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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Pierre And His People, V4, by G. Parker
+#5 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+  Contents:
+    The Tall Master
+    The Crimson Flag
+    The Flood
+    In Pipi Valley
+
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+
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+Title: Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Volume 4.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6177]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE, V4, PARKER ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE
+
+TALES OF THE FAR NORTH
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 4.
+
+
+THE TALL MASTER
+THE CRIMSON FLAG
+THE FLOOD
+IN PIPI VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+THE TALL MASTER
+
+The story has been so much tossed about in the mouths of Indians, and
+half-breeds, and men of the Hudson's Bay Company, that you are pretty
+sure to hear only an apocryphal version of the thing as you now travel in
+the North.  But Pretty Pierre was at Fort Luke when the battle occurred,
+and, before and after, he sifted the business thoroughly.  For he had a
+philosophical turn, and this may be said of him, that he never lied
+except to save another from danger.  In this matter he was cool and
+impartial from first to last, and evil as his reputation was in many ways
+there were those who believed and trusted him.  Himself, as he travelled
+here and there through the North, had heard of the Tall Master.  Yet he
+had never met anyone who had seen him; for the Master had dwelt, it was
+said, chiefly among the strange tribes of the Far-Off Metal River whose
+faces were almost white, and who held themselves aloof from the southern
+races.  The tales lost nothing by being retold, even when the historians
+were the men of the H. B. C.;---Pierre knew what accomplished liars may
+be found among that Company of Adventurers trading in Hudson's Bay, and
+how their art had been none too delicately engrafted by his own people.
+But he was, as became him, open to conviction, especially when,
+journeying to Fort Luke, he heard what John Hybar, the Chief Factor--
+a man of uncommon quality--had to say.  Hybar had once lived long among
+those Indians of the Bright Stone, and had seen many rare things among
+them.  He knew their legends of the White Valley and the Hills of the
+Mighty Men, and how their distinctive character had imposed itself on the
+whole Indian race of the North, so that there was none but believed, even
+though vaguely, in a pleasant land not south but Arcticwards; and Pierre
+himself, with Shon McGann and Just Trafford, had once had a strange
+experience in the Kimash Hills.  He did not share the opinion of Lazenby,
+the Company's clerk at Fort Luke, who said, when the matter was talked of
+before him, that it was all hanky-panky,--which was evidence that he had
+lived in London town, before his anxious relatives, sending him forth
+under the delusive flag of adventure and wild life, imprisoned him in the
+Arctic regions with the H. B. C.
+
+Lazenby admired Pierre; said he was good stuff, and voted him amusing,
+with an ingenious emphasis of heathen oaths; but advised him, as only an
+insolent young scoundrel can, to forswear securing, by the seductive game
+of poker or euchre, larger interest on his capital than the H. B. C.;
+whose record, he insisted, should never be rivalled by any single man in
+any single lifetime.  Then he incidentally remarked that he would like to
+empty the Company's cash-box once--only once;--thus reconciling the
+preacher and the sinner, as many another has done.  Lazenby's morals were
+not bad, however.  He was simply fond of making them appear terrible;
+even when in London he was more idle than wicked.  He gravely suggested
+at last, as a kind of climax, that he and Pierre should go out on the pad
+together.  This was a mere stroke of pleasantry on his part, because, the
+most he could loot in that far North were furs and caches of buffalo
+meat; and a man's capacity and use for them were limited.  Even Pierre's
+especial faculty and art seemed valueless so far Polewards; but he had
+his beat throughout the land, and he kept it like a perfect patrolman.
+He had not been at Fort Luke for years, and he would not be there again
+for more years; but it was certain that he would go on reappearing till
+he vanished utterly.  At the end of the first week of this visit at Fort
+Luke, so completely had he conquered the place, that he had won from the
+Chief Factor the year's purchases of skins, the stores, and the Fort
+itself; and every stitch of clothing owned by Lazenby: so that, if he had
+insisted on the redemption of the debts, the H. B. C. and Lazenby had
+been naked and hungry in the wilderness.  But Pierre was not a hard
+creditor.  He instantly and nonchalantly said that the Fort would be
+useless to him, and handed it back again with all therein, on a most
+humorously constructed ninety-nine years' lease; while Lazenby was left
+in pawn.  Yet Lazenby's mind was not at certain ease; he had a wholesome
+respect for Pierre's singularities, and dreaded being suddenly called
+upon to pay his debt before he could get his new clothes made, maybe, in
+the presence of Wind Driver, chief of the Golden Dogs, and his demure and
+charming daughter, Wine Face, who looked upon him with the eye of
+affection--a matter fully, but not ostentatiously, appreciated by
+Lazenby.  If he could have entirely forgotten a pretty girl in South
+Kensington, who, at her parents' bidding, turned her shoulder on him, he
+would have married Wine Face; and so he told Pierre.  But the half-breed
+had only a sardonic sympathy for such weakness.  Things changed at once
+when Shon McGann arrived.  He should have come before, according to a
+promise given Pierre, but there were reasons for the delay; and these
+Shon elaborated in his finely picturesque style.
+
+He said that he had lost his way after he left the Wapiti Woods, and
+should never have found it again, had it not been for a strange being who
+came upon him and took him to the camp of the White Hand Indians, and
+cared for him there, and sent him safely on his way again to Fort Luke.
+
+"Sorra wan did I ever see like him," said Shon,  with a face that was
+divil this minute and saint the next; pale in the cheek, and black in the
+eye, and grizzled hair flowin' long at his neck and lyin' like snakes on
+his shoulders; and whin his fingers closed on yours, bedad!  they didn't
+seem human at all, for they clamped you so cold and strong."
+
+"'For they clamped you so cold and strong,'" replied Pierre, mockingly,
+yet greatly interested, as one could see by the upward range of his eye
+towards Shon.  "Well, what more?"
+
+"Well, squeeze the acid from y'r voice, Pierre; for there's things that
+better become you: and listen to me, for I've news for all here at the
+Fort, before I've done, which'll open y'r eyes with a jerk."
+
+"With a wonderful jerk, hold! let us prepare, messieurs, to be waked with
+an Irish jerk!" and Pierre pensively trifled with the fringe on Shon's
+buckskin jacket, which was whisked from his fingers with smothered anger.
+For a few moments he was silent; but the eager looks of the Chief Factor
+and Lazenby encouraged him to continue.  Besides, it was only Pierre's
+way--provoking Shon was the piquant sauce of his life.
+
+"Lyin' awake I was," continued Shon, "in the middle of the night, not
+bein' able to sleep for a pain in a shoulder I'd strained, whin I heard a
+thing that drew me up standin'.  It was the sound of a child laughin'; so
+wonderful and bright, and at the very door of me tent it seemed.  Then it
+faded away till it was only a breath, lovely, and idle, and swingin'.  I
+wint to the door and looked out.  There was nothin' there, av coorse."
+"And why 'av coorse'?" rejoined Pierre.  The Chief Factor was intent on
+what Shon was saying, while Lazenby drummed his fingers on the table, his
+nose in the air.
+
+"Divils me darlin', but ye know as well as I, that there's things in the
+world neither for havin' nor handlin'.  And that's wan of thim, says I to
+meself.  .  .  .  I wint back and lay down, and I heard the voice singin'
+now and comin' nearer and nearer, and growin' louder and louder, and then
+there came with it a patter of feet, till it was as a thousand children
+were dancin' by me door.  I was shy enough, I'll own; but I pulled aside
+the curtain of the tent to see again: and there was nothin' beyand for
+the eye.  But the singin' was goin' past and recedin' as before, till it
+died away along the waves of prairie grass.  I wint back and give Grey
+Nose, my Injin bed-fellow, a lift wid me fut.  'Come out of that,' says
+I, 'and tell me if dead or alive I am.'  He got up, and there was the
+noise soft and grand again, but with it now the voices of men, the flip
+of birds' wings and the sighin' of tree tops, and behind all that the
+long wash of a sea like none I ever heard.  .  .  .  'Well,' says I to
+the Injin grinnin' before me, 'what's that, in the name o' Moses?'
+'That,' says he, laughin' slow in me face, 'is the Tall Master--him that
+brought you to the camp.' Thin I remimbered all the things that's been
+said of him, and I knew it was music I'd been hearin' and not children's
+voices nor anythin' else at all.
+
+"'Come with me,' says Grey Nose; and he took me to the door of a big tent
+standin' alone from the rest.
+
+"'Wait a minute,' says he, and he put his hand on the tent curtain; and at
+that there was a crash, as a million gold hammers were fallin' on silver
+drums.  And we both stood still; for it seemed an army, with swords
+wranglin' and bridle-chains rattlin', was marchin' down on us.  There was
+the divil's own uproar, as a battle was comin' on; and a long line of
+spears clashed.  But just then there whistled through the larrup of sound
+a clear voice callin', gentle and coaxin', yet commandin' too; and the
+spears dropped, and the pounding of horsehoofs ceased, and then the army
+marched away; far away; iver so far away, into--"
+
+"Into Heaven!" flippantly interjected Lazenby.  "Into Heaven, say I, and
+be choked to you! for there's no other place for it; and I'll stand by
+that, till I go there myself, and know the truth o' the thing."  Pierre
+here spoke.  "Heaven gave you a fine trick with words, Shon McGann.  I
+sometimes think Irishmen have gifts for only two things--words and women.
+.  .  .  'Bien,' what then?"
+
+Shon was determined not to be angered.  The occasion was too big.  "Well,
+Grey Nose lifted the curtain and wint in.  In a minute he comes out.
+'You can go in,' says he.  So in I wint, the Injin not comin', and there
+in the middle of the tint stood the Tall Master, alone.  He had his
+fiddle to his chin, and the bow hoverin' above it.  He looked at me for a
+long time along the thing; then, all at once, from one string I heard the
+child laughin' that pleasant and distant, though the bow seemed not to be
+touchin'.  Soon it thinned till it was the shadow of a laugh, and I
+didn't know whin it stopped, he smilin' down at the fiddle bewhiles.
+Then he said without lookin' at me,--'It is the spirit of the White
+Valley and the Hills of the Mighty Men; of which all men shall know, for
+the North will come to her spring again one day soon, at the remaking of
+the world.  They thought the song would never be found again, but I have
+given it a home here.'  And he bent and kissed the strings.  After, he
+turned sharply as if he'd been spoken to, and looked at someone beside
+him; someone that I couldn't see.  A cloud dropped upon his face, he
+caught the fiddle hungrily to his breast, and came limpin' over to me--
+for there was somethin' wrong with his fut--and lookin' down his hook-
+nose at me, says he,--'I've a word for them at Fort Luke, where you're
+goin', and you'd better be gone at once; and I'll put you on your way.
+There's to be a great battle.  The White Hands have an ancient feud with
+the Golden Dogs, and they have come from where the soft Chinook wind
+ranges the Peace River, to fight until no man of all the Golden Dogs be
+left, or till they themselves be destroyed.  It is the same north and
+south,' he wint on; 'I have seen it all in Italy, in Greece, in--' but
+here he stopped and smiled strangely.  After a minute he wint on: 'The
+White Hands have no quarrel with the Englishmen of the Fort, and I would
+warn them, for Englishmen were once kind to me--and warn also the Golden
+Dogs.  So come with me at once,' says he.  And I did.  And he walked with
+me till mornin', carryin' the fiddle under his arm, but wrapped in a
+beautiful velvet cloth, havin' on it grand figures like the arms of a
+king or queen.  And just at the first whisk of sun he turned me into a
+trail and give me good-bye, sayin' that maybe he'd follow me soon, and,
+at any rate, he'd be there at the battle.  Well, divils betide me!  I got
+off the track again; and lost a day; but here I am; and there's me story
+to take or lave as you will."
