Part 24 (1/2)
CHAPTER XIX THE HUDSON'S BAY BRIGADE
The two days that followed were heavy ones to Maren.
No farther did they dare venture lest they pa.s.s to the west and miss the brigade coming down from the north and entering the lake at the northeast extremity.
So they waited on the sh.o.r.e in anxiety of spirit, watching the bright waters with eyes that ached with the intensity of the vigil, and Dupre hunted in the forest and over the sand dunes, among the high meadows that broke the heavy woods in this region, and down along the reaches of the water.
”Farther with each day!” thought Maren to herself. ”Holy Mother, send the brigade!”
And Dupre echoed the thought in sadness of soul.
”More pain for her heart in each hour's delay. Would the trial were done!”
About three of the clock on the first day of waiting there came sounds of singing and a string of canoes rounded a bend of the sh.o.r.e at the south.
”M'sieu!” cried Maren swiftly; ”who comes?”
Dupre, tinkering at the canoe overturned on the pebbly beach, straightened and looked in the direction she indicated.
He looked long with hand to eye, and presently turned quietly.
”Nor'westers, I think, Ma'amselle. They come from Fort William to the Wilderness.”
Fort William!
Back along the trail went memory with mention of the post on the distant sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior. How oft had she peeped with fascinated eyes from behind her father's forge at st.u.r.dy men in buckskins who spoke with the blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she felt the old yearning for the unknown.
And this was it,--this gleaming stretch of inland sea, one man who stood by her and another who betrayed her with a kiss, yet who drew her after him as the helpless leaf, fallen to the stream, is whirled into the white destruction of the rapids.
Aye, verily, this was the unknown.
She was looking down the lake with the sun on her uncovered head, on the soft whiteness of the doeskin garment, and to young Dupre she had never seemed so near the divine, so far and unattainable.
”Ma'amselle,” he said presently, ”if these newcomers speak us, heed you not what I may say. There are times in the open ways when a man must lie for the good of himself--or others.”
The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his face. It was grave and quiet.
”a.s.suredly,” she said after a moment's scrutiny. ”Had I best hide in the bushes, M'sieu?”
”No, they have seen us.”
Sweeping forward, the brigade of the Nor'westers, for such it proved to be, headed near in a circle and the head canoe turned in to sh.o.r.e.
”Friend?” called a man in the prow; whom Dupre knew for a wintering partner by the name of McIntosh of none too savoury report.
”Hudson's Bay trapper, M'sieu,” he said politely, going a step nearer the water. ”I wait, with Madame my wife, the coming of our brigade from York, now one day overdue.”
”Ah,--my mistake. I had thought the H. B. C.'s this fortnight gone down.
As ever, they are a trifle behind.”