Part 28 (2/2)
Affairs at the school were at a standstill. From a busy hive of activity, with the women and children showing marked improvement at their tasks, and the men happy in the felling of logs and the whip-sawing of lumber, the settlement had suddenly slumped into a disorganized hodge-podge of unrest and anxiety. MacNair's Indians had followed him into the North; their women and children brooded sullenly, and a feeling of unrest and expectancy pervaded the entire colony.
Among the inmates of the cottage the condition was even worse. With Harriet Penny hysterical and excited, Big Lena more glum and taciturn than usual, the Louchoux girl cowering in mortal dread of impending disaster, and Chloe herself disgusted, discouraged, nursing in her heart a consuming rage against Brute MacNair, the man who had wrought the harm, and who had been her evil genius since she had first set foot into the North.
Upon the afternoon of the day she despatched LeFroy to Fort Resolution with the wounded officer of the Mounted, Chloe stood at her little window gazing out over the wide sweep of the river and wondering how it all would end. Would MacNair find Lapierre, and would he kill him? Or would the Mounted heed the urgent appeal she despatched in care of LeFroy and arrive in time to recapture MacNair before he came upon his victim?
”If I only knew where to find him,” she muttered, ”I could warn him of his danger.”
The next moment her eyes widened with amazement, and she pressed her face close against the gla.s.s; across the clearing from the direction of the river dashed a dog-team, with three men running before and three behind, while upon the sled, jaunty and smiling, and debonair as ever, sat Pierre Lapierre himself. With a flourish he swung the dogs up to the tiny veranda and stepped from the sled, and the next moment Chloe found herself standing in the little living-room with Lapierre bowing low over her hand. Harriet Penny was in the schoolhouse; the Louchoux girl was helping Big Lena in the kitchen, and for the first time in many moons Chloe Elliston felt glad that she was alone with Lapierre.
When at length she removed her hand from his grasp she stood for some moments regarding the clean-cut lines of his features, and then she smiled as she noted the trivial fact that he had removed his hat, and that he stood humbly before her with bared head. A great surge of feeling rushed over her as she realized how clean and good--how perfect this man seemed in comparison with the hulking brutality of MacNair.
She motioned him to a seat beside the table, and drawing her chair close to his side, poured into his attentive and sympathetic ears all that she knew of MacNair's escape, of the shooting of Corporal Ripley, and his departure in the night with his Indians.
Lapierre listened, smiling inwardly at her version of the affair, and at the conclusion of her words leaned forward and took one of the slim brown hands in his. For a long, long time the girl listened in silence to the pleading of his lips; and the little room was filled with the pa.s.sion of his low-voiced eloquence.
Neither was aware of the noiseless opening of a door, nor of the wide-eyed, girlish face that stared at them through the aperture, nor was either aware that the man's words were borne distinctly to the ears of the Louchoux girl. Nor could they note the change from an expression of startled surprise to slitlike, venomous points of fire that took place in the eyes of the listening girl--nor the clenching fists. Nor did they hear the soft, catlike tread with which the girl quit the door and crossed to the kitchen table. Nor could they see the cruel snarl of her lips as her fingers closed tightly about the haft of the huge butcher-knife, whose point was sharp and whose blade was keen.
Nor did they hear the noiseless tread with which the girl again approached the door, swung wider now to admit the pa.s.sage of her tense, lithe body. Nor did they see her crouch for a spring with the tight-clutched knife upraised and the gleaming slitlike eyes focused upon a point mid-way between Lapierre's shoulder-blades as his arm unconsciously came to rest upon the back of Chloe Elliston's chair.
For a long moment the girl poised, gloating--enjoying in its fulness the measure of her revenge. Before her, leaning in just the right att.i.tude to receive upon his defenceless back the full force of the blow, sat the man who had deceived her. For not until she had listened to the low-voiced, impa.s.sioned words had she realized there had been any deception. With the realization came the hot, fierce flame of anger that seared her very soul. An anger engendered by her own wrong, and fanned to its fiercest by the knowledge that the man was at that moment seeking to deceive the white woman--the woman who had taught her much, and who with the keenest interest and gentleness had treated her as an equal.
She had come to love this white woman with the love that was greater than the love of life. And the words to which this woman was now listening were the same words, from the same lips, to which she herself had listened beside the cold waters of the far-off Mackenzie. Thus the Louchoux girl faced suddenly her first great problem. And to the half-savage mind of her the solution of the problem seemed very simple, very direct, and, had Big Lena not entered by way of the outer door at the precise moment that the girl crouched with uplifted knife, it would doubtless have been very effective.
