As yet I had not said good-morning to her, although I had seen her from the distance, and knew that she had breakfasted and had talked with Father Nouvel. She was sitting now under a beech tree on the headland, and when I bent before her she shook her head.

"It is not real," she said, with a look over water and forest. "It is all a dream."

I stopped to send a group of curious squaws upon their way. It was indeed like a pictured spectacle,—the green wood, the Indian village, and the headland-guarded bay opening northward over rolling water.

"Yes, it is a dream," I agreed. "You will soon wake. Where would you like the wakening to take place, mademoiselle? At Meudon?"

She looked up with a smile. "What would you like to know about me?" she asked, with a sober directness, which, like her smile, was friendly and brave. "You heard something last night. I am entirely willing to tell you more. But is it not wise for us to know as little as possible about each other?"

"Why, mademoiselle?"

She hesitated. "As we stand now," she explained slowly, "we have no past nor future. We live in a fantasy. We are cold and hungry, but life is so strange that we forget our bodies. It is all as unreal as a mirage. When it is over, we part. If we part knowing nothing of each other, it will all seem like a dream."

I thought a moment. "Then you think that we must guard against growing interested in each other, mademoiselle?"

She looked at me gravely. "Yes. Do you not think so, monsieur? 'Friends for the night's bivouac.' Those were your words."

Now was here a woman who felt deeply and talked lightly? I had not met such. "It is wise," I rejoined, "but difficult." I took the crayon from my pocket and began drawing faces on the white limestone rock at my side. I drew idly and scowled at my work. "The Indians can do better," I lamented. "Was your cousin, Benjamin Starling, clever with his pencil, mademoiselle?"

She drew back, but she answered me fairly. "Very clever," she said quietly. "It was a talent. Why do you ask, monsieur?"

"I find myself thinking of him." I dropped the crayon. "Listen, mademoiselle. I must ask you some questions. Believe me, I have reasons. Now as to your cousin,—is he alive?"

She looked off at the water. "I do not know, monsieur."

She had become another woman. I hated Benjamin Starling that his name could so instantly sap the life from her tone.

"Please look at me," I begged irritably. "Mademoiselle, I think that I must ask you to tell me more,—to tell me much more."

She rose. "Is it necessary?"

I bowed. "Else I should not ask it. Please sit, mademoiselle."

She sat where my hand pointed. "You know that we were Tories," she began, in the quiet monotone I had learned to expect from her under stress, "and that our family followed King James to France. My parents died. I had no brothers or sisters, and so, a year ago, I came to the Colonies where I had friends. Later, my cousin followed, and we were betrothed. We had the same cause at heart, and our joint estates would give us some power. We planned to use them for that purpose."

"And your capture? Did your cousin know of it?"

"Monsieur, you say that this is necessary? My nurse had come to America, and married a settler, in a village on the frontier. She was ill, and I went to see her, and stayed some days. My cousin followed, and stayed at a neighboring house. One night the Indians came. The woman's husband was away, and the little maid-servant ran at the first outcry. I was alone with the woman, who could not leave her bed. I cut my hair roughly, put on a suit of her husband's clothing, and took a musket. It was a blockhouse, and I hoped that I might hold the Indians off for a time if they thought me a man."

"And your cousin?"

"He came to me. He was running. He said it was of no use. He had seen men brained. There were legions of Indians. He said there was nothing left but flight. He tried to take me with him."

"And when you would not go? When you would not desert?"

"Monsieur, he went alone."

I laid myself down on the grass before her, and covered her hands with mine. "I am not quite a brute," I said. "I had to ask it. Look, look, mademoiselle, it is all over. See, the sky is gentle, and the Indians are friendly, and my sword—— Well, I will not leave you, mademoiselle, until you tell me to go. But I must say more. Your cousin—— Is he Lord Starling?"

"Yes."

"Lord Starling is probably alive. If he is, he is searching for you. Have you thought of that?"

"But the wilderness,—the terrible leagues of wilderness! He could not track me, monsieur."

"When there is money and influence, even the wilderness has messengers. He was close to the person of James. Is he a Catholic?"

"He professed it, monsieur."

I shook my head. "You are very bitter. You need not be. He was insane that night. I have known the sight of Indian butchery to turn good men into whimpering animals. He was not responsible. I know that he is lavishing time and fortune and strength to find you now."

I thought she winced. "You know this, monsieur?"

It was my turn to look away. "I know something of a man's heart," I answered deliberately. "If I loved you, mademoiselle, and lost you—lost you, and played the craven,—I should find you. The wilderness would not matter. I should find you. I should find you, and retrieve myself—some way. Lord Starling has wit and daring, else he would not be an exile, else you would not have promised to marry him. Be assured that he is following you, and is probably not far behind. Do you want him to find you, mademoiselle?"

I turned with the last word, and looked her full in the face. It was a stupid trick, but it served. I had her answer.

"There!" I cried, and I laughed a little jerkily. "Never mind. Don't answer. We have talked enough, mademoiselle. We will be married at noon to-day. Ah, you never loved him, else, no matter what he had done, you could never look as you look now. Wherever he is, or whatever kind of man he may be, I do him no wrong in giving you my name to-day." I took the pictured birch bark from my pocket, and tore it in fine strips. "A useless map," I said in explanation. "Mademoiselle, may I have your finger to measure?"

She gave me her hand, and I circled her finger with a grass blade, and warned her that the ring that I should give her would be almost as crude. She was trying to keep herself from asking questions, and was going to succeed. I liked that. It was useless to terrify her with fables of prowling Indians, and profiles on bark. And then, what was there to tell? I knew at once too much and too little. I took some bent gold wire from my pocket, and showed it to her.

"I am going to plait it into a braid for the ring," I said. "I think that I can file the ends, and make it serve. It is all I have. I wear no jewelry, and would not give you one of the brass rings we use in trade. This is at least gold."

She watched me straighten the kinks in the wire. "You took that from something you valued," she said. "I will wear the brass ring. Surely you can replace this wire where it belongs."

I shook my head. "It was a filigree frame," I volunteered.

I had spoken with as little thought as a dog barks, and quite as witlessly. I knew that as soon as I heard my words. I looked at the woman. But she was not going to question me.

"If it was a frame, it held a miniature," she said quietly. "Please twist the wire around it again. I prefer the brass ring."

"Because?"

"I would not rob any one. If you have carried the picture all these leagues, it is a token from some one you love; some one who loves you. I have no part in that."

I went on plaiting the wire. "The woman of the miniature will know no robbery," I said, "because she knew no possession. Mademoiselle, you seem in every way to be a woman with whom it is wisest to have a clear understanding."

"You need tell me nothing."

"It is better to tell the whole, now that you have stumbled on a part. I was nothing to that woman whose face I carried with me. She did not know I had the picture. I might never have told her. It was nothing, you see. It was all in a man's mind, and the man now has sterner matters to fill his thought. I would like you to wear this ring."

"Why not the other?"

I laughed at her a little. "I shall try not to give you spurious metal,—even granted that our bargain is provisional. Now, mademoiselle, may I take you to the lodge I have had made? In two hours we are to be married."

She followed at my side, and I took her to the lodge, and pointed her within. She glanced at what I had done, and I saw her bite her lip. She turned to me without a smile.

"It all makes it harder," she said indefinitely. "Harder to think of the wrong that I am doing you and the other woman."

I cannot abide misapprehension. We were alone. "Wait!" I begged. "Mademoiselle, you cannot probe a man's thought. Often he cannot probe his own. But I am not unhappy. A man marries many brides, and Ambition, if the truth be told, is, perhaps, the dearest. I shall embrace her. You should be able to understand."

"But the woman. She must have seen that you loved her. She may have cared more in return than you knew."

I looked at her. "The lady of the miniature," I said slowly, "had many lovers. If she showed me special favor, I assure you I did not know. But even if her fancy did stray toward me,—which I think it did not,—why, she was—— She was a winsome, softly smiling, gentle lady, mademoiselle. She was not fire, and spirit, and courage, and loyalty, and temper, and tenderness. No, she was not in the least like that. I think that she would soon forget. Have we dropped this subject forever, mademoiselle?"

She made me a grave curtsy. "Till we reach Montreal," she promised, and she did not raise her eyes.

We were married at noon. The altar stood under an oak tree, and the light sifted in patterns on the ground. I wore satin, and ribbon, and shining buckle, for I carried those gewgaws in my cargo, but my finery did not shame my bride's attire. She stood proud, and rounded, and supple in her deerskins, and a man might have gloried in her. Seven hundred Indians, glistening like snakes with oil and vermilion, squatted around us, but they held themselves as lifeless as marionettes. It was so still that I heard the snore of a sleeping dog and the gulls in the harbor squawking over a floating fish. Father Nouvel spoke very slowly. This was a real marriage, a sacrament, to him.

As we turned from the ceremony, Onanguisse came forward. He was not painted, but he wore a mantle of embroidered buffalo skin, and his hair, which was dressed high with eagle's feathers, was powdered with down from the breasts of white gulls. He stood in front of the woman.

