For an
+instant the eyes of the two men met, and then, swift as lightning,
+Carrigan's arm shot out, and with the flat of his hand he struck St.
+Pierre a terrific blow squarely on the cheek. The sound of the blow was
+like the smash of a paddle on smooth water. Not a riverman but heard
+it, and as St. Pierre staggered back, flung almost from his feet by its
+force, a subdued cry of amazement broke from the waiting men. Concombre
+Bateese stood like one stupefied. And then, in another flash, St.
+Pierre had caught himself and whirled like a wild beast. Every muscle
+in his body was drawn for a gigantic, overwhelming leap; his eyes
+blazed; the fury of a beast was in his face. Before all his people he
+had suffered the deadliest insult that could be offered a man of the
+Three River Country--a blow struck with the flat of another's hand.
+Anything else one might forgive, but not that. Such a blow, if not
+avenged, was a brand that passed down into the second and third
+generations, and even children would call out
+"Yellow-Back--Yellow-Back," to the one who was coward enough to receive
+it without resentment. A rumbling growl rose in the throat of Concombre
+Bateese in that moment when it seemed as though St. Pierre Boulain was
+about to kill the man who had struck him. He saw the promise of his own
+fight gone in a flash. For no man in all the northland could now fight
+David Carrigan ahead of St. Pierre.
+
+David waited, prepared to meet the rush of a madman. And then, for a
+second time, he saw a mighty struggle in the soul of St. Pierre. The
+giant held himself back. The fury died out of his face, but his great
+hands remained clenched as he said, for David alone,
+
+"That was a playful blow, m'sieu? It was--a joke?"
+
+"It was for you, St. Pierre," replied Carrigan, "You are a coward--and
+a skunk. I swam to the raft last night, looked through your window, and
+saw what happened there. You are not fit for a decent man to fight, yet
+I will fight you, if you are not too great a coward--and dare to let
+our wagers stand as they were made."
+
+St. Pierre's eyes widened, and for a breath or two he stared at
+Carrigan, as if looking into him and not at him. His big hands relaxed,
+and slowly the panther-like readiness went out of his body. Those who
+looked beheld the transformation in amazement, for of all who waited
+only St. Pierre and the half-breed had heard Carrigan's words, though
+they had seen and heard the blow of insult.
+
+"You swam to the raft," repeated St. Pierre in a low voice, as if
+doubting what he had heard. "You looked through the window--and saw--"
+
+David nodded. He could not cover the sneering poison in his voice, his
+contempt for the man who stood before him.
+
+"Yes, I looked through the window. And I saw you, and the lowest woman
+on the Three Rivers--the sister of a man I helped to hang, I--"
+
+"STOP!"
+
+St. Pierre's voice broke out of him like the sudden crash of thunder.
+He came a step nearer, his face livid, his eyes shooting flame. With a
+mighty effort he controlled himself again. And then, as if he saw
+something which David could not see, he tried to smile, and in that
+same instant David caught a grin cutting a great slash across the face
+of Concombre Bateese. The change that came over St. Pierre now was
+swift as sunlight coming out from shadowing cloud. A rumble grew in his
+great chest. It broke in a low note of laughter from his lips, and he
+faced the bateau across the river.
+
+"M'sieu, you are sorry for HER. Is that it? You would fight--"
+
+"For the cleanest, finest little girl who ever lived--your wife!"
+
+"It is funny," said St. Pierre, as if speaking to himself, and still
+looking at the bateau. "Yes, it is very funny, ma belle Marie-Anne! He
+has told you he loves you, and he has kissed your hair and held you in
+his arms--yet he wants to fight me because he thinks I am steeped in
+sin, and to make me fight in place of Bateese he has called my Carmin a
+low woman! So what else can I do? I must fight. I must whip him until
+he can not walk. And then I will send him back for you to nurse,
+cherie, and for that blessing I think he will willingly take my
+punishment! Is it not so, m'sieu?"
+
+He was smiling and no longer excited when he turned to David.
+
+"M'sieu, I will fight you. And the wagers shall stand. And in this hour
+let us be honest, like men, and make confession. You love ma belle
+Jeanne--Marie-Anne? Is it not so? And I--I love my Carmin, whose
+brother you hanged, as I love no other woman in the world. Now, if you
+will have it so, let us fight!"
+
+He began stripping off his shirt, and with a bellow in his throat
+Concombre Bateese slouched away like a beaten gorilla to explain to St.
+Pierre's people the change in the plan of battle. And as that news
+spread like fire in the fir-tops, there came but a single cry in
+response--shrill and terrible--and that was from the throat of Andre,
+the Broken Man.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+As Carrigan stripped off his shirt, he knew that at least in one way he
+had met more than his match in St. Pierre Boulain. In the splendid
+service of which he was a part he had known many men of iron and steel,
+men whose nerve and coolness not even death could very greatly disturb.
+Yet St. Pierre, he conceded, was their master--and his own. For a flash
+he had transformed the chief of the Boulains into a volcano which had
+threatened to break in savage fury, yet neither the crash nor
+destruction had come. And now St. Pierre was smiling again, as Carrigan
+faced him, stripped to the waist. He betrayed no sign of the tempest of
+passion that had swept him a few minutes before. His cool, steely eyes
+had in them a look that was positively friendly, as Concombre Bateese
+marked in the hard sand the line of the circle within which no man
+might come. And as he did this and St. Pierre's people crowded close
+about it, St. Pierre himself spoke in a low voice to David.
+
+"M'sieu, it seems a shame that we should fight. I like you. I have
+always loved a man who would fight to protect a woman, and I shall be
+careful not to hurt you more than is necessary to make you see
+reason--and to win the wagers. So you need not be afraid of my killing
+you, as Bateese might have done. And I promise not to destroy your
+beauty, for the sake of--the lady in the bateau. My Carmin, if she knew
+you spied through her window last night, would say kill you with as
+little loss of time as possible, for as regards you her sweet
+disposition was spoiled when you hung her brother, m'sieu. Yet to me
+she is an angel!"
+
+Contempt for the man who spoke of his wife and the infamous Carmin
+Fanchet in the same breath drew a sneer to Carrigan's lips. He nodded
+toward the waiting circle of men.
+
+"They are ready for the show, St. Pierre. You talk big. Now let us see
+if you can fight."
+
+For another moment St. Pierre hesitated. "I am so sorry, m'sieu--
+
+"Are you ready, St. Pierre?"
+
+"It is not fair, and she will never forgive me. You are no match for
+me. I am half again as heavy."
+
+"And as big a coward as you are a scoundrel, St. Pierre."
+
+"It is like a man fighting a boy."
+
+"Yet it is less dishonorable than betraying the woman who is your wife
+for another who should have been hanged along with her brother, St.
+Pierre."
+
+Boulain's face darkened. He drew back half a dozen steps and cried out
+a word to Bateese. Instantly the circle of waiting men grew tense as
+the half-breed jerked the big handkerchief from his head and held it
+out at arm's length. Yet, with that eagerness for the fight there was
+something else which Carrigan was swift to sense. The attitude of the
+watchers was not one of uncertainty or of very great expectation, in
+spite of the staring faces and the muscular tightening of the line. He
+knew what was passing in their minds and in the low whispers from lip
+to lip. They were pitying him. Now that he stood stripped, with only a
+few paces between him and the giant figure of St. Pierre, the
+unfairness of the fight struck home even to Concombre Bateese. Only
+Carrigan himself knew how like tempered steel the sinews of his body
+were built. But to the eye, in size alone, he stood like a boy before
+St. Pierre. And St. Pierre's people, their voices stilled by the deadly
+inequality of it, were waiting for a slaughter and not a fight.
+
+A smile came to Carrigan's lips as he saw Bateese hesitating to drop
+the handkerchief, and with the swiftness of the trained fighter he made
+his first plan for the battle before the cloth fell from the
+half-breed's fingers, As the handkerchief fluttered to the ground, he
+faced St. Pierre, the smile gone.
+
+"Never smile when you fight," the greatest of all masters of the ring
+had told him. "Never show anger, Don't betray any emotion at all if you
+can help it."
+
+Carrigan wondered what the old ring-master would say could he see him
+now, backing away slowly from St. Pierre as the giant advanced upon
+him, for he knew his face was betraying to St. Pierre and his people
+the deadliest of all sins--anxiety and indecision. Very closely, yet
+with eyes that seemed to shift uneasily, he watched the effect of his
+trick on Boulain. Twice the huge riverman followed him about the ring
+of sand, and the steely glitter in his eyes changed to laughter, and
+the tense faces of the men about them relaxed. A subdued ripple of
+merriment rose where there had been silence. A third time David
+maneuvered his retreat, and his eyes shot furtively to Concombre
+Bateese and the men at his back. They were grinning. The half-breed's
+mouth was wide open, and his grotesque body hung limp and astonished.
+This was not a fight! It was a comedy--like a rooster following a
+sparrow around a barnyard! And then a still funnier thing happened, for
+David began to trot in a circle around St. Pierre, dodging and
+feinting, and keeping always at a safe distance. A howl of laughter
+came from Bateese and broke in a roar from the men. St. Pierre stopped
+in his tracks, a grin on his face, his big arms and shoulders limp and
+unprepared as Carrigan dodged in close and out again. And then--
+
+A howl broke in the middle of the half-breed's throat. Where there had
+been laughter, there came a sudden shutting off of sound, a great gasp,
+as if made by choking men. Swifter than anything they had ever seen in
+human action Carrigan had leaped in. They saw him strike. They heard
+the blow. They saw St. Pierre's great head rock back, as if struck from
+his shoulders by a club, and they saw and heard another blow, and a
+third--like so many flashes of lightning--and St. Pierre went down as
+if shot. The man they had laughed at was no longer like a hopping
+sparrow. He was waiting, bent a little forward, every muscle in his
+body ready for action. They watched for him to leap upon his fallen
+enemy, kicking and gouging and choking in the riverman way. But David
+waited, and St. Pierre staggered to his feet. His mouth was bleeding
+and choked with sand, and a great lump was beginning to swell over his
+eye. A deadly fire blazed in his face, as he rushed like a mad bull at
+the insignificant opponent who had tricked and humiliated him. This
+time Carrigan did not retreat, but held his ground, and a yell of joy
+went up from Bateese as the mighty bulk of the giant descended upon his
+victim. It was an avalanche of brute-force, crushing in its
+destructiveness, and Carrigan seemed to reach for it as it came upon
+him. Then his head went down, swifter than a diving grebe, and as St.
+Pierre's arm swung like an oaken beam over his shoulder, his own shot
+in straight for the pit of the other's stomach. It was a bull's-eye
+blow with the force of a pile-driver behind it, and the groan that
+forced its way out of St. Pierre's vitals was heard by every ear in the
+cordon of watchers. His weight stopped, his arms opened, and through
+that opening Carrigan's fist went a second time to the other's jaw, and
+a second time the great St. Pierre Boulain sprawled out upon the sand.
+And there he lay, and made no effort to rise.
+
+Concombre Bateese, with his great mouth agape, stood for an instant as
+if the blow had stunned him in place of his master. Then, suddenly he
+came to life, and leaped to David's side.
