Part 38 (1/2)

And, as the morning sun glittered on the ripples of the departing boats, Maren stood long looking after them, a mist in her eyes and her full lips quivering.

She looked until the gathering dimness hid the waving kerchief of the only woman friend who had ever truly reached her heart.

Then she sat down and took up a paddle.

”Last lap, Messieurs,” she said, above the mutter of McElroy at her feet, and they turned toward where the familiar river came rus.h.i.+ng to the lake.

The summer lay heavy on the land when they reached the a.s.siniboine.

Deep green of the forests, deep green of fern and bush and understuff, told of the full tide of the year. Here and there a leaf trailed in the shallows, yellow as gold in an early death.

She thought of the spring, so long past, when she had first come into this sweet land, and it seemed like another time, another life, another person.

This day at dusk they pa.s.sed the hidden cove where she had found Marc Dupre waiting to build her fire. The abandoned canoe still lay hidden where he left it.

Cool blue dawn, hushed and wide-reaching, still with that stillness which precedes the sunrise, lay over the river, when the lone canoe rounded the lower bend and Anders McElroy, factor of Fort de Seviere, came back to his own again.

In the prow there knelt a weary figure in a soiled and sun-bleached garment of doeskin, its glittering plastron of bright beads broken here and there, the ragged ends of sinews hanging as they were left by briar and branch, and the haggard eyes went with eager swiftness to the stockade standing in its grim invincibility facing the east.

The row of wonted canoes lay upturned upon the shelving sh.o.r.e at the landing, the half-moon at the right still glowered with its puny cannon which had spoken no word to save their master on that fateful day, and all things looked as if but a day had pa.s.sed between.

The great gate with its studded breast was closed, the bastions at the corners were empty of watchers, for peace folded its wings above the past.

Without sound the boat cut up to the landing, Brilliers leaped out and steadied it to place, and Maren stepped once more upon the familiar slope.

They lifted McElroy, swinging in his blanket, and the tread of the moccasined feet was hollow on the planks.

Thus there pa.s.sed up to the gate of De Seviere a triumphal procession of victory, whose heart was heavy within it, and whose leader in her tattered dress was the saddest sight of all.

She raised her hand and beat upon the gate, and a voice cried, ”Who comes?”

”Open, my brother,” she called, for the voice was that of Henri Baptiste, whose turn at the gate it was.

There was an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, a swift rattle of chains, and the heavy portal swung back, while the blanched face of young Henri stared into the dawn.

Maren motioned to the men and they stepped in with their burden.

”Holy Mary! Maren! Maren! Maren!” cried Henri Baptiste, and took both her arms in a gripping clasp. He looked into her face with fear and wonder, as if the girl had returned from the dead, while joy unspeakable began to lighten his features.

”Sister! Holy Mary!”

And then, when the touch of her in the flesh had dispelled his first horror, when the sight of the factor swinging grotesquely in the blanket had taken on the sense of reality, he raised his voice in a stentorian call.

From every door it brought the populace running, half-dressed and startled, and in scant s.p.a.ce a ring of faces stared upon the strangers in stupid awe.

”Ma'amselle Le Moyne!” they whispered, fearfully.

”Mother of Heaven! The factor!”

”Our factor! Out of the hands of Death!”