"Listen," he said. "I speak to the white thrush. She cannot understand my words, but her heart has called to my heart, and that will teach her to know my meaning. Brethren, bear witness. An eagle cares naught for a partridge, but an eagle calls to an eagle though there be much water and many high rocks between. You know the lodge of Onanguisse. It has fire, but no warmth. I am old, and age needs love to warm it, but I am alone. First my wife, then my two sons, last of all, at the time the chestnuts were in blossom, my daughter Mimi,—the Master of Life called them one by one. I have washed my face, and I have combed my hair, yet who can say I have not mourned? My life has been as dead as the dried grass that thatches the muskrat's lodges. When have any of you seen Onanguisse smile? Yet think not that I stretch out my hands to the country of souls. I will live, and sit at the council fire till many of you who are before me have evaporated like smoke from a pipe. For I am of the race of the bear, and the bear never yields while one drop of blood is left. And the Master of Life has been kind. He has brought me at last a woman who has an eagle's eyesight and a bear's endurance. She is worthy to be of my family. I have waited for such an one. Her speech is strange, but her blood answers mine. It is idle to mourn. I will replace the dead with the living. This woman shall be no more the white thrush. She shall be Mimi, the turtle dove, the daughter of Onanguisse. Brethren, bear witness. Mimi is no longer dead. She stands here." He stepped closer to the woman. "I give you this cloak that you may wrap me in your memory," he went on. "I hereby confirm my words;" and thereupon, he threw over her shoulders a long, shining mantle made of the small skins of the white hare. It was a robe for an empress.

I stepped forward, then stood still, and resolved to trust the woman as she had asked.

"You are adopted," I prompted softly, with no motion of my lips.

She understood. Wrapped in her white cloak, she curtsied low before Onanguisse. Then she turned to me. "Tell him," she said, "that my heart is wiser than my tongue; the one is dumb, but the other answers. Say to him that I see his face, and it tells me that he has lived wisely and with honor. I am now of his family. I, too, will strive to live wisely, that he need not be shamed. Say to him that I will not forget." She stopped with her glance upon the old chief, and her eyes held something I had not seen in them before. With me, their self-reliance had sometimes been hard, almost provocative, as if the spirit behind them defied the world to break it down. But as she met this kindness—this kindness that was instinctive, and not a matter of prudence or reason—all hardness vanished, and her dignity was almost wistful. I thought of my mother, the saddened head of a great house, who had seen the ruin of home and heart, but whose spirit would not die. Something in this woman's face, as she stood silent, suddenly gave me back the vision of my mother as I had seen her last. I looked with my heart beating hard. The hush lasted fully a moment, then the woman drew her cloak closer, curtsied again, and walked back to her green lodge.

I turned to the chief, and would have translated what had been said, but after the first phrase, he motioned me to silence. "She has taken my robe. She has become of my family. That is sufficient." He lifted his calumet, and went to give orders for the feasting.

So the priest and I stood alone. He looked at me, and shook his head. His mouth was smiling, but I saw him brush at his eyes. "You have married a woman of great spirit, monsieur," he said, with a touch of his hand on my sleeve. "They are rare,—most rare." He stopped. "Yet the roedeer is not made for the paddock," he said impersonally.

I laughed, and it sounded exultant. I felt the blood hammer in my temples. "Nor can the thrush be tamed to sit the finger like the parrakeet," I completed. "I understand that, Father Nouvel."

The wedding feast followed. Madame de Montlivet, the priest, Onanguisse, and I sat in a semicircle on the ground, and slaves served us with wooden trenchers of food. We each had our separate service, like monks in a refectory, but we were not treated with equal state, for the woman drank from a copper-trimmed ladle, made from the polished skull of a buffalo, while my cup was a dried gourd. We ate in ceremonial silence, and were sunk in our own thoughts. There was food till the stomach sickened at its gross abundance: whitefish, broth, sagamite, the feet of a bear, the roasted tail of a beaver. I watched the slaves bring the food and bear it away, and I said to myself that I was sitting at my wedding feast,—a feast to celebrate a false marriage.

After the feast, the calumet was danced before us. Still there was silence between the woman and myself as we sat side by side. I wondered if she realized that this strange dance was still further confirmation of what we had done; that it was part of the ceremony of our marriage. It was a picture as unreal, as incomprehensible, as the fate we had invited. The sun was westering, and shone full upon the dancing braves. Their corded muscles and protruding eyes made them ghastly as tortured wretches of some red-lit inferno. There was no laughter nor jesting. The kettle-drum rumbled like water in a cave, and the chant of the singers wailed, and died, and wailed again. And this was for my wedding. I looked down at the woman's hand that bore my ring, and saw that the strong, nervous fingers were gripped till they were bloodless. What was she thinking? I tried to meet her look, but it was rapt and awed. A wave of heat ran through me; the wild music beat into my blood. This savage ritual that I had looked at with alien eyes suddenly took to itself the dignity of the terrible wilderness that bound us. The pageantry of its barbarism seized upon me; it was a fitting setting for one kind of marriage,—not a marriage of flowers and dowry, but the union of two great, stormy hearts who, through clash and turmoil, had found peace at last. But ours was a mock marriage, and we had not found peace. My breath choked me. I leaped to my feet, and begged Onanguisse to end the ceremony, and let me do my share. I knew what was my part as bridegroom, and Pierre and Labarthe were waiting with their arms laden. I distributed hatchets, Brazil tobacco, and beads from Venice. Then I turned to Onanguisse.

"We go to the land of the Malhominis, to the wild rice people. They live toward the south-west?"

He nodded. "Across La Baye des Puants as the wild goose flies. Then down till you find the mouth of the wild rice river. But why go till another sunrise?"

I hesitated. But I thought of the shadowing Huron, and decided that I could elude him best at night. "We are in haste," I told Onanguisse, and I pointed the men toward their work.

But before I myself had time to step toward the canoes, I felt the woman's touch upon my arm. Though, in truth, it was odd that I felt it, for the movement was light as the brushing of a grass stalk.

"Monsieur, do we go now?" she asked. "You have had no opportunity for council with these Indians, yet I see that they are powerful."

She was watching my interests. I laid my fingers on hers, and looked full at her as I had not done since we had been man and wife. Her eyes were mournful as they often were, but they were starry with a thought I could not read. The awe and the wonder were still there, and her fingers were unsteady under mine. I dropped to my knees.

"I have done more than you saw," I said, with my eyes on hers. "I have talked with Onanguisse, and have smoked a full pipe with the old men in council. Thank you for your interest. Thank you, Madame de Montlivet."

But she would not look at me bent before her. "That I wish you to do your best, unhampered by me, does not mean that I wish you success," she said, with her head high, and she went to Onanguisse, and curtsied her adieus. Her last words were with Father Nouvel, and she hid her eyes for a moment, while he blessed her and said good-by.

Our canoes pointed to the sunset as we rounded the headland and slid outward. On the shore, the Indian women chanted a hymn to Messou,—to Messou, the Maker of Life, and the God of Marriage, to whom, on our behalf, many pipes had been smoked that day.



CHAPTER XV

I TAKE A NEW PASSENGER

Now the great bay on which we were embarked was a water empire, fair to the eye, but tricky of wind and current. La Baye des Puants the French called it, from the odor that came at seasons from the swamps on the shore, and it ran southwest from Lake Illinois. The Pottawatamie Islands that we had just left well-nigh blocked its mouth, and its southern end was the outlet of a shining stream that was known as the River of the Fox. The bay was thirty leagues long by eight broad, and had tides like the ocean. Five tribes dwelt around it: the Pottawatamies at its mouth, the Malhominis halfway down on its western shore, and the Sacs, the Chippewas, and the Winnebagoes scattered at different points in more transitory camps. To the east the bay was separated from Lake Illinois by a long peninsula that lay like a rough-hewn arrow with its point to the polestar. It was goodly land, I had been told, rich in game, and splashed with ponds, but since it was too small to support the hunting of a tribe it was left comparatively unoccupied. All of the five tribes, and sometimes the Miamis, fished there at intervals; it was neutral ground. I told all this to the woman as our canoes swept toward the sunset.

She sat with her back to the west, and the sun, that dazzled my eyes, shone red through her brown hair, and I scorned myself that I should have believed for a moment that such soft, fine abundance ever framed a man's forehead. I talked to her freely; talked of winds and tides and Indians, and was not deterred when she answered me but sparingly. I could not see her face distinctly, because of the light, but there was something in the gentleness and intentness of her listening poise that made me feel that she welcomed the safeguard of my aimless speech, but that for the moment she had no similar weapons of her own.

So long as daylight lasted, we traveled swiftly toward the southwest, but when the sunset had burned itself to ashes, and the sky had blurred into the tree line, I told the men to shift their paddles, and drift for a time. The last twenty-four hours had hardened them to surprise. They obeyed me as they did Providence,—as a troublesome, but all-powerful enigma.