+
+Shon paused and began to fumble with the cards on the table before him,
+looking the while at the others.
+
+The Chief Factor was the first to speak.  "I don't doubt but he told you
+true about the White Hands and the Golden Dogs," he said; "for there's
+been war and bad blood between them beyond the memory of man--at least
+since the time that the Mighty Men lived, from which these date their
+history.  But there's nothing to be done to-night; for if we tell old
+Wind Driver, there'll be no sleeping at the Fort.  So we'll let the thing
+stand."
+
+"You believe all this poppy-cock, Chief?" said Lazenby to the Factor,
+but laughing in Shon's face the while.  The Factor gravely replied:
+"I knew of the Tall Master years ago on the Far-Off Metal River; and
+though I never saw him I can believe these things--and more.  You do not
+know this world through and through, Lazenby; you have much to learn."
+
+Pierre said nothing.  He took the cards from Shon and passed them to and
+fro in his hand.  Mechanically he dealt them out, and as mechanically
+they took them up and in silence began to play.
+
+The next day there was commotion and excitement at Fort Luke.  The Golden
+Dogs were making preparations for the battle.  Pow-wow followed pow-wow,
+and paint and feathers followed all.  The H. B. C. people had little to
+do but look to their guns and house everything within the walls of the
+Fort.
+
+At night, Shon, Pierre, and Lazenby were seated about the table in the
+common-room, the cards lying dealt before them, waiting for the Factor to
+come.  Presently the door opened and the Factor entered, followed by
+another.  Shon and Pierre sprang to their feet.
+
+"The Tall Master," said Shon with a kind of awe; and then stood still.
+
+Their towering visitor slowly unloosed something he carried very
+carefully and closely beneath his arm, and laid it on the table, dropping
+his compass-like fingers softly on it.  He bowed gravely to each, yet the
+bow seemed grotesque, his body was so ungainly.  With the eyes of all
+drawn to him absolutely, he spoke in a low sonorous tone: "I have
+followed the traveller fast"--his hand lifted gently towards Shon--"for
+there are weighty concerns abroad, and I have things to say and do before
+I go again to my people--and beyond.  .  .  .  I have hungered for the
+face of a white man these many years, and his was the first I saw;"--
+again he tossed a long finger towards the Irishman--"and it brought back
+many things.  I remember.  .  .  .  "  He paused, then sat down; and they
+all did the same.  He looked at them one by one with distant kindness.
+"I remember," he continued, and his strangely articulated fingers folded
+about the thing on the table beside him, "when"--here the cards caught
+his eye.  His face underwent a change.  An eager fantastic look shot from
+his eye, "when I gambled this away at Lucca,"--his hand drew the bundle
+closer to him--"but I won it back again--at a price!" he gloomily added,
+glancing sideways as to someone at his elbow.
+
+He remained, eyes hanging upon space for a moment, then he recollected
+himself and continued: "I became wiser; I never risked it again; but I
+loved the game always.  I was a gamester from the start--the artist is
+always so when he is greatest,--like nature herself.  And once, years
+after, I played with a mother for her child--and mine.  And yet once
+again at Parma with"--here he paused, throwing that sharp sidelong
+glance--"with the greatest gamester, for the infinite secret of Art: and
+I won it; but I paid the price!  .  .  .  I should like to play now."
+
+He reached his hand, drew up five cards, and ran his eye through them.
+"Play!" he said.  "The hand is good--very good.  .  .  .  Once when I
+played with the Princess--but it is no matter; and Tuscany is far away!
+.  .  .  Play!" he repeated.
+
+Pierre instantly picked up the cards, with an air of cool satisfaction.
+He had either found the perfect gamester or the perfect liar.  He knew
+the remedy for either.
+
+The Chief Factor did not move.  Shon and Lazenby followed Pierre's
+action.  By their positions Lazenby became his partner.  They played in
+silence for a minute, the Tall Master taking all.  "Napoleon was a
+wonderful player, but he lost with me," he said slowly as he played a
+card upon three others and took them.
+
+Lazenby was so taken back by this remark that, presently, he trumped
+his partner's ace, and was rewarded by a talon-like look from the Tall
+Master's eye; but it was immediately followed by one of saturnine
+amusement.
+
+They played on silently.
+
+"Ah, you are a wonderful player!" he presently said to Pierre, with a
+look of keen scrutiny.  "Come, I will play with you--for values--the
+first time in seventy-five years; then, no more!"
+
+Lazenby and Shon drew away beside the Chief Factor.  The two played.
+Meanwhile Lazenby said to Shon: "The man's mad.  He talks about Napoleon
+as if he'd known him--as if it wasn't three-fourths of a century ago.
+Does he think we're all born idiots?  Why, he's not over sixty years old
+now.  But where the deuce did he come from with that Italian face?  And
+the funniest part of it is, he reminds me of someone.  Did you notice how
+he limped--the awkward beggar!"
+
+Lazenby had unconsciously lifted his voice, and presently the Tall Master
+turned and said to him: "I ran a nail into my foot at Leyden seventy-odd
+years ago."
+
+"He's the devil himself," rejoined Lazenby, and he did not lower his
+voice.
+
+"Many with angelic gifts are children of His Dark Majesty," said the Tall
+Master, slowly; and though he appeared closely occupied with the game, a
+look of vague sadness came into his face.
+
+For a half-hour they played in silence, the slight, delicate-featured
+half-breed, and the mysterious man who had for so long been a thing of
+wonder in the North, a weird influence among the Indians.
+
+There was a strange, cold fierceness in the Tall Master's face.  He now
+staked his precious bundle against the one thing Pierre prized--the gold
+watch received years ago for a deed of heroism on the Chaudiere.  The
+half-breed had always spoken of it as amusing, but Shon at least knew
+that to Pierre it was worth his right hand.
+
+Both men drew breath slowly, and their eyes were hard.  The stillness
+became painful; all were possessed by the grim spirit of Chance.  .  .  .
+The Tall Master won.  He came to his feet, his shambling body drawn
+together to a height.  Pierre rose also.  Their looks clinched.  Pierre
+stretched out his hand.  "You are my master at this," he said.
+
+The other smiled sadly.  "I have played for the last time.  I have not
+forgotten how to win.  If I had lost, uncommon things had happened.
+This,"--he laid his hand on the bundle and gently undid it,--"is my
+oldest friend, since the warm days at Parma . . .  all dead . . . all
+dead."  Out of the velvet wrapping, broidered with royal and ducal arms,
+and rounded by a wreath of violets--which the Chief Factor looked at
+closely--he drew his violin.  He lifted it reverently to his lips.
+
+"My good Garnerius!" he said.  "Three masters played you, but I am chief
+of them all.  They had the classic soul, but I the romantic heart--'les
+grandes caprices.'"  His head lifted higher.  "I am the master artist of
+the world.  I have found the core of Nature.  Here in the North is the
+wonderful soul of things.  Beyond this, far beyond, where the foolish
+think is only inviolate ice, is the first song of the Ages in a very
+pleasant land.  I am the lost Master, and I shall return, I shall return
+.  .  .  but not yet .  .  .  not yet."
+
+He fetched the instrument to his chin with a noble pride.  The ugliness
+of his face was almost beautiful now.
+
+The Chief Factor's look was fastened on him with bewilderment; he was
+trying to remember something: his mind went feeling, he knew not why,
+for a certain day, a quarter of a century before, when he unpacked a box
+of books and papers from England.  Most of them were still in the Fort.
+The association of this man with these things fretted him.
+
+The Tall Master swung his bow upward, but at that instant there came a
+knock, and, in response to a call, Wind Driver and Wine Face entered.
+Wine Face was certainly a beautiful girl; and Lazenby might well have
+been pardoned for throwing in his fate with such a heathen, if he
+despaired of ever seeing England again.  The Tall Master did not turn
+towards these.  The Indians sat gracefully on a bearskin before the fire.
+The eyes of the girl were cast shyly upon the Man as he stood there
+unlike an ordinary man; in his face a fine hardness and the cold light of
+the North.  He suddenly tipped his bow upward and brought it down with a
+most delicate crash upon the strings.  Then softly, slowly, he passed
+into a weird fantasy.  The Indians sat breathless.  Upon them it acted
+more impressively than the others: besides, the player's eye was
+searching them now; he was playing into their very bodies.  And they
+responded with some swift shocks of recognition crossing their faces.
+Suddenly the old Indian sprang up.  He thrust his arms out, and made, as
+if unconsciously, some fantastic yet solemn motions.  The player smiled
+in a far-off fashion, and presently ran the bow upon the strings in an
+exquisite cry; and then a beautiful avalanche of sound slid from a
+distance, growing nearer and nearer, till it swept through the room, and
+imbedded all in its sweetness.
+
+At this the old Indian threw himself forward at the player's feet.  "It
+is the song of the White Weaver, the maker of the world--the music from
+the Hills of the Mighty Men.  .  .  .  I knew it--I knew it--but never
+like that.  .  .  .  It was lost to the world; the wild cry of the lofty
+stars.  .  .  ."  His face was wet.
+
+The girl too had risen.  She came forward as if in a dream and reverently
+touched the arm of the musician, who paused now, and was looking at them
+from under his long eyelashes.  She said whisperingly: "Are you a spirit?
+Do you come from the Hills of the Mighty Men?"
+
+He answered gravely: "I am no spirit.  But I have journeyed in the Hills
+of the Mighty Men and along their ancient hunting-grounds.  This that I
+have played is the ancient music of the world--the music of Jubal and his
+comrades.  It comes humming from the Poles; it rides laughing down the
+planets; it trembles through the snow; it gives joy to the bones of the
+wind.  .  .  .  And I am the voice of it," he added; and he drew up his
+loose unmanageable body till it looked enormous, firm, and dominant.
+
+The girl's fingers ran softly over to his breast.  "I will follow you,"
+she said, "when you go again to the Happy Valleys."
+
+Down from his brow there swept a faint hue of colour, and, for a breath,
+his eyes closed tenderly with hers.  But he straightway gathered back his
+look again, his body shrank, not rudely, from her fingers, and he
+absently said: "I am old-in years the father of the world.  It is a man's
+life gone since, at Genoa, she laid her fingers on my breast like that.
+.  .  .  These things can be no more .  .  .  until the North hath its
+summer again; and I stand young--the Master--upon the summits of my
+renown."
+
+The girl drew slowly back.  Lazenby was muttering under his breath now;
+he was overwhelmed by this change in Wine Face.  He had been impressed to
+awe by the Tall Master's music, but he was piqued, and determined not to
+give in easily.  He said sneeringly that Maskelyne and Cooke in music had
+come to life, and suggested a snake-dance.
