"I should have told you at once, madame. I am glad you introduced this matter. Does your mind still hold? Or do you now think that we should seek your cousin?"

Again she lowered her eyes, but I did not miss the sudden flash in them. "My cousin chose his path. Why need we interfere? Have you—have you theories as to where he can be?"

I flicked my finger at a wandering robin. "I am as guiltless of theories as that bird. It is passing strange. Your cousin and our ghostly Huron seem to have gone up in vapor."

"Our ghostly Huron, monsieur?"

I planted my elbows on the grass that I might face her. "Listen, madame. It is time you knew the story of Pemaou." And thereupon I recited all that had happened between the Huron and myself from the day when we had played at shuttlecock with spears till the night when he had shadowed us at the Pottawatamie camp,—the night before our wedding. I even told her of the profile in his pouch.

She winced at that. "Why did you not tell me before?"

"It seemed useless to alarm you."

"But you tell me now."

I smiled at her. "I know you better. It seems fitting to tell you everything now, madame."

She looked at me with a frown of worry. "Monsieur, you are in danger from that Huron. He hates you if you humbled him."

I laughed at her. "He would not dare harm a Frenchman, madame."

"Then why does he follow you?"

But there I could only shrug. "He was probably in Lord Starling's pay, and was keeping track of us that he might direct your cousin to us. But we have shaken him off."

She thought this over for some time without speaking, and I was content to lie silent at her feet. Bees droned in the flowers and white drifts of afternoon clouds floated over us. I was happy in the moment, and more than that, I was drugged with my dreams of the future. There were days and days and days before us. This was but the threshold. And then, with my ear to the ground, I heard the sound of an axe. The sound of an axe in an untraveled wilderness!

I crowded closer to the ground. My blood beat in my temples, and I was awake with every muscle. But I learned nothing. The sound of an axe and then silence.

The woman looked at me. "Monsieur, is something wrong? Your face has changed."

I stretched out my hand to her. "You must not grow fanciful. But come. It is time to go home, madame."

I pushed her into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the light. I dropped my paddle.

"Tell me more about yourself. Talk to me. Tell me of your childhood," I breathed.

She put out her hand. "Monsieur! Our contract!"

I let the canoe drift. "Madame; tell me the truth. Why do you hold yourself so detached from me? Is it—— Madame, is it because you fear that we shall learn to love each other,—to love against our wills?"

She looked down. "It would be a tragedy if we did, monsieur."

"You would think it a tragedy to learn to love me?"

"It could be nothing else, monsieur."

The breeze took us where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking canoe. I leaned forward.

"Listen, madame, you know life. You know how little is often given under the bond of marriage. You know how men and women live long lives together though completely sundered in heart, and how others though separated in life walk side by side in the spirit. As this is so, why do you fear to see or know too much of me? Propinquity does not create love."

Still she looked down. "Men say that it does, monsieur."

"Then why are so many marriages unhappy? No, madame, you know better than that. And you know that if love should grow between us it would sweep away your toy barriers like paper. Nearness or absence would not affect it. Madame, let me have your hand."

"No, no! Monsieur, I do not know you."

"You shall know me better. Come, what is a hand? There. Madame, would you prefer, from now on, to travel in hardship with me rather than be left in comfort here?"

"I should indeed, monsieur."

"Then you shall go with me."

"But your work, monsieur!"

I released her hand and picked up my paddle. "I see that Indian tribes are not my only concern," I explained. "I have other matters to conquer. We shall not be separated from now on."

She did not answer, and I paddled home in silence with my eyes on her face. As we landed, she gave me her hand.

"I do not care for supper, and am going to my house. Good-night, monsieur."

I bowed over her hand. "Are you glad that you are to travel with me and know me better? Are you glad, madame?"

She smiled a little. "I—I think so, monsieur."

"You are not sure? Think of it to-night. Perhaps you will tell me to-morrow. Will you tell me to-morrow, madame?"

She drew back into the dusk. "Perhaps—to-morrow. Good-night, monsieur."

I walked through the meadow. I would not eat supper and I would not work. Finally I called Simon. He was a strange, quiet man, not as strong as the others of the crew, but of use to me for his knowledge of woodcraft. As a boy he had been held captive by the Mohawks, and he was almost as deft of hand and eye as they.

"Have you seen any sign or sound of Indian or white men in these three weeks?" I asked him.

He looked at me rather sullenly. "Yes. A canoe went through here one night about a week ago."

"Who was in it?"

"I do not know."

"You should have followed."

"I did."

"You should have reported to me."

He glowered at me with the eye of a rebellious panther. "I watched. The master went away." Then he showed his teeth in open defiance. "I watched every night on the beach. The master slept or went away."

I opened my mouth to order him under guard, but I did not form the words. I thought of the way that he had spent his days working on the delicately fashioned canoe and his nights in keeping guard. And all for the woman. Women make mischief in the wilderness. I grew pitiful.