And so we floated, swinging like dead leaves on the long swells. The stars came out, the gulls went shoreward for the night, and we were as alone as if on the sea. The woman's slender figure, wrapped in her white cloak, became a silent, shining wraith. She was within touch of my hand, yet unreachably remote. I lost my glib speech. The gray loneliness that one feels in a crowd came over me. If I had been alone with my men, I should have felt well accompanied, master of my craft, and in tune with my condition. It was the presence of this alien woman, whom I must protect, but not approach, that made me realize that I was thousands of leagues from my own kind, and that I must depend on my own judgment—with which I felt much out of conceit—to carry this expedition safely through the barbarous wilderness. I shook myself, and told my men to pick up their paddles.

But we were to travel no more toward the southwest that night. My plan was to turn back, paddle due east, and reach the peninsula before the late moonrise. This doubling on my track was to cheat Pemaou if he were indeed pursuing. Then I was planning to make the peninsula my headquarters for a time. I had left word at the islands that I was on my way to confer with the Malhominis, but I had not committed myself as to where I should make my permanent camp. I hoped, in this game of hide and seek, to shake off the Huron, and leave the woman in safe hiding, while I went on my mission from tribe to tribe.

And so I told the men to work with muffled paddles. I thought the precaution somewhat unnecessary, but took it as a matter of form. Now that I was in action again, I felt in command of the situation. And then, from some shadowy distance, I heard the splash of a pursuing oar.

I commanded silence, and we craned into the darkness, and listened. We all heard it. The sound came as regularly as a heart-beat, and it was no muffled stroke. The oarsman was using his paddle openly and fast. The sound came from behind us, a little to the north, and, judging from its growing distinctness, it was following hard in our track. There was nothing for it but a race. I gave orders.

The men worked well, and we sped through foaming water for perhaps a quarter hour. Then land rose in front of us. It shot up, all in an instant, out of the murk, and we had quick work to keep from grounding our canoes. I could see no shore line to north or south. We had found either the end of a promontory or a small island. We landed on a shelving beach, and lifted the canoes out of danger.

"Lie down," I commanded; and we dropped on the sand, and strained our ears for sound of pursuit.

For a time we heard nothing. Our burst of speed had carried us some distance, and I had begun to think that we had shaken off our pursuer, when again came the beat, beat, beat of the distant oar. We lay close as alligators on a bank, and waited. The strokes came nearer, and at last we saw a sliding shape. As well as we could make out, there was but one canoe, and it was passing us a little to the northward. It would miss the jut of land where we were hiding, and land on the main shore of the peninsula. We could hear but one paddle, so judged that there was but one person in the canoe. Still we did not know.

It was growing near moonrise, and there was nothing to be done. I told the men to lie near together, and sleep till I called them. Then I cut boughs and laid a couple of blankets on them for the woman's couch. She had sat quiet all these hours, and now, as I bade her good-night, she asked her first question.

"Are you willing to tell me why you fear pursuit, monsieur?"

I hesitated. "We grow like animals in the wilderness," I parried, "and so suspect every sound as coming from a foe."

"Then you do not know who it is in the canoe?"

I could have answered "no," but I would not.

"Yes, I think that I know," I replied. "I think that it is Pemaou, a Huron. An Indian whom you have never seen."

She read the hate in my voice. "Do you know what he wants, monsieur?"

And now I could answer truthfully, and with a laugh. "I suspect that he wants, or has been sent to get, something that I have determined to keep,—at least for the present," I told her. "Good-night, madame."

I told my inner self that I must sleep soundly, and wake just before dawn; and so that was what happened. The horizon was flushing when I rose and looked around. My company was asleep. The woman lay on her bright blankets, and I looked at her a moment to make sure that all was well. She was smiling as if her dreams were pleasant, and her face wore such a look of peace, that I turned to the east, ready to begin the day, and to thank God that I had not done everything entirely wrong. I took the lighter of the canoes, carried it to the water, and dipping a cautious paddle, crept off along the shore.

If I wake in the woods every dawn for a year, I can never grow stale to the miracle of it. I was on no pleasant errand, yet I could not help tingling at the cleanness of the air and at the smell of the mint that our canoes had crushed. I hugged the shore like a shadow, and rounded a little bend. It was as I had thought. We had landed on the western side of a small island, and before me, not a quarter hour's paddling away, stretched the shore line of the peninsula.

Here was my risk. I paddled softly across the open stretch, but that availed me little, for I was an unprotected target. I slanted my course northward, and strained my gaze along the shore. Yet I hardly expected to find anything. It came like a surprise when I saw in advance of me a light canoe drawn up on the sand.

I landed, drew my own canoe to shelter, and reconnoitred. I had both knife and musket ready, and I pulled myself over logs as silent as a snake. Yet, cautious as I was, little furtive rustlings preceded me. The wood folks had seen me and were spreading the warning. Unless Pemaou were asleep I had little chance of surprising him. Yet I crept on till I saw through the leaves the outlines of a brown figure on the ground.

I stopped. I had been trying for a good many hours to balance the right and wrong of this matter in my mind, and my reason had insisted to my inclination that, if I had opportunity, I must kill Pemaou without warning. We respect no code in dealing with a rattlesnake, and I must use this Huron like the vermin that he was. So I had taught myself.

But now I could not do it. The blanket-wrapped shape was as unconscious as a child in its cradle, and though the wilderness may breed hardness of purpose it need not teach butchery. I crept out determined to scuttle the Indian's canoe and go away. If the man waked, my knife was ready to try conclusions with him in a fair field.

I suppose that I really desired him to wake, and that made me careless, for just as I bent to the canoe, I let my foot blunder on a twig, and it cracked like shattering glass. I grasped my knife and whirled. The figure on the ground jerked, threw off its shrouding blanket, and stretched up. It was not Pemaou. It was the Ottawa girl Singing Arrow.

I did not drop my knife. My thought was of decoy and ambush, which was no credit to me, for this girl had been faithful before. But we train ourselves not to trust an Indian except of necessity.

"Are you alone?" I demanded.

She nodded, pressing her lips together and dimpling. She feared me as little as a kitten might.

"I came to the Pottawatamie camp just after you left," she volunteered.

And then I laughed, laughed as I had not done in days. So this was the quarry that I had been stalking! I had been under a long tension, and it was suddenly comfortable to be ridiculous. I sat down and laughed again.

"Are you following Pierre?" I asked, sobering, and trying to be stern.

But she put her head sidewise and considered me. She looked like a squirrel about to crack a nut.

"A hare may track a stag," she announced judicially. "I have followed you. My back is bent like a worm with the aching of it, but I came faster than a man. I have this for you," and fumbling in her blouse she brought out a bulky packet addressed with my name.

I took it with the marvel that a child takes a sleight-of-hand toy and stared at the seal.

"From Cadillac! From the commandant!" I ejaculated.

She nodded. It was her moment of triumph, but she passed it without outward show.

"Read it. I am sleepy," she said, and yawning in my face she tumbled herself back into the blanket and closed her eyes.

The packet was well wrapped and secured, and I dug my way to the heart of it and found the written pages. The letter began abruptly.

"Monsieur," it said, "I send you strange tidings by a stranger messenger. It is new to me to trust petticoats in matters of secrecy, but it is rumored that you set me the example, and that you carried off the Englishman dressed in this Singing Arrow's clothes. The Indian herself will tell me nothing. That determined me to trust her.

"Briefly, you are followed. That fire-eating English lad that you have with you—I warrant that he has proved a porcupine to travel with—must be of some importance. At all events, an Englishman, who gives his name as Starling, has made his way here in pursuit. He tells a fair tale. He says that the lad, who is dear as a brother to him, is a cousin, who was captured in an Indian raid on the frontier. As soon as he, Starling, learned of the capture, he started after them, and he has spent months searching the wilderness, as you would sift the sand of the sea. He found the trail at last, and followed it here. He begs that I send him on to you with a convoy.

"Now this, as you see, sounds very fair, and part of it I know to be true. The man is certainly in earnest—about something,—and has spent great time and endeavor in this search. He has even been to Quebec, and worked on Frontenac's sympathies, for he bears from the governor a letter of safe conduct to me, and another, from the Jesuits, to Father Carheil. He comes—apparently—on no political mission; he is alone, and his tale is entirely plausible. There is but one course open to me. I must let him go on.

"But I do it with misgivings. The story is fair, but I can tell a fair story myself upon occasion, and there is no great originality in this one. I remember that you said after your first interview with your Englishman, that you were afraid he was a spy. There is always that danger,—a danger that Frontenac underestimates because he has not grasped the possibilities that we have here. If both these men should prove to be spies, and in collusion—— Well, they are brave men, and crafty; it will be the greater pleasure to outwit them. I cannot overlook the fact that the first Englishman was brought here by the Baron's band of Hurons, and that this man selects his messengers from the same dirty clan. I have reason to think he was in communication with them before he came,—which is no credit to a white man. Dubisson, my lieutenant, tells me that a Huron told his Indian servant that pictures of the prisoner drawn on bark had been scattered among the Indians for a fortnight past. The story was roundabout, and I could not run it down. But it makes me watchful.

"So this is where we stand. I must give this man Starling a letter to you. The letter will be official, and will direct you to deliver your prisoner into Starling's hands. If he finds you, you have no choice but to obey; so, if you think from your further knowledge of your prisoner that it is unwise for these two men to meet, it is your cue not to be found. I leave it with you.