+
+The Tall Master heard these things, and immediately he turned to Lazenby
+with an angry look on his face.  His brows hung heavily over the dull
+fire of his eyes; his hair itself seemed like Medusa's, just quivering
+into savage life; the fingers spread out white and claw-like upon the
+strings as he curved his violin to his chin, whereof it became, as it
+were, a piece.  The bow shot out and down upon the instrument with a
+great clangour.  There eddied into a vast arena of sound the prodigious
+elements of war.  Torture rose from those four immeasurable chords;
+destruction was afoot upon them; a dreadful dance of death supervened.
+
+Through the Chief Factor's mind there flashed--though mechanically, and
+only to be remembered afterwards--the words of a schoolday poem.  It
+shuttled in and out of the music:
+
+                   "Wheel the wild dance,
+                    While lightnings glance,
+                    And thunders rattle loud;
+                    And call the brave to bloody grave,
+                    To sleep without a shroud."
+
+The face of the player grew old and drawn.  The skin was wrinkled, but
+shone, the hair spread white, the nose almost met the chin, the mouth was
+all malice.  It was old age with vast power: conquest volleyed from the
+fingers.
+
+Shon McGann whispered aves, aching with the sound; the Chief Factor
+shuddered to his feet; Lazenby winced and drew back to the wall, putting
+his hand before his face as though the sounds were striking him; the old
+Indian covered his head with his arms upon the floor.  Wine Face knelt,
+her face all grey, her fingers lacing and interlacing with pain.  Only
+Pierre sat with masterful stillness, his eyes never moving from the face
+of the player; his arms folded; his feet firmly wedded to the floor.  The
+sound became strangely distressing.  It shocked the flesh and angered the
+nerves.  Upon Lazenby it acted singularly.  He cowered from it, but
+presently, with a look of madness in his eyes, rushed forward, arms
+outstretched, as though to seize this intolerable minstrel.  There was a
+sudden pause in the playing; then the room quaked with noise, buffeting
+Lazenby into stillness.  The sounds changed instantly again, and music of
+an engaging sweetness and delight fell about them as in silver drops--an
+enchanting lyric of love.  Its exquisite tenderness subdued Lazenby, who,
+but now, had a heart for slaughter.  He dropped on his knees, threw his
+head into his arms, and sobbed hard.  The Tall Master's fingers crept
+caressingly along one of those heavenly veins of sound, his bow poising
+softly over it.  The farthest star seemed singing.
+
+At dawn the next day the Golden Dogs were gathered for war before the
+Fort.  Immediately after the sun rose, the foe were seen gliding darkly
+out of the horizon.  From another direction came two travellers.  These
+also saw the White Hands bearing upon the Fort, and hurried forward.
+They reached the gates of the Fort in good time, and were welcomed.  One
+was a chief trader from a fort in the west.  He was an old man, and had
+been many years in the service of the H. B. C.; and, like Lazenby, had
+spent his early days in London, a connoisseur in all its pleasures; the
+other was a voyageur.  They had posted on quickly to bring news of this
+crusade of the White Hands.
+
+The hostile Indians came steadily to within a few hundred yards of the
+Golden Dogs.  Then they sent a brave to say that they had no quarrel with
+the people of the Fort; and that if the Golden Dogs came on they would
+battle with them alone; since the time had come for "one to be as both,"
+as their Medicine Men had declared since the days of the Great Race.
+And this signified that one should destroy the other.
+
+At this all the Golden Dogs ranged into line.  The sun shone brightly,
+the long hedge of pine woods in the distance caught the colour of the
+sky, the flowers of the plains showed handsomely as a carpet of war.  The
+bodies of the fighters glistened.  You could see the rise and fall of
+their bare, strenuous chests.  They stood as their forefathers in battle,
+almost naked, with crested head, gleaming axe, scalp-knife, and bows and
+arrows.  At first there was the threatening rustle of preparation; then
+a great stillness came and stayed for a moment; after which, all at once,
+there sped through the air a big shout of battle, and the innumerable
+twang of flying arrows; and the opposing hosts ran upon each other.
+
+Pierre and Shon McGann, watching from the Fort, cried out with
+excitement.
+
+"Divils me darlin'!" called Shon, "are we gluin' our eyes to a chink in
+the wall, whin the tangle of battle goes on beyand?  Bedad, I'll not
+stand it!  Look at them twistin' the neck o' war!  Open the gates, open
+the gates say I, and let us have play with our guns."
+
+"Hush!  'Mon Dieu!'"  interrupted Pierre.  "Look!  The Tall Master!"
+
+None at the Fort had seen the Tall Master since the night before.  Now he
+was covering the space between the walls and the battle, his hair
+streaming behind him.
+
+When he came near to the vortex of fight he raised his violin to his
+chin, and instantly a piercingly sweet call penetrated the wild uproar.
+The Call filled it, drained through it, wrapped it, overcame it; so that
+it sank away at last like the outwash of an exhausted tide: the weft of
+battle stayed unfinished in the loom.
+
+Then from the Indian lodges came the women and children.  They drew near
+to the unearthly luxury of that Call, now lifting with an unbounded joy.
+Battleaxes fell to the ground; the warriors quieted even where they stood
+locked with their foes.  The Tall Master now drew away from them, facing
+the north and west.  That ineffable Call drew them after him with grave
+joy; and they brought their dead and wounded along.  The women and
+children glided in among the men and followed also.  Presently one girl
+ran away from the rest and came close into the great leader's footsteps.
+
+At that instant, Lazenby, from the wall of the Fort, cried out madly,
+sprang down, opened the gates, and rushed towards the girl, crying: "Wine
+Face!  Wine Face!"
+
+She did not look behind.  But he came close to her and caught her by the
+waist.  "Come back!  Come back!  O my love, come back!" he urged; but
+she pushed him gently from her.
+
+"Hush!  Hush!" she said.  "We are going to the Happy Valleys.  Don't you
+hear him calling?" .  .  .  And Lazenby fell back.
+
+The Tall Master was now playing a wonderful thing, half dance, half
+carnival; but with that Call still beating through it.  They were passing
+the Fort at an angle.  All within issued forth to see.  Suddenly the old
+trader who had come that morning started forward with a cry; then stood
+still.  He caught the Factor's arm; but he seemed unable to speak yet;
+his face was troubled, his eyes were hard upon the player.
+
+The procession passed the empty lodges, leaving the ground strewn with
+their weapons, and not one of their number stayed behind.  They passed
+away towards the high hills of the north-west-beautiful austere barriers.
+
+Still the trader gazed, and was pale, and trembled.  They watched long.
+The throng of pilgrims grew a vague mass; no longer an army of
+individuals; and the music came floating back with distant charm.
+At last the old man found voice.  "My God, it is--"
+
+The Factor touched his arm, interrupting him, and drew a picture from his
+pocket--one but just now taken from that musty pile of books, received so
+many years before.  He showed it to the old man.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the other, "that is he.  .  .  .  And the world buried
+him forty years ago!"
+
+Pierre, standing near, added with soft irony: "There are strange things
+in the world.  He is the gamester of the world.  'Mais' a grand comrade
+also."
+
+The music came waving back upon them delicately but the pilgrims were
+fading from view.
+
+Soon the watchers were alone with the glowing day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CRIMSON FLAG
+
+Talk and think as one would, The Woman was striking to see; with
+marvellous flaxen hair and a joyous violet eye.  She was all pulse and
+dash; but she was as much less beautiful than the manager's wife as Tom
+Liffey was as nothing beside the manager himself; and one would care
+little to name the two women in the same breath if the end had been
+different.  When The Woman came to Little Goshen there were others of her
+class there, but they were of a commoner sort and degree.  She was the
+queen of a lawless court, though she never, from first to last, spoke to
+one of those others who were her people; neither did she hold commerce
+with any of the ordinary miners, save Pretty Pierre, but he was more
+gambler than miner,--and he went, when the matter was all over, and told
+her some things that stripped her soul naked before her eyes.  Pierre had
+a wonderful tongue.  It was only the gentlemen-diggers--and there were
+many of them at Little Goshen--who called upon her when the lights were
+low; and then there was a good deal of muffled mirth in the white house
+among the pines.  The rougher miners made no quarrel with this, for the
+gentlemen-diggers were popular enough, they were merely sarcastic and
+humorous, and said things which, coming to The Woman's ears, made her
+very merry; for she herself had an abundant wit, and had spent wild hours
+with clever men.  She did not resent the playful insolence that sent a
+dozen miners to her house in the dead of night with a crimson flag, which
+they quietly screwed to her roof; and paint, with which they deftly put a
+wide stripe of scarlet round the cornice, and another round the basement.
+In the morning, when she saw what had been done, she would not have the
+paint removed nor the flag taken down; for, she said, the stripes looked
+very well, and the other would show that she was always at home.
+
+Now, the notable thing was that Heldon, the manager, was in The Woman's
+house on the night this was done.  Tom Liffey, the lumpish guide and
+trapper, saw him go in; and, days afterwards, he said to Pierre: "Divils
+me own, but this is a bad hour for Heldon's wife--she with a face like a
+princess and eyes like the fear o' God.  Nivir a wan did I see like her,
+since I came out of Erin with a clatter of hoofs behoind me and a squall
+on the sea before.  There's wimmin there wid cheeks like roses and
+buthermilk, and a touch that'd make y'r heart pound on y'r ribs; but none
+that's grander than Heldon's wife.  To lave her for that other, standin'
+hip-high in her shame, is temptin' the fires of Heaven, that basted the
+sinners o' Sodom."
+
+Pierre, pausing between the whiffs of a cigarette, said: "So?  But you
+know more of catching foxes in winter, and climbing mountains in summer,
+and the grip of the arm of an Injin girl, than of these things.  You are
+young, quite young in the world, Tom Liffey."
+
+"Young I may be with a glint o' grey at me temples from a night o'
+trouble beyand in the hills; but I'm the man, an' the only man, that's
+climbed to the glacier-top--God's Playground, as they call it: and nivir
+a dirty trick have I done to Injin girl or any other; and be damned to
+you there!"
+
+"Sometimes I think you are as foolish as Shon McGann," compassionately
+replied the half-breed.
+
+"You have almighty virtue, and you did that brave trick of the glacier;
+but great men have fallen.  You are not dead yet.  Still, as you say,
+Heldon's wife is noble to see.  She is grave and cold, and speaks little;
+but there is something in her which is not of the meek of the earth.
+Some women say nothing, and suffer and forgive, and take such as Heldon
+back to their bosoms; but there are others--I remember a woman--bien, it
+is no matter, it was long ago; but they two are as if born of one mother;
+and what comes of this will be mad play--mad play."
+
+"Av coorse his wife may not get to know of it, and--"
+
+"Not get to know it!  'Tsh, you are a child--"
+
+"Faith, I'll say what I think, and that in y'r face!  Maybe he'll tire of
+the handsome rip--for handsome she is, like a yellow lily growin' out o'
+mud--and go back to his lawful wife, that believes he's at the mines,
+when he's drinkin' and colloguin' wid a fly-away."
+
+Pierre slowly wheeled till he had the Irishman straight in his eye.  Then
+he said in a low, cutting tone: "I suppose your heart aches for the
+beautiful lady, eh?"  Here he screwed his slight forefinger into Tom's
+breast; then he added sharply: "'Nom de Dieu,' but you make me angry!