+
+"Diable! Tonnerre! You have not fight Concombre Bateese yet!" he
+howled. "Non, you have cheat me, you have lie, you have run lak cat
+from Concombre Bateese, ze stronges' man on all T'ree River! You are
+wan' gran' coward, wan poltroon, an' you 'fraid to fight ME, who ees
+greates' fightin' man in all dees countree! Sapristi! Why you no hit
+Concombre Bateese, m'sieu? Why you no hit ze greates' fightin' man w'at
+ees--"
+
+David did not hear the rest. The opportunity was too tempting. He
+swung, and with a huge grunt the gorilla-like body of Concombre Bateese
+rolled over that of the chief of the Boulains. This time Carrigan did
+not wait, but followed up so closely that the half-breed had scarcely
+gathered the crook out of his knees when another blow on the jaw sent
+him into the sand again. Three times he tried the experiment of
+regaining his feet, and three times he was knocked down. After the last
+blow he raised himself groggily to a sitting posture, and there he
+remained, blinking like a stunned pig, with his big hands clutching in
+the sand. He stared up unseeingly at Carrigan, who waited over him, and
+then stupidly at the transfixed cordon of men, whose eyes were bulging
+and who were holding their breath in the astonishment of this miracle
+which had descended upon them. They heard Bateese muttering something
+incoherent as his head wobbled, and St. Pierre himself seemed to hear
+it, for he stirred and raised himself slowly, until he also was sitting
+in the sand, staring at Bateese.
+
+Carrigan picked up his shirt, and the riverman who had brought him from
+the bateau returned with him to the canoe. There was no demonstration
+behind them. To David himself the whole thing had been an amazing
+surprise, and he was not at all reluctant to leave as quickly as his
+dignity would permit, before some other of St. Pierre's people offered
+to put a further test upon his prowess. He wanted to laugh. He wanted
+to thank God at the top of his voice for the absurd run of luck that
+had made his triumph not only easy but utterly complete. He had
+expected to win, but he had also expected a terrific fight before the
+last blow was struck. And there had been no fight! He was returning to
+the bateau without a scratch, his hair scarcely ruffled, and he had
+defeated not only St. Pierre, but the giant half-breed as well! It was
+inconceivable--and yet it had happened; a veritable burlesque, an
+opera-bouffe affair that might turn quickly into a tragedy if either
+St. Pierre or Concombre Bateese guessed the truth of it. For in that
+event he might have to face them again, with the god of luck playing
+fairly, and he was honest enough with himself to confess that the idea
+no longer held either thrill or desire for him. Now that he had seen
+both St. Pierre and Bateese stripped for battle, he had no further
+appetite for fistic discussion with them. After all, there was a merit
+in caution, and he had several lucky stars to bless just at the present
+moment!
+
+Inwardly he was a bit suspicious of the ultimate ending of the affair.
+St. Pierre had almost no cause for complaint, for it was his own
+carelessness, coupled with his opponent's luck, that had been his
+undoing--and luck and carelessness are legitimate factors of every
+fight, Carrigan told himself. But with Bateese it was different. He had
+held up his big jaw, uncovered and tempting, entreating some one to hit
+him, and Carrigan had yielded to that temptation. The blow would have
+stunned an ox. Three others like it had left the huge half-breed
+sitting weak-mindedly in the sand, and no one of those three blows were
+exactly according to the rules of the game. They had been mightily
+efficacious, but the half-breed might demand a rehearing when he came
+fully into his senses.
+
+Not until they were half-way to the bateau did Carrigan dare to glance
+back over his shoulder at the man who was paddling, to see what effect
+the fistic travesty had left on him. He was a big-mouthed, clear-eyed,
+powerfully-muscled fellow, and he was grinning from ear to ear.
+
+"Well, what did you think of it, comrade?"
+
+The other gave his shoulders a joyous shrug.
+
+"Mon Dieu! Have you heard of wan garcon named Joe Clamart, m'sieu? Non?
+Well, I am Joe Clamart what was once great fightin' man. Bateese hav'
+whip' me five times, m'sieu--so I say it was wan gr-r-r-a-n' fight!
+Many years ago I have seen ze same t'ing in Montreal--ze boxeur de
+profession. Oui, an' Rene Babin pays me fifteen prime martin against
+which I put up three scrubby red fox that you would win. They were bad,
+or I would not have gambled, m'sieu. It ees fonny!"
+
+"Yes, it is funny," agreed David. "I think it is a bit too funny. It is
+a pity they did not stand up on their legs a little longer!" Suddenly
+an inspiration hit him. "Joe, what do you say--shall you and I return
+and put up a REAL fight for them?"
+
+Like a sprung trap Joe Clamart's grinning mouth dosed. "Non, non, non,"
+he grunted. "Dere has been plenty fight, an' Joe Clamart mus' save hees
+face tor Antoinette Roland, who hate ze sign of fight lak she hate ze
+devil, m'sieu! Non, non!"
+
+His paddle dug deeper into the water, and David's heart felt lighter.
+If Joe was an average barometer, and he was a husky and
+fearless-looking chap, it was probable that neither St. Pierre nor
+Bateese would demand another chance at him, and St. Pierre would pay
+his wager.
+
+He could see no one aboard the bateau when he climbed from the canoe.
+Looking back, he saw that two other canoes had started from the
+opposite shore. Then he went to his cabin door, opened it, and entered,
+Scarcely had the door closed behind him when he stopped, staring toward
+the window that opened on the river.
+
+Standing full in the morning glow of it was Marie-Anne Boulain. She was
+facing him. Her cheeks were flushed. Her red lips were parted. Her eyes
+were aglow with a fire which she made no effort to hide from him. In
+her hand she still held the binoculars he had left on the cabin table.
+He guessed the truth. Through the glasses she had watched the whole
+miserable fiasco.
+
+He felt creeping over him a sickening shame, and his eyes fell slowly
+from her to the table. What he saw there caught his breath in the
+middle. It was the entire surgical outfit of Nepapinas, the old Indian
+doctor. And there were basins of water, and white strips of linen ready
+for use, and a pile of medicated cotton, and all sorts of odds and ends
+that one might apply to ease the agonies of a dying man, And beyond the
+table, huddled in so small a heap that he was almost hidden by it, was
+Nepapinas himself, disappointment writ in his mummy-like face as his
+beady eyes rested on David.
+
+The evidence could not be mistaken. They had expected him to come back
+more nearly dead than alive, and St. Pierre's wife had prepared for the
+thing she had thought inevitable. Even his bed was nicely turned down,
+its fresh white sheets inviting an occupant!
+
+And David, looking at St. Pierre's wife again, felt his heart beating
+hard in his breast at the look which was in her eyes. It was not the
+scintillation of laughter, and the flame in her cheeks was not
+embarrassment. She was not amused. The ludicrousness of her mislaid
+plans had not struck her as they had struck him. She had placed the
+binoculars on the table, and slowly she came to him. Her hands reached
+out, and her fingers rested like the touch of velvet on his arms.
+
+"It was splendid!" she said softly, "It was splendid!"
+
+She was very near, her breast almost touching him, her hands creeping
+up until the tips of her fingers rested on his shoulders, her scarlet
+mouth so close he could feel the soft breath of it in his face.
+
+"It was splendid!" she whispered again.
+
+And then, suddenly, she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him. So
+swiftly was it done that she was gone before he sensed that wild touch
+of her lips against his own. Like a swallow she was at the door, and
+the door opened and closed behind her, and for a moment he heard the
+quick running of her feet. Then he looked at the old Indian, and the
+Indian, too, was staring at the door through which St. Pierre's wife
+had flown.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+For many seconds that seemed like minutes David stood where she had
+left him, while Nepapinas rose gruntingly to his feet, and gathered up
+his belongings, and hobbled sullenly to the bateau door and out. He was
+scarcely conscious of the Indian's movement, for his soul was aflame
+with a red-hot fire. Deliberately--with that ravishing glory of
+something in her eyes--St. Pierre's wife had kissed him! On her
+tiptoes, her cheeks like crimson flowers, she had given her still
+redder lips to him! And his own lips burned, and his heart pounded
+hard, and he stared for a time like one struck dumb at the spot where
+she had stood by the window. Then suddenly, he turned to the door and
+flung it wide open, and on his lips was the reckless cry of
+Marie-Anne's name. But St. Pierre's wife was gone, and Nepapinas was
+gone, and at the tail of the big sweep sat only Joe Clamart, guarding
+watchfully.
+
+The two canoes were drawing near, and in one of them were two men, and
+in the other three, and David knew that--like Joe Clamart--they were
+watchers set over him by St. Pierre. Then a fourth canoe left the far
+shore, and when it had reached mid-stream, he recognized the figure in
+the stern as that of Andre, the Broken Man. The other, he thought, must
+be St. Pierre.
+
+He went back into the cabin and stood where Marie-Anne had stood--at
+the window. Nepapinas had not taken away the basins of water, and the
+bandages were still there, and the pile of medicated cotton, and the
+suspiciously made-up bed. After all, he was losing something by not
+occupying the bed--and yet if St. Pierre or Bateese had messed him up
+badly, and a couple of fellows had lugged him in between them, it was
+probable that Marie-Anne would not have kissed him. And that kiss of
+St. Pierre's wife would remain with him until the day he died!
+
+He was thinking of it, the swift, warm thrill of her velvety lips, red
+as strawberries and twice as sweet, when the door opened and St. Pierre
+came in. The sight of him, in this richest moment of his life, gave
+David no sense of humiliation or shame. Between him and St. Pierre rose
+swiftly what he had seen last night--Carmin Fanchet in all the lure of
+her disheveled beauty, crushed close in the arms of the man whose wife
+only a moment before had pressed her lips close to his; and as the eyes
+of the two met, there came over him a desire to tell the other what had
+happened, that he might see him writhe with the sting of the two-edged
+thing with which he was playing. Then he saw that even that would not
+hurt St. Pierre, for the chief of the Boulains, standing there with the
+big lump over his eye, had caught sight of the things on the table and
+the nicely turned down bed, and his one good eye lit up with sudden
+laughter, and his white teeth flashed in an understanding smile.
+
+"TONNERRE, I said she would nurse you with gentle hands," he rumbled.
+"See what you have missed, M'sieu Carrigan!"
+
+"I received something which I shall remember longer than a fine
+nursing," retorted David. "And yet right now I have a greater interest
+in knowing what you think of the fight, St. Pierre--and if you have
+come to pay your wager."
+
+St. Pierre was chuckling mysteriously in his throat. "It was
+splendid--splendid," he said, repeating Marie-Anne's words. "And Joe
+Clamart says she ran out, blushing like a red rose in August, and that
+she said no word, but flew like a bird into the white-birch ashore!"
+
+"She was dismayed because I beat you, St. Pierre."
+
+"Non, non--she was like a lark filled with joy."
+
+Suddenly his eyes rested on the binoculars.
+
+David nodded. "Yes, she saw it all through the glasses."
+
+St. Pierre seated himself at the table and heaved out a groan as he
+took one of the bandage strips between his fingers. "She saw my
+disgrace. And she didn't wait to bandage ME up, did she?"
+
+"Perhaps she thought Carmin Fanchet would do that, St. Pierre."
+
+"And I am ashamed to go to Carmin--with this great lump over my eye,
+m'sieu. And on top of that disgrace--you insist that I pay the wager?"
+
+"I do."
+
+St. Pierre's face hardened.
+
+"OUI, I am to pay. I am to tell you all I know about that BETE
+NOIR--Black Roger Audemard. Is it not so?"
+
+"That is the wager."
+
+"But after I have told you--what then? Do you recall that I gave you
+any other guarantee, M'sieu Carrigan? Did I say I would let you go? Did
+I promise I would not kill you and sink your body to the bottom of the
+river? If I did, I can not remember."
+
+"Are you a beast, St. Pierre--a murderer as well as--"
+
+"Stop! Do not tell me again what you saw through the window, for it has
+nothing to do with this. I am not a beast, but a man. Had I been a
+beast, I should have killed you the first day I saw you in this cabin.