"There is, of course, great doubt whether this will find you. You asked me about Onanguissee so I infer that you will stop at the islands at the mouth of La Baye, and I shall send the Indian girl directly there. I shall suggest to Starling that he hug the coast line, and search each bay, and if he listens to me, the girl should reach you well in advance. But it is all guess-work. Starling may have spies among the Indians, and know exactly where you are. I wish he were out of the way. Granted that his errand is fair, he will still see too much. For all men, in whatever state they are born, lack neither vanity nor ambition, and this man is accustomed to command. It is a crack in the dike, and I do not like it.

"But enough. I hear that you trussed Father Blackgown like a pigeon for the spit the night that you went away. I would have given my best tobacco box to have seen it. There was some excitement here over the loss of the prisoner, but no talk of pursuit. Indeed, the Hurons seemed relieved to have him spirited out of the way. Which is odd, for they took great pains to obtain him. But I am wonted to the unexpected; it is the usual that finds me unprepared. Even Father Blackgown surprises me. He has not complained to me of you, though heretofore I have found him as ready to shout his wrongs as a crow in a cornfield. But again, enough.

"And I have the honor to be, with great respect, monsieur,

"Your very obedient servant,

"ANTOINE DE LA MOTHE-CADILLAC."

I read the letter through twice. Then I turned to Singing Arrow. I was glad she was a savage. If she had been white, man or woman, I should have been obliged to go through a long explanation, and I was not in the mood for it. Now savages are content to begin things in the middle, and omit questions. It may be indolence with them, and it may be philosophy. I have never decided to my satisfaction. But the fact serves.

"Do you think that you were followed?" I asked.

The girl sat up and shook her head. "Only by the stars and the clouds," she answered.

I felt relieved. "And how did you happen to come this way?" I went on. "What did they tell you at the Pottawatamie Islands?"

She stopped to laugh. "That you went the other way," she replied, and she swept her arm to the southwest.

I shrugged my shoulders. "And you thought I lied to them?"

She nodded her answer. "The bird who hides her nest cries and makes a great noise and runs away from it," she explained. "You told all the Pottawatamies who would listen that you were going southwest. So I went southeast."

I could afford to let her laugh at me. "We stopped at that island over there," I said, without comment. "Now we will follow this shore line for a distance south. You must go with us. Singing Arrow, did they tell you at the islands that the English prisoner was a woman, and that she is now my wife?"

The girl did not answer nor look in my direction. She pulled her blanket over her head, and sat as stiffly as a badger above his hole. I could not determine whether the news of the marriage was a surprise or not. It did not matter. I lit my pipe and let her work it out.

"Are you coming?" I asked at last. "I must go back to the island now."

She rose and pulled her blanket around her. She was typically Indian at the moment, unreadable and cold. But she nodded in acquiescence and went to her canoe.

I found my own canoe and we paddled side by side. The sun was over the horizon now and fish were jumping. I saw a great bass that must have weighed five pounds spring his whole length out of the water for a fly. A sportsman in France would have traveled leagues to have seen such a fish, and here it lay ready for my hand. Perhaps after all there was no need to search for reasons for the exultation that was possessing me.

A few moments brought us to the island, and we rounded the point and came into the cove. The little camp was awake and startled by my absence. Pierre was searching the horizon from under a red, hairy hand, and Labarthe was looking to the priming of his arquebus. Only the woman sat steadfast. All this I saw at a glance.

I rushed the canoes to the shore, and helped the Indian girl to alight as I would have helped any woman. I gave one look at the men, and said, "Be still," and then I led Singing Arrow to the woman.

"Madame," I said, "here is the Indian girl who befriended you when you were a prisoner. It was she who passed us last night. She comes to me with documents from Cadillac, and I have great reason to be grateful to her. I commend her to you, madame."

I doubt that the woman heard much of my speech, though I made it earnestly. She was looking at the Indian girl, and the Indian girl at her. I should have liked cordiality between them, but I did not expect it. The woman would do her best, but she would not know how. I had come to think her gracious by nature, and she would treat this girl with courtesy, but she was a great lady while Singing Arrow was a squaw, and she would remember it. Yet Singing Arrow, even though she might admit her inferiority to a white man, would think herself the equal of any woman of whatever rank or race. I could not see how the gulf could be bridged.

But bridged it was, and that oddly. The woman stood for a moment half smiling, and then suddenly tears gathered in her eyes. She put out her hand to Singing Arrow, and the Indian took it, and they walked together back into the trees. They could not understand each other, and I wondered what they would do. But later I heard them laughing.

Well, the woman was destined to surprise me, and she had done it again. I had thought her too finely woven and strong of fibre to be easily emotional. It was some hours before it came to me that she had not been with another woman since the night the savages had found her in the Connecticut farmhouse. All the world had been a foe to be feared and parried except myself, and I had been a despot. Perhaps she did not know herself. Perhaps she would welcome Benjamin Starling after all. No matter what her horror of him, she could at least be natural with him, if only to show her scorn.



CHAPTER XVI

THE STORM

We embarked in good season that morning and followed the line of the peninsula in its slant to the southwest. It was a pleasant shore, limestone-scarped and tree-bannered, and we paddled so near to it that the squirrels scolded at us, and a daisy-spotted fawn crashed through the young cedars and stared at us with shy eyes. The birds were singing and calling like maids in a hayfield, and the woman sat with her back straight and her eyes laughing, and imitated each new note as the breeze brought it to her. She did it fairly well, but Singing Arrow could have done it better. In my heart I commended the Indian for sitting silent, for I knew that the vanity of her sex and the inherent boastfulness of her savage blood must both be whispering to her that this was the place to show her superiority. But she resisted.

I had taken her in the canoe with the woman and myself, and putting Pierre in her canoe had bidden him follow. I was well satisfied to keep them apart for a time. Yet no sister of the Ursulines could have been more exemplary with her glances than this Indian was just then. She sat like a figure of destiny and watched the woman. Whether she admired or not I should not know till I saw whether she intended to imitate.

Cadillac's letter lay heavy in my pocket that day and disinclined me to speech. Should I show it to the woman and ask her what she would like to do? And having asked her, should I let her preference warp my final decision? I was not sure. The manner of my life had confirmed me in my natural inclination to decide things for myself and take no counsel. And now all my desires called out to me to destroy this letter and say nothing. Why should I wish to meet Lord Starling? And by keeping out of the way I should be playing into Cadillac's hands and therefore furthering my own ends. Yet the woman! After all, Starling was her cousin. Had she not the right to choose for herself whether she should see him? My training and instinct said no to this last question. Women were made to be cared for, at whatever cost, but not to be taken into confidence as to ways and means. Still I had entered into a bond with this woman. I breathed hard. I had always been restive under any bond, though by nature plodding enough when it was removed. I was aware that I was but sullen company while I rolled this matter in my mind.

The day was warm, and by afternoon soaring pinions of cloud pushed up from the western horizon. I watched their white edges curl and blacken, and when they began to be laced with red lightning I said to the woman that we should have to land.

"Though I hoped to make the Sturgeon Cove," I added idly.

The breeze was rising, drawing sharp criss-cross furrows on the water, and I noticed how it ruffled the woman's hair; her hair was like her eyes, a warm red-brown.

"What is Sturgeon Cove?" she asked. "Is it a bay,—a larger one than we have passed?"

I took a rough map from my wallet and handed it to her. "Much larger, you see," I said. "It almost bisects the peninsula. Only the Sturgeon portage, about a mile long, separates it from the lake of the Illinois. We must be near it now."

She gave but a look at the map, then glanced at the cloud-streaked west and at the shore.

"Try to make it. Try to reach Sturgeon Cove," she urged.

I was thinking of something else, so I answered her only by a shake of the head. Perhaps that angered her. At all events she smote her palms together with a short, soft little clap, such as I use when I call my dog.

"I do not wish to land here," she said, throwing back her head at me quite as she had done when I thought her a boy. "I wish to go on. Why not?"

I motioned Pierre to the shore. "Because you would get wet," I answered stoically.

She flushed as redly as if I had hurt her. "And if I did?" she cried. "Better discomfort than this constant humiliation. Monsieur, I refuse to be made a burden of in this fashion. It is not fair. You made your plans to reach a certain point, and you would go on, rain or otherwise, if it were not for me. For me, for me, for me! I am sick of the sound of the words in my own brain. I am sick of the excuse. Each added sacrifice you make for me weighs me like lead. It binds me. I cannot endure the obligation. Believe me, monsieur."

I had no choice but to believe her. Yet she stopped with a gasp of the breath, as if she had said too much, or perhaps too little,—as if she were dissatisfied. Well, I had but scant desire to reply. I should have liked to walk away, and rebelled in my heart at our forced nearness in the canoe. My feeling was not new. When I had thought her a man she had antagonized me in spite of my interest; as a maid she had troubled me, and now as my wife I found that she had already power to wound. Still, with all my inner heat, I could look as it were in a mirror and understand her unhappiness and vexation. She was trying to act towards me with a man's fairness and detachment, but each move that I made showed that I considered her solely as a woman and therefore an encumbrance. Let her act with whatever bravery and wisdom she might, her sex still enmeshed us like a silken trap. We could not escape it. And it was a fetter. Mask it as courteously as I would, the fact remained that it was undoubtedly a fetter. I felt a certain compassion for her and her forced dependence, and said to myself that I would hide my own soreness. But her words had bitten, and I am not a patient man.