+You talk too much.  Such men get into trouble.  And keep down the riot of
+that heart of yours, Tom Liffey, or you'll walk on the edge of knives one
+day.  And now take an inch of whisky and ease the anxious soul. 'Voila!'"
+After a moment he added: "Women work these things out for themselves."
+Then the two left the hut, and amiably strolled together to the centre of
+the village, where they parted.  It was as Pierre had said: the woman
+would work the thing out for herself.  Later that evening Heldon's wife
+stood cloaked and veiled in the shadows of the pines, facing the house
+with The Crimson Flag.  Her eyes shifted ever from the door to the flag,
+which was stirred by the light breeze.  Once or twice she shivered as
+with cold, but she instantly stilled again, and watched.  It was
+midnight.  Here and there beyond in the village a light showed, and
+straggling voices floated faintly towards her.  For a long time no sound
+came from the house.  But at last she heard a laugh.  At that she drew
+something from her pocket, and held it firmly in her hand.  Once she
+turned and looked at another house far up on the hill, where lights were
+burning.  It was Heldon's house--her home.  A sharp sound as of anguish
+and anger escaped her; then she fastened her eyes on the door in front of
+her.
+
+At that moment Tom Liffey was standing with his hands on his hips looking
+at Heldon's home on the hill; and he said some rumbling words, then
+strode on down the road, and suddenly paused near the wife.  He did not
+see her.  He faced the door at which she was looking, and shook his fist
+at it.
+
+"A murrain on y'r sowl!" said he, "as there's plague in y'r body, and
+hell in the slide of y'r feet, like the trail of the red spider.  And out
+o' that come ye, Heldon, for I know y're there.  Out of that, ye beast!
+.  .  .  But how can ye go back--you that's rolled in that sewer--to the
+loveliest woman that ever trod the neck o' the world!  Damned y' are in
+every joint o' y'r frame, and damned is y'r sowl, I say, for bringing
+sorrow to her; and I hate you as much for that, as I could worship her
+was she not your wife and a lady o' blood, God save her!"
+
+Then shaking his fist once more, he swung away slowly down the road.
+During this the wife's teeth held together as though they were of a
+piece.  She looked after Tom Liffey and smiled; but it was a dreadful
+smile.
+
+"He worships me, that common man--worships me," she said.  "This man who
+was my husband has shamed me, left me.  Well--"
+
+The door of the house opened; a man came out.  His wife leaned a little
+forward, and something clicked ominously in her hand.  But a voice came
+up the road towards them through the clear air--the voice of Tom Liffey.
+The husband paused to listen; the wife mechanically did the same.  The
+husband remembered this afterwards: it was the key to, and the beginning
+of, a tragedy.  These are the words the Irishman sang:
+
+              "She was a queen, she stood up there before me,
+               My blood went roarin' when she touched my hand;
+               She kissed me on the lips, and then she swore me
+               To die for her--and happy was the land."
+
+A new and singular look came into her face.  It trans formed her.
+"That," she said in a whisper to herself--"that!  He knows the way."
+
+As her husband turned towards his home, she turned also.  He heard the
+rustle of garments, and he could just discern the cloaked figure in the
+shadows.  He hurried on; the figure flitted ahead of him.  A fear
+possessed him in spite of his will.  He turned back.  The figure stood
+still for a moment, then followed him.  He braced himself, faced about,
+and walked towards it: it stopped and waited.  He had not the courage.
+He went back again swiftly towards the house he had left.  Again he
+looked behind him.  The figure was standing, not far, in the pines.  He
+wheeled suddenly towards the house, turned a key in the door, and
+entered.
+
+Then the wife went to that which had been her home: Heldon did not go
+thither until the first flush of morning.  Pierre, returning from an all-
+night sitting at cards, met him, and saw the careworn look on his face.
+The half-breed smiled.  He knew that the event was doubling on the man.
+When Heldon reached his house, he went to his wife's room.  It was
+locked.  Then he walked down to his mines with a miserable shame and
+anger at his heart.  He did not pass The Crimson Flag.  He went by
+another way.
+
+That evening, in the dusk, a woman knocked at Tom Liffey's door.  He
+opened it.
+
+"Are you alone?" she said.  "I am alone, lady."
+
+"I will come in," she added.  "You will--come in?" he faltered.
+
+She drew near him, and reached out and gently caught his hand.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with a sound almost like a sob in its intensity, and the
+blood flushed to his hair.
+
+He stepped aside, and she entered.  In the light of the candle her eye
+burned into his, but her face wore a shining coldness.  She leaned
+towards him.
+
+"You said you could worship me," she whispered, "and you cursed him.
+Well--worship me--altogether--and that will curse him, as he has killed
+me."
+
+"Dear lady!" he said, in an awed, overwhelmed murmur; and he fell back
+to the wall.
+
+She came towards him.  "Am I not beautiful?" she urged.  She took his
+hand.  His eye swam with hers.  But his look was different from hers,
+though he could not know that.  His was the madness of a man in a dream;
+hers was a painful thing.  The Furies dwelt in her.  She softly lifted
+his hand above his head, and whispered: "Swear."  And she kissed him.
+Her lips were icy, though he did not think so.  The blood tossed in his
+veins.  He swore: but, doing so, he could not conceive all that would be
+required of him.  He was hers, body and soul, and she had resolved on a
+grim thing.  .  .  .  In the darkness, they left the hut and passed into
+the woods, and slowly up through the hills.
+
+Heldon returned to his home that night to find it empty.  There were no
+servants.  There was no wife.  Her cat and dog lay dead upon the
+hearthrug.  Her clothing was cut into strips.  Her wedding-dress was a
+charred heap on the fireplace.  Her jewellery lay molten with it.  Her
+portrait had been torn from its frame.
+
+An intolerable fear possessed him.  Drops of sweat hung on his forehead
+and his hands.  He fled towards the town.  He bit his finger-nails till
+they bled as he passed the house in the pines.  He lifted his arm as if
+the flappings of The Crimson Flag were blows in his face.
+
+At last he passed Tom Liffey's hut.  He saw Pierre, coming from it.  The
+look on the gambler's face was one, of gloomy wonder.  His fingers
+trembled as he lighted a cigarette, and that was an unusual thing.  The
+form of Heldon edged within the light.  Pierre dropped the match and said
+to him,--"You are looking for your wife?"
+
+Heldon bowed his head.  The other threw open the door of the hut.  "Come
+in here," he said.  They entered.  Pierre pointed to a woman's hat on the
+table.  "Do you know that?" he asked, huskily, for he was moved.  But
+Heldon only nodded dazedly.  Pierre continued: "I was to have met Tom
+Liffey here--to-night.  He is not here.  You hoped--I suppose--to see
+your wife in your--home.  She is not there.  He left a word on paper for
+me.  I have torn it up.  Writing is the enemy of man.  But I know where
+he is gone.  I know also where your wife has gone."
+
+Heldon's face was of a hateful paleness.  .  .  .  They passed out into
+the night.
+
+"Where are you going?" Heldon said.
+
+"To God's Playground, if we can get there."
+
+"To God's Playground?  To the glacier-top?  You are mad."
+
+"No, but he and she were mad.  Come on."  Then he whispered something,
+and Heldon gave a great cry, and they plunged into the woods.
+
+In the morning the people of Little Goshen, looking towards the glacier,
+saw a flag (they knew afterwards that it was crimson) flying on it.  Near
+it were two human figures.  A miner, looking through a field-glass, said
+that one figure was crouching by the flag-staff, and that it was a woman.
+The other figure near was a man.  As the morning wore on, they saw upon a
+crag of ice below the sloping glacier two men looking upwards towards the
+flag.  One of them seemed to shriek out, and threw up his hands, and made
+as if to rush forward; but the other drew him back.
+
+Heldon knew what revenge and disgrace may be at their worst.  In vain he
+tried to reach God's Playground.  Only one man knew the way, and he was
+dead upon it--with Heldon's wife: two shameless suicides.  .  .  .  When
+he came down from the mountain the hair upon his face was white, though
+that upon his head remained black as it had always been.  And those
+frozen figures stayed there like statues with that other crimson flag:
+until, one day, a great-bodied wind swept out of the north, and, in pity,
+carried them down a bottomless fissure.
+
+But long before this happened, The Woman had fled from Little Goshen in
+the night, and her house was burned to the ground.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FLOOD
+
+Wendling came to Fort Anne on the day that the Reverend Ezra Badgley and
+an unknown girl were buried.  And that was a notable thing.  The man had
+been found dead at his evening meal; the girl had died on the same day;
+and they were buried side by side.  This caused much scandal, for the man
+was holy, and the girl, as many women said, was probably evil altogether.
+At the graves, when the minister's people saw what was being done, they
+piously protested; but the Factor, to whom Pierre had whispered a word,
+answered them gravely that the matter should go on: since none knew but
+the woman was as worthy of heaven as the man.  Wendling chanced to stand
+beside Pretty Pierre.
+
+"Who knows!" he said aloud, looking hard at the graves, "who knows!....
+She died before him, but the dead can strike."
+
+Pierre did not answer immediately, for the Factor was calling the earth
+down on both coffins; but after a moment he added: "Yes, the dead can
+strike."  And then the eyes of the two men caught and stayed, and they
+knew that they had things to say to each other in the world.
+
+They became friends.  And that, perhaps, was not greatly to Wendling's
+credit; for in the eyes of many Pierre was an outcast as an outlaw.
+Maybe some of the women disliked this friendship most; since Wendling was
+a handsome man, and Pierre was never known to seek them, good or bad; and
+they blamed him for the other's coldness, for his unconcerned yet
+respectful eye.
+
+"There's Nelly Nolan would dance after him to the world's end," said Shon
+McGann to Pierre one day; "and the Widdy Jerome herself, wid her flamin'
+cheeks and the wild fun in her eye, croons like a babe at the breast as
+he slides out his cash on the bar; and over on Gansonby's Flat there's--"
+
+"There's many a fool, 'voila,'" sharply interjected Pierre, as he pushed
+the needle through a button he was sewing on his coat.
+
+"Bedad, there's a pair of fools here, anyway, I say; for the women might
+die without lift at waist or brush of lip, and neither of ye'd say,
+'Here's to the joy of us, goddess, me own!'"
+
+Pierre seemed to be intently watching the needlepoint as it pierced up
+the button-eye, and his reply was given with a slowness corresponding to
+the sedate passage of the needle.  "Wendling, you think, cares nothing
+for women?  Well, men who are like that cared once for one woman, and
+when that was over--But, pshaw!  I will not talk.  You are no thinker,
+Shon McGann.  You blunder through the world.  And you'll tremble as much
+to a woman's thumb in fifty years as now."
+
+"By the holy smoke," said Shon, "though I tremble at that, maybe, I'll
+not tremble, as Wendling, at nothing at all."  Here Pierre looked up
+sharply, then dropped his eyes on his work again.  Shon lapsed suddenly
+into a moodiness.
+
+"Yes," said Pierre, "as Wendling, at nothing at all?  Well?"
+
+"Well, this, Pierre, for you that's a thinker from me that's none.  I was
+walking with him in Red Glen yesterday.  Sudden he took to shiverin', and
+snatched me by the arm, and a mad look shot out of his handsome face.
