Part 10 (1/2)

”I will fight them to the death,” he said, getting down his revolver, with an air that would have done honor to Don Quixote.

”If you fight them and whip them, they will waylay you and kill you.

But there are ten of them, and if you fight them you will be killed, and this lady will be without a protector. If you run away, the house will be destroyed, and you will be killed whenever you are found. But what have you here--a magic lantern?”

The old gentleman had, before Edwards's arrival, taken down the instrument to introduce some improvement which he had just invented.

When Edwards stumbled over it and called it a magic lantern he looked at him scornfully.

”A magic lantern!” he cried. ”No, sir; that is a dissolving view, oxy-calcium, panto-sciostereoscopticon.”

”With this we must save you and your daughter from the half-breeds,”

said the trapper, a little impatient at this ill-timed manifestation of pedantry. ”Get ready for action immediately.”

”I have no oxygen gas.”

”Make it at once,” said Edwards. He picked up some papers marked ”chlor. pota.s.s.” and ”black oxide.”

”Here is your material,” he said.

”Do _you_ understand chemistry?” asked Lindsley. But the trapper did not answer. He got out the retort, and in five minutes the oxygen was bubbling furiously through the wash bottle into the India-rubber receiver. Edwards stood at the window scanning the road toward Gager's with his telescope until it grew dark, which in that lat.i.tude was at about ten o'clock. Then the magic lantern was removed to the little gra.s.s-roofed stable, in which dwelt a solitary pony, and by Edwards's direction the focus was carefully set so that it would throw a picture against the house. Edwards selected two pictures and adjusted them for use in the two tubes.

The half-breeds were not in haste, and in all the long hour of suspense Emilia, hidden in the barn with her father and young Edwards, was positively happy. For here was human companions.h.i.+p, and a hungry soul will gladly risk death if by that means companions.h.i.+p can be purchased.

It did not matter either that conversation was out of the question. It is presence, and not talk, that makes companions.h.i.+p.

But hark! the _bois brules_ are on the bank of the river below. Emilia's heart grew still as she heard them swear. Their _sacr-r-r-r-re_ rolled like the rattle of a rattlesnake. They were coming up the hill, quarreling drunkenly about the powder. Now they were between the house and the stable, getting ready to dig a hole for the ”_poudre a canon_”

”I'll give them fireworks!” said Edwards in a whisper.

A picture of Thorwaldsen's bas-relief of ”Morning” having been previously placed in the instrument, Edwards now removed the cap, and the beautiful flying female figure, with the infant in her arms, shone out upon the side of the house with marvelous vividness.

”By thunder!” said Whisky Jim, steadying himself, while every hair stood on end.

”_Mon Dieu!_” cried the _bois brules_, who had never seen a picture in their lives except in the cathedral of St. Boniface, at Fort Garry.

”_Mon Dieu! La Sainte Vierge!_” And they fell on their knees before this apparition of the Blessed Virgin, and crossed themselves and prayed l.u.s.tily.

But ”Whisky Jim” straightened himself up, and hiccoughed, and stammered ”By thunder!” and added some words which, being Saxon, I will not print.

”The devil!” cried Jim, a minute later, starting down the hill at full speed, for, by Edwards's direction, the light had been s.h.i.+fted to the other tube in such a way as to dissolve the ”Morning” into a hideous picture of the conventional horned and hoofed devil. The picture was originally meant to be comic, but it now set Jim to running for dear life.

”_Oui, c'est le diable! le diable! le diable!_” cried the frantic _bois brules_, breaking off their invocations to the Virgin most abruptly, and fleeing pellmell down the hill after Jim, falling over one another as they ran. Quick as a flash Edwards threw about him a sheet which he had ready, and pursued the fleeing Frenchmen. Jim had already seized the reins, and, on the plan of ”the devil take the hindmost,” was driving at a pace that would have done him credit in the Central Park, up the trail toward Gager's, leaving the half-breeds to get on as best they could. Bourdon stumbled and fell, and Edwards lavished some blows upon him that must have satisfied the _bois brule_ that ghosts have a most solid corporeal existence.

Then Edwards returned and captured the keg of powder. He a.s.sured the Lindsleys that the superst.i.tious half-breeds would never again venture within five miles of a house that was guarded by the Holy Virgin and the devil in partners.h.i.+p. And they never did. Even the Indians were afraid to approach the place, p.r.o.nouncing it ”Wakan,” or supernaturally inhabited. They regarded Lindsley as a ”medicine-man” of great power.

But what a night that was! For Edwards stayed two hours, and made the acquaintance of Lindsley and his daughter. And how he talked, while Emilia thought she had never known how heaven felt before; and the old man forgot his inventions, and did not broach more than twenty of his theories in the two hours. He was so much interested in the tall trapper that he forgot the rest. Edwards ate a supper set out by the hands of Emilia, and left at three o'clock. He was at Pelican Lake next morning, and no man suspected his share in the affair except Gager, who had sense enough to say nothing. And Emilia lay down and dreamed of angels about the house. One was like Thorwaldsen's ”Morning,” and the other wore long hair and beard, and was very tall.

This abortive attempt to make a skyrocket out of Lindsley's cabin wrought only good to Emilia at first. The father was now wholly in love with the trapper. He praised him at all hours.

”He is a philosopher, my daughter. He understands chemistry. He lives in the arcana of nature and reads her secrets. No foolish study of the heathen cla.s.sics; no training after mediaeval fas.h.i.+on in one of our colleges, which are anachronisms, has perverted his taste. Here is the emile worthy of my Emilia,” he would say, much to the daughter's annoyance.

But when Edwards came the hours were golden. Hanging his wolf-skin cap behind the door, and shaking back his long locks as he took his seat, he would entrance father and daughter alike with his talk of adventure.

From the time of his first visit new life came to the heart of Emilia; and Mr. Lindsley, whose every whim the trapper humored, was as much fascinated as his daughter. But now commenced a fierce battle in the heart of Emilia. Edwards loved her. By all the speech that his eyes were capable of, he told her so. And by all the beating of her own heart she knew that she loved the brown-faced, long-haired trapper in return. But what about the fair-eyed student, who for very love and disappointment had gone to the arctic seas? He was not at hand to plead his cause, and for this very reason her conscience pleaded it for him.