I turned my canoe inland, and looked to it that the others did the same. Then I leaned toward her.

"No, we will land here," I said. "Madame, I am frequently forced to look behind your words, which are sharp, and search for your meaning, which is admirable. You resent being an encumbrance. May I suggest that you will be less one if you follow my plans without opposition? I mean no discourtesy, madame, when I say that no successful expedition can have two heads in control."

With all her great self-discipline in some directions, she had none in others, and I braced myself for her retort. But none came. Instead she looked at me almost wistfully.

"I lose my temper when I wish I did not," she said. "But I should like to help you, monsieur."

I laid down my paddle. "Help is a curious quantity," I replied. "Especially here in the wilderness where what we say counts for so little and what we are for so much. I think,—it comes to me now,—madame, you have given me strength more than once when you did not suspect it. So you need not try to help me consciously. But now I need your counsel. Will you read this?" and I took Cadillac's letter from my pocket and handed it to her.

She examined the seal with amazement as I had done, then looked at Singing Arrow. "The Indian brought this? It must be very important. Ought I—— Is it right for me to see it, monsieur?"

I laughed. I looked off at the piling thundercaps and the ruffling water, and the exhilaration of the coming storm whipped through me. There was a pleasant tang to life.

"Read it, yes," I insisted. "You are Madame de Montlivet. No one can have a better right. Read it after we land."

It took some moments to make a landing, for the waves were already high and the shore rough. In spite of ourselves we tore the canoes on hidden rocks. We unloaded the cargo and had things snug and tidy by the time the first great drops plumped down upon us. We worked like ants, and I did not look at the woman. I knew that she was reading the letter, and I had no wish to spy.

But when I went to her there was no letter in sight. I did not stop to talk, but I wrapped her in the cloak that Onanguisse had given her, and wound her still further with blankets. "You will be cool enough in a few minutes," I assured her, and I made a nest for her in a thicket of young pines. She obeyed me dumbly, but with a certain gentleness, a sort of submission. As she gazed up at me with her brown face and inscrutable eyes, my hands were not quite steady. Heretofore I had felt her power; now I felt only her inexperience, her dependence. Child, woman, sphinx! What should I do with her? I turned away. The rain was upon us in earnest.

I looked for my crew. The men were curled under trees, but Singing Arrow had used more craft. She had hidden herself under her light canoe,—which she had first secured with pegs that it might not blow away,—and she lay as compact and comfortable as a tree-housed grub. I lifted the corner of the canoe and peered at her, whereat she giggled happily, serene in the thought that I was wet while she was dry. She was as restful to the brain as a frolicking puppy, and I shook my head at her to hear her giggle again. I was about to wonder whether she had ever known awe of anything, but just then the thunder, which had been merely growling, barked out like a howitzer above us, and she covered her head and screamed like any of her sex.

The thunder sent me back to the woman. I crept, wet as I was, into her pine-needled hollow, and started to ask if she were afraid. But the question died at sight of her. She was propped on her elbows, and had parted the low boughs in front of her that she might look out at the storm. She turned at sound of me, and the blood was in her cheeks as I felt it in mine.

"Come," she cried with her motion.

I went and lay close beside her, peering, as she did, through the trees. The world was all wind and red light and churning water. I could feel her quick breathing.

"I can hear the spirit of the wilderness crying," she said to me. The lightning played over her face and eyes, and they shone like flame.

I laid a hand on her wet blankets. "Has the rain soaked through?"

But she did not listen. The exultation in her look I have seen sometimes in the face of a young priest; I have also seen it in a savage dancer. It is all one. It is the leaping response of the soul to the call of a great freedom. Storm was summoning storm. I found the woman's hand, and lay with it in mine.

She remembered me again after a time. "Does it call to you?" she cried.

I could feel the blood racing in her palm. "As it does to you," I answered, and I lay still, and let the storm riot in me, and around me, with her hand held close.

We could not speak for some time. The thunder was constant, and the play of the lightning was like the dazzle of a fencer's sword. Mingled with the thunder came the slap of frothing water and the whine of bending trees. The wind was ice to the cheeks.

At the first lull the woman turned to me. "If you had followed my wishes we should have been drowned."

I nodded. I had no wish to speak. The storm in me was not lessening. I kept the woman's hand and was swept on by the tempest.

And the woman, too, lay silent. I saw her look at me once, and look away. And then, because I could think more coherently, it came to me that she had changed. The change had come since she had read Cadillac's letter. She had said nothing, but she was different. What did it mean? Was she natural at last because she thought succor was near? I was not ready to know. The moments that I had now were mine. Ten minutes later they might, if she decreed, belong to Benjamin Starling.

The storm passed as swiftly as the shifting of a tableau. The rain stopped, not lingeringly, but as if a key had been turned, and cracks came in the clouds like clefts in black ice and showed the blue beyond. In five minutes the sun was shining. We all crept out from under trees and canoes, and shook ourselves like drenched fowls.

It was magic the way the world changed. The wind died, and the sun shone low and yellow, and a robin began to sing. The water was still white and fretting, and the sand was strewn with torn leaves, but otherwise there was peace. I told Pierre to take one of the men and find dry fuel for a fire, and Labarthe to take the other and attend to gumming the canoes. Then I went to the woman, who had slipped dry and red-cheeked from her wrappings, and was walking in the sun.

"Well, Madame Montlivet," I said, with a bow, "what shall we do about Monsieur Cadillac's letter?"

There was laughter in my voice, and it confused her. "What shall we do?" she echoed doubtfully. "Did you mean to say 'we'?"

I bowed again. "'We' assuredly. It must be a joint decision. Come, it is for you to declare your mind. Do we seek Lord Starling, do we hide from him, or do we stand still and let Fate throw the dice for us? What do you wish, madame?"

She looked at me with a little puzzled withdrawal. "Why do you laugh?" she asked.

I was loath to vex her. But, indeed, I could not check the tide of joyous excitement that was surging through me. "I do not know quite why I laugh," I answered truly. "Perhaps it is because the sun is shining, and because life looks so fair and rich and full of possibilities. But, madame, we have been tragic too long; it irks us both. Tell me, now. It rests with you. Shall we paddle northwest and search for your cousin, Lord Starling?"

She thought a moment. "You wish it?"

"No, madame."

She turned away. "Then why ask me? You said there could not be two heads in this command."

I sobered. "Now that was a cat's scratch," I rebuked. "You have never done that before."

The gentleness of her look made me ashamed. "You are suspicious of me," she said a little sadly. "That was not a scratch, monsieur. I said what I mean; I prefer to leave the decision in your hands."

"But your wish?"

"It is confused, monsieur."

"But your sense of justice in the matter?"

She was silent a moment, and walked up and down. "I have been trying to see the right ever since I read the letter," she said quietly. "This is the best answer I can make. I think that we had better avoid meeting Lord Starling, monsieur."

I stepped to her side and matched my pace to hers. The robin had been joined by his mate, and they were singing. "Why, madame?" I asked her, and when she was still silent I persisted. "Why, madame?"

She lifted grave eyes to me. "I think it will be wise to keep Lord Starling in the wilderness as long as possible," she answered. "If he does not find me it may be that he will keep on searching. He may not,—but again he may. On the other hand, if he finds me he will assuredly go home."

"And if he does go home? I assure you the wilderness is no sweeter in my eyes while he is here."

She handed me Cadillac's letter. "I think that you know what I mean," She said. "Your commandant is a wise man. Monsieur, I do not understand Lord Starling's purpose in this journey, but I am afraid that Monsieur de la Mothe-Cadillac is right. My cousin may be treating secretly with the Indians. He is a capable man, and not easy to read. I do not know why he should be here."

I looked down at her. "But I know. He is here to find you. Have you forgotten what I said to you yesterday morning? He will not rest till he has found you. Ought we to save him anxiety? I can understand that he has suffered."

But she shook her head, and her eyes as she looked up at me showed the deep sadness that always seemed, while it lasted, to be too rooted ever to be erased.

"You are an idealist, monsieur. You believe in man's constancy as I do not. I cannot believe that I am the moving cause of Lord Starling's journey. He would undoubtedly like to find me, for I am of his house and of use to him, but he has other purposes. Of that I am sure."

I grew cruel because I was glad; there is nothing so ruthless as happiness. "And you would thwart his purposes, madame?" I cried.

She looked at me coldly. "I will not be used as a tool against you," she said.

"And that is all?"

"It is enough. I have said this to you many times. Why do you make me say it again? I have undertaken to do something, and I will carry it through. I will not lend myself to any plot against your interests. I will not. So long as we are together, I will play the game fair."

"And when we are no longer together?"

She pushed out her hands. "I do not know. I am glad that you asked me that. Monsieur, if any chance should free us from each other, if we should reach Montreal in safety, why, then, I do not know. I come of an ambitious race. It may be that I shall use the information that I have. I love my country as you do yours, and when a woman has had some beliefs taken from her there is little remaining her but ambition. So let me know as little as possible of your plans, for I may use my knowledge. I give you warning, monsieur."

