path: root/old/flmft10.txt

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Flaming Forest, by James Oliver Curwood
#5 in our series by James Oliver Curwood

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg file.

We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your own disk,
thereby keeping an electronic path open for future readers.

Please do not remove this.

This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to
view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission.
The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information
they need to understand what they may and may not do with the etext.
To encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end,
rather than having it all here at the beginning.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*****These Etexts Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and
further information, is included below.  We need your donations.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.



Title: The Flaming Forest

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4702]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 3, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Flaming Forest, by James Oliver Curwood
***********This file should be named flmft10.txt or flmft10.zip***********

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, flmft11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, flmft10a.txt

Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.


Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.

The "legal small print" and other information about this book
may now be found at the end of this file.  Please read this
important information, as it gives you specific rights and
tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used.










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 obirterated 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. Pierref





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 rnak 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 &s 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.





The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Flaming Forest, by James Oliver Curwood
***********This file should be named flmft10.txt or flmft10.zip***********

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, flmft11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, flmft10a.txt

Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

More information about this book is at the top of this file.

We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our Web sites at:
http://gutenberg.net or
http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
etexts, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).


Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03

Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

eBooks Year Month

    1  1971 July
   10  1991 January
  100  1994 January
 1000  1997 August
 1500  1998 October
 2000  1999 December
 2500  2000 December
 3000  2001 November
 4000  2001 October/November
 6000  2002 December*
 9000  2003 November*
10000  2004 January*


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.

International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.

The most recent list of states, along with all methods for donations
(including credit card donations and international donations), may be
found online at http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.


The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
     including any form resulting from conversion by word
     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
     *EITHER*:

     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
          does *not* contain characters other than those
          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
          author, and additional characters may be used to
          indicate hypertext links; OR

     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
          OR

     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
          or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
     "Small Print!" statement.

[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
     let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
software or any other related product without express permission.]

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*

End of Project Gutenberg's The Flaming Forest, by James Oliver Curwood