+I am not threatening to kill you, and yet it may be necessary if you
+insist that I pay the wager. You understand, m'sieu. To refuse to pay a
+wager is a greater crime among my people than the killing of a man, if
+there is a good reason for the killing. I am helpless. I must pay, if
+you insist. Before I pay it is fair that I give you warning."
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"I mean nothing, as yet. I can not say what it will be necessary for me
+to do, after you have heard what I know about Roger Audemard. I am
+quite settled on a plan just now, m'sieu, but the plan might change at
+any moment. I am only warning you that it is a great hazard, and that
+you are playing with a fire of which you know nothing, because it has
+not burned you yet."
+
+Carrigan seated himself slowly in a chair opposite St. Pierre, with the
+table between them.
+
+"You are wasting time in attempting to frighten me," he said. "I shall
+insist on the payment of the wager, St Pierre."
+
+For a moment St. Pierre was clearly troubled. Then his lips tightened,
+and he smiled grimly over the table at David.
+
+"I am sorry, M'sieu David. I like you. You are a fighting man and no
+coward, and I should like to travel shoulder to shoulder with you in
+many things. And such a thing might be, for you do not understand. I
+tell you it would have been many times better for you had I whipped you
+out there, and it had been you--and not me--to pay the wager!"
+
+"It is Roger Audemard I am interested in, St. Pierre. Why do you
+hesitate?"
+
+"I? Hesitate? I am not hesitating, m'sieu. I am giving you a chance."
+He leaned forward, his great arms bent on the table. "And you insist,
+M'sieu David?"
+
+"Yes, I insist."
+
+Slowly the fingers of St. Pierre's hands closed into knotted fists, and
+he said in a low voice, "Then I will pay, m'sieu. _I_ AM ROGER
+AUDEMARD!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+The astounding statement of the man who sat opposite him held David
+speechless. He had guessed at some mysterious relationship between St.
+Pierre and the criminal he was after, but not this, and Roger Audemard,
+with his hands unclenching and a slow humor beginning to play about his
+mouth, waited coolly for him to recover from his amazement. In those
+moments, when his heart seemed to have stopped beating, Carrigan was
+staring at the other, but his mind had shot beyond him--to the woman
+who was his wife. Marie-Anne AUDEMARD--the wife of Black Roger! He
+wanted to cry out against the possibility of such a fact, yet he sat
+like one struck dumb, as the monstrous truth took possession of his
+brain and a whirlwind of understanding swept upon him. He was thinking
+quickly, and with a terrific lack of sentiment now. Opposite him sat
+Black Roger, the wholesale murderer. Marie-Anne was his wife. Carmin
+Fanchet, sister of a murderer, was simply one of his kind. And Bateese,
+the man-gorilla, and the Broken Man, and all the dark-skinned pack
+about them were of Black Roger's breed and kind. Love for a woman had
+blinded him to the facts which crowded upon him now. Like a lamb he had
+fallen among wolves, and he had tried to believe in them. No wonder
+Bateese and the man he had known as St. Pierre had betrayed such
+merriment at times!
+
+A fighting coolness possessed him as he spoke to Black Roger.
+
+"I will admit this is a surprise. And yet you have cleared up a number
+of things very quickly. It proves to me again that comedy is not very
+far removed from tragedy at times."
+
+"I am glad you see the humor of it, M'sieu David." Black Roger was
+smiling as pleasantly as his swollen eye would permit. "We must not be
+too serious when we die. If I were to die a-hanging, I would sing as
+the rope choked me, just to show the world one need not be unhappy
+because his life is coming to an end."
+
+"I suppose you understand that ultimately I am going to give you that
+opportunity," said David.
+
+Almost eagerly Black Roger leaned toward him over the table. "You
+believe you are going to hang me?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+"And you are willing to wager the point, M'sieu David?"
+
+"It is impossible to gamble with a condemned man."
+
+Black Roger chuckled, rubbing his big hands together until they made a
+rasping sound, and his one good eye glowed at Carrigan.
+
+"Then I will make a wager with myself, M'sieu David. MA FOI, I swear
+that before the leaves fall from the trees, you will be pleading for
+the friendship of Black Roger Audemard, and you will be as much in love
+with Carmin Fanchet as I am! And as for Marie-Anne--"
+
+He thrust back his chair and rose to his feet, the old note of subdued
+laughter rumbling in his chest. "And because I make this wager with
+myself, I cannot kill you, M'sieu David--though that might be the best
+thing to do. I am going to take you to the Chateau Boulain, which is in
+the forests of the Yellowknife, beyond the Great Slave. Nothing will
+happen to you if you make no effort to escape. If you do that, you will
+surely die. And that would hurt me, M'sieu David, because I love you
+like a brother, and in the end I know you are going to grip the hand of
+Black Roger Audemard, and get down on your knees to Carmin Fanchet. And
+as for Marie-Anne--" Again he interrupted himself, and went out of the
+cabin, laughing. And there was no mistake in the metallic click of the
+lock outside the door.
+
+For a time David did not move from his seat near the table. He had not
+let Roger Audemard see how completely the confession had upset his
+inner balance, but he made no pretense of concealing the thing from
+himself now. He was in the power of a cut-throat, who in turn had an
+army of cut-throats at his back, and both Marie-Anne and Carmin Fanchet
+were a part of this ring. And he was not only a prisoner. It was
+probable, under the circumstances, that Black Roger would make an end
+of him when a convenient moment came. It was even more than a
+probability. It was a grim necessity. To let him live and escape would
+be fatal to Black Roger.
+
+From back of these convictions, riding over them as if to demoralize
+any coherence and logic that might go with the evidence he was building
+up, came question after question, pounding at him one after the other,
+until his mind became more than ever a whirling chaos of uncertainty.
+If St. Pierre was Black Roger, why would he confess to that fact simply
+to pay a wager? What reason could he have for letting him live at all?
+Why had not Bateese killed him? Why had Marie-Anne nursed him back to
+life? His mind shot to the white strip of sand in which he had nearly
+died. That, at least, was convincing. Learning in some way that he was
+after Black Roger, they had attempted to do away with him there. But if
+that were so, why was it Bateese and Black Roger's wife and the Indian
+Nepapinas had risked so much to make him live, when if they had left
+him where he had fallen he would have died and caused them no trouble?
+
+There was something exasperatingly uncertain and illogical about it
+all. Was it possible that St. Pierre Boulain was playing a huge joke on
+him? Even that was inconceivable. For there was Carmin Fanchet, a
+fitting companion for a man like Black Roger, and there was Marie-Anne,
+who, if it had been a joke, would not have played her part so well.
+
+Suddenly his mind was filled only with her. Had she been his friend,
+using all her influence to protect him, because her heart was sick of
+the environment of which she was a part? His own heart jumped at the
+thought. It was easy to believe. In Marie-Anne he had faith, and that
+faith refused to be destroyed, but persisted--even clearer and stronger
+as he thought again of Carmin Fanchet and Black Roger. In his heart
+grew the conviction it was sacrilege to believe the kiss she had given
+him that morning was a lie. It was something else--a spontaneous
+gladness, a joyous exultation that he had returned unharmed, a thing
+unplanned in the soul of the woman, leaping from her before she could
+stop it. Then had come shame, and she had run away from him so swiftly
+he had not seen her face again after the touch of her lips. If it had
+been a subterfuge, a lie, she would not have done that.
+
+He rose to his feet and paced restlessly back and forth as he tried to
+bring together a few tangled bits of the puzzle. He heard voices
+outside, and very soon felt the movement of the bateau under his feet,
+and through one of the shoreward windows he saw trees and sandy beach
+slowly drifting away. On that shore, as far as his eyes could travel up
+and down, he saw no sign of Marie-Anne, but there remained a canoe, and
+near the canoe stood Black Roger Audemard, and beyond him, huddled like
+a charred stump in the sand, was Andre, the Broken Man. On the opposite
+shore the raft was getting under way.
+
+During the next half-hour several things happened which told him there
+was no longer a sugar-coating to his imprisonment. On each side of the
+bateau two men worked at his windows, and when they had finished, no
+one of them could be opened more than a few inches. Then came the
+rattle of the lock at the door, the grating of a key, and somewhat to
+Carrigan's surprise it was Bateese who came in. The half-reed bore no
+facial evidence of the paralyzing blows which had knocked him out a
+short time before. His jaw, on which they had landed, was as aggressive
+as ever, yet in his face and his attitude, as he stared curiously at
+Carrigan, there was no sign of resentment or unfriendliness. Nor did he
+seem to be ashamed. He merely stared, with the curious and rather
+puzzled eyes of a small boy gazing at an inexplicable oddity. Carrigan,
+standing before him, knew what was passing in the other's mind, and the
+humor of it brought a smile to his lips.
+
+Instantly Concombre's face split into a wide grin. "MON DIEU, w'at if
+you was on'y brother to Concombre Bateese, m'sieu. T'ink of
+zat--you--me--FRERE D'ARMES! VENTRE SAINT GRIS, but we mak' all
+fightin' men in nort' countree run lak rabbits ahead of ze fox! OUI, we
+mak' gr-r-r-eat pair, m'sieu--you, w'at knock down Bateese--an'
+Bateese, w'at keel polar bear wit hees naked hands, w'at pull down
+trees, w'at chew flint w'en hees tobacco gone."
+
+His voice had risen, and suddenly there came a laugh from outside the
+door, and Concombre cut himself short and his mouth closed with a snap.
+It was Joe Clamart who had laughed.
+
+"I w'ip heem five time, an' now I w'ip heem seex!" hissed Bateese in an
+undertone. "Two time each year I w'ip zat gargon Joe Clamart so he
+understan' w'at good fightin' man ees. An' you will w'ip heem, eh,
+m'sieu? Oui? An' I will breeng odder good fightin' mans for you to
+w'ip--all w'at Concombre Bateese has w'ipped--ten, dozen, forty--an'
+you w'ip se gran' bunch, m'sieu. Eh, shall we mak' ze bargain?"
+
+"You are planning a pleasant time for me, Bateese," said Carrigan, "but
+I am afraid it will be impossible. You see, this captain of yours,
+Black Roger Audemard--"
+
+"W'at!" Bateese jumped as if stung. "W'at you say, m'sieu?"
+
+"I said that Roger Audemard, Black Roger, the man I thought was St.
+Pierre Boulain--"
+
+Carrigan said no more. What he had started to say was unimportant
+compared with the effect of Roger Audernard's name on Concombre
+Bateese. A deadly light glittered in the half-breed's eyes, and for the
+first time David realized that in the grotesque head of the riverman
+was a brain quick to grip at the significance of things. The fact was
+evident that Black Roger had not confided in Bateese as to the price of
+the wager and the confession of his identity, and for a moment after
+the repetition of Audemard's name came from David's lips the half-breed
+stood as if something had stunned him. Then slowly, as if forcing the
+words in the face of a terrific desire that had transformed his body
+into a hulk of quivering steel, he said:
+
+"M'sieu--I come with message--from St. Pierre. You see windows--closed.
+Outside door--she locked. On bot' sides de bateau, all de time, we
+watch. You try get away, an' we keel you. Zat ees all. We shoot. We
+five mans on ze bateau, all ze day, TOUTE LA NUIT. You unnerstan'?"
+
+He turned sullenly, waiting for no reply, and the door opened and
+closed after him--and again came the snap of the lock outside.