But Big Lena did enter, and, with a swiftness of perception that belied the vacuous stare of the fishlike eyes, took in the situation at a glance; for LeFroy had already hinted to her of the relation which existed between his erstwhile superior and this girl from the land of the midnight sun. Whereupon Big Lena had kept her own counsel and had patiently bided her time, and now her time had come, and she was in no wise minded that the fulness of her vengeance should be marred by the untimely taking off of Lapierre. Swiftly she crossed the room, and as her strong fingers closed about the wrist of the Indian girl's upraised knife-arm, the other hand reached beyond and noiselessly closed the door between the two rooms.
The Louchoux girl whirled like a flash and sank her strong, white teeth deep in the rolled-sleeved forearm of the huge Swedish woman. But a thumb, inserted dextrously and with pressure in the little hollow behind the girl's ear, caused her jaws instantly to relax, and she stood trembling before the big woman, who regarded her with a tolerant grin, and the next moment laid a friendly hand upon her shoulder and, turning her gently about, guided her to a chair at the farther side of the room.
Followed then a quarter of an hour of earnest conversation, in which the older woman managed to convey, through the medium of her broken English, a realization that Lapierre's discomfiture could be encompa.s.sed much more effectively and in a thoroughly orthodox and less sanguinary manner.
The ethics of Big Lena's argument were undoubtedly beyond the Louchoux girl's comprehension; but because this woman had been good to her, and because she seemed greatly to desire this thing, the girl consented to abstain from violence, at least for the time being. A few minutes later, when Chloe Elliston opened the door and announced that Mr.
Lapierre would join them at supper, she found the two women busily engaged in the final preparation of the meal.
Big Lena pa.s.sed into the dining-room, which was also the living-room, and without deigning to notice Lapierre's presence, proceeded to lay the table for supper. Returning to the kitchen, she despatched the Indian girl to the storehouse upon an errand which would insure her absence until after Chloe and Lapierre and Harriet Penny had taken their places at the table.
Since her arrival at the school the Louchoux girl had been treated as ”one of the family,” and it was with a look of inquiry toward the girl's empty chair that Chloe seated herself with the others.
Interpreting the look, Big Lena a.s.sured her that the girl would return in a few moments; and Chloe had just launched into an impa.s.sioned account of the virtues and the accomplishments of her ward, when the door opened and the girl herself entered the room and crossed swiftly to her accustomed place. As she stood with her hand on the back of her chair, Lapierre for the first time glanced into her face.
The quarter-breed was a man trained as few men are trained to meet emergencies, to face crises with an impa.s.siveness of countenance that would shame the Sphinx. He had lost thousands across the green cloth of gambling-tables without batting an eye. He had faced death and had killed men with a face absolutely devoid of expression, and upon numerous occasions his nerve--the consummate _sang-froid_ of him--had alone thrown off the suspicion that would have meant arrest upon charges which would have taken more than a lifetime to expiate. And as he sat at the little table beside Chloe Elliston, his eyes met unflinchingly the flas.h.i.+ng, accusing gaze of the black eyes of the girl from the Northland--the girl who was his wife.
For a long moment their glances held, while the atmosphere of the little room became surcharged with the terrible portent of this silent battle of eyes. Harriet Penny gasped audibly; and as Chloe stared from one to the other of the white, tense faces before her, her brain seemed suddenly to numb, and the breath came short and quick between her parted lips to the rapid heaving of her bosom. The Louchoux girl's eyes seemed fairly to blaze with hate. The fingers of her hand dug into the wooden back of her chair until the knuckles whitened. She leaned far forward and, pointing directly into the face of the man, opened her lips to speak. It was then Lapierre's gaze wavered, for in that moment he realized that for him the game was lost.
With a half-smothered curse he leaped to his feet, overturning his chair, which banged sharply upon the plank floor. He glanced wildly about the little room as if seeking means of escape, and his eyes encountered the form of Big Lena, who stood stolidly in the doorway, blocking the exit. In a flash he noted the huge, bared forearm; noted, too, that one thick hand gripped tightly the helve of a chopping ax, with which she toyed lightly as if it were a little thing, while the thumb of her other hand played smoothly, but with a certain terrible significance, along the keen edge of its blade. Lapierre's glance flashed to her face and encountered the fishlike stare of the china-blue eyes, as he had encountered it once before. The eyes, as before, were expressionless upon their surface, but deep down--far into their depths--Lapierre caught a cold gleam of mockery. And then the Louchoux girl was speaking, and he turned upon her with a snarl.
CHAPTER XXII
CHLOE WRITES A LETTER
<script>