+'Hush!' says he.  I listened.  There was a sound like the hard rattle of
+a creek over stones, and then another sound behind that.  'Come quick,'
+says he, the sweat standin' thick on him; and he ran me up the bank--for
+it was at the beginnin' of the Glen where the sides were low--and there
+we stood pantin' and starin' flat at each other.  'What's that?  and
+what's got its hand on ye?  for y' are cold as death, an' pinched in the
+face, an' you've bruised my arm,' said I.  And he looked round him slow
+and breathed hard, then drew his fingers through the sweat on his cheek.
+'I'm not well, and I thought I heard--you heard it; what was it like?'
+said he; and he peered close at me.  'Like water,' said I; 'a little
+creek near, and a flood comin' far off.' 'Yes, just that,' said he; 'it's
+some trick of wind in the place, but it makes a man foolish, and an inch
+of brandy would be the right thing.'  I didn't say no to that.  And on we
+came, and brandy we had with a wish in the eye of Nelly Nolan that'd warm
+the heart of a tomb.  .  .  .  And there's a cud for your chewin',
+Pierre.  Think that by the neck and the tail, and the divil absolve ye."
+
+During this, Pierre had finished with the button.  He had drawn on his
+coat and lifted his hat, and now lounged, trying the point of the needle
+with his forefinger.  When Shon ended, he said with a sidelong glance:
+"But what did you think of all that, Shon?"
+
+"Think!  There it was!  What's the use of thinkin'?  There's many a trick
+in the world with wind or with spirit, as I've seen often enough in ould
+Ireland, and it's not to be guessed by me."  Here his voice got a little
+lower and a trifle solemn.  "For, Pierre," spoke he, "there's what's more
+than life or death, and sorra wan can we tell what it is; but we'll know
+some day whin--"
+
+"When we've taken the leap at the Almighty Ditch," said Pierre, with a
+grave kind of lightness.  "Yes, it is all strange.  But even the Almighty
+Ditch is worth the doing: nearly everything is worth the doing; being
+young, growing old, fighting, loving--when youth is on--hating, eating,
+drinking, working, playing big games.  All is worth it except two
+things."
+
+"And what are they, bedad?"
+
+"Thy neighbour's wife and murder.  Those are horrible.  They double on a
+man one time or another; always."
+
+Here, as in curiosity, Pierre pierced his finger with the needle, and
+watched the blood form in a little globule.  Looking at it meditatively
+and sardonically, he said: "There is only one end to these.  Blood for
+blood is a great matter; and I used to wonder if it would not be terrible
+for a man to see his death coming on him drop by drop, like that."  He
+let the spot of blood fall to the floor.  "But now I know that there is a
+punishment worse than that .  .  .  'mon Dieu!' worse than that," he
+added.
+
+Into Shon's face a strange look had suddenly come.  "Yes, there's
+something worse than that, Pierre."
+
+"So, 'bien?'"
+
+Shon made the sacred gesture of his creed.  "To be punished by the dead.
+And not see them--only hear them."  And his eyes steadied firmly to the
+other's.
+
+Pierre was about to reply, but there came the sound of footsteps through
+the open door, and presently Wendling entered slowly.  He was pale and
+worn, and his eyes looked out with a searching anxiousness.  But that did
+not render him less comely.  He had always dressed in black and white,
+and this now added to the easy and yet severe refinement of his person.
+His birth and breeding had occurred in places unfrequented by such as
+Shon and Pierre; but plains and wild life level all; and men are friends
+according to their taste and will, and by no other law.  Hence these with
+Wendling.  He stretched out his hand to each without a word.  The hand-
+shake was unusual; he had little demonstration ever.  Shon looked up
+surprised, but responded.  Pierre followed with a swift, inquiring look;
+then, in the succeeding pause, he offered cigarettes.  Wendling took one;
+and all, silent, sat down.  The sun streamed intemperately through the
+doorway, making a broad ribbon of light straight across the floor to
+Wendling's feet.  After lighting his cigarette, he looked into the
+sunlight for a moment, still not speaking.  Shon meanwhile had started
+his pipe, and now, as if he found the silence awkward,--"It's a day for
+God's country, this," he said: "to make man a Christian for little or
+much, though he play with the Divil betunewhiles."  Without looking at
+them, Wendling said, in a low voice: "It was just such a day, down there
+in Quebec, when It happened.  You could hear the swill of the river, the
+water licking the piers, and the saws in the Big Mill and the Little Mill
+as they marched through the timber, flashing their teeth like bayonets.
+It's a wonderful sound on a hot, clear day--that wild, keen singing of
+the saws, like the cry of a live thing fighting and conquering.  Up from
+the fresh-cut lumber in the yards there came a smell like the juice of
+apples, and the sawdust, as you thrust your hand into it, was as cool and
+soft as the leaves of a clove-flower in the dew.  On these days the town
+was always still.  It looked sleeping, and you saw the heat quivering up
+from the wooden walls and the roofs of cedar shingles as though the
+houses were breathing."
+
+Here he paused, still intent on the shaking sunshine.  Then he turned to
+the others as if suddenly aware that he had been talking to them.  Shon
+was about to speak, but Pierre threw a restraining glance, and, instead,
+they all looked through the doorway and beyond.  In the settlement below
+they saw the effect that Wendling had described.  The houses breathed.
+A grasshopper went clacking past, a dog at the door snapped up a fly; but
+there seemed no other life of day.  Wendling nodded his head towards the
+distance.  "It was quiet, like that.  I stood and watched the mills and
+the yards, and listened to the saws, and looked at the great slide, and
+the logs on the river: and I said ever to myself that it was all mine--
+all.  Then I turned to a big house on the hillock beyond the cedars,
+whose windows were open, with a cool dusk lying behind them.  More than
+all else, I loved to think I owned that house and what was in it. . . .
+She was a beautiful woman.  And she used to sit in a room facing the
+mill--though the house fronted another way--thinking of me, I did not
+doubt, and working at some delicate needle-stuff.  There never had been a
+sharp word between us, save when I quarrelled bitterly with her brother,
+and he left the mill and went away.  But she got over that mostly, though
+the lad's name was, never mentioned between us.  That day I was so hungry
+for the sight of her that I got my field-glass--used to watch my vessels
+and rafts making across the bay--and trained it on the window where I
+knew she sat.  I thought, it would amuse her, too, when I went back at
+night, if I told her what she had been doing.  I laughed to myself at the
+thought of it as I adjusted the glass.  .  .  .  I looked.  .  .  .
+There was no more laughing.  .  .  .  I saw her, and in front of her a
+man, with his back half on me.  I could not recognise him, though at the
+instant I thought he was something familiar.  I failed to get his face at
+all.  Hers I found indistinctly.  But I saw him catch her playfully by
+the chin!  After a little they rose.  He put his arm about her and kissed
+her, and he ran his fingers through her hair.  She had such fine golden
+hair--so light, and it lifted to every breath.  Something got into my
+brain.  I know now it was the maggot which sent Othello mad.  The world
+in that hour was malicious, awful.  .  .  .
+
+"After a time--it seemed ages, she and everything had receded so far--
+I went .  .  .  home.  At the door I asked the servant who had been
+there.  She hesitated, confused, and then said the young curate of the
+parish.  I was very cool: for madness is a strange thing; you see
+everything with an intense aching clearness--that is the trouble. . . .
+She was more kind than common.  I do not think I was unusual.  I was
+playing a part well, my grandmother had Indian blood like yours, Pierre,
+and I was waiting.  I was even nicely critical of her to myself.  I
+balanced the mole on her neck against her general beauty; the curve of
+her instep, I decided, was a little too emphatic.  I passed her backwards
+and forwards, weighing her at every point; but yet these two things were
+the only imperfections.  I pronounced her an exceeding piece of art--and
+infamy.  I was much interested to see how she could appear perfect in her
+soul.  I encouraged her to talk.  I saw with devilish irony that an angel
+spoke.  And, to cap it all, she assumed the fascinating air of the
+mediator--for her brother; seeking a reconciliation between us.  Her
+amazing art of person and mind so worked upon me that it became
+unendurable; it was so exquisite--and so shameless.  I was sitting where
+the priest had sat that afternoon; and when she leaned towards me I
+caught her chin lightly and trailed my fingers through her hair as he
+had done: and that ended it, for I was cold, and my heart worked with
+horrible slowness.  Just as a wave poises at its height before breaking
+upon the shore, it hung at every pulse-beat, and then seemed to fall over
+with a sickening thud.  I arose, and acting still, spoke impatiently of
+her brother.  Tears sprang to her eyes.  Such divine dissimulation,
+I thought--too good for earth.  She turned to leave the room, and I did
+not stay her.  Yet we were together again that night.  .  .  .  I was
+only waiting."
+
+The cigarette had dropped from his fingers to the floor, and lay there
+smoking.  Shon's face was fixed with anxiety; Pierre's eyes played
+gravely with the sunshine.  Wendling drew a heavy breath, and then went
+on.
+
+"Again, next day, it was like this-the world draining the heat.  .  .  .
+I watched from the Big Mill.  I saw them again.  He leaned over her chair
+and buried his face in her hair.  The proof was absolute now.  .  .  .
+I started away, going a roundabout, that I might not be seen.  It took me
+some time.  I was passing through a clump of cedar when I saw them making
+towards the trees skirting the river.  Their backs were on me.  Suddenly
+they diverted their steps--towards the great slide, shut off from water
+this last few months, and used as a quarry to deepen it.  Some petrified
+things had been found in the rocks, but I did not think they were going
+to these.  I saw them climb down the rocky steps; and presently they were
+lost to view.  The gates of the slide could be opened by machinery from
+the Little Mill.  A terrible, deliciously malignant thought came to me.
+I remember how the sunlight crept away from me and left me in the dark.
+I stole through that darkness to the Little Mill.  I went to the
+machinery for opening the gates.  Very gently I set it in motion, facing
+the slide as I did so.  I could see it through the open sides of the
+mill.  I smiled to think what the tiny creek, always creeping through a
+faint leak in the gates and falling with a granite rattle on the stones,
+would now become.  I pushed the lever harder--harder.  I saw the gates
+suddenly give, then fly open, and the river sprang roaring massively
+through them.  I heard a shriek through the roar.  I shuddered; and a
+horrible sickness came on me.  .  .  .  And as I turned from the
+machinery, I saw the young priest coming at me through a doorway! . . .
+It was not the priest and my wife that I had killed; but my wife and her
+brother.  .  .  ."
+
+He threw his head back as though something clamped his throat.  His voice
+roughened with misery.  "The young priest buried them both, and people
+did not know the truth.  They were even sorry for me.  But I gave up the
+mills--all; and I became homeless .  .  .  this."
+
+Now he looked up at the two men, and said: "I have told you because you
+know something, and because there will, I think, be an end soon."  He got
+up and reached out a trembling hand for a cigarette.  Pierre gave him
+one.  "Will you walk with me?" he asked.
+
+Shon shook his head.  "God forgive you," he replied, "I can't do it."
+
+But Wendling and Pierre left the hut together.  They walked for an hour,
+scarcely speaking, and not considering where they went.  At last Pierre
+mechanically turned to go down into Red Glen.  Wendling stopped short,
+then, with a sighing laugh, strode on.  "Shoo has told you what happened
+here?" he said.