+
+Steadily the bateau swept down the big river that day. There was no
+let-up in the steady creaking of the long sweep. Even in the swifter
+currents David could hear the working of it, and he knew he had seen
+the last of the more slowly moving raft. Near one of the partly open
+windows he heard two men talking just before the bateau shot into the
+Brule Point rapids. They were strange voices. He learned that
+Audemard's huge raft was made up of thirty-five cribs, seven abreast,
+and that nine times between the Point Brule and the Yellowknife the
+raft would be split up, so that each crib could be run through
+dangerous rapids by itself.
+
+That would be a big job, David assured himself. It would be slow work
+as well as hazardous, and as his own life was in no immediate jeopardy,
+he would have ample time in which to formulate some plan of action for
+himself. At the present moment, it seemed, the one thing for him to do
+was to wait--and behave himself, according to the half-breed's
+instructions. There was, when he came to think about it, a saving
+element of humor about it all. He had always wanted to make a trip down
+the Three Rivers in a bateau. And now--he was making it!
+
+At noon a guard brought in his dinner. He could not recall that he had
+ever seen this man before, a tall, lithe fellow built to run like a
+hound, and who wore a murderous-looking knife at his belt. As the door
+opened, David caught a glimpse of two others. They were business-like
+looking individuals, with muscles built for work or fight; one sitting
+cross-legged on the bateau deck with a rifle over his knees, and the
+other standing with a rifle in his hand. The man who brought his dinner
+wasted no time or words. He merely nodded, murmured a curt bonjour, and
+went out. And Carrigan, as he began to eat, did not have to tell
+himself twice that Audemard had been particular in his selection of the
+bateau's crew, and that the eyes of the men he had seen could be as
+keen as a hawk's when leveled over the tip of a rifle barrel. They
+meant business, and he felt no desire to smile in the face of them, as
+he had smiled at Concombre Bateese.
+
+It was another man, and a stranger, who brought in his supper. And for
+two hours after that, until the sun went down and gloom began to fall,
+the bateau sped down the river. It had made forty miles that day, he
+figured.
+
+It was still light when the bateau was run ashore and tied up, but
+tonight there were no singing voices or wild laughter of men whose
+hours of play-time and rest had come. To Carrigan, looking through his
+window, there was an oppressive menace about it all. The shadowy
+figures ashore were more like a death-watch than a guard, and to dispel
+the gloom of it he lighted two of the lamps in the cabin, whistled,
+drummed a simple chord he knew on the piano, and finally settled down
+to smoking his pipe. He would have welcomed the company of Bateese, or
+Joe Clamart, or one of the guards, and as his loneliness grew upon him
+there was something of companionship even in the subdued voices he
+heard occasionally outside. He tried to read, but the printed words
+jumbled themselves and meant nothing.
+
+It was ten o'clock, and clouds had darkened the night, when through his
+open windows he heard a shout coming from the river. Twice it came
+before it was answered from the bateau, and the second time Carrigan
+recognized it as the voice of Roger Audemard. A brief interval passed
+between that and the scraping of a canoe alongside, and then there was
+a low conversation in which even Audemard's great voice was subdued,
+and after that the grating of a key in the lock, and the opening of the
+door, and Black Roger came in, bearing an Indian reed basket under his
+arm. Carrigan did not rise to meet him. It was not like the coming of
+the old St. Pierre, and on Black Roger's lips there was no twist of a
+smile, nor in his eyes the flash of good-natured greeting. His face was
+darkly stern, as if he had traveled far and hard on an unpleasant
+mission, but in it there was no shadow of menace, as there had been in
+that of Concombre Bateese. It was rather the face of a tired man, and
+yet David knew what he saw was not physical exhaustion. Black Roger
+guessed something of his thought, and his mouth for an instant
+repressed a smile.
+
+"Yes, I have been having a rough time," he nodded, "This is for you!"
+
+He placed the basket on the table. It held half a bushel, and was
+filled to the curve of the handle. What lay in it was hidden under a
+cloth securely tied about it.
+
+"And you are responsible," he added, stretching himself in a chair with
+a gesture of weariness. "I should kill you, Carrigan. And instead of
+that I bring you good things to eat! Half the day she has been fussing
+with the things in the basket, and then insisted that I bring them to
+you. And I have brought them simply to tell you another thing. I am
+sorry for her. I think, M'sieu Carrigan, you will find as many tears in
+the basket as anything else, for her heart is crushed and sick because
+of the humiliation she brought upon herself this morning."
+
+He was twisting his big, rough hands, and David's own heart went sick
+as he saw the furrowed lines that had deepened in the other's face.
+Black Roger did not look at him as he went on.
+
+"Of course, she told me. She tells me everything. And if she knew I was
+telling you this, I think she would kill herself. But I want you to
+understand. She is not what you might think she is. That kiss came from
+the lips of the best woman God ever made, M'sieu Carrigan!"
+
+David, with the blood in him running like fire, heard himself
+answering, "I know it. She was excited, glad you had not stained your
+hands with my life--"
+
+This time Audemard smiled, but it was the smile of a man ten years
+older than he had appeared yesterday. "Don't try to answer, m'sieu. I
+only want you to know she is as pure as the stars. It was unfortunate,
+but to follow the impulse of one's heart can not be a sin. Everything
+has been unfortunate since you came. But I blame no one, except--"
+
+"Carmin Fanchet?"
+
+Audemard nodded. "Yes. I have sent her away. Marie-Anne is in the cabin
+on the raft now. But even Carmin I can not blame very greatly, m'sieu,
+for it is impossible to hold anything against one you love. Tell me if
+I am right? You must know. You love my Marie-Anne. Do you hold anything
+against her?"
+
+"It is unfair," protested David. "She is your wife, Audemard, is it
+possible you don't love her?"
+
+"Yes, I love her."
+
+"And Carmin Fanchet?"
+
+"I love her, too. They are so different. Yet I love them both. Is it
+not possible for a big heart like mine to do that, m'sieu?"
+
+With almost a snort David rose to his feet and stared through one of
+the windows into the darkness of the river. "Black Roger," he said
+without turning his head, "the evidence at Headquarters condemns you as
+one of the blackest-hearted murderers that ever lived. But that crime,
+to me, is less atrocious than the one you are committing against your
+own wife. I am not ashamed to confess I love her, because to deny it
+would be a lie. I love her so much that I would sacrifice myself--soul
+and body--if that sacrifice could give you back to her, clean and
+undefiled and with your hand unstained by the crime for which you must
+hang!"
+
+He did not hear Roger Audemard as he rose from his chair. For a moment
+the riverman stared at the back of David's head, and in that moment he
+was fighting to keep back what wanted to come from his lips in words.
+He turned before David faced him again, and did not pause until he
+stood at the cabin door with his hand at the latch. There he was partly
+in shadow.
+
+"I shall not see you again until you reach the Yellowknife," he said.
+"Not until then will you know--or will I know--what is going to happen.
+I think you will understand strange things then, but that is for the
+hour to tell. Bateese has explained to you that you must not make an
+effort to escape. You would regret it, and so would I. If you have red
+blood in you, m'sieu--if you would understand all that you cannot
+understand now--wait as patiently as you can. Bonne nuit, M'sieu
+Carrigan!"
+
+"Good night!" nodded David.
+
+In the pale shadows he thought a mysterious light of gladness illumined
+Black Roger's face before the door opened and closed, leaving him alone
+again.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+With the going of Black Roger also went the oppressive loneliness which
+had gripped Carrigan, and as he stood listening to the low voices
+outside, the undeniable truth came to him that he did not hate this man
+as he wanted to hate him. He was a murderer, and a scoundrel in another
+way, but he felt irresistibly the impulse to like him and to feel sorry
+for him. He made an effort to shake off the feeling, but a small voice
+which he could not quiet persisted in telling him that more than one
+good man had committed what the law called murder, and that perhaps he
+didn't fully understand what he had seen through the cabin window on
+the raft. And yet, when unstirred by this impulse, he knew the evidence
+was damning.
+
+But his loneliness was gone. With Audemard's visit had come an
+unexpected thrill, the revival of an almost feverish anticipation, the
+promise of impending things that stirred his blood as he thought of
+them. "You will understand strange things then," Roger Audemard had
+said, and something in his voice had been like a key unlocking
+mysterious doors for the first time. And then, "Wait, as patiently as
+you can!" Out of the basket on the table seemed to come to him a
+whispering echo of that same word--wait! He laid his hands upon it, and
+a pulse of life came with the imagined whispering. It was from
+Marie-Anne. It seemed as though the warmth of her hands were still
+there, and as he removed the cloth the sweet breath of her came to him.
+And then, in the next instant, he was trying to laugh at himself and
+trying equally hard to call himself a fool, for it was the breath of
+newly-baked things which her fingers had made.
+
+Yet never had he felt the warmth of her presence more strangely in his
+heart. He did not try to explain to himself why Roger Audemard's visit
+had broken down things which had seemed insurmountable an hour ago.
+Analysis was impossible, because he knew the transformation within
+himself was without a shred of reason. But it had come, and with it his
+imprisonment took on another form. Where before there had been thought
+of escape and a scheming to jail Black Roger, there filled him now an
+intense desire to reach the Yellowknife and the Chateau Boulain.
+
+It was after midnight when he went to bed, and he was up with the early
+dawn. With the first break of day the bateau men were preparing their
+breakfast. David was glad. He was eager for the day's work to begin,
+and in that eagerness he pounded on the door and called out to Joe
+Clamart that he was ready for his breakfast with the rest of them, but
+that he wanted only hot coffee to go with what Black Roger had brought
+to him in the basket.
+
+That afternoon the bateau passed Fort McMurray, and before the sun was
+well down in the west Carrigan saw the green slopes of Thickwood Hills
+and the rising peaks of Birch Mountains. He laughed outright as he
+thought of Corporal Anderson and Constable Frazer at Fort McMurray,
+whose chief duty was to watch the big waterway. How their eyes would
+pop if they could see through the padlocked door of his prison! But he
+had no inclination to be discovered now. He wanted to go on, and with a
+growing exultation he saw there was no intention on the part of the
+bateau's crew to loiter on the way. There was no stop at noon, and the
+tie-up did not come until the last glow of day was darkening into the
+gloom of night in the sky. For sixteen hours the bateau had traveled
+steadily, and it could not have made less than sixty miles as the river
+ran. The raft, David figured, had not traveled a third of the distance.
+
+The fact that the bateau's progress would bring him to Chateau Boulain
+many days, and perhaps weeks, before Black Roger and Marie-Anne could
+arrive on the raft did not check his enthusiasm. It was this interval
+between their arrivals which held a great speculative promise for him.
+In that time, if his efficiency had not entirely deserted him, he would
+surely make discoveries of importance.
+
+Day after day the journey continued without rest. On the fourth day
+after leaving Fort McMurray it was Joe Clamart who brought in David's
+supper, and he grunted a protest at his long hours of muscle-breaking
+labor at the sweeps. When David questioned him he shrugged his
+shoulders, and his mouth closed tight as a clam. On the fifth, the
+bateau crossed the narrow western neck of Lake Athabasca, slipping past
+Chipewyan in the night, and on the sixth it entered the Slave River. It
+was the fourteenth day when the bateau entered Great Slave Lake, and
+the second night after that, as dusk gathered thickly between the
+forest walls of the Yellowknife, David knew that at last they had
+reached the mouth of the dark and mysterious stream which led to the
+still more mysterious domain of Black Roger Audemard.
