Part 14 (1/2)

”You have done well, Dupre,” he said shortly. ”Get you to your cabin and rest, for I may want your wit again. Only, on the way, send Pierre Garqon to me.”

The young man touched his red toque, symbol of safety to all trappers in a land where the universal law is ”kill,” for no wild animal of the woods bears a crimson head save that animal man who is the greatest killer of all, and turned away. He was draggled and stained from a forced march through forest and up-stream, over portage and rapid, carrying his tiny birchbark craft on his head, s.n.a.t.c.hing a short sleep on a bed of moss, hurrying on that he might learn of the Nakonkirhirinons travelling slowly down from that unknown land to the far north, even many leagues beyond York factory on the sh.o.r.es of the great bay.

As he went toward his own cabin he glanced swiftly at the open door of the Baptistes. Always these days he glanced that way with a sick feeling in the region of his heart. Who was he, Marc Dupre, trapper of the big woods, that he should dare think so often of that woman from Grand Portage, with her wondrous beauty and her tongue that could be like a cold knife-blade or the petal of a lily for softness? And yet he was conscious of a mighty change that had come over him with that day on the flat rock by the stockade when she had talked to him of the trapping,--a change like that which comes to one when he is so fortunate as to be in distant Montreal and sits in the dusk of the great church there among the saints and the incense.

There was no longer pleasure in flipping jests and love words with the red-cheeked maids, and something had happened to the das.h.i.+ng spirit of the youth. All through those long days in the forest, those short blue nights under the velvet sky, one image had stood before him, calm, smiling, quivering with that illusive light which held men's hearts.

Never a day that he could win forgetfulness of the face of Maren Le Moyne, and now he glanced toward her doorway. It lay in the sunlight without a foot upon its sill, and Marc sighed unconsciously. He was not to see her, perhaps, to-day.

But suddenly, as he rounded a corner among the cabins, he came full upon her, and his flippant tongue clove to the roof of his mouth without speech.

She came toward him with a bread-pan in her hands and her eyes were cast down. The heart in him ran to water at sight of her, and he stopped.

Once more thought of his unworthiness abased him.

Then she felt his presence and raised her eyes, and the young trapper looked deep into them with that helplessness which draws the look of a child. Deep he looked and long, and the woman looked back, and in that moment there sprang into life the first thrill of that thing which was to lead to the great crisis which she had predicted that day by the stockade.

With it Marc Dupre found his tongue.

”Ma'amselle!” he cried sharply, ”what is it? Mon Dieu! What is it?”

For the dark eyes, with their light-behind-black-marble splendour, were quenched and dazed and all knowledge seemed stricken from them. The look of them cut to his very soul, quick and sensitive from the working of the great change, made ready as a wind-harp by the silent days of dreams, the nights of visions. To him alone was the devastation within them apparent. He stretched out a timid hand and touched her sleeve.

”What is it, Ma'amselle?” he begged abjectly. ”I would heal it with my blood!”

Extravagant, impulsive, the boy was in deadly earnest, and Maren Le Moyne was conscious of it as simply as that she lived.

Just as simply she acknowledged to him what she would have to none other in De Seviere, that something had fallen from a clear sky.

”Nay,” she said, and the deep voice was lifeless, ”I am beyond help.”

Dupre's fingers slipped, trembling, around her arm.

”But I am a stone to your foot, Ma'amselle,--always remember that. When the way becomes too hard there shall be a stone to your foot. I ask no better fate and you have said.”

The miserable eyes were not dead to everything. At his swift words they glowed a moment.

”Aye,--I have said, and I thank G.o.d, M'sieu, for such friends.h.i.+p. I am rich, indeed.”

”Oho! Marc Dupre does better at the lovemaking than at the trapping! His account at the factory suffers from les amours!”

A childish voice broke in upon them, and Francette's impish face peeped round the corner of the nearest cabin.

”Let it be, Marc Dupre,” as the youth dropped his and from Maren's arm.

”Ma'amselle does not object,--a trapper or a cavalier, all are fish to Ma'amselle's net. Mon Dieu! If all were so attractive as Ma'amselle!”

The little maid sighed in exaggerated dolour.

Dupre flashed round on his moccasined heel and reached her in a stride.

”Aha! It is you, by all the saints!” he said beneath his breath, as he took her none too gently by the shoulder. ”I know your tricks.”