+
+Pierre nodded.
+
+"And you know what came once when you walked with me....  The dead can
+strike," he added.  Pierre sought his eye.  "The minister and the girl
+buried together that day," he said, "were--"
+
+He stopped, for behind him he heard the sharp, cold trickle of water.
+Silent they walked on.  It followed them.  They could not get out of the
+Glen now until they had compassed its length--the walls were high.  The
+sound grew.  The men faced each other.
+
+"Good-bye," said Wendling; and he reached out his hand swiftly.  But
+Pierre heard a mighty flood groaning on them, and he blinded as he
+stretched his arm in response.  He caught at Wendling's shoulder, but
+felt him lifted and carried away, while he himself stood still in a
+screeching wind and heard impalpable water rushing over him.  In a minute
+it was gone; and he stood alone in Red Glen.
+
+He gathered himself up and ran.  Far down, where the Glen opened to the
+plain, he found Wendling.  The hands were wrinkled; the face was cold;
+the body was wet: the man was drowned and dead.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN PIPI VALLEY
+
+"Divils me darlins, it's a memory I have of a time whin luck wasn't
+foldin' her arms round me, and not so far back aither, and I on the
+wallaby track hot-foot for the City o' Gold."
+
+Shon McGann said this in the course of a discussion on the prosperity of
+Pipi Valley.  Pretty Pierre remarked nonchalantly in reply,--"The wallaby
+track--eh--what is that, Shon?"
+
+"It's a bit of a haythen y' are, Pierre.  The wallaby track?  That's the
+name in Australia for trampin' west through the plains of the Never-Never
+Country lookin' for the luck o' the world; as, bedad, it's meself that
+knows it, and no other, and not by book or tellin' either, but with the
+grip of thirst at me throat and a reef in me belt every hour to quiet the
+gnawin'."  And Shon proceeded to light his pipe afresh.
+
+"But the City o' Gold-was there much wealth for you there, Shon?"
+
+Shon laughed, and said between the puffs of smoke, "Wealth for me, is it?
+Oh, mother o' Moses! wealth of work and the pride of livin' in the heart
+of us, and the grip of an honest hand betunewhiles; and what more do y'
+want, Pierre?"
+
+The Frenchman's drooping eyelids closed a little more, and he replied,
+meditatively: "Money?  No, that is not Shon McGann.  The good fellowship
+of thirst?--yes, a little.  The grip of the honest hand, quite, and the
+clinch of an honest waist?  Well, 'peut-etre.'
+
+"Of the waist which is not honest?--tsh! he is gay--and so!"
+
+The Irishman took his pipe from his mouth, and held it poised before him.
+He looked inquiringly and a little frowningly at the other for a moment,
+as if doubtful whether to resent the sneer that accompanied the words
+just spoken; but at last he good-humouredly said: "Blood o' me bones, but
+it's much I fear the honest waist hasn't always been me portion--Heaven
+forgive me!"
+
+"'Nom de pipe,' this Irishman!" replied Pierre.  "He is gay; of good
+heart; he smiles, and the women are at his heels; he laughs, and they are
+on their knees--Such a fool he is!"
+
+Still Shon McGann laughed.
+
+"A fool I am, Pierre, or I'd be in ould Ireland at this minute, with a
+roof o' me own over me and the friends o' me youth round me, and brats
+on me knee, and the fear o' God in me heart."
+
+"'Mais,' Shon," mockingly rejoined the Frenchman, "this is not Ireland,
+but there is much like that to be done here.  There is a roof, and there
+is that woman at Ward's Mistake, and the brats--eh, by and by?"
+
+Shon's face clouded.  He hesitated, then replied sharply: "That woman, do
+y' say, Pierre, she that nursed me when the Honourable and meself were
+taken out o' Sandy Drift, more dead than livin'; she that brought me back
+to life as good as ever, barrin' this scar on me forehead and a stiffness
+at me elbow, and the Honourable as right as the sun, more luck to him!
+which he doesn't need at all, with the wind of fortune in his back and
+shiftin' neither to right nor left.  --That woman!  faith, y'd better not
+cut the words so sharp betune yer teeth, Pierre."
+
+"But I will say more--a little--just the same.  She nursed you--well,
+that is good; but it is good also, I think, you pay her for that, and
+stop the rest.  Women are fools, or else they are worse.  This one?  She
+is worse.  Yes; you will take my advice, Shon McGann."  The Irishman came
+to his feet with a spring, and his words were angry.
+
+"It doesn't come well from Pretty Pierre, the gambler, to be revilin'
+a woman; and I throw it in y'r face, though I've slept under the same
+blanket with ye, an' drunk out of the same cup on manny a tramp, that you
+lie dirty and black when ye spake ill--of my wife."
+
+This conversation had occurred in a quiet corner of the bar-room of the
+Saints' Repose.  The first few sentences had not been heard by the others
+present; but Shon's last speech, delivered in a ringing tone, drew the
+miners to their feet, in expectation of seeing shots exchanged at once.
+The code required satisfaction, immediate and decisive.  Shon was not
+armed, and some one thrust a pistol towards him; but he did not take it.
+Pierre rose, and coming slowly to him, laid a slender finger on his
+chest, and said:
+
+"So! I did not know that she was your wife.  That is a surprise."
+
+The miners nodded assent.  He continued:
+
+"Lucy Rives your wife!  Hola, Shon McGann, that is such a joke."
+
+"It's no joke, but God's truth, and the lie is with you, Pierre."
+
+Murmurs of anticipation ran round the room; but the half-breed said:
+"There will be satisfaction altogether; but it is my whim to prove what
+I say first; then"--fondling his revolver--"then we shall settle.  But,
+see: you will meet me here at ten o'clock to-night, and I will make it,
+I swear to you, so clear, that the woman is vile."
+
+The Irishman suddenly clutched the gambler, shook him like a dog, and
+threw him against the farther wall.  Pierre's pistol was levelled from
+the instant Shon moved; but he did not use it.  He rose on one knee after
+the violent fall, and pointing it at the other's head, said coolly: "I
+could kill you, my friend, so easy!  But it is not my whim.  Till ten
+o'clock is not long to wait, and then, just here, one of us shall die.
+Is it not so?"  The Irishman did not flinch before the pistol.  He said
+with low fierceness, "At ten o'clock, or now, or any time, or at any
+place, y'll find me ready to break the back of the lies y've spoken, or
+be broken meself.  Lucy Rives is my wife, and she's true and straight as
+the sun in the sky.  I'll be here at ten o'clock, and as ye say, Pierre,
+one of us makes the long reckoning for this."  And he opened the door and
+went out.
+
+The half-breed moved to the bar, and, throwing down a handful of silver,
+said: "It is good we drink after so much heat.  Come on, come on,
+comrades."
+
+The miners responded to the invitation.  Their sympathy was mostly with
+Shon McGann; their admiration was about equally divided; for Pretty
+Pierre had the quality of courage in as active a degree as the Irishman,
+and they knew that some extraordinary motive, promising greater
+excitement, was behind the Frenchman's refusal to send a bullet
+through Shon's head a moment before.
+
+King Kinkley, the best shot in the Valley next to Pierre, had watched the
+unusual development of the incident with interest; and when his glass had
+been filled he said, thoughtfully: "This thing isn't according to Hoyle.
+There's never been any trouble just like it in the Valley before.  What's
+that McGann said about the lady being his wife?  If it's the case, where
+hev we been in the show?  Where was we when the license was around?  It
+isn't good citizenship, and I hev my doubts."
+
+Another miner, known as the Presbyterian, added: "There's some
+skulduggery in it, I guess.  The lady has had as much protection as if
+she was the sister of every citizen of the place, just as much as Lady
+Jane here (Lady Jane, the daughter of the proprietor of the Saints'
+Repose, administered drinks), and she's played this stacked hand on us,
+has gone one better on the sly."
+
+"Pierre," said King Kinkley, "you're on the track of the secret, and
+appear to hev the advantage of the lady: blaze it--blaze it out."
+
+Pierre rejoined, "I know something; but it is good we wait until ten
+o'clock.  Then I will show you all the cards in the pack.  Yes, so,
+'bien sur.'"
+
+And though there was some grumbling, Pierre had his way.  The spirit of
+adventure and mutual interest had thrown the French half-breed, the
+Irishman, and the Hon. Just Trafford together on the cold side of the
+Canadian Rockies; and they had journeyed to this other side, where the
+warm breath from the Pacific passed to its congealing in the ranges.
+They had come to the Pipi field when it was languishing.  From the moment
+of their coming its luck changed; it became prosperous.  They conquered
+the Valley each after his kind.  The Honourable--he was always called
+that--mastered its resources by a series of "great lucks," as Pierre
+termed it, had achieved a fortune, and made no enemies; and but two
+months before the day whose incidents are here recorded, had gone to the
+coast on business.  Shon had won the reputation of being a "white man,"
+to say nothing of his victories in the region of gallantry.  He made no
+wealth; he only got that he might spend.  Irishman-like he would barter
+the chances of fortune for the lilt of a voice or the clatter of a pretty
+foot.
+
+Pierre was different.  "Women, ah, no!" he would say, "they make men
+fools or devils."
+
+His temptation lay not that way.  When the three first came to the Pipi,
+Pierre was a miner, simply; but nearly all his life he had been something
+else, as many a devastated pocket on the east of the Rockies could bear
+witness; and his new career was alien to his soul.  Temptation grew
+greatly on him at the Pipi, and in the days before he yielded to it he
+might have been seen at midnight in his but playing solitaire.  Why he
+abstained at first from practising his real profession is accounted for
+in two ways: he had tasted some of the sweets of honest companionship
+with the Honourable and Shon, and then he had a memory of an ugly night
+at Pardon's Drive a year before, when he stood over his own brother's
+body, shot to death by accident in a gambling row having its origin with
+himself.  These things had held him back for a time; but he was weaker
+than his ruling passion.
+
+The Pipi was a young and comparatively virgin field; the quarry was at
+his hand.  He did not love money for its own sake; it was the game that
+enthralled him.  He would have played his life against the treasury of a
+kingdom, and, winning it with loaded double sixes, have handed back the
+spoil as an unredeemable national debt.
+
+He fell at last, and in falling conquered the Pipi Valley; at the same
+time he was considered a fearless and liberal citizen, who could shoot as
+straight as he played well.  He made an excursion to another field,
+however, at an opportune time, and it was during this interval that the
+accident to Shon and the Honourable had happened.  He returned but a few
+hours before this quarrel with Shon occurred, and in the Saints' Repose,
+whither he had at once gone, he was told of the accident.  While his
+informant related the incident and the romantic sequence of Shon's
+infatuation, the woman passed the tavern and was pointed out to Pierre.
+The half-breed had not much excitableness in his nature, but when he saw
+this beautiful woman with a touch of the Indian in her contour, his pale
+face flushed, and he showed his set teeth under his slight moustache.
+He watched her until she entered a shop, on the signboard of which was
+written--written since he had left a few months ago--Lucy Rives,
+Tobacconist.
+
+Shon had then entered the Saints' Repose; and we know the rest.  A couple
+of hours after this nervous episode, Pierre might have been seen standing
+in the shadow of the pines not far from the house at Ward's Mistake,
+where, he had been told, Lucy Rives lived with an old Indian woman.  He
+stood, scarcely moving, and smoking cigarettes, until the door opened.