+
+That night the rejoicing of the bateau men ashore was that of men who
+had come out from under a strain and were throwing off its tension for
+the first time in many days. A great fire was built, and the men sang
+and laughed and shouted as they piled wood upon it. In the flare of
+this fire a smaller one was built, and kettles and pans were soon
+bubbling and sizzling over it, and a great coffee pot that held two
+gallons sent out its steam laden with an aroma that mingled joyously
+with the balsam and cedar smells in the air. David could see the whole
+thing from his window, and when Joe Clamart came in with supper, he
+found the meat they were cooking over the fire was fresh moose steak.
+As there had been no trading or firing of guns coming down, he was
+puzzled and when he asked where the meat had come from Joe Clamart only
+shrugged his shoulders and winked an eye, and went out singing about
+the allouette bird that had everything plucked from it, one by one. But
+David noticed there were never more than four men ashore at the same
+time. At least one was always aboard the bateau, watching his door and
+windows.
+
+And he, too, felt the thrill of an excitement working subtly within
+him, and this thrill pounded in swifter running blood when he saw the
+men about the fire jump to their feet suddenly and go to meet new and
+shadowy figures that came up indistinctly just in the edge of the
+forest gloom. There they mingled and were lost in identity for a long
+time, and David wondered if the newcomers were of the people of Chateau
+Boulain. After that, Bateese and Joe Clamart and two others stamped out
+the fires and came over the plank to the bateau to sleep. David
+followed their example and went to bed.
+
+The cook fires were burning again before the gray dawn was broken by a
+tint of the sun, and when the voices of many men roused David, he went
+to his window and saw a dozen figures where last night there had been
+only four. When it grew lighter he recognized none of them. All were
+strangers. Then he realized the significance of their presence. The
+bateau had been traveling north, but downstream. Now it would still
+travel north, but the water of the Yellow-knife flowed south into Great
+Slave Lake, and the bateau must be towed. He caught a glimpse of the
+two big York boats a little later, and six rowers to a boat, and after
+that the bateau set out slowly but steadily upstream.
+
+For hours David was at one window or the other, with something of awe
+working inside him as he saw what they were passing through--and
+between. He fancied the water trail was like an entrance into a
+forbidden land, a region of vast and unbroken mystery, a country of
+enchantment, possibly of death, shut out from the world he had known.
+For the stream narrowed, and the forest along the shores was so dense
+he could not see into it. The tree-tops hung in a tangled canopy
+overhead, and a gloom of twilight filled the channel below, so that
+where the sun shot through, it was like filtered moonlight shining on
+black oil. There was no sound except the dull, steady beat of the
+rowers' oars, and the ripple of water along the sides of the bateau.
+The men did not sing or laugh, and if they talked it must have been in
+whispers. There was no cry of birds from ashore. And once David saw Joe
+Clamart's face as he passed the window, and it was set and hard and
+filled with the superstition of a man who was passing through a
+devil-country.
+
+And then suddenly the end of it came. A flood of sunlight burst in at
+the windows, and all at once voices came from ahead, a laugh, a shout,
+and a yell of rejoicing from the bateau, and Joe Clamart started again
+the everlasting song of the allouette bird that was plucked of
+everything it had. Carrigan found himself grinning. They were a queer
+people, these bred-in-the-blood northerners--still moved by the
+superstitions of children. Yet he conceded that the awesome deadness of
+the forest passage had put strange thoughts into his own heart.
+
+Before nightfall Bateese and Joe Clamart came in and tied his arms
+behind him, and he was taken ashore with the rumble of a waterfall in
+his ears. For two hours he watched the labors of the men as they
+beached the bateau on long rollers of smooth birch and rolled it foot
+by foot over a cleared trail until it was launched again above the
+waterfall. Then he was led back into the cabin and his arms freed. That
+night he went to sleep with the music of the waterfall in his ears.
+
+The second day the Yellowknife seemed to be no longer a river, but a
+narrow lake, and the third day the rowers came into the Nine Lake
+country at noon, and until another dusk the bateau threaded its way
+through twisting channels and impenetrable forests, and beached at last
+at the edge of a great open where the timber had been cut. There was
+more excitement here, but it was too dark for David to understand the
+meaning of it. There were many voices; dogs barked. Then voices were at
+his door, a key rattled in the lock, and it opened. David saw Bateese
+and Joe Clamart first. And then, to his amazement, Black Roger Audemard
+stood there, smiling at him and nodding good-evening.
+
+It was impossible for David to repress his astonishment.
+
+"Welcome to Chateau Boulain," greeted Black Roger. "You are surprised?
+Well, I beat you out by half a dozen hours--in a canoe, m'sieu. It is
+only courtesy that I should be here to give you welcome!"
+
+Behind him Bateese and Joe Clamart were grinning widely, and then both
+came in, and Joe Clamart picked up his dunnage-sack and threw it over
+his shoulder.
+
+"If you will come with us, m'sieu--"
+
+David followed, and when he stepped ashore there were Bateese, and Joe
+Clamart and one other behind him, and three or four shadowy figures
+ahead, with Black Roger walking at his side. There were no more voices,
+and the dog had ceased barking. Ahead was a wall of darkness, which was
+the deep black forest beyond the clearing, and into it led a trail
+which they followed. It was a path worn smooth by the travel of many
+feet, and for a mile not a star broke through the tree-tops overhead,
+nor did a flash of light break the utter chaos of the way but once,
+when Joe Clamart lighted his pipe. No one spoke. Even Black Roger was
+silent, and David found no word to say.
+
+At the end of the mile the trees began to open above their heads, and
+they soon came to the edge of the timber. In the darkness David caught
+his breath. Dead ahead, not a rifle shot away, was the Chateau Boulain.
+He knew it before Black Roger had said a word. He guessed it by the
+lighted windows, full a score of them, without a curtain drawn to shut
+out their illumination from the night. He could see nothing but these
+lights, yet they measured off a mighty place to be built of logs in the
+heart of a wilderness, and at his side he heard Black Roger chuckling
+in low exultation.
+
+"Our home, m'sieu," he said. "Tomorrow, when you see it in the light of
+day, you will say it is the finest chateau in the north--all built of
+sweet cedar where birch is not used, so that even in the deep snows it
+gives us the perfume of springtime and flowers."
+
+David did not answer, and in a moment Audemard said:
+
+"Only on Christmas and New Year and at birthdays and wedding feasts is
+it lighted up like that. Tonight it is in your honor, M'sieu David."
+Again he laughed softly, and under his breath he added, "And there is
+some one waiting for you there whom you will be surprised to see!"
+
+David's heart gave a jump. There was meaning in Black Roger's words and
+no double twist to what he meant. Marie-Anne had come ahead with her
+husband!
+
+Now, as they passed on to the brilliantly lighted chateau, David made
+out the indistinct outlines of other buildings almost hidden in the
+out-creeping shadows of the forest-edges, with now and then a ray of
+light to show people were in them. But there was a brooding silence
+over it all which made him wonder, for there was no voice, no bark of
+dog, not even the opening or closing of a door. As they drew nearer, he
+saw a great veranda reaching the length of the chateau, with screening
+to keep out the summer pests of mosquitoes and flies and the night
+prowling insects attracted by light. Into this they went, up wide birch
+steps, and ahead of them was a door so heavy it looked like the postern
+gate of a castle. Black Roger opened it, and in a moment David stood
+beside him in a dimly lighted hall where the mounted heads of wild
+beasts looked down like startled things from the gloom of the walls.
+And then David heard the low, sweet notes of a piano coming to them
+very faintly.
+
+He looked at Black Roger. A smile was on the lips of the chateau
+master; his head was up, and his eyes glowed with pride and joy as the
+music came to him. He spoke no word, but laid a hand on David's arm and
+led him toward it, while Bateese and Joe Clamart remained standing at
+the entrance to the hall. David's feet trod in thick rugs of fur; he
+saw the dim luster of polished birch and cedar in the walls, and over
+his head the ceiling was rich and matched, as in the bateau cabin. They
+drew nearer to the music and came to a closed door. This Black Roger
+opened very quietly, as if anxious not to disturb the one who was
+playing.
+
+They entered, and David held his breath. It was a great room he stood
+in, thirty feet or more from end to end, and scarcely less in width--a
+room brilliant with light, sumptuous in its comfort, sweet with the
+perfume of wild-flowers, and with a great black fireplace at the end of
+it, from over which there stared at him the glass eyes of a monster
+moose. Then he saw the figure at the piano, and something rose up
+quickly and choked him when his eyes told him it was not Marie-Anne. It
+was a slim, beautiful figure in a soft and shimmering white gown, and
+its head was glowing gold in the lamplight.
+
+Roger Audemard spoke, "Carmin!"
+
+The woman at the piano turned about, a little startled at the
+unexpectedness of the voice, and then rose quickly to her feet--and
+David Carrigan found himself looking into the eyes of Carmin Fanchet!
+
+Never had he seen her more beautiful than in this moment, like an angel
+in her shimmering dress of white, her hair a radiant glory, her eyes
+wide and glowing--and, as she looked at him, a smile coming to her red
+lips. Yes, SHE WAS SMILING AT HIM--this woman whose brother he had
+brought to the hangman, this woman who had stolen Black Roger from
+another! She knew him--he was sure of that; she knew him as the man who
+had believed her a criminal along with her brother, and who had fought
+to the last against her freedom. Yet from her lips and her eyes and her
+face the old hatred was gone. She was coming toward him slowly; she was
+reaching out her hand, and half blindly his own went out, and he felt
+the warmth of her fingers for a moment, and he heard her voice saying
+softly,
+
+"Welcome to Chateau Boulain, M'sieu Carrigan."
+
+He bowed and mumbled something, and Black Roger gently pressed his arm,
+drawing him back to the door. As he went he saw again that Carmin
+Fanchet was very beautiful as she stood there, and that her lips were
+very red--but her face was white, whiter than he had ever seen the face
+of a woman before.
+
+As they went up a winding stair to the second floor, Roger Audemard
+said, "I am proud of my Carmin, M'sieu David. Would any other woman in
+the world have given her hand like that to the man who had helped to
+kill her brother?"
+
+They stopped at another door. Black Roger opened it. There were lights
+within, and David knew it was to be his room. Audemard did not follow
+him inside, but there was a flashing humor in his eyes.
+
+"I say, is there another woman like her in the world, m'sieu?"
+
+"What have you done to Marie-Anne--your wife?" asked David.
+
+It was hard for him to get the words out. A terrible thing was gripping
+at his throat, and the clutch of it grew tighter as he saw the wild
+light in Black Roger's eyes.
+
+"Tomorrow you will know, m'sieu. But not to-night. You must wait until
+tomorrow."
+
+He nodded and stepped back, and the door closed--and in the same
+instant came the harsh grating of a key in the lock.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Carrigan turned slowly and looked about his room. There was no other
+door except one opening into a closet, and but two windows. Curtains
+were drawn at these windows, and he raised them. A grim smile came to
+his lips when he saw the white bars of tough birch nailed across each
+of them, outside the glass. He could see the birch had been freshly
+stripped of bark and had probably been nailed there that day. Carmin
+Fanchet and Black Roger had welcomed him to Chateau Boulain, but they
+were evidently taking no chances with their prisoner. And where was
+Marie-Anne?
+
+The question was insistent, and with it remained that cold grip of
+something in his heart that had come with the sight of Carmin Fanchet
+below. Was it possible that Carmin's hatred still lived, deadlier than
+ever, and that with Black Roger she had plotted to bring him here so
+that her vengeance might be more complete--and a greater torture to
+him? Were they smiling and offering him their hands, even as they knew
+he was about to die? And if that was conceivable, what had they done
+with Marie-Anne?