"Watch again to-night," I said kindly, "and you shall sleep to-morrow. Simon, I thought that I heard the sound of an axe off the south shore to-day. I shall take the small canoe at daybreak and see what I can find. Tell the camp I have gone fishing. I shall return by noon. And, Simon"——

"Yes, master."

"Madame de Montlivet is your special care till I return."



CHAPTER XIX

IN THE MIST

I slipped off in grayness the next morning. There was a water fog that hugged me clammily, and sounds echoed in it as in a metal canopy. I could not have found my way in open water, but here I could crowd tight to the shore and keep my bearings. I took a keg of pitch with me, for when I saw the weather I knew that I would give the canoe many a scrape on rocks and snags.

It was tedious traveling, and it seemed a long time before I made my worming way around every inequality in the shore and reached the inlet where we had eaten lunch. Here I lifted the canoe, turned it bottom side up in the meadow, and covered it with a sailcloth. I wanted it to dry, and the air was still dripping moisture. I had expected the fog to lift before this, but it seemed to be growing heavier.

I tried to light my pipe, but the tobacco was damp and would not burn. Slow drops dribbled from the trees and the meadow was soggy. Where should I go? I could hear nothing, and as for seeing anything I could have passed my own camp a rod away. It began to seem a fool's errand. I thought of returning.

Perhaps it was a boyish feeling that took me to the sycamore. I looked about. The ashes of our little fire still lay in a rounded pile, and at the edge of the pile, printed deep in the yielding surface, was a moccasin print. It was not the woman's moccasin, nor my own boot. One look showed me that.

And then I went over the surrounding ground. I learned nothing, for pebbles and short grass are as non-committal as a Paris pavement. The print had been made before the mist fell, for the dew was unbrushed. I looked at the encircling forest, and its dripping uniformity gave no clue. I knocked the charred tobacco from my pipe, pulled my hat down on my ears, and plunged straight ahead.

It was a fool's way of going at the matter, but a fool has as good a chance as a philosopher in such a case. I clove my way through the mist as blind and breathless as a swimmer in a breaker. The forest was thickly grown and the trees stood about me as alike as water-reeds. Whenever I touched one it pelted me with drops, and I was numbed with cold. My feet slipped, for the ground was slimy with wet. But I was not thinking of comfort, nor of speed. I was listening.

For the strange, gray air was trembling with echoes. Every snapped twig, every bird murmur, every brush of a padded foot on leaf mould was multiplied many-fold. The fog was a sounding-board. All the spectral space around me, above me, below me was quivering and talking. My very breath was peopled with murmurs. I have been in many fogs, but none like this one. If the spirits of the dead should revisit us, they would whisper, I think, as the air whispered around me then.

How long I groped, learning nothing, I do not know, for when the mind forgets the body minutes may be long or short, and no count is taken of them. But at last among the noises that knocked at my ear came a new note. I heard a human voice.

And then, indeed, I pressed all my faculties into service. I put my ear to the wet ground and strained it against tree trunks, trying to weed out the myriad tiny whisperings that assailed me and grasp that one sound that I wanted and hold it clear. And at last I heard it unmistakably; there were voices, more than one it seemed.

My ears buzzed with my effort to listen. I heard the sound, lost it, then heard it again. It was like a child's game. I heard it, blundered after it, then it disappeared. I turned to go back, and it came behind and mocked me. It was everywhere and nowhere. It came near, then faded into silence. The fog suffocated me; I found myself pressing at it with my hands.

Yet on the whole I made progress. In time the voices grew clearer. There were several of them, perhaps many. I heard shouting,—orders, presumably,—and once a clink of metal,—an iron kettle it might have been. But the sound was back of me, in front of me, at the sides of me, above me. I could not hold it. It reverberated like the drumming of a woodcock that comes to the ear from four quarters at once. And all the time the fog pressed on my eyelids like a hand.

I had left my musket hidden under the canoe, for I could not have used it in the dampness, so I had only my knife for guard. I carried it open, and made an occasional notch upon a tree. Once I came to a notched tree a second time. The old woodland madness was on me, and I was stepping in circles. Yet the sounds were growing clearer. They were approaching, though I could not tell from what quarter. I stood still.

What followed was like a dream; like the dream that I had had the night after the storm when I woke with sweat cold on me. The fog pinioned me like a clammy winding-sheet; I could see nothing; I was too chilled to feel; I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the damp leather of the carrying-straps. Something cracked, pricking in my ears in a blur of sound, and I knew that the men had brushed a branch with the canoe that they were carrying on their heads. They were near me; at any moment they might come within touch of my hand. But where were they? Whoever they were, whatever they were, the wish to see them became an obsession. I knew no feeling but my tingling to get at them. I pushed to right and left. I knocked against trees. The sounds were here, then there. I could not reach them. They taunted me as lost spirits tantalize a soul in purgatory. Whichever way I turned they were just out of my grasp. I clenched my hands and swore that I would not be beaten.