The happiness in me would not die, and so, perhaps, I smiled. She looked at me keenly.

"You think that I am vaunting idly," she said. "Perhaps I am. I do not know what I shall do. But, monsieur, for your own sake do not underestimate my capacity for doing you harm. I mean that as a gauge."

She stood against the sunset, and her delicate height and proud head showed like a statue's. I stooped and lifted an imaginary glove from the sand.

"I take your gauge," I said. "But I find it a small and delicate gauntlet for so warlike a purpose. May I wear it next my heart, madame?"

She looked at me proudly. "I am serious," she said.

"And I take you seriously," I rejoined. I stepped to her and let my hand touch hers. "You wrong me. I find that I take you very seriously indeed. Believe me. But I have always lived in the present. Come, we have been grave long enough. Let us be children and take the passing moment. Madame, Montreal is very far away."



CHAPTER XVII

AFTER THE STORM

We slept at that place that night, and the stars came out clear, and the water on the sand sang like a harp played by the wind. I slept, but I dreamed. I thought that Lord Starling came to me, and that the woman went away. And then the dream shifted, and I stood in a strange, barren mist-world, and I was alone. I saw the awful loneliness of creation, and immensity stretched around me. I traveled through infinite spaces of void and blackness, and found no sound of voice or life, yet all the time, welling high within me, was a tide, the fullness of which I had never known in my waking hours. All the strength that I had hoarded, all the desire for love that I had pushed aside, all of the fierce commotions of unrest that mark us from the brute, stirred in me till I felt as if I were suffocating, and cried out for a helping hand. But I was alone, and gray wastes surrounded me, and my surge of feeling beat itself out against desolation. I woke with sweat on my forehead.

I woke to a black night. The stars looked cold, and the men beside me lay as if dead. I looked up and watched the roll of the planets. The mystery of infinity which lies naked at midnight in the wilderness drives some men mad. Heretofore I had been untouched by it except with delight. Now I crept cautiously to my feet and went softly to the woman.

I know that I stepped without sound, but as I stood for a moment looking down at the couch of boughs where she lay I heard a guarded whisper.

"Monsieur, monsieur."

I bent over her. Her eyes were not only open, but wakeful, and her small face looked white against the dark blanket.

"What is it, monsieur?" she whispered.

I knelt that I might answer softly. "I woke, and thought you were in danger. I came to look at you and be sure that all was well. You do not sleep, madame?"

She shook her head. "I slept, but I dreamed. And you, monsieur?"

"I, too, have dreamed."

I thought that she smiled at me, though her face, when I leaned to see it clearly, blurred into the dark.

"Will you sleep the rest of the night within sound of my voice?" she asked, with a little tremble in her whisper. "The wilderness tonight is like that storm. Its greatness terrifies me. Do you think that all is well, monsieur?"

I was glad that she could not see my face. "Yes, I think that all is very well," I answered. "Blessedly well. Sleep, now, madame. I shall stay here, and your whisper would wake me. Is there terror in the wilderness now?"

Again she shook her head. "No," she whispered.

I lay beside her couch and cushioned my head in my arm. I had answered her truly. All was very well with me, for at last I saw clearly; I knew myself. The dream, the night, and something that I could not name, had stripped me naked to my own understanding. I felt as if, man that I had thought myself, I had played with toys until this moment, and that now, for the first time, I was conscious of my full power for joy or suffering. I looked up through the star spaces and was grateful for knowledge, for knowledge even if it brought pain.

I had not lain this way long when I heard her stir.

"Monsieur," came her whisper.

I lifted myself to my knees. "Yes, madame."

"You were not asleep?"

"No, madame."

"Monsieur, I was loath to disturb you, but I cannot sleep. Tell me. Suppose that Lord Starling should find us. Will he have power to take me?"

"Away from your husband? How could he, madame?"

She stirred, and turned her face from me, even though I could not see it in the dark.

"But he has a warrant," she whispered. "The letter said that you must deliver me to my cousin if we were found. What will be done with you, monsieur, if you refuse to obey?"

Then I bent close and let her hear me laugh softly.

"I know of no warrant that applies to you," I murmured. "Cadillac's letter mentioned an Englishman. I know of none such. I travel with a woman, my wife, and commandants have naught to do with us. Was that what was troubling you, madame?"

She bowed, and her breath came unevenly. Her right hand lay outside the blanket, and I bent and touched it with my lips.

"How you hate Lord Starling! How you hate him!" I whispered. "I wonder, can you love as singly? Can you love with as little care for self and comfort and for all the fat conveniences of life? Madame, you are a willful child to lie here and tilt at shadows when you should be garnering strength by sleep. I promised you my sword and my name, and I agreed that they should both be yours till of your own wish you should send me away. Had you forgotten that I promised? I had not."

I had slipped to my knees again and rested with my forehead on her hand. I could feel her other hand stray toward me.

"No," she whispered. "No, I had not forgotten, but the dark and a sudden loneliness made me a coward. Thank you. It is over now and I will sleep. Monsieur, my partner, I will say good-night, and this time I will not call you."

But I rested a moment longer on my knees with my head against her palm. Then I rose.

"Partners, perhaps," I said softly. "Yet more than that. Madame, are we not like pilgrims groping our way together on a dark road? We cannot see far ahead, but there is a light in the distance. I think that we shall reach it. Good-night. We shall both sleep now, madame."

But she slept and I did not. It was nearly day when I closed my eyes again, yet I did not find the moments long.

The next morning was quiet and the sky clear. I had read my maps rightly, and once embarked, an hour of paddling brought us to Sturgeon Cove. It opened before us suddenly, a wedge of flecked turquoise laid across the shaded greens of the peninsula. As we entered it a flock of white gulls rose from the rocky shore and flew before us. The air, rain washed, was so limpid that it seemed a marvel that it could sustain the heavy-pinioned birds, but they moved in sure curves and seemed to bear us with them. I pointed the woman's glance toward them.

"An omen. We shall follow them and rest here. It is our home."

We nosed our way, with leisurely paddles, close to the northern shore. The land sloped gently from the beach, and the quivering water, a faded green from the tree shadows, crawled over gravel that was patterned with the white of quartz and with the pomegranate of carnelian. It was a jeweled pavement, and it led to forest aisles where cathedral lights splashed through the trees. But I would not stop. The gulls were still leading.

The bay narrowed, and the shores pressed close to us, with compact ranks of cedars held spearwise. Yet we pushed on, and the water path spread out once more, a final widening. We saw before us the rounded end of the bay, and the neck of land that formed the Sturgeon portage. The woman looked at me.

"What now, monsieur?"

But I smiled at her with my conceit untroubled. I had seen reeds close to the northern shore. "Halt!" I cried to the canoes.

We lay quiet a moment, and the birds glancing back at us found us suddenly harmless. The reeds under them were swarming with young fish. The gulls looked down and squawked in a hungry chorus. In a moment they lighted, balancing their great wings like reefing sails.

I laughed as I looked at the woman. It was a small triumph, but intoxication breeds easy laughter. I had been drinking deep that morning of a sparkling happiness more disturbing than any wine.

We sent the canoes shoreward into the curve where the reeds lay. The stiff green withes rattled against our canoes like hail, and gave warning of our approach for a half mile distant. I nodded my inner approval.

"The gulls are wise," I said to the woman. "We could not plan a better water defense to our camp."

The grass came down to the water, and we pulled the canoes over short turf and into beds of white blossoms. A cloud of butterflies rose to greet us; they too were satin-white, the color that a bride should wear, and they fluttered over us without fear. The smell of the grasses rose like incense. With all the light and perfume there was a sense of quiet, of deep content and peace. Even the woods that fringed the meadow seemed kindly. They did not have the sombre awe of the heavy timber, but looked sun-drenched and gay.

"We shall stay here," I said. "Unload the canoes."

Five men with good sinews, some understanding, and well-sharpened axe blades, can make a great change in the forest in one day. When the sunset found us I had a fortified house built for my wife. It was framed of fragrant pine, and occupied the extremity of a spit of land that lay next the meadow. Its door opened on the water, and I made the opening wide so that the stars might look in at night. All about the sides and rear of the house were laid boughs, one upon another, and on the top of this barricade was stretched a long cord threaded with hawk's bells. The lodges for myself and the men we placed in the rear, and behind them we laid still another wall of brush to separate us from the forest. I was satisfied with the defenses. With the reeds in front and the brush behind, any intruder would sound his own alarm.

The woman took Singing Arrow and went to her house early that night, but I sat late over my charts and journal. I had much to study and more to plan.

Yet I was abroad the next morning while the stars were still reflected in the bay. Labarthe was with me, and we took Singing Arrow's light canoe and packed it with supplies and merchandise. Then we breakfasted on meal and jerked meat and were ready to start.

But the rest of the men were not yet astir, and the woman's house was silent. I walked to it and stood irresolute. I disliked to wake her. Yet I could not leave her without some message. But while I pondered I heard her step behind me. She came up from the water, and she looked all vigor and morning gladness.