+
+He looked about the room. It was singularly bare, in an unusual sort of
+way, he thought. There were rich rugs on the floor--three magnificent
+black bearskins, and two wolf. The heads of two bucks and a splendid
+caribou hung against the walls. He could see, from marks on the floor,
+where a bed had stood, but this bed was now replaced by a couch made up
+comfortably for one inclined to sleep. The significance of the thing
+was clear--nowhere in the room could he lay his hand upon an object
+that might be used as a weapon!
+
+His eyes again sought the white-birch bars of his prison, and he raised
+the two windows so that the cool, sweet breath of the forests reached
+in to him. It was then that he noticed the mosquito-proof screening
+nailed outside the bars. It was rather odd, this thinking of his
+comfort even as they planned to kill him!
+
+If there was truth to this new suspicion that Black Roger and his
+mistress were plotting both vengeance and murder, their plans must also
+involve Marie-Anne. Suddenly his mind shot back to the raft. Had Black
+Roger turned a clever coup by leaving his wife there, while he came on
+ahead of the bateau with Carmin Fanchet? It would be several weeks
+before the raft reached the Yellowknife, and in that time many things
+might happen. The thought worried him. He was not afraid for himself.
+Danger, the combating of physical forces, was his business. His fear
+was for Marie-Anne. He had seen enough to know that Black Roger was
+hopelessly infatuated with Carmin Fanchet. And several things might
+happen aboard the raft, planned by agents as black-souled as himself.
+If they killed Marie-Anne--
+
+His hand gripped the knob of the door, and for a moment he was filled
+with the impulse to shout for Black Roger and face him with what was in
+his mind. And as he stood there, every muscle in his body ready to
+fight, there came to him faintly the sound of music. He heard the piano
+first, and then a woman's voice singing. Soon a man's voice joined the
+woman's, and he knew it was Black Roger, singing with Carmin Fanchet.
+
+Suddenly the mad impulse in his heart went out, and he leaned his head
+nearer to the crack of the door, and strained his ears to hear. He
+could make out no word of the song, yet the singing came to him with a
+thrill that set his lips apart and brought a staring wonder into his
+eyes. In the room below him, fifteen hundred miles from civilization,
+Black Roger and Carmin Fanchet were singing "Home, Sweet Home!"
+
+An hour later David looked through one of the barred windows upon a
+world lighted by a splendid moon. He could see the dark edge of the
+distant forest that rimmed in the chateau, and about him seemed to be a
+level meadow, with here and there the shadow of a building in which the
+lights were out. Stars were thick in the sky, and a strange quietness
+hovered over the world he looked upon. From below him floated up now
+and then a perfume of tobacco smoke. The guard under his window was
+awake, but he made no sound.
+
+A little later he undressed, put out the two lights in his room, and
+stretched himself between the cool, white sheets on the couch. After a
+time he slept, but it was a restless slumber filled with troubled
+dreams. Twice he was half awake, and the second time it seemed to him
+his nostrils sensed a sharper tang of smoke than that of burning
+tobacco, yet he did not fully rouse himself, and the hours passed, and
+new sounds and smells that rose in the night impinged themselves upon
+him only as a part of the troublous fabric of his dreams. But at last
+there came a shock, something which beat over these things which
+chained him, and seized upon his consciousness, demanding that he rouse
+himself, open his eyes, and get up.
+
+He obeyed the command, and before he was fully awake, found himself on
+his feet. It was still dark, but he heard voices, voices no longer
+subdued, but filled with a wild note of excitement and command. And
+what he smelled was not the smell of tobacco smoke! It was heavy in his
+room. It filled his lungs. His eyes were smarting with the sting of it.
+
+Then came vision, and with a startled cry he leaped to a window. To the
+north and east he looked out upon a flaming world!
+
+With his fist he rubbed his smarting eyes. The moon was gone. The gray
+he saw outside must be the coming of dawn, ghostly with that mist of
+smoke that had come into his room. He could see shadowy figures of men
+running swiftly in and out and disappearing, and he could hear the
+voices of women and children, and from beyond the edge of the forest to
+the west came the howling of many dogs. One voice rose above the
+others. It was Black Roger's, and at its commands little groups of
+figures shot out into the gray smoke-gloom and did not appear again.
+
+North and east the sky was flaming sullen red, and a breath of air
+blowing gently in David's face told him the direction of the wind. The
+chateau lay almost in the center of the growing line of conflagration.
+
+He dressed himself and went again to the window. Quite distinctly now,
+he could make out Joe Clamart under his window, running toward the edge
+of the forest at the head of half a dozen men and boys who carried axes
+and cross-cut saws over their shoulders. It was the last of Black
+Roger's people that he saw for some time in the open meadow, but from
+the front of the chateau he could hear many voices, chiefly of women
+and children, and guessed it was from there that the final operations
+against the fire were being directed. The wind was blowing stronger in
+his face. With it came a sharper tang of smoke, and the widening light
+of day was fighting to hold its own against the deepening pall of
+flame-lit gloom advancing with the wind.
+
+There seemed to come a low and distant sound with that wind, so
+indistinct that to David's ears it was like a murmur a thousand miles
+away. He strained his ears to hear, and as he listened, there came
+another sound--a moaning, sobbing voice below his window! It was grief
+he heard now, something that went to his heart and held him cold and
+still. The voice was sobbing like that of a child, yet he knew it was
+not a child's. Nor was it a woman's. A figure came out slowly in his
+view, humped over, twisted in its shape, and he recognized Andre, the
+Broken Man. David could see that he was crying like a child, and he was
+facing the flaming forests, with his arms reaching out to them in his
+moaning. Then, of a sudden, he gave a strange cry, as if defiance had
+taken the place of grief, and he hurried across the meadow and
+disappeared into the timber where a great lightning-riven spruce
+gleamed dully white through the settling veil of smoke-mist.
+
+For a space David looked after him, a strange beating in his heart. It
+was as if he had seen a little child going into the face of a deadly
+peril, and at last he shouted out for some one to bring back the Broken
+Man. But there was no answer from under his window. The guard was gone.
+Nothing lay between him and escape--if he could force the white birch
+bars from the window.
+
+He thrust himself against them, using his shoulder as a battering-ram.
+Not the thousandth part of an inch could he feel them give, yet he
+worked until his shoulder was sore. Then he paused and studied the bars
+more carefully. Only one thing would avail him, and that was some
+object which he might use as a lever.
+
+He looked about him, and not a thing was there in the room to answer
+the purpose. Then his eyes fell on the splendid horns of the caribou
+head. Black Roger's discretion had failed him there, and eagerly David
+pulled the head down from the wall. He knew the woodsman's trick of
+breaking off a horn from the skull, yet in this room, without log or
+root to help him, the task was difficult, and it was a quarter of an
+hour after he had last seen the Broken Man before he stood again at the
+window with the caribou horn in his hands. He no longer had to hold his
+breath to hear the low moaning in the wind, and where there had been
+smoke-gloom before there were now black clouds rolling and twisting up
+over the tops of the north and eastern forests, as if mighty breaths
+were playing with them from behind.
+
+David thrust the big end of the caribou horn between two of the
+white-birch bars, but before he had put his weight to the lever he
+heard a great voice coming round the end of the chateau, and it was
+calling for Andre, the Broken Man. In a moment it was followed by Black
+Roger Audemard, who ran under the window and faced the lightning-struck
+spruce as he shouted Andre's name again.
+
+Suddenly David called down to him, and Black Roger turned and looked up
+through the smoke-gloom, his head bare, his arms naked, and his eyes
+gleaming wildly as he listened.
+
+"He went that way twenty minutes ago," David shouted. "He disappeared
+into the forest where you see the dead spruce yonder. And he was
+crying, Black Roger--he was crying like a child."
+
+If there had been other words to finish, Black Roger would not have
+heard them. He was running toward the old spruce, and David saw him
+disappear where the Broken Man had gone. Then he put his weight on the
+horn, and one of the tough birch bars gave way slowly, and after that a
+second was wrenched loose, and a third, until the lower half of the
+window was free of them entirely. He thrust out his head and found no
+one within the range of his vision. Then he worked his way through the
+window, feet first, and hanging the length of arms and body from the
+lower sill, dropped to the ground.
+
+Instantly he faced the direction taken by Roger Audemard, it was HIS
+turn now, and he felt a savage thrill in his blood. For an instant he
+hesitated, held by the impulse to rush to Carmin Fanchet and with his
+fingers at her throat, demand what she and her paramour had done with
+Marie-Anne. But the mighty determination to settle it all with Black
+Roger himself overwhelmed that impulse like an inundation. Black Roger
+had gone into the forest. He was separated from his people, and the
+opportunity was at hand.
+
+Positive that Marie-Anne had been left with the raft, the thought that
+the Chateau Boulain might be devoured by the onrushing conflagration
+did not appal David. The chateau held little interest for him now. It
+was Black Roger he wanted. As he ran toward the old spruce, he picked
+up a club that lay in the path.
+
+This path was a faintly-worn trail where it entered the forest beyond
+the spruce, very narrow, and with brush hanging close to the sides of
+it, so that David knew it was not in general use and that but few feet
+had ever used it. He followed swiftly, and in five minutes came
+suddenly out into a great open thick with smoke, and here he saw why
+Chateau Boulain would not burn. The break in the forest was a clearing
+a rifle-shot in width, free of brush and grass, and partly tilled; and
+it ran in a semi-circle as far as he could see through the smoke in
+both directions. Thus had Black Roger safeguarded his wilderness
+castle, while providing tillable fields for his people; and as David
+followed the faintly beaten path, he saw green stuffs growing on both
+sides of him, and through the center of the clearing a long strip of
+wheat, green and very thick. Up and down through the fog of smoke he
+could hear voices, and he knew it was this great, circular
+fire-clearing the people of Chateau Boulain were watching and guarding.
+
+But he saw no one as he trailed across the open. In soft patches of the
+earth he found footprints deeply made and wide apart, the footprints of
+hurrying men, telling him Black Roger and the Broken Man were both
+ahead of him, and that Black Roger was running when he crossed the
+clearing.
+
+The footprints led him to a still more indistinct trail in the farther
+forest, a trail which went straight into the face of the fire ahead. He
+followed it. The distant murmur had grown into a low moaning over the
+tree-tops, and with it the wind was coming stronger, and the smoke
+thicker. For a mile he continued along the path, and then he stopped,
+knowing he had come to the dead-line. Over him was a swirling chaos.
+The fire-wind had grown into a roar before which the tree-tops bent as
+if struck by a gale, and in the air he breathed he could feel a swiftly
+growing heat. For a space he stood there, breathing quickly in the face
+of a mighty peril. Where had Black Roger and the Broken Man gone? What
+mad impulse could it be that dragged them still farther into the path
+of death? Or had they struck aside from the trail? Was he alone in
+danger?
+
+As if in answer to the questions there came from far ahead of him a
+loud cry. It was Black Roger's voice, and as he listened, it called
+over and over again the Broken Man's name,
+
+"Andre--Andre--Andre--"
+
+Something in the cry held Carrigan. There was a note of terror in it, a
+wild entreaty that was almost drowned in the trembling wind and the
+moaning that was in the air. David was ready to turn back. He had
+already approached too near to the red line of death, yet that cry of
+Black Roger urged him on like the lash of a whip. He plunged ahead into
+the chaos of smoke, no longer able to distinguish a trail under his
+feet. Twice again in as many minutes he heard Black Roger's voice, and
+ran straight toward it. The blood of the hunter rushed over all other
+things in his veins. The man he wanted was ahead of him and the moment
+had passed when danger or fear of death could drive him back. Where
+Black Roger lived, he could live, and he gripped his club and ran
+through the low brush that whipped in stinging lashes against his face
+and hands.