+Shon came out and walked down the hillside to the town.  Then Pierre went
+to the door, and without knocking, opened it, and entered.  A woman
+started up from a seat where she was sewing, and turned towards him.
+As she did so, the work, Shon's coat, dropped from her hands, her face
+paled, and her eyes grew big with fear.  She leaned against a chair for
+support--this man's presence had weakened her so.  She stood silent, save
+for a slight moan that broke from her lips, as Pierre lighted a cigarette
+coolly, and then said to an old Indian woman who sat upon the floor
+braiding a basket: "Get up, Ikni, and go away."
+
+Ikni rose, came over, and peered into the face of the half-breed.  Then
+she muttered: "I know you--I know you.  The dead has come back again."
+She caught his arm with her bony fingers as if to satisfy herself that he
+was flesh and blood, and shaking her head dolefully, went from the room.
+When the door closed behind her there was silence, broken only by an
+exclamation from the man.
+
+The other drew her hand across her eyes, and dropped it with a motion of
+despair.  Then Pierre said, sharply: "Bien?"
+
+"Francois," she replied, "you are alive!"
+
+"Yes, I am alive, Lucy."
+
+She shuddered, then grew still again and whispered: "Why did you let it
+be thought that you were drowned?  Why?  Oh, why?" she moaned.
+
+He raised his eyebrows slightly, and between the puffs of smoke, said:
+
+"Ah yes, my Lucy, why?  It was so long ago.  Let me see: so--so--ten
+years.  Ten years is a long time to remember, eh?"
+
+He came towards her.  She drew back; but her hand remained on the chair.
+He touched the plain gold ring on her finger, and said:
+
+"You still wear it.  To think of that--so loyal for a woman!  How she
+remembers, holy Mother!  .  .  .  But shall I not kiss you, yes, just
+once after eight years--my wife?"
+
+She breathed hard and drew back against the wall, dazed and frightened,
+and said:
+
+"No, no, do not come near me; do not speak to me--ah, please, stand back,
+for a moment--please!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and continued, with mock tenderness:
+
+"To think that things come round so!  And here you have a home.  But that
+is good.  I am tired of much travel and life all alone.  The prodigal
+goes not to the home, the home comes to the prodigal."  He stretched up
+his arms as if with a feeling of content.
+
+"Do you--do you not know," she said, "that--that--"
+
+He interrupted her:
+
+"Do I not know, Lucy, that this is your home?  Yes.  But is it not all
+the same?  I gave you a home ten years ago--to think, ten years ago!
+We quarrelled one night, and I left you.  Next morning my boat was found
+below the White Cascade--yes, but that was so stale a trick!  It was not
+worthy of Francois Rives.  He would do it so much better now; but he was
+young then; just a boy, and foolish.  Well, sit down, Lucy, it is a long
+story, and you have much to tell, how much--who knows?"  She came slowly
+forward and said with a painful effort:
+
+"You did a great wrong, Francois.  You have killed me.
+
+"Killed you, Lucy, my wife!  Pardon!  Never in those days did you look so
+charming as now--never.  But the great surprise of seeing your husband,
+it has made you shy, quite shy.  There will be much time now for you to
+change all that.  It is quite pleasant to think on, Lucy.  .  .  .  You
+remember the song we used to sing on the Chaudiere at St. Antoine?  See,
+I have not forgotten it--
+
+                  "'Nos amants sont en guerre,
+                    Vole, mon coeur, vole.'"
+
+He hummed the lines over and over, watching through his half-shut eyes
+the torture he was inflicting.
+
+"Oh, Mother of God," she whispered, "have mercy!  Can you not see, do you
+not know?  I am not as you left me."
+
+"Yes, my wife, you are just the same; not an hour older.  I am glad that
+you have come to me.  But how they will envy Pretty Pierre!"
+
+"Envy--Pretty-Pierre," she repeated, in distress; "are you Pretty Pierre?
+Ah, I might have known, I might have known!"
+
+"Yes, and so!  Is not Pretty Pierre as good a name as Francois Rives?
+Is it not as good as Shon McGann?"
+
+"Oh, I see it all, I see it all now!" she said mournfully.  "It was with
+you he quarrelled, and about me.  He would not tell me what it was.  You
+know, then, that I am--that I am married--to him?"
+
+"Quite.  I know all that; but it is no marriage."  He rose to his feet
+slowly, dropping the cigarette from his lips as he did so.  "Yes," he
+continued, "and I know that you prefer Shon McGann to Pretty Pierre."
+
+She spread out her hands appealingly.
+
+"But you are my wife, not his.  Listen: do you know what I shall do?
+I will tell you in two hours.  It is now eight o'clock.  At ten o'clock
+Shon McGann will meet me at the Saints' Repose.  Then you shall know....
+Ah, it is a pity!  Shon was my good friend, but this spoils all that.
+Wine--it has danger; cards--there is peril in that sport; women--they
+make trouble most of all."
+
+"O God," she piteously said, "what did I do?  There was no sin in me.
+I was your faithful wife, though you were cruel to me.  You left me,
+cheated me, brought this upon me.  It is you that has done this
+wickedness, not I."  She buried her face in her hands, falling on her
+knees beside the chair.
+
+He bent above her: "You loved the young avocat better, eight years ago."
+
+She sprang to her feet.  "Ah, now I understand,' she said.  "That was why
+you quarrelled with me; why you deserted me.  You were not man enough to
+say what made you so much the--so wicked and hard, so--"
+
+"Be thankful, Lucy, that I did not kill you then," he interjected.
+
+"But it is a lie," she cried; "a lie!"
+
+She went to the door and called the Indian woman.  "Ikni," she said.
+"He dares to say evil of Andre and me.  Think--of Andre!"
+
+Ikni came to him, put her wrinkled face close to his, and said: "She was
+yours, only yours; but the spirits gave you a devil.  Andre, oh, oh,
+Andre!  The father of Andre was her father--ah, that makes your sulky
+eyes to open.  Ikni knows how to speak.  Ikni nursed them both.  If you
+had waited you should have known.  But you ran away like a wolf from a
+coal of fire; you shammed death like a fox; you come back like the snake
+to crawl into the house and strike with poison tooth, when you should be
+with the worms in the ground.  But Ikni knows--you shall be struck with
+poison too, the Spirit of the Red Knife waits for you.  Andre was her
+brother."
+
+He pushed her aside savagely: "Be still!" he said.  "Get out-quick.
+'Sacre'--quick!"
+
+When they were alone again he continued with no anger in his tone: "So,
+Andre the avocat and you--that, eh?  Well, you see how much trouble has
+come; and now this other--a secret too.  When were you married to Shon
+McGann?"
+
+"Last night," she bitterly replied; "a priest came over from the Indian
+village."
+
+"Last night," he musingly repeated.  "Last night I lost two thousand
+dollars at the Little Goshen field.  I did not play well last night;
+I was nervous.  In ten years I had not lost so much at one game as I did
+last night.  It was a punishment for playing too honest, or something;
+eh, what do you think, Lucy--or something, 'hein?'"
+
+She said nothing, but rocked her body to and fro.
+
+"Why did you not make known the marriage with Shon?"
+
+"He was to have told it to-night," she said.
+
+There was silence for a moment, then a thought flashed into his eyes, and
+he rejoined with a jarring laugh, "Well, I will play a game to-night,
+Lucy Rives; such a game that Pretty Pierre will never be forgotten in the
+Pipi Valley--a beautiful game, just for two.  And the other who will
+play--the wife of Francois Rives shall see if she will wait; but she must
+be patient, more patient than her husband was ten years ago."
+
+"What will you do--tell me, what will you do?"
+
+"I will play a game of cards--just one magnificent game; and the cards
+shall settle it.  All shall be quite fair, as when you and I played in
+the little house by the Chaudiere--at first, Lucy,--before I was a
+devil."
+
+Was this peculiar softness to his last tones assumed or real?  She looked
+at him inquiringly; but he moved away to the window, and stood gazing
+down the hillside towards the town below.  His eyes smarted.
+
+"I will die," she said to herself in whispers--"I will die."  A minute
+passed, and then Pierre turned and said to her: "Lucy, he is coming up
+the hill.  Listen.  If you tell him that I have seen you, I will shoot
+him on sight, dead.  You would save him, for a little, for an hour or
+two--or more?  Well, do as I say; for these things must be according to
+the rules of the game, and I myself will tell him all at the Saints'
+Repose.  He gave me the lie there, and I will tell him the truth before
+them all there.  Will you do as I say?"
+
+She hesitated an instant, and then replied: "I will not tell him."
+
+"There is only one way, then," he continued.  "You must go at once from
+here into the woods behind there, and not see him at all.  Then at ten
+o'clock you will come to the Saints' Repose, if you choose, to know how
+the game has ended."
+
+She was trembling, moaning, no longer.  A set look had come into her
+face; her eyes were steady and hard.  She quietly replied: "Yes, I shall
+be there."
+
+He came to her, took her hand, and drew from her finger the wedding-ring
+which last night Shon McGann had placed there.  She submitted passively.
+Then, with an upward wave of his fingers, he spoke in a mocking
+lightness, but without any of the malice which had first appeared in his
+tones, words from an old French song:
+
+                   "I say no more, my lady
+                    Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!
+                    I say no more, my lady,
+                    As nought more can be said."
+
+He opened the door, motioned to the Indian woman, and, in a few moments,
+the broken-hearted Lucy Rives and her companion were hidden in the pines;
+and Pretty Pierre also disappeared into the shadow of the woods as Shon
+McGann appeared on the crest of the hill.
+
+The Irishman walked slowly to the door, and pausing, said to himself:
+"I couldn't run the big risk, me darlin', without seein' you again, God
+help me!  There's danger ahead which little I'd care for if it wasn't for
+you."
+
+Then he stepped inside the house--the place was silent; he called, but no
+one answered; he threw open the doors of the rooms, but they were empty;
+he went outside and called again, but no reply came, except the flutter
+of a night-hawk's wings and the cry of a whippoorwill.  He went back into
+the house and sat down with his head between his hands.  So, for a
+moment, and then he raised his head, and said with a sad smile: "Faith,
+Shon, me boy, this takes the life out of you! the empty house where she
+ought to be, and the smile of her so swate, and the hand of her that
+falls on y'r shoulder like a dove on the blessed altar-gone, and lavin'
+a chill on y'r heart like a touch of the dead.  Sure, nivir a wan of me
+saw any that could stand wid her for goodness, barrin' the angel that
+kissed me good-bye with one foot in the stirrup an' the troopers behind
+me, now twelve years gone, in ould Donegal, and that I'll niver see
+again, she lyin' where the hate of the world will vex the heart of her no
+more, and the masses gone up for her soul.  Twice, twice in y'r life,
+Shon McGann, has the cup of God's joy been at y'r lips, and is it both
+times that it's to spill?--Pretty Pierre shoots straight and sudden, and
+maybe it's aisy to see the end of it; but as the just God is above us,
+I'll give him the lie in his throat betimes for the word he said agin me
+darlin'.  What's the avil thing that he has to say?  What's the divil's
+proof he would bring?  And where is she now?  Where are you, Lucy?  I
+know the proof I've got in me heart that the wreck of the world couldn't
+shake, while that light, born of Heaven, swims up to your eyes whin you
+look at me!"
