Part 35 (2/2)
THE ONE GOOD WHITE MAN
The following morning Bill parted from his friends. As he was about to step into the canoe Jeanne appeared at the water's edge bearing the mackinaw which he had worn when they drew him from the river.
Without meeting his glance she extended it toward him, speaking in a low, tense voice.
”In the lining I have sewed them--the papers that fell dripping from your pocket--and the picture. Many times I have looked upon the face of this woman, who has caused you pain. And I have hated! Oh, how I have hated! So that I could have torn her in pieces.
”And many times I would have burned them, that you might forget. But, instead, I sewed them from sight in the lining of the coat--and here is the coat.”
Bill tossed the mackinaw into the bottom of the canoe.
”Thank you, Jeanne,” he said. ”And until we meet again, good-by!”
With a push of the paddle he shot the light canoe far out into the current of the stream.
Bill paddled leisurely, camping early and sitting late over his camp-fire smoking many pipefuls of tobacco. And, as he smoked, his thoughts drifted over the events of the past year, and the people who comprised his little world.
Appleton, who had offered him the chance to make good; whole-hearted Fallon; devoted old Daddy Dunnigan; Stromberg, in whom was much to admire; Creed, the craven tool of Moncrossen; the boss himself, crooked, brutal, vicious; Blood River Jack, his friend; Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the sinister old squaw, who believed all white men to be bad; and Jeanne, the beautiful, half-wild girl, within whose breast a great soul fluttered against the restraint of her environment.
To this girl he owed his life, and he had repaid the debt by trampling roughshod upon her heart. Bitterly he reproached himself for not seeing how things were going. For not until the day she told him in the clearing had he guessed that she loved him.
And yet now as he looked backward he could remember a hundred little things that ought to have warned him--a word here, a look, a touch of the hand--little things, insignificant in themselves, but in the light of his present understanding, looming large as the danger signals of a well-ordered block system--signals he had blindly disregarded, to the wrecking of a heart. Well, he would make all amends in his power; would look after her as best he could, and in time she would forget.
”They _all_ forget,” he muttered aloud with a short, bitter laugh, as the memory of certain staring head-lines flashed through his brain. ”I wish to G.o.d I could forget--_her!_”
But the old wound would not heal, and far into the night he sat staring into the fire.
”It's a man's game,” he murmured as he spread his blankets, ”and I will win out; but why?”
Beyond the fire came the sound of a snapping twig. The man started, staring into the gloom, when suddenly into the soft light of the dying embers stepped Jeanne Lacombie. He stared at her speechless.
There, in the uncertain glow, she stood, a Diana of flesh and blood, whose open hunting-s.h.i.+rt fell away from her rounded throat in soft, fringed folds. Her short skirt of heavy drilling came only to her knees; she wore no stockings, and her tiny feet were incased in heavily beaded moccasins.
And so she stood there in the midnight, smiling down upon the man who gazed speechless from his blanket upon the opposite side of the dying fire; and then she spoke:
”I have come,” she said simply.
”Jeanne!” cried the man, ”why have you done this thing?”
”I love you, and I will go with you.”
”But, girl, don't you realize what it means? This is the third night since I left the camp of Jacques----” The girl interrupted him with a laugh:
”And I, too, have been gone three nights; have struck straight through the forest, and because the river makes a great bend of many miles I came to this place before you, and have waited for you here a night and a day.
”And now I'm hungry. I will eat first, and then we will sleep, and to-morrow we will start together for the land of the white men.”
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