+
+He came to the foot of a ridge, and from the top of this he knew Black
+Roger had called. It was a huge hog's-back, rising a hundred feet up
+out of the forest, and when he reached the top of it, he was panting
+for breath. It was as if he had come suddenly within the blast of a hot
+furnace. North and east the forest lay under him, and only the smoke
+obstructed his vision. But through this smoke he could make out a thing
+that made him rub his eyes in a fierce desire to see more clearly. A
+mile away, perhaps two, the conflagration seemed to be splitting itself
+against the tip of a mighty wedge. He could hear the roar of it to the
+right of him and to the left, but dead ahead there was only a moaning
+whirlpool of fire-heated wind and smoke. And out of this, as he looked,
+came again the cry,
+
+"Andre--Andre--Andre!"
+
+Again he stared north and south through the smoke-gloom. Mountains of
+resinous clouds, black as ink, were swirling skyward along the two
+sides of the giant wedge. Under that death-pall the flames were
+sweeping through the spruce and cedar tops like race-horses, hidden
+from his eyes. If they closed in there could be no escape; in fifteen
+minutes they would inundate him, and it would take him half an hour to
+reach the safety of the clearing.
+
+His heart thumped against his ribs as he hurried down the ridge in the
+direction of Black Roger's voice. The giant wedge of the forest was not
+burning--yet, and Audemard was hurrying like mad toward the tip of that
+wedge, crying out now and then the name of the Broken Man. And always
+he kept ahead, until at last--a mile from the ridge--David came to the
+edge of a wide stream and saw what it was that made the wedge of
+forest. For under his eyes the stream split, and two arms of it widened
+out, and along each shore of the two streams was a wide fire-clearing
+made by the axes of Black Roger's people, who had foreseen this day
+when fire might sweep their world.
+
+Carrigan dashed water into his eyes, and it was warm. Then he looked
+across. The fire had passed, the pall of smoke was clearing away, and
+what he saw was the black corpse of a world that had been green. It was
+smoldering; the deep mold was afire. Little tongues of flame still
+licked at ten thousand stubs charred by the fire-death--and there was
+no wind here, and only the whisper of a distant moaning sweeping
+farther and farther away.
+
+And then, out of that waste across the river, David heard a terrible
+cry. It was Black Roger, still calling--even in that place of hopeless
+death--for Andre, the Broken Man!
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Into the stream Carrigan plunged and found it only waist-deep in
+crossing. He saw where Black Roger had come out of the water and where
+his feet had plowed deep in the ash and char and smoldering debris
+ahead. This trail he followed. The air he breathed was hot and filled
+with stifling clouds of ash and char-dust and smoke. His feet struck
+red-hot embers under the ash, and he smelled burning leather. A forest
+of spruce and cedar skeletons still crackled and snapped and burst out
+into sudden tongues of flame about him, and the air he breathed grew
+hotter, and his face burned, and into his eyes came a smarting
+pain--when ahead of him he saw Black Roger. He was no longer calling
+out the Broken Man's name, but was crashing through the smoking chaos
+like a great beast that had gone both blind and mad. Twice David turned
+aside where Black Roger had rushed through burning debris, and a third
+time, following where Audemard had gone, his feet felt the sudden stab
+of living coals. In another moment he would have shouted Black Roger's
+name, but even as the words were on his lips, mingled with a gasp of
+pain, the giant river-man stopped where the forest seemed suddenly to
+end in a ghostly, smoke-filled space, and when David came up behind
+him, he was standing at the black edge of a cliff which leaped off into
+a smoldering valley below.
+
+Out of this narrow valley between two ridges, an hour ago choked with
+living spruce and cedar, rose up a swirling, terrifying heat. Down into
+this pit of death Black Roger stood looking, and David heard a strange
+moaning coming in his breath. His great, bare arms were black and
+scarred with heat; his hair was burned; his shirt was torn from his
+shoulders. When David spoke--and Black Roger turned at the sound--his
+eyes glared wildly out of a face that was like a black mask. And when
+he saw it was David who had spoken, his great body seemed to sag, and
+with an unintelligible cry he pointed down.
+
+David, staring, saw nothing with his half-blind eyes, but under his
+feet he felt a sudden giving way, and the fire-eaten tangle of earth
+and roots broke off like a rotten ledge, and with it both he and Black
+Roger went crashing into the depths below, smothered in an avalanche of
+ash and sizzling earth. At the bottom David lay for a moment, partly
+stunned. Then his fingers clutched a bit of living fire, and with a
+savage cry he staggered to his feet and looked to see Black Roger. For
+a space his eyes were blinded, and when at last he could see, he made
+out Black Roger, fifty feet away, dragging himself on his hands and
+knees through the blistering muck of the fire. And then, as he stared,
+the stricken giant came to the charred remnant of a stump and crumpled
+over it with a great cry, moaning again that name--
+
+"Andre--Andre--"
+
+David hurried to him, and as he put his hands under Black Roger's arms
+to help him to his feet, he saw that the charred stump was not a stump,
+but the fire-shriveled corpse of Andre, the Broken Man!
+
+Horror choked back speech on his own lips. Black Roger looked up at
+him, and a great breath came in a sob out of his body. Then, suddenly,
+he seemed to get grip of himself, and his burned and bleeding fingers
+closed about David's hand at his shoulder.
+
+"I knew he was coming here," he said, the words forcing themselves with
+an effort through his swollen lips. "He came home--to die."
+
+"Home--?"
+
+"Yes. His mother and father were buried here nearly thirty years ago,
+and he worshiped them. Look at him, Carrigan. Look at him closely. For
+he is the man you have wanted all these years, the finest man God ever
+made, Roger Audemard! When he saw the fire, he came to shield their
+graves from the flames. And now he is dead!"
+
+A moan came to his lips, and the weight of his body grew so heavy that
+David had to exert his strength to keep him from falling.
+
+"And YOU?" he cried. "For God's sake, Audemard--tell me--"
+
+"I, m'sieu? Why, I am only St. Pierre Audemard, his brother."
+
+And with that his head dropped heavily, and he was like a dead man in
+David's arms.
+
+How at last David came to the edge of the stream again, with the weight
+of St. Pierre Audemard on his shoulders, was a torturing nightmare
+which would never be quite clear in his brain. The details were
+obliterated in the vast agony of the thing. He knew that he fought as
+he had never fought before; that he stumbled again and again in the
+fire-muck; that he was burned, and blinded, and his brain was sick. But
+he held to St. Pierre, with his twisted, broken leg, knowing that he
+would die if he dropped him into the flesh-devouring heat of the
+smoldering debris under his feet. Toward the end he was conscious of
+St. Pierre's moaning, and then of his voice speaking to him. After that
+he came to the water and fell down in the edge of it with St. Pierre,
+and inside his head everything went as black as the world over which
+the fire had swept.
+
+He did not know how terribly he was hurt. He did not feel pain after
+the darkness came. Yet he sensed certain things. He knew that over him
+St. Pierre was shouting. For days, it seemed, he could hear nothing but
+that great voice bellowing away in the interminable distance. And then
+came other voices, now near and now far, and after that he seemed to
+rise up and float among the clouds, and for a long time he heard no
+other sound and felt no movement, but was like one dead.
+
+Something soft and gentle and comforting roused him out of darkness. He
+did not move, he did not open his eyes for a time, while reason came to
+him. He heard a voice, and it was a woman's voice, speaking softly, and
+another voice replied to it. Then he heard gentle movement, and some
+one went away from him, and he heard the almost noiseless opening and
+closing of a door. A very little he began to see. He was in a room,
+with a patch of sunlight on the wall. Also, he was in a bed. And that
+gentle, comforting hand was still stroking his forehead and hair, light
+as thistledown. He opened his eyes wider and looked up. His heart gave
+a great throb. Over him was a glorious, tender face smiling like an
+angel into his widening eyes. And it was the face of Carmin Fanchet!
+
+He made an effort, as if to speak.
+
+"Hush," she whispered, and he saw something shining in her eyes, and
+something wet fell upon his face. "She is returning--and I will go. For
+three days and nights she has not slept, and she must be the first to
+see you open your eyes."
+
+She bent over him. Her soft lips touched his forehead, and he heard her
+sobbing breath.
+
+"God bless you, David Carrigan!"
+
+Then she was going to the door, and his eyes dropped shut again. He
+began to experience pain now, a hot, consuming pain all over him, and
+he remembered the fight through the path of the fire. Then the door
+opened very softly once more, and some one came in, and knelt down at
+his side, and was so quiet that she scarcely seemed to breathe. He
+wanted to open his eyes, to cry out a name, but he waited, and lips
+soft as velvet touched his own. They lay there for a moment, then moved
+to his closed eyes, his forehead, his hair--and after that something
+rested gently against him.
+
+His eyes shot open. It was Marie-Anne, with her head nestled in the
+crook of his arm as she knelt there beside him on the floor. He could
+see only a bit of her face, but her hair was very near, crumpled
+gloriously on his breast, and he could see the tips of her long lashes
+as she remained very still, seeming not to breathe. She did not know he
+had roused from his sleep--the first sleep of those three days of
+torture which he could not remember now; and he, looking at her, made
+no movement to tell her he was awake. One of his hands lay over the
+edge of the bed, and so lightly he could scarce feel the weight of her
+fingers she laid one of her own upon it, and a little at a time drew it
+to her, until the bandaged thing was against her lips. It was strange
+she did not hear his heart, which seemed all at once to beat like a
+drum inside him!
+
+Suddenly he sensed the fact that his other hand was not bandaged. He
+was lying on his side, with his right arm partly under him, and against
+that hand he felt the softness of Marie-Anne's cheek, the velvety crush
+of her hair!
+
+And then he whispered, "Marie-Anne--"
+
+She still lay, for a moment, utterly motionless. Then, slowly, as if
+believing he had spoken her name in his sleep, she raised her head and
+looked into his wide-open eyes. There was no word between them in that
+breath or two. His bandaged hand and his well hand went to her face and
+hair, and then a sobbing cry came from Marie-Anne, and swiftly she
+crushed her face down to his, holding him close with both her arms for
+a moment. And after that, as on that other day when she kissed him
+after the fight, she was up and gone so quickly that her name had
+scarcely left his lips when the door closed behind her, and he heard
+her running down the hall.
+
+He called after her, "Marie-Anne! Marie-Anne!"
+
+He heard another door, and voices, and quick footsteps again, coming
+his way, and he was waiting eagerly, half on his elbow, when into his
+room came Nepapinas and Carmin Fanchet. And again he saw the glory of
+something in the woman's face.
+
+His eyes must have burned strangely as he stared at her, but it did not
+change that light in her own, and her hands were wonderfully gentle as
+she helped Nepapinas raise him so that he was sitting up straight, with
+pillows at his back.
+
+"It doesn't hurt so much now, does it?" she asked, her voice low with a
+mothering tenderness.
+
+He shook his head. "No. What is the matter?"
+
+"You were burned--terribly. For two days and nights you were in great
+pain, but for many hours you have been sleeping, and Nepapinas says the
+burns will not hurt any more. If it had not been for you--"
+
+She bent over him. Her hand touched his face, and now he began to
+understand the meaning of that glory shining in her eyes.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you--he would have died!"
+
+She drew back, turning to the door. "He is coming to see you--alone,"
+she said, a little broken note in her throat. "And I pray God you will
+see with clear understanding, David Carrigan--and forgive me--as I have
+forgiven you--for a thing that happened long ago."