+
+He rose to his feet again and walked to and fro; he went once more to the
+doors; he looked here and there through the growing dusk, but to no
+purpose.  She had said that she would not go to her shop this night; but
+if not, then where could she have gone and Ikni, too?  He felt there was
+more awry in his life than he cared to put into thought or speech.  He
+picked up the sewing she had dropped and looked at it as one would regard
+a relic of the dead; he lifted her handkerchief, kissed it, and put it in
+his breast.  He took a revolver from his pocket and examined it closely,
+looked round the room as though to fasten it in his memory, and then
+passed out, closing the door behind him.  He walked down the hillside and
+went to her shop in the one street of the town, but she was not there,
+nor had the lad in charge seen her.
+
+Meanwhile, Pretty Pierre had made his way to the Saints' Repose, and was
+sitting among the miners indolently smoking.  In vain he was asked to
+play cards.  His one reply was, "No, pardon, no!  I play one game only
+to-night, the biggest game ever played in Pipi Valley."  In vain, also,
+was he asked to drink.  He refused the hospitality, defying the danger
+that such lack of good-fellowship might bring forth.  He hummed in
+patches to himself the words of a song that the 'brules' were wont to
+sing when they hunted the buffalo:
+
+                  "'Voila!'  it is the sport to ride--
+                         Ah, ah the brave hunter!
+
+                    To thrust the arrow in his hide,
+                    To send the bullet through his side
+                         'Ici,' the buffalo, 'joli!'
+                              Ah, ah the buffalo!"
+
+He nodded here and there as men entered; but he did not stir from his
+seat.  He smoked incessantly, and his eyes faced the door of the bar-room
+that entered upon the street.  There was no doubt in the minds of any
+present that the promised excitement would occur.  Shon McGann was as
+fearless as he was gay.  And Pipi Valley remembered the day in which he
+had twice risked his life to save two women from a burning building--Lady
+Jane and another.  And Lady Jane this evening was agitated, and once or
+twice furtively looked at something under the bar-counter; in fact, a
+close observer would have noticed anger or anxiety in the eyes of the
+daughter of Dick Waldron, the keeper of the Saints' Repose.  Pierre would
+certainly have seen it had he been looking that way.  An unusual
+influence was working upon the frequenters of the busy tavern.  Planned,
+premeditated excitement was out of their line.  Unexpectedness was the
+salt of their existence.  This thing had an air of system not in accord
+with the suddenness of the Pipi mind.  The half-breed was the only one
+entirely at his ease; he was languid and nonchalant; the long lashes of
+his half-shut eyelids gave his face a pensive look.  At last King Kinkley
+walked over to him and said: "There's an almighty mysteriousness about
+this event which isn't joyful, Pretty Pierre.  We want to see the muss
+cleared up, of course; we want Shon McGann to act like a high-toned
+citizen, and there's a general prejudice in favour of things bein' on the
+flat of your palm, as it were.  Now this thing hangs fire, and there's a
+lack of animation about it, isn't there?"
+
+To this, Pretty Pierre replied: "What can I do?  This is not like other
+things; one had to wait; great things take time.  To shoot is easy; but
+to shoot is not all, as you shall see if you have a little patience.
+Ah, my friend, where there is a woman, things are different. I throw a
+glass in your face, we shoot, someone dies, and there it is quite plain
+of reason; you play a card which was dealt just now, I call you--
+something, and the swiftest finger does the trick; but in such as this,
+one must wait for the sport."
+
+It was at this point that Shon McGann entered, looked round, nodded to
+all, and then came forward to the table where Pretty Pierre sat.  As the
+other took out his watch, Shon said firmly but quietly: "Pierre, I gave
+you the lie to-day concerning me wife, and I'm here, as I said I'd be,
+to stand by the word I passed then."
+
+Pierre waved his fingers lightly towards the other, and slowly rose.
+Then he said in sharp tones: "Yes, Shon McGann, you gave me the lie.
+There is but one thing for that in Pipi Valley.  You choked me; I would
+not take that from a saint of heaven; but there was another thing to do
+first.  Well, I have done it; I said I would bring proofs--I have them."
+He paused, and now there might have been seen a shining moisture on his
+forehead, and his words came menacingly from between his teeth, while the
+room became breathlessly still, save that in the silence a sleeping dog
+sighed heavily: "Shon McGann," he added, "you are living with my wife."
+
+Twenty men drew in a sharp breath of excitement, and Shon came a step
+nearer the other, and said in a strange voice: "I--am--living--with--
+your--wife?"
+
+"As I say, with my wife, Lucy Rives.  Francois Rives was my name ten
+years ago.  We quarrelled.  I left her, and I never saw her again until
+to-night.  You went to see her two hours ago.  You did not find her.
+Why?  She was gone because her husband, Pierre, told her to go.  You want
+a proof?  You shall have it.  Here is the wedding-ring you gave her last
+night."
+
+He handed it over, and Shon saw inside it his own name and hers.
+
+"My God!" he said.  "Did she know?  Tell me she didn't know, Pierre?"
+
+"No, she did not know.  I have truth to speak to night.  I was jealous,
+mad, and foolish, and I left her.  My boat was found upset.  They
+believed I was drowned.  'Bien,' she waited until yesterday, and then
+she took you--but she was my wife; she is my wife--and so you see!"
+
+The Irishman was deadly pale.
+
+"It's an avil heart y' had in y' then, Pretty Pierre, and it's an avil
+day that brought this thing to pass, and there's only wan way to the end
+of it."
+
+"So, that is true.  There is only one way," was the reply; "but what
+shall that way be?  Someone must go: there must be no mistake.  I have
+to propose.  Here on this table we lay a revolver.  We will give up these
+which we have in our pockets.  Then we will play a game of euchre, and
+the winner of the game shall have the revolver.  We will play for a life.
+That is fair, eh--that is fair?" he said to those around.
+
+King Kinkley, speaking for the rest, replied: "That's about fair.  It
+gives both a chance, and leaves only two when it's over.  While the woman
+lives, one of you is naturally in the way.  Pierre left her in a way that
+isn't handsome; but a wife's a wife, and though Shon was all in the glum
+about the thing, and though the woman isn't to be blamed either, there's
+one too many of you, and there's got to be a vacation for somebody.
+Isn't that so?"
+
+The rest nodded assent.  They had been so engaged that they did not see
+a woman enter the bar from behind, and crouch down beside Lady Jane,
+a woman whom the latter touched affectionately on the shoulder and
+whispered to once or twice, while she watched the preparations for the
+game.
+
+The two men sat down, Shon facing the bar and Pierre with his back to it.
+
+The game began, neither man showing a sign of nervousness, though Shon
+was very pale.  The game was to finish for ten points.  Men crowded about
+the tables silent but keenly excited; cigars were chewed instead of
+smoked, and liquor was left undrunk.  At the first deal Pierre made a
+march, securing two.  At the next Shon made a point, and at the next also
+a march.  The half-breed was playing a straight game.  He could have
+stacked the cards, but he did not do so; deft as he was he might have
+cheated even the vigilant eyes about him, but it was not so; he played as
+squarely as a novice.  At the third, at the fourth, deal he made a march;
+at the fifth, sixth, and seventh deals, Shon made a march, a point, and a
+march.  Both now had eight points.  At the next deal both got a point,
+and both stood at nine!
+
+Now came the crucial play.
+
+During the progress of the game nothing had been heard save the sound of
+a knuckle on the table, the flip flip of the pasteboard, or the rasp of a
+heel on the floor.  There was a set smile on Shon's face--a forgotten
+smile, for the rest of the face was stern and tragic.  Pierre smoked
+cigarettes, pausing, while his opponent was shuffling and dealing, to
+light them.
+
+Behind the bar as the game proceeded the woman who knelt beside Lady Jane
+listened to every sound.  Her eyes grew more agonised as the numbers,
+whispered to her by her companion, climbed to the fatal ten.
+
+The last deal was Shon's; there was that much to his advantage.  As he
+slowly dealt, the woman--Lucy Rives--rose to her feet behind Lady Jane.
+So absorbed were all that none saw her.  Her eyes passed from Pierre to
+Shon, and stayed.
+
+When the cards were dealt, with but one point for either to gain, and so
+win and save his life, there was a slight pause before the two took them
+up.  They did not look at one another; but each glanced at the revolver,
+then at the men nearest them, and lastly, for an instant, at the cards
+themselves, with their pasteboard faces of life and death turned
+downward.  As the players picked them up at last and spread them out fan-
+like, Lady Jane slipped something into the hand of Lucy Rives.
+
+Those who stood behind Shon McGann stared with anxious astonishment at
+his hand; it contained only nine and ten spots.  It was easy to see the
+direction of the sympathy of Pipi Valley.  The Irishman's face turned a
+slight shade paler, but he did not tremble or appear disturbed.
+
+Pierre played his biggest card and took the point.  He coolly counted
+one, and said, "Game.  I win."  The crowd drew back.  Both rose to their
+feet.  In the painful silence the half-breed's hand was gently laid on
+the revolver.  He lifted it, and paused slightly, his eyes fixed to the
+steady look in those of Shon McGann.  He raised the revolver again, till
+it was level with Shon's forehead, till it was even with his hair!  Then
+there was a shot, and someone fell--not Shon, but Pierre, saying, as they
+caught him, "Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!  From behind!"
+
+Instantly there was another shot, and someone crashed against the bottles
+in the bar.  The other factor in the game, the wife, had shot at Pierre,
+and then sent a bullet through her own lungs.
+
+Shon stood for a moment as if he was turned to stone, and then his head
+dropped in his arms upon the table.  He had seen both shots fired, but
+could not speak in time.
+
+Pierre was severely but not dangerously wounded in the neck.
+
+But the woman--?  They brought her out from behind the counter.  She
+still breathed; but on her eyes was the film of coming death.  She turned
+to where Shon sat.  Her lips framed his name, but no voice came forth.
+Someone touched him on the shoulder.  He looked up and caught her last
+glance.  He came and stooped beside her; but she had died with that one
+glance from him, bringing a faint smile to her lips.  And the smile
+stayed when the life of her had fled--fled through the cloud over her
+eyes, from the tide-beat of her pulse.  It swept out from the smoke and
+reeking air into the open world, and beyond, into those untried paths
+where all must walk alone, and in what bitterness, known only to the
+Master of the World who sees these piteous things, and orders in what
+fashion distorted lives shall be made straight and wholesome in the
+Places of Readjustment.
+
+Shon stood silent above the dead body.
+
+One by one the miners went out quietly.  Presently Pierre nodded towards
+the door, and King Kinkley and another lifted him and carried him towards
+it.  Before they passed into the street he made them turn him so that he
+could see Shon.  He waved his hand towards her that had been his wife,
+and said: "She should have shot but once and straight, Shon McGann, and
+then!--Eh, 'bien!'"
+
+The door closed, and Shon McGann was left alone with the dead.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Irishmen have gifts for only two things--words and women
+More idle than wicked
+Reconciling the preacher and the sinner, as many another has
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE, V4, PARKER ***
+
+*********** This file should be named 6177.txt or 6177.zip ***********
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