"Why the canoe so early?" she called. "Do we have fish for breakfast?"

I took her hand. "Come with me to the water." I led her to the canoe and pointed out the bales of supplies. "You see we are ready for work. We shall be back in a few days."

She dropped my hand. "Then why did you build that house?"

"Why not, madame?"

"But you say that we are to go this morning."

"I must go, madame."

"And you intend to leave me here?"

"Why, yes, madame."

"But you said 'we.'"

I looked some amazement. "I take Labarthe with me. I leave three men with you on guard. There is nothing to fear."

And then she threw back her head. "I do not think that I am afraid," she said more quietly. "But—I was not prepared for this. It had not occurred to me that you would go away."

I stopped a moment. "I do not go for pleasure. Indeed, I cannot imagine a fairer spot in which to linger and forget the world. But did you think that I would sit in idleness, madame?"

She looked down. "I do not know that I thought at all about it. It has gone on like a play, a dream. Perhaps I thought it would continue. Your plan is to travel from tribe to tribe, and come back here at intervals?"

"That is my plan. I shall buy furs and cache them here. I shall try not to be away more than a week at a time. I regret that I surprised you. I did not think but that you understood."

She stood biting her lips and smiling to herself in half-satiric, half-whimsical fashion. "It says little for my intelligence that I was unprepared. You are a man, not a courtier. I should have known that you would not waste an hour. I wish that I might go with you."

"Madame, I wish it, too."

She looked up more briskly. "But that would be impossible. Have you instructions for me, monsieur?"

"Madame, if you are afraid, come with me."

"I am not afraid if you say that it is safe, monsieur."

"Thank you, madame. I think that it is entirely safe. Pierre is a good deal of a fool and more of a knave, but in some few respects there is no one like him; he is a rock. You are my wife and in his charge. He will guard you absolutely."

"Are we in danger of attack?"

"I can imagine no possible reason for attack, else I should not leave you. The Indians are friendly. One thing troubles me. Your cousin—— Should"——

She looked up. "Should Lord Starling find me?" she completed. "Well, he would tarry here until you came. He would at least show that courtesy. I can promise as much as that for the family name, monsieur."

I smiled at her. "I shall await the meeting," I said with unction. I motioned Labarthe to the paddle, and I kissed the woman's hand.

"I salute your courage. I shall see you within the week, madame."

She looked straight at me. "And until then, good fortune."

But I paused. "Wish me opportunity. That is all that I ask from you or of you,—opportunity. Good-by for a week, madame."



CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH I USE OPPORTUNITY

I squatted beside many camp fires in the next week. I sat in the flattened cones of the Chippewas' tepees and smoked innumerable pipes of rank tobacco with the old men. I traded some, but talked more, and at the end of the week I started home. I waited for a pleasant day and a westerly wind, for the small canoe was perilously laden with skins. There was scarcely room for Labarthe and myself to crowd down on our knees and use our paddles.

We slipped into Sturgeon Cove late in the afternoon, and swept with the wind up the stretches of the bay to the camping ground. Summer was at flood tide, and the air was pungent and the leaves shining. The sunset shone through tattered ends of cloud, so that the west was hung with crimson banners. It was my first homecoming.

Before we reached the camp I saw the woman. She had strayed down the shore to the west,—too far for safety, I thought,—and was standing alone on the sand, looking toward the sunset. Her head was back, and her arms flung out to the woods and the shining sky. I have sometimes found myself stretching my own arms in just that fashion when I have been alone and have felt something pressing within me that was too large for speech. I motioned Labarthe to ship his paddle that I might look. The western glow was full upon the woman, and her lips were parted. The open sleeves of her skin blouse fell away from her arms, which had grown gently rounded since I saw her first. I could not see her eyes, but she looked somewhere off into the untraveled west,—the west that was the portal of my enterprise. What was her thought? I must not let myself trap it unaware. I gave a long, low call; the call of the loon as he skirts the marshes in the twilight.

She turned instantly and saw us. I bent forward. The drabbled plume of my hat swept the water, and I heard Labarthe curse under his breath, and beg me remember that the canoe was laden. But just then I had no caution in me.

The woman's arms dropped. She had a moment of indecision, and she stood looking at me with the sunset in her face and eyes. Then she suddenly thrust out both hands towards me across the stretch of water. I could see her smooth-skinned brown fingers, and one wore my ring. She bade me welcome. I bent to my paddle, and would have crashed the canoe up to the shore.

But she forestalled me. She was already on her way back to the camp, and if she knew that I had started toward her she did not let me see. So I had, perforce, to follow. She walked with the free, gliding step of a woman whose foot had been trained on polished surfaces. I watched her, and let Labarthe paddle our way through the reeds.

We reached the camp, deafened by Pierre's bellow of greeting. The woman had kept pace with us, and stood waiting for us to disembark. She was breathing quickly and the blood was in her brown cheeks; her great eyes were frankly opened and shining. I pushed by the men and bent to kiss her hand.

"Madame, thank you for my welcome home."

She bowed, and I caught the perfume of a rose on her breast. "Monsieur, we are all rejoiced to see you safe." Her tone took, half-whimsically, the note of court and compliment. The fingers that I still held were berry stained. She showed them to me with a laugh and a light word, and so made excuse to draw them away. Her hair had grown long enough to blow into her eyes, and she smoothed a soft loose wave of it as she questioned me about my voyage.

I was new to the wonder of seeing her there, so answered her stupidly. For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that found me unprepared. I made but a poor figure. It was as well that work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away and direct the men.

We ate our supper at the time of the last daylight, and the whippoorwills were calling and the water singing in the reeds. It was a silent meal, but I sat beside the woman, and when it was over I drew her with me to the shore. It was very still. Fireflies danced in the grasses, and the stars pricked out mistily through a gauze of cloud. I wrapped the woman in her fur coat, and bade her sit, while I stretched myself at her feet. Then I turned to her.

"Madame, have you questions for me that you did not wish the men to hear?"

She sat very quietly, but I knew that her hand, which was within touch of mine, grew suddenly rigid.

"Monsieur, you heard nothing of Lord Starling?"

I touched her hand lightly. "Nothing, madame. I have no news."

"Then matters stand just as they did a week ago?"

I hesitated. "As concerns Lord Starling, yes. As concerns ourselves—— Madame, I carry a lighter heart than I did. All this week I have feared that you were fretting at the loneliness and the rough surroundings. But I find you serene and the surface of life smooth. It is a gallant spirit that you bring to this situation. I thank you, madame."

She did not speak for a moment, so that I wondered if I had vexed her. I looked up straight into her great eyes that were full on me, and there was something disquietingly alight in her glance, a flicker of that lightning that had played between us on the day of the storm.

"Monsieur!" she cried, with a little sobbing laugh. "I beg you never to thank me—for anything. The stream of gratitude must always run from me to you. I have not been serene because of any will of mine. It has been instinctive. I can sometimes carry out a fixed purpose, but I do it stiffly, inflexibly, not as you do, with a laugh and a shrug, monsieur. No, no! My serenity has not been calculated. I have been—I have been almost happy. It is strange, but it is true."

I drew my hand away from her finger tips, for my own were shaking. "Madame, what makes you happy?"

She looked down at me with frank seriousness, but her eyes still kept their sweet, strange brightness; she pressed her palms together as she always did when much in earnest.

"Monsieur, is it so strange after all? Think of the wonder of what I see about me! The great stars, the dawns, and the strange waters that go no one knows where. I have lived all my life in courts and have not felt trammeled by them, but now—— Monsieur, there is a freedom, yes, and a happiness stirring in me that I have not known. I wonder if you understand?"

I watched the starlight draw elfin lines across her face, and my heart suddenly cried through my tongue words that my brain would have forbidden.

"I understand this at least. Madame, you talk of happiness. I am finding happiness at this moment that I never felt at court,—no, nor in the wilderness till now."

She did not draw back nor protest, but she looked at me with wistful gravity.

"Monsieur—— Monsieur"——

"I am your servant, madame."

She halted. "This is a masque, a comedy," she stumbled. "This—this life in the greenwood. Does it not seem a fantasy?"

"You seem very real to me, madame."

"Monsieur, I tell you, it is a masque. Will you not help me play it as such?"

"You treat it as a masque in your own heart, madame?"

She turned her face into the shadow. "I eat, I sleep, I laugh with the birds, and I play with Singing Arrow. I do not look ahead." She rose. "Play with me. Play it is a dream, monsieur."

I rose and stepped beside her toward her cabin. "I am a man," I said, with a short laugh of my own. "I cannot spin words nor cheat myself. But I shall not distress you. Do not fear me, madame."

But her step lingered. "You leave us soon?"

"At dawn to-morrow."

"Monsieur! And you go"——

"To the Winnebagoes. I shall return in a week."

She clasped her hands behind her as if her white cloak bound her. "To the Winnebagoes,—to another tribe of Indians! Are you sure that they are friendly? I forget that there are Indians in the forest, since I see none here. Ah, you must sleep now if you are to rise so early. Good-night, and—thank you, monsieur. Good-night." I had hardly bowed to her in turn before her long light step had brought her to her door.