+
+He waited. His head was in a jumble, and his thoughts were tumbling
+over one another in an effort to evolve some sort of coherence out of
+things amazing and unexpected. One thing was impressed upon him--he had
+saved St. Pierre's life, and because he had done this Carmin Fanchet
+was very tender to him. She had kissed him, and Marie-Anne had kissed
+him, and--
+
+A strange dawning was coming to him, thrilling him to his finger-tips.
+He listened. A new sound was approaching from the hall. His door was
+opened, and a wheel-chair was rolled in by old Nepapinas. In the chair
+was St. Pierre Audemard. Feet and hands and arms were wrapped in
+bandages, but his face was uncovered and wreathed in smiling happiness
+when he saw David propped up against his pillows. Nepapinas rolled him
+close to the bed and then shuffled out, and as he closed the door,
+David was sure he heard the subdued whispering of feminine voices down
+the hall.
+
+"How are you, David?" asked St. Pierre.
+
+"Fine," nodded Carrigan. "And you?"
+
+"A bit scorched, and a broken leg." He held up his padded hands. "Would
+be dead if you hadn't carried me to the river. Carmin says she owes you
+her life for having saved mine."
+
+"And Marie-Anne?"
+
+"That's what I've come to tell you about," said St. Pierre. "The
+instant they knew you were able to listen, both Carmin and Marie-Anne
+insisted that I come and tell you things. But if you don't feel well
+enough to hear me now--"
+
+"Go on!" almost threatened David.
+
+The look of cheer which had illumined St. Pierre's face faded away, and
+David saw in its place the lines of sorrow which had settled there. He
+turned his gaze toward a window through which the afternoon sun was
+coming, and nodded slowly.
+
+"You saw--out there. He's dead. They buried him in a casket made of
+sweet cedar. He loved the smell of that. He was like a little child.
+And once--a long time ago--he was a splendid man, a greater and better
+man than St. Pierre, his brother, will ever be. What he did was right
+and just, M'sieu David. He was the oldest--sixteen--when the thing
+happened. I was only nine, and didn't fully understand. But he saw it
+all--the death of our father because a powerful factor wanted my
+mother. And after that he knew how and why our mother died, but not a
+word of it did he tell us until years later--after the day of vengeance
+was past.
+
+"You understand, David? He didn't want me in that. He did it alone,
+with good friends from the upper north. He killed the murderers of our
+mother and father, and then he buried himself deeper into the forests
+with us, and we took our mother's family names which was Boulain, and
+settled here on the Yellowknife. Roger--Black Roger, as you know
+him--brought the bones of our father and mother and buried them over in
+the edge of that plain where he died and where our first cabin stood.
+Five years ago a falling tree crushed him out of shape, and his mind
+went at the same time, so that he has been like a little child, and was
+always seeking for Roger Audemard--the man he once was. That was the
+man your law wanted. Roger Audemard. Our brother."
+
+"OUR brother," cried David. "Who is the other?"
+
+"My sister."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Marie-Anne."
+
+"Good God!" choked David. "St. Pierre, do you lie? Is this another bit
+of trickery?"
+
+"It is the truth," said St. Pierre. "Marie-Anne is my sister, and
+Carmin--whom you saw in my arms through the cabin window--"
+
+He paused, smiling into David's staring eyes, taking full measure of
+recompense in the other's heart-breaking attitude as he waited. "--Is
+my wife, M'sieu David."
+
+A great gasp of breath came out of Carrigan.
+
+"Yes, my wife, and the greatest-hearted woman that ever lived, without
+one exception in all the world!" cried St. Pierre, a fierce pride in
+his voice. "It was she, and not Marie-Anne, who shot you on that strip
+of sand, David Carrigan! Mon Dieu, I tell you not one woman in a
+million would have done what she did--let you live! Why? Listen,
+m'sieu, and you will understand at last. She had a brother, years
+younger than she, and to that brother she was mother, sister,
+everything, because they had no parents almost from babyhood. She
+worshiped him. And he was bad. Yet the worse he became, the more she
+loved him and prayed for him. Years ago she became my wife, and I
+fought with her to save the brother. But he belonged to the devil hand
+and foot, and at last he left us and went south, and became what he was
+when you were sent out to get him, Sergeant Carrigan. It was then that
+my wife went down to make a last fight to save him, to bring him back,
+and you know how she made that fight, m'sieu--until the day you hanged
+him!"
+
+St. Pierre was leaning from his chair, his face ablaze. "Tell me, did
+she not fight?" he cried. "And YOU, until the last--did you not fight
+to have her put behind prison bars with her brother?"
+
+"Yes, it is so," murmured Carrigan.
+
+"She hated you," went on St. Pierre. "You hanged her brother, who was
+almost a part of her flesh and body. He was bad, but he had been hers
+from babyhood, and a mother will love her son if he is a devil. And
+then--I won't take long to tell the rest of it! Through friends she
+learned that you, who had hanged her brother, were on your way to run
+down Roger Audemard. And Roger Audemard, mind you, was the same as
+myself, for I had sworn to take my brother's place if it became
+necessary. She was on the bateau with Marie-Anne when the messenger
+came. She had but one desire--to save me--to kill you. If it had been
+some other man, but it was you, who had hanged her brother! She
+disappeared from the bateau that day with a rifle. You know, M'sieu
+David, what happened. Marie-Anne heard the shooting and
+came--alone--just as you rolled out in the sand as if dead. It was she
+who ran out to you first, while my Carmin crouched there with her
+rifle, ready to send another bullet into you if you moved. It was
+Marie-Anne you saw standing over you, it was she who knelt down at your
+side, and then--"
+
+St. Pierre paused, and he smiled, and then grimaced as he tried to rub
+his two bandaged hands together. "David, fate mixes things up in a
+funny way. My Carmin came out and stood over you, hating you; and
+Marie-Anne knelt down there at your side, loving you. Yes, it is true.
+And over you they fought for life or death, and love won, because it is
+always stronger than hate. Besides, as you lay there bleeding and
+helpless, you looked different to my Carmin than as you did when you
+hanged her brother. So they dragged you up under a tree, and after that
+they plotted together and planned, while I was away up the river on the
+raft. The feminine mind works strangely, M'sieu David, and perhaps it
+was that thing we call intuition which made them do what they did.
+Marie-Anne knew it would never do for you to see and recognize my
+Carmin, so in their scheming of things she insisted on passing herself
+off as my wife, while my Carmin came back in a canoe to meet me. They
+were frightened, and when I came, the whole thing had gone too far for
+me to mend, and I knew the false game must be played out to the end.
+When I saw what was happening--that you loved Marie-Anne so well that
+you were willing to fight for her honor even when you thought she was
+my wife--I was sure it would all end well. But I could take no chances
+until I knew. And so there were bars at your windows, and--"
+
+St. Pierre shrugged his shoulders, and the lines of grief came into his
+face again, and in his voice was a little break as he continued: "If
+Roger had not gone out there to fight back the flames from the graves
+of his dead, I had planned to tell you as much as I dared, M'sieu
+David, and I had faith that your love for our sister would win. I did
+not tell you on the river because I wanted you to see with your own
+eyes our paradise up here, and I knew you would not destroy it once you
+were a part of it. And so I could not tell you Carmin was my wife, for
+that would have betrayed us--and--besides--that fight of yours against
+a love which you thought was dishonest interested me very much, for I
+saw in it a wonderful test of the man who might become my brother if he
+chose wisely between love and what he thought was duty. I loved you for
+it, even when you sat me there on the sand like a silly loon. And now,
+even my Carmin loves you for bringing me out of the fire--But you are
+not listening!"
+
+David was looking past him toward the door, and St. Pierre smiled when
+he saw the look that was in his face.
+
+"Nepapinas!" he called loudly. "Nepapinas!"
+
+In a moment there was shuffling of feet outside, and Nepapinas came in.
+St. Pierre held out his two great, bandaged hands, and David met them
+with his own, one bandaged and one free. Not a word was spoken between
+them, but their eyes were the eyes of men between whom had suddenly
+come the faith and understanding of a brotherhood as strong as life
+itself.
+
+Then Nepapinas wheeled St. Pierre from the room and David straightened
+himself against his pillows, and waited, and listened, until it seemed
+two hearts were thumping inside him in the place of one.
+
+It was an interminable time, he thought, before Marie-Anne stood in the
+doorway. For a breath she paused there, looking at him as he stretched
+out his bandaged arm to her, moved by every yearning impulse in her
+soul to come in, yet ready as a bird to fly away. And then, as he
+called her name, she ran to him and dropped upon her knees at his side,
+and his arms went about her, insensible to their hurt--and her hot face
+was against his neck, and his lips crushed in the smothering sweetness
+of her hair. He made no effort to speak, beyond that first calling of
+her name. He could feel her heart throbbing against him, and her hands
+tightened at his shoulders, and at last she raised her glorious face so
+near that the breath of it was on his lips. Then, seeing what was in
+his eyes, her soft mouth quivered in a little smile, and with a broken
+throb in her throat she whispered,
+
+"Has it all ended--right--David?"
+
+He drew the red mouth to his own, and with a glad cry which was no word
+in itself he buried his face in the lustrous tresses he loved.
+Afterward he could not remember all it was that he said, but at the end
+Marie-Anne had drawn a little away so that she was looking at him, her
+eyes shining gloriously and her cheeks beautiful as the petals of a
+wild rose. And he could see the throbbing in her white throat, like the
+beating of a tiny heart.
+
+"And you'll take me with you?" she whispered joyously.
+
+"Yes; and when I show you to the old man--Superintendent Me Vane, you
+know--and tell him you're my wife, he can't go back on his promise. He
+said if I settled this Roger Audemard affair, I could have anything I
+might ask for. And I'll ask for my discharge, I ought to have it in
+September, and that will give us time to return before the snow flies.
+You see--"
+
+He held out his arms again. "You see," he cried, his face smothered in
+her hair again, "I've found the place of my dreams up here, and I want
+to stay--always. Are you a little glad, Marie-Anne?"
+
+In a great room at the end of the hall, with windows opening in three
+directions upon the wilderness, St. Pierre waited in his wheel-chair,
+grunting uneasily now and then at the long time it was taking Carmin to
+discover certain things out in the hall. Finally he heard her coming,
+tiptoeing very quietly from the direction of David Carrigan's door, and
+St. Pierre chuckled and tried to rub his bandaged hands when she came
+in, her face pink and her eyes shining with the greatest thrill that
+can stir a feminine heart.
+
+"If we'd only known," he tried to whisper, "I would have had the
+keyhole made larger, Cherie! He deserves it for having spied on us at
+the cabin window. But--tell me!--Could you see? Did you hear? What--"
+
+Carmin's soft hand went over his mouth. "In another moment you'll be
+shouting," she warned. "Maybe I didn't see, and maybe I didn't hear,
+Big Bear--but I know there are four very happy people in Chateau
+Boulain. And now, if you want to guess who is the happiest--"
+
+"I am, chere-coeur."
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, then, if you insist--YOU are."
+
+"Yes. And the next?"
+
+St. Pierre chuckled. "David Carrigan," he said.
+
+"No, no, no! If you mean that--"
+
+"I mean--always--that I am second, unless you will ever let me be
+first," corrected St. Pierre, kissing the hand that was gently stroking
+his cheek.
+
+And then he leaned his great head back against her where she stood
+behind him, and Carmin's fingers ran where his hair was crisp with the
+singe of fire, and for a long time they said no other word, but let
+their eyes rest upon the dim length of the hall at the far end of which
+was David Carrigan's room.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Flaming Forest, by James Oliver Curwood
+
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