But my pitiful little oath was all bluster and impotent defiance. I was as helpless as a squirming puppy held by the neck. I ran like a madman, but I ran the wrong way. The invisible crew passed me, and their voices faded. I heard them melt, melt into nothing. A sound, an impression,—that had been all. Not even a gray shadow on the fog to show that I had not been dreaming. I looked at my skinned knuckles and disordered clothes, and a strange feeling shook me. A certain rashness of temperament had all my life made me contemptuous of fear. But this was different. I tried to laugh at myself, but could not.

It was a simple matter to retrace my route, for I had left a trail like a behemoth's. And one thought I chewed all the way back to the meadow. If I could have done it over again I should have called, and so have drawn whatever thing it was toward me. That would have been dangerous, and I might have paid the forfeit of a head that was not my own to part with, but at least I should have seen what thing it was that passed me in the fog. There began to be something that was not wholly sound and sane in the depth of my feeling that I ought, at whatever cost, to have confronted that noise and forced it to declare itself.

When I came to the meadow it was wet and spectral. The fog had lifted somewhat and now the air was curiously luminous. It appeared transparent, as if the vision could pierce far-stretching reaches, but when I tried to peer ahead I found my glance baffled a few feet away. It was as if the world ended suddenly, exhaled in grayness, just beyond the reach of my hand. It made objects remote and unreal and singularly shining. I looked toward the sycamore, and my heart beat fast for a moment, for I thought that a pool of fresh blood lay in the grass where the woman and I had sat the day before. But I looked again and saw that it was only the bunch of red lilies that she had plucked and worn and thrown away. I had told her that their red was the color of war, and she had let them drop to the ground. I went to them and picked them up, and they left heavy, scarlet stains upon my fingers.

When I went to the canoe I found it still damp, but I uncovered it and went to work to do what I could with the frayed seams. An unreasoning haste had possession of me, and I worked fumblingly and badly, like a man with fear behind him. Yet I was not afraid. I was consumed by the feeling that I must get back to camp and to the woman without delay.

Kneeling to my work with my back to the forest, strange noises came behind and begged attention. But I would not look up. I had had enough of visions and whisperings and a haunted wood. I wanted my canoe and my paddle and a chance to shoot straight and to get home. For already I thought of the camp as home, and of this meadow as a place where I had been held for a long time. It was a strange morning.

And so it was that even when I heard the thud, thud of a man's step behind me I did not turn. A man's step is unlike an animal's, and I had no doubt in my heart that a man was coming. But let him come to me. My immediate and pressing concern was to repair my canoe that I might get to camp, and I would squander neither movement nor eyesight till that was done. A few moments before it had seemed a vital matter to find what creatures they were that whispered and rustled past me in the grayness. Now my anxiety was transferred.

The echoing fog played witchcraft with the step as it had done with the other noises. The sound came, came, came,—a steady, moderate note; no haste, no dallying, no indecision. Quiet, purposeful, controlled, it sounded; that pace, pace, that came through the twig-carpeted timber. The Greek Fates were pictured as moving with just that even relentlessness of stride. Yet in life, so far as I have seen it, tragedies commonly pounce upon us, like a wolfish cat upon her prey, and we find ourselves stunned and mangled before we gather dignity to meet the blow. I thought of this, in an incoherent, muddy way, as the step came nearer. And I worked with hurrying hands at the canoe.

Then came a voice. No whispering, no rustling, nothing vague and formless and haunting, but a low, commanding call:—

"Bonjour, mon ami."

I did not start. If I turned slowly it was because I knew what was waiting me, and was adjusting several possibilities to meet it. It was a man's voice that called, yet its every inflection was familiar, familiar as the beating of my heart. For madame, my wife, had called to me more or less often in the twin of that voice with its slurring deliberateness and its insolent disregard of the pitfall accents of a foreign tongue. And now I turned to meet her cousin, the man whom she had promised to marry; the man who had deserted her to the knives of savages; the man whom she despised and yet feared, and who now called to me in a voice that was hers and yet was not; that haunted and repelled, all in one. I did not think out any of this by rule and line. I only knew that I dreaded meeting this man who was stepping, stepping into my life through the fog, and that I turned to meet him with my heart like ice but my brain on fire.

I had ado to keep my tongue from exclaiming when I turned. I do not know why I expected the man to be small, except that I myself am overly large, and that I was looking for him to be my antithesis in every way. But the figure that loomed toward me out of the luminous mist dwarfed my own stature. Never had my eyes seen so powerful a man. Long and swinging as an elk, he had the immense, humped shoulders of a buffalo and the length of arm of a baboon. His head would have sat well on some rough bronze coin of an early day. Semitic in type he looked, with his eagle-beaked nose and prominent cheek bones, but the blue of his eyes was English. They were intelligent eyes.