And then I went back to work. The furs had been sorted, labeled, and cached; the canoe had been dried, and its splints examined and new bales of merchandise had been made up for the trip on the morrow. But there remained much writing and figuring to be gone over. It seemed as if I had but closed my eyes when Labarthe touched me on the shoulder and told me it was dawn.

And out in the dawn I found the woman. She had seen to it that the whole camp was astir, and the fire was crackling and the kettle already puffing steam. The morning was austere and gray-veiled, so that the red blaze was like the cheer of home. We ate with laughter, and sleepy birds scolded in the thickets. The woman sparkled with dainty merriment that held my thanks at bay. It was only when she waved her adieus at the beach that she dropped her foils.

"I shall pray for fair winds, monsieur," she called.

I looked back at her across the widening water. "Madame, can you hear me? The wind I pray for will blow me back to you."

Metaphor aside, it was a favorable day and the breeze was with us. We pushed up a tarpaulin on our paddles for a square sail, and covered the distance to the west shore of La Baye in a few hours. Before night we were lifting the rush mats that hung before the reed-thatched lodges of the Winnebagoes.

And here for seven days I plied my trade. A man has many coats and all may fit him. The one that I wore in those days showed the bells and ribands of the harlequin, but there was chain armor underneath. I counted my results as satisfactory when I started home.

We did not reach the camp on this second homecoming till after the stars were out. That left me too few hours for a large labor, and I had but hurried greetings from the woman while all the camp looked on. The men were sleek from idleness, and I had need to goad them with word and eye. It was late before I could linger at the woman's cabin and beg a word. She sat with Singing Arrow, watching the soft night, and again her first question was of her cousin.

"You have heard nothing of Lord Starling?"

Was this fear of him or a covert wish to meet him? "Nothing, madame," I replied. "But I have been to the south far out of your cousin's way. I go next to the Malhominis. I think I shall certainly hear tidings of him there."

"You go to-morrow?"

"I must, madame. Madame, I have been anxious about you. Will you promise me not to stray alone from the camp?"

She left the cabin and came and stood beside me in the quiet and starshine. She looked off at the forest.

"Is there danger around us, monsieur?"

I followed her look back into the dark timber. We both hushed our breathing till we heard the moan of the water and the lament of some strange night bird. The woman was so small, and yet I left her in the wilderness without me!

"Keep close to the camp," I said hoarsely. "No, I know of no danger. But keep close to the camp."

Her glance came back to me. "Ah, you do think there is danger! But, monsieur, of yourself—— If there is peril for me there must be more for you."

She looked at me fully, with no fear in her eyes, but with quick, intelligent concern. She stood beside me in the dusk, as wife should stand with husband, and feared for my safety and forgot her own. Yet I dared not touch her hand. I lifted my sword and slammed it in its scabbard.

"There is no danger," I said, with stupid brusqueness. "I am over-anxious. I bid you good-night, madame."

I went to the Malhominis with haste pushing me, for I hoped for news of Starling. I pressed forward, yet I recoiled. There would be cross-threads to untangle when I met my wife's cousin.

It was wonderful voyaging to the Malhominis. Their village was near the mouth of a river, and they were close bound with great rice swamps that gave them their name. Our low canoe burrowed through a tunnel of green as we nosed our way up to their camp. Birds fluttered in the tangle, and fish bubbled to the surface under our paddles. I did not wonder that I found the tribe as well fed as summer beavers. But I learned nothing from them. They were a good-natured people, as running over with talk as idle women, and they assured me that I was the first white man they had seen since the moon of worms. We talked of the Huron situation at Michillimackinac, but they said nothing of having seen a warrior of that tribe, so I made sure that Pemaou had not been with them. I swallowed relief and disappointment. They said that a small company of Sacs was encamped to the north, and that Father Nouvel was with them. So after a few days I went on.

A waft of fetid air on a hot day will bring the smell of that Sac camp to me even now. The Sacs were a migratory, brutish people, who snatched at life red-handed and growling, and as I squatted in their dirty hovels, I lost, like a dropped garment, all sense of the wonder and freedom of my wilderness life. Suddenly all the forest seemed squalid, and a longing for the soft ease and cleanliness of civilization came on me like a wave. But I hid the feeling, and lingered, though my welcome was but slight. Even my small cask of brandy failed to buy their smiles, and it was only when I talked of war that they listened. They were a useless people on the water, for they could not handle canoes, but land warfare was their meat. So I talked long.

I found Father Nouvel among them, his delicate old face shining white and serene amid their grime. I fell upon him eagerly, but he could tell me nothing. He had left the Pottawatamies the day after the wedding, and had heard no rumors of any Englishman. I did not take him into my confidence. He had outlived the time when the abstract terms "ambition" and "patriotism" had meaning to him. The story of my hopes would have tinkled in his ears like the blarings of a child's trumpet. But in one matter he questioned me.

"Your wife,—should you not have brought her with you, monsieur?"

I felt piqued. "But her comfort, Father Nouvel!"

He looked me over. "I think somehow that she would prefer your company to her own comfort," he said, and when I did not answer he looked troubled. When he bade me good-by, he spoke again.

"Your wife came strangely near my heart. You are giving her a hard life. You will be patient with her, monsieur?"

I bowed, for I did not wish to answer. Mine was a real marriage to Father Nouvel. I thought of the look in the priest's eyes as he made us man and wife, and of the voices of the Indian women as they chanted of life and marriage, and I shut my teeth on a sudden feeling of bitterness. A man may be counted rich yet know himself to be a pauper. I never saw Father Nouvel again. If he were living now I would go far to meet him.

It was a long day's travel back to Sturgeon Cove, and night had fallen before we wound our passage around the curves of the bay and saw the clear eye of the evening fire burning steadily on the shore. Our double trip had taken eleven days, and for me the time had lagged. I had carried an unreasoning weight of oppression, and the shout that I gave at sight of the black figures around the blaze was an outburst of relief.

My company flung themselves at the shore, and all talked at once.

"For three days we have watched," Singing Arrow scolded.

The woman stood near, and I went to her. "Have you watched for three days?" I asked, with my lips on her hand.

"Yes," she said, and then I felt ashamed, for her eyes looked worn and troubled.

"Forgive me, madame," I murmured, though I scarcely knew for what, and I felt embarrassed and without words.

"I will stay here to-morrow," I said stupidly, and when she said that she was glad, it did not seem to me that she meant it. I saw her no more that night.

But with the fresh morning I forgot all chill. We lingered over a breakfast of broiled bass, and the woman showed me a canoe that Simon had made for her. Simon was the deft-fingered member of my crew, and he had fashioned a fairy craft. I saw that it would carry two, and I said to the woman that we would take it, and have a day of idleness together. I feared she might demur, but she did not. Indeed, she suddenly laughed out like a child without much reason, and there was that in the sound that satisfied me, until I swore at the men and their blundering to keep down my own joy.

We took materials for lunch and started before the dew was dry. The woman showed me her new skill with the paddle, and I praised her without care for my conscience. We went slowly and we talked much. Yet we talked only of the birds and the woods and the paddling. Never of ourselves.

At noon we landed in a pocket of an inlet on the south side of the cove toward its mouth. There was a wonderful meadow there with tiger lilies burning like blood and a giant sycamore leaning to the water. I cooked a venison steak on hot stones, and we had maize cakes and wild berries and water from a spring. We sat alone at meat as we had never done.

After lunch the woman sat under the sycamore and I lay at her feet. I looked up at her till her eyes dropped.

"Madame," I whispered, "madame, you were vexed with me last night."

She forced her glance to mine. "Monsieur, I had been terribly anxious for three days. When I saw you"——

A sun ray fell across her face, and I took my hat and held it between her and the light. "You did not finish," I said. "I will help you. When you saw that I was safe you were vexed that I had not come earlier and so saved you anxiety? Is that what you were about to say, madame?"

She turned to smile and shake her head at my seriousness. She fought down her rising color and held her head like a gallant boy.

"I was unreasonable," she said. "Please forget it. Did your trading prosper, monsieur?"

But I would not shift my eyes. "I shall try not to vex you again in that way. I did not think—except of my own anxiety. Let me tell you what I have been doing. I have been trading, yes, but I have also"——

"Careful, monsieur!"

"I wish you to know. Madame, I am succeeding in my intriguing among the tribes. I talk more than I trade. You would smile at my rhetoric and call me a mountebank, but I am succeeding. I tell the tribes that when more than one Englishman reaches here the whole race will follow and will overflow the hunting grounds as a torrent does the lowlands. I tell them the English will bring the Iroquois. I show them that the French are their only protection. They listen, for what I say is not new. It has been talked around their fires for a long time, but the tribes are not powerful enough to act alone, and they have lacked a leader who could unite them. I think that they will follow me if I call them to war, madame!"

She looked at me steadily. "War upon whom, monsieur?"

"War upon the Iroquois. Upon the English if they venture near."

"And you tell me this because"——

"Because I wish sincerity between us."

My hat lay at her feet, and she pressed its sorry plume between her fingers. "Monsieur, if you had heard news of Lord Starling during this last week you would have told me at once."