He looked at me a moment, and I stood silent for his initiative. I remembered that I was dressed roughly, was torn and rumpled by my contest with the forest, and that I must appear an out-at-elbows coureur de bois. He would not know me for the man he was seeking. I waited for him to ask my name, and selected one to give him that was my own and yet was not M. de Montlivet. Since names cannot be sold nor squandered, my father had bequeathed me a plethora of them.

But I credited the Englishman with too little acuteness. He stepped forward. "This is Monsieur de Montlivet?"

I could do no less than bow, but I kept my hand by my side. "And you, monsieur?"

He smiled as at one indulging a childish skirmish of wits; but controlled as his face was, I could see the relief that overspread it at my admission. "My name is Starling. I have a packet for you, monsieur," and he handed me Cadillac's letter.

I hated the farce of the whole affair, and when I ran my eye over Cadillac's message, which I could forecast word for word, I felt like a play-acting fool. But I read it and put it in my pocket.

"You have had a long trip, Lord Starling," I said, with some show of courtesy. "It is new to see a man of your nation in this land!"

He waved me and my words into limbo.

"Where is the Englishman,—the prisoner?"

A folded blanket lay beside the canoe, and I shook it out and spread it on the dew-drenched grass. "Will you sit, Lord Starling? Forgive me if I smoke. It is unusual grace to meet a man of my own station, and I would enjoy it in my own way. Will you do the same? I see you have your pipe."

He swung his great arm like a war club. "Where is the prisoner?"

I sat on the red blanket and filled my pipe. "I know of no prisoner."

I thought he would have broken into oaths, but instead he shrugged his shoulders. He walked to the other side of the blanket, and I saw that he limped painfully. Then he sat down opposite me, his great turtle neck standing up between his humping shoulders. With all his size and ugliness he was curiously well finished,—a personality. He was a man to sway men and women. I felt it as I felt his likeness to his cousin, a likeness that I could not put my finger on but that I knew was there. Small wonder that she dreaded him. He was a replica in heavy lines of the sterner traits in her own nature. He had something of her curiously winning quality, too. Did she feel that? She had promised to marry him. I lit my pipe and smoked, and waited for him to declare himself.

He did it with his glance hard on me. "You are playing for time. Is that worthy your very evident intelligence, monsieur, since you can protract the game only the matter of a few hours at most? I have Cadillac's warrant for the prisoner."

I smoked. I felt no haste for speech. What I had to say would make a brutal, tearing wound, and I hugged my sense of power and gloated over it like an Iroquois. A woman was between us, and I knew no mercy.

My silence appeared to amuse him. He studied me and looked unhurried and reflective. He stretched out a long, yellow arm in simulation of contented weariness. "I wonder why you wish to keep the prisoner with you longer," he marveled.

And then I laughed. I looked him full in the face and laughed again. "But I have no prisoner. Unless, indeed, matrimony be a sort of bondage. I travel with my wife, with Madame de Montlivet, nee Starling, monsieur."

I knew that I had cut him in a vital part, but he held himself well. An oath burst from him, but it did not move his great, immobile face into betraying lines. Yet when he tried to speak his voice trailed off in an unmeaning rattle. He tried twice, and his hands were sweat-beaded. Then he heaved his great bulk upward and stood over me, his baboon arms reaching for my throat.

"The marriage was honest? Speak."

I could respect that feeling. "Father Nouvel married us," I replied. "We found him at the Pottawatamie Islands. I marvel that you did not hear news of us from there, monsieur."

He sank back on the blanket. "I did not go there. I sprained my ankle." He talked still with that curious rattling in his voice. "I lost time and the damned Indians left me. When did you discover"——

"I married madame as soon as I discovered. Monsieur, you are of her family. I can assure you that I have shown your cousin all the respect and consideration in my power."

He looked at me as if I were some smirking carpet knight who prated of conventions when a man was dying.

"Where is she?"

"In my camp, monsieur."

"Take me to her."

"Monsieur, I must refuse."

He opened his mouth with a look that cursed me, but before the words came he thought twice and changed his front. He spoke calmly. "I am her guardian and her cousin. I was her intended husband. You are a gentleman. I ask you to bring me to my cousin, monsieur."

His tone of calm possession fired me, I remembered what he was, and I enumerated his titles in order.

"Yes. You are the guardian who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in the future, monsieur."

The great face turned yellow to the eyes. "She told you this?"

"I am no mind reader, monsieur."

And then he turned away. I took one glimpse of his face and knew it was not decent to look a second time. He had done a hideous thing, but he was having a hideous punishment. Nature had formed him for a proud man, and he had lived arrogantly, secure of homage. I wondered now that he could live at all.

And so I went to work at the canoe, and waited till he should turn to me. When he did it was with a child's plea for pity, and the abjectness of his tone was horrible, coming from a man of his girth and power.

"You might have done the same thing yourself, monsieur."

I bowed. I could not but toss him that bone of comfort, for it was the truth. Sometimes a spring snaps suddenly in a man, and he becomes a brute. How could I boast that I would be immune?

"But I would have shot myself the moment after," I said.

He had regained his level. "Then you would have been a double coward. I shall do better."

"You think to reinstate yourself?"

"I know that I shall reinstate myself. Monsieur, I throw myself upon your courtesy. I ask to be taken to my cousin."

"No, monsieur. I follow my wife's wishes."

"I loved her, monsieur."

My pity of the moment before was gone like vapor. I looked up from my canoe, and took the man's measure. "I think not. You loved something, I grant. Her wit, perhaps, her money, the pleasure she gave your epicure's taste. But you did not love her, the woman. My God, if you loved her how could you endure to scatter her likeness broadcast among the savages as you did? To make that profile, that mouth, that chin, the jest and property of a greasy Indian! No, you shall not see my wife, monsieur."

He changed no line at my outburst. "Then I shall follow by force. I shall sit here till you move, monsieur."

I shrugged. "A rash promise. Are your provisions close at hand?"

He looked at me steadfastly. "Then you absolutely refuse to take me to her?"

"I refuse."

"Yet I shall reach her."

I took moss from my pocket and calked a seam with some precision. I did not speak.

"You think that I cannot reach her?"

I smiled. There was a womanish vein in the man that he should press me in this fashion for a useless answer. I began to see his weakness as well as his obvious strength. I waited till he asked yet again.

"You think that I shall not be able to reach your wife, monsieur?"

And then I shrugged and examined him over my pipe-bowl. "Yes, you will reach her, I think. You have a certain persistence that often wins small issues,—seldom large ones. But I shall not help you."

"I shall stay here till you go."

"Then we shall be companions for some time. May I offer you tobacco, monsieur?"

He smiled, though wryly and against his will. It was plain that we were taking a certain saturnine enjoyment out of the situation. We could hate each other well, and we were doing it, but we were both starved for men's talk,—the talk of equals.

"It seems a pity to detain you," he mused. "You are obviously on business. When I came up behind you I thought that I had never seen a man work in such a frenzy of haste. There was sweat on your forehead."

I waved my pipe at him. I had the upper hand, and I felt cruelly jovial. "It was haste to meet you," I assured him. "I missed you in the fog, and feared you would reach camp before me."

"You feared me, monsieur?"

I felt an unreasoning impulse to be candid with him. The strange, choking terror had swept back at that instant, and again it had me by the throat. Yet here sat the cause of my terror before me, and he was in my power.

"I feared your Indians." I spoke gravely. "Handle those Hurons carefully, monsieur. It is a tricky breed."

"But I have no"—— He stopped, and looked at me strangely. "What made you think that I was near?"

"For one thing I heard your axe yesterday."

"But yesterday I was five leagues from here."

I whistled through my teeth. I hate a useless lie. "I heard your axe," I reiterated. "This morning you and your men passed me in the fog."

He stared at me, then at the forest. "Monsieur, I have no men!"

"What?"

"I came alone."

"Monsieur, you are lying."

"It is you who are mad. Take your hands away!"

"I will let you go when you tell me the truth. Remember, your men passed me this morning."

"I tell you, I came alone."

"Where are your Indians that Cadillac sent with you?"

"I sprained my ankle and they left me."

"Where did they go?"

"How should I know? I tell you they left me."

"Was Pemaou, the Huron, one of them?"

"He was guide. Monsieur, what do you mean?"

I could not answer. My throat was dry as if I breathed a furnace blast. I looked at the canoe under my hands. It was not seaworthy. "Will your canoe carry two?" I cried.

He nodded. His great rough face was sickly with suspense. "Monsieur, what does this mean?"

I swore at him and at the hour he had made me lose. "Men passed me in a fog. They have been hiding here for a day at least. Show me your canoe. We must get to camp. Yes, come with me. Come, show me your canoe."



CHAPTER XX

WHAT I FOUND

Once in the canoe I bade Lord Starling crouch low, and I paddled fiercely. I breathed hard not from exertion, but like a swimmer fighting for his breath. I was submerged in waves of terror, yet I had no name for what I feared. I learned then that there is but one real terror in the world,—fear of the unseen. The man who feels terror of an open foe must be a strange craven.

Lord Starling respected my mood and was silent. He sat warily, shifting his weight to suit the plunging canoe.

"The fog chokes me," he said at length. "How large a camp have you? Whom did you leave on guard?"

I told him.

"That should be sufficient."

"Not for a concerted attack."

"But who would make a concerted attack?"

I lengthened my stroke till the canoe quivered. "I am not sure. I have been shadowed. I thought it was by your order. I cannot talk and paddle, monsieur."

But I could paddle and think. And always I saw the meadow as we had found it that first day with drifts of white butterflies over the flowers, and the woods warm and beckoning. How would the meadow look now?

But when we came to it I thought it looked unchanged, save that the fog made all things sinister. We crashed through the guarding reeds, and I let the canoe drive hard upon the sand. No one was in sight, and a wolf was whining at the edge of the timber. I leaped to the shore.

I think that I called as I stumbled forward. I saw the ashes of a dead fire, and a cask that had held rum lying with the sides and end knocked in. Then I saw a dead body.

I did not hasten then. My feet crawled. The body lay sprawled and limp with its out-stretched fingers clutching. One hand pointed toward the woman's cabin.

I turned the corpse over. It was Simon. His scarlet head was still dripping, but his face was untouched. I saw that he had died despairing, and I laid him back with a prayer on my lips but with the lust to kill in my heart.

I went through the cabins quickly but methodically. I think that I made no sound of grief or excitement, but I knew indefinitely that Lord Starling was following me, and that, at horribly measured intervals, he gave short, panting groans. But I did not speak to him, nor he to me.

I spoke for the first time at the woman's cabin. I looked within and saw that it was untouched; then I put out my arm and barred Lord Starling's way.

"I have never stepped in here, and you shall not," I told him with my jaws set, and I think that I struck him across the face, though of that I have never been quite sure.

In my own lodge I found havoc. Bales had been broken open, and my papers were thrown and trampled. Many of the papers were blood-smeared.

I examined every cabin and every bale, then went to the ashes of the camp fire and stood still. Lord Starling followed, and I heard his smothered groan. I took out my knife.

"I shall kill you if you make that noise again," I said.

I think that I spoke quietly, but he stepped back. I saw that he was afraid,—afraid of losing his miserable, mistaken life,—and I laughed. I laughed for a long time. Hearing myself laugh, I knew that it sounded as if I were near insanity, but I was not. My head had never been clearer.

Perhaps Lord Starling conquered his fear. He came nearer and lifted his magnificent, compelling bulk above me.

"Listen!" he began. "We have been foes; we shall be again; but now we are knit closer than eye and brain in a common cause. I will deal with you with absolute truth as with my own right hand. Tell me. Tell me, in God's mercy! What do you know? Who did this? What can we do?"

His voice was judicial, but I saw his great frame swaying like a shambling ox. I marveled that he could show emotion. My own body felt dead.

"The woman has been taken away," my stiff, strange voice explained. "So far they have not harmed her."

"How do you know?"

"There are no marks of struggle. Simon resisted, and they killed him. The other men surrendered. The Indians wanted prisoners, not scalps."

"Was it Pemaou and his Hurons?"

"Yes."

"You are sure?"

"He left a broken spear in my lodge. There was bad blood between us once, and I broke the spear in two and tossed the pieces at him, telling him to keep them,—to keep them, for we should meet again. I humbled him. Now it is his jest. He is a capable Indian. He seems to have outwitted even you, monsieur."

Because I spoke as one dead he thought I needed leading. He took me by the arm and would have guided me gently to the canoe.

"Come, Monsieur de Montlivet, you must rouse yourself. We must start in pursuit."

I shook him off. "Sit here where it is dry. You need your strength. We have hours to get through here before we leave, and little to do to help us through the time. We must wait here for Pierre."

"What do you mean? We must go at once."

"No, we wait for Pierre. It may be dusk before he returns. I sent him over the portage yesterday with orders to explore some leagues to the south. We must wait for him. He can tell us whether Pemaou went east by way of the portage."

"But we lose time!"

"We gain it. If Pemaou did not go by way of the portage, he went west. He would not dare go north, for fear of the Pottawatamies, and he would have no object in going south. He went east or west. We can learn from Pierre."

The man's shoulders heaved. "Your men were cowards," he muttered.

I looked at him. So a coward could despise a coward! "My men were wise," I corrected. "With Simon killed there were only two men left,—one, rather, for Leclerc is a nonentity. Labarthe, left alone, was wise to surrender. He is skillful with Indians. Monsieur, tell me of your dealings with Pemaou. Tell me your trip here. I need details."

He measured me. "You dictate, monsieur?"

I pointed to Simon's body. "That is my claim."

He gulped at that, and turned his back on the red horror to fix his steady, critical gaze on my face. "After the massacre," he began, with an effort, "I followed many false trails. I went to Quebec, to Montreal. All this has nothing to do with what you wish to know. But at Montreal I first heard rumors of an English prisoner who was being carried westward. That sent me to Michillimackinac."

"You heard this rumor through the priests?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"I thought so. It is fortunate for the success of your somewhat complicated plans that you are a Catholic and a Jacobite."

"Is there a slur in that remark, monsieur?"

"Not unless the facts themselves are insulting, Our priests would see no hidden purpose in your story. They would be predisposed in favor of a Catholic and follower of James. They would give you letters where a commandant would not. It was good policy to go to them."

"But, monsieur, I am a Catholic!"

"Which, I repeat, is fortunate."

"Monsieur, this is wanton insult. Are you trying to pick a quarrel with me here, here with this tragedy around us? It is a dog's trick. I will not fight you."

Again I took out my knife. "I will not fight you here,—here with this tragedy around us,—but I may kill you. I shall do it if you do not tell me this story fairly. I care nothing for your life, and I need this story. I will have it if I have to choke it out of your throat."

"I am trying to tell you the story, monsieur."

"No. You are telling me a pleasant fairy tale of a love-lorn knight searching the wilderness for his lost mistress. A moving tale, monsieur, but not the true one. I want the real story. The story of the English spy who wishes to ransom his cousin, but who also treats secretly with the Hurons,—who treats with Pemaou, monsieur. Tell me his story."

His face did not alter. "You believe me a spy?"

"I have reason, monsieur."

Still he regarded me. "You might be right, but you are not. Monsieur, I am a broken man. I want nothing but my cousin. If there is intrigue around me I do not know it. I am telling you the truth."

I fought hard against the man's fascination, his splendid, ruined pomp. "You must have a code," I burst out. "There must be something you hold dear. Will you swear to me by the name of the woman that you have not had secret dealings with the Hurons?"

"I swear."

"But the profile that the Huron carried!"

"Those pictures I scattered broadcast. You will find them among the Algonquins, and the Ottawas of the upper river. My cousin has a distinctive profile. I offered rewards for news of any one—man or woman—who looked like the face that I had drawn."

I put out my hand. "I hope that I have wronged you, monsieur."

He bowed and touched my fingers. His own were icy, yet he shivered at the chill of mine. "Pemaou would not dare harm the woman. Monsieur de Montlivet, you know Indians. Surely Pemaou would not dare?"

I gripped my knife. "No man knows Indians! Where did you see Pemaou first?"

"At Michillimackinac. When I reached there and learned that the prisoner had gone with you I sent interpreters through the camps with offers of reward for news of your whereabouts. Pemaou came. He said he could locate you and I took him as guide."

"He selected his own escort?"

"Yes."

"And you traveled slowly?"

"Very slowly."

I fingered my pipe and bit hard at its stem. "Pemaou has played carefully. He had the woman captured and brought to camp. The time was not ripe for him to use her, so he let me carry her away. But he has had me shadowed. You played well into his hands, for you furnished blankets and provisions. He had no intention of letting you find us. We are equal dupes. I see that I wronged you, monsieur."

He looked down, his breath laboring. I could look at him now without recoil, for a common humiliation bound us. We were white and we had been tricked by a savage. We sat in heavy silence.

At last Starling spoke dully. "Why did Pemaou wait so long?"

I gripped my knife the closer. "That we shall learn when we learn what he has done with the woman."

He looked up with his jaw shaking. "Monsieur, we must make haste."

But I shook my head. "Monsieur, no. We must await Pierre."

The fog was withdrawing. It was noon, and I rose and made ready a grave for Simon. I chose a spot under a pine where I had seen the woman sit, and I dug deep as my crude implements would permit. Then I piled stones on the mound. The Englishman helped me, and together we said a prayer. We did not comment till our work was over. Then Starling looked down at the mound.

"I wonder why he was killed? The others surrendered."

I shrugged a trifle bitterly. "He loved the woman. It was not her fault. I doubt that she knew it, and she could not help it. But it cost him his life, for it made him attempt to carry a forlorn hope. And she never even knew. It is suicide to love a woman hopelessly, monsieur."

It was hideous when we went back to our seats by the ashes. The sun had come out hot and nauseating, and the flies buzzed horribly. We tried to crowd down food, but we could not swallow. We sat and chewed on our despairing thoughts, and hate that was a compound of physical faintness and sick uncertainty rose between us.

The Englishman took a miniature from his pocket and handed it to me.

"She gave it to me herself," he said. "With laughter and with kisses, monsieur."

I tried to wave the picture away, but I had not strength to resist looking. It was no profile that I saw. The brown eyes looked full in mine; merry eyes, challenging, fun-crowded, innocent. There were no sombre shadows there. There was spirit in plenty, but no sorrow. White shoulders rose from clouds of pink gauze, and the hair was powdered and pearl-wreathed and piled high in a coronet. It was not the face of the woman that I knew. I said so, and returned the portrait to the Englishman.

He could not resist baiting me. "You do not like it, monsieur?"

I shook my head. "It is nothing to me. It is the face of a laughing, trusting, untouched girl. I have never seen her."

"You say that you married her."

"Monsieur, this is a girl. I married a woman, a woman matured by tragedy. The eyes that are laughing in this portrait are wiser now. They have seen the depths of a man's treachery. But they have not lost their spirit, no, nor their tenderness, monsieur. You will find little that you recognize in the woman who is now my wife."

He kept his composure. "You use the word 'wife' very glibly," he said, with a yawn. "Do you use it when the lady is within hearing, as you do now?"

"She is my wife."

He laughed, for he saw he had drawn blood. "Your wife in name, perhaps,—I grant you that,—but not in fact. Do you think me blind that I should not see the two cabins. And you said that you had never crossed the threshold of the woman's room. I see that I shall find my cousin the maiden that I left her, monsieur."

I kept my lips closed. He had indeed drawn blood. I could not answer. He leaned forward and tapped a significant forefinger on my knee.

"Remember, she has kissed me, monsieur. She has kissed me often of her own will."

And then my spirit did return. "That does not concern me."

He lifted his great lip. "You are indulgent."

The flies buzzed odiously. The Englishman was gloating over me, his great head craned forward like a buzzard's. My brain took fire.

"I am not indulgent," I said slowly, with my throat dry. "I am wise. She has kissed you, yes. I have no doubt that she has kissed you many times, casually, lightly, indifferently. She brushed the plumage of her falcon in the same way. You are welcome to the memory of those kisses, my lord. You may have more like them in the future, and I shall not say you nay. They mean nothing."

He scowled at me. "What do you know of her kisses?" he said under his breath.

I looked him in the eye. "I know this. There is but one kiss that means anything from a woman, and she gives it, if she is the right kind of a woman, to but one man in her life. For the rest,—I value them no more than the brush of her finger-tips. Tell me, have you felt her lips pressed to yours till her breath and her soul were one with you? Tell me that. Answer, I say."

I had let the cord of reason and decency slip. I rose, and I think that the hate in my face must have been wolfish, for the man drew back. He tried to look contemptuous, but I saw fear in his eyes. Fear and something more,—a sudden pain and longing. The emotion that heretofore he had kept well in hand trapped him for the moment. I was answered. The woman might never be mine, but she had never been his, either. I turned away. I was triumphant, but I loathed myself. I was sick with the situation, and the man who had brought me to it.

"You may keep your kisses, monsieur," I said savagely. "You may keep them. But if you mention them to me again I shall throttle you where you stand."

The Englishman had felt the revulsion, and he showed no resentment of my heat. He heaved himself up in the hot, horrible sunshine and rubbed his hands as if washing them free.

"We are curs," he said quietly.

I could not say nay. "We must eat," I cautioned; "we must eat, and keep ourselves sane. If we can get through this day without murder or worse, we shall have work to do from now on that will serve to keep our heads clear. Pierre will be coming soon now."

Starling was regarding me keenly. "You lose your temper, and therefore you should be easy to read," he said reflectively. "But you are not. You evidently married my cousin for convenience. I can understand the situation. But you stand by your bargain well. You have the honor of your name somewhat sensitively at heart. But if you had not married her—— If there were no compulsion, no outside reason—tell me, would you marry her now?"

But that I left unanswered.



CHAPTER XXI

THE PIVOT

Pierre came at five o'clock. He was keen for the approaching supper hour and came jovially.

I was sick with haste, and deep sunk in my own grief, so I was cruel and a fool; I plumped the facts at him without a softening word. And so I frustrated my own ends. The great, slow creature cowered and grew dumb under my story. Then he went, great-eyed and hanging-lipped, from cabin to cabin. I had locked up his springs of word and thought.

But one thing my sword and my words prodded out of him. He had come by the portage path from the east, and had seen no marks of passage that were less than a week old. Our star led west.

I baled what provision and ammunition we needed, loaded the canoes, and cached the furs and the balance of the stores at the edge of the forest. At six o'clock we were afloat. I led the way, and Pierre followed with the Englishman. This gave me space to think in silence.

The sun sank red and clear, and we paddled from a colored dusk to a clear starlight. I knew this dimly, as the lost in the inferno know the barred joys above them. Unless we found Pemaou within the next few hours I should never be one with the loveliness of nature again.

I held my way due west to the Malhominis. I could secure their cooperation, if nothing more. Pierre followed at a canoe length, and we traveled unbrokenly. It was an hour short of midnight when we saw the west shore. I could take no bearings in the dim light, so we nosed along, uncertain whether to go north or south to find the mouth of the Wild Rice River where the Malhominis had their home. We held a short colloquy and started northward. Suddenly Pierre shot his canoe beside my own.

"A camp!" he breathed in a giant whisper.

I suspended my paddle. On the shore to the north of us were lights. It could not be the Malhominis, for they lived inland; it was not Pemaou, for the camp was many times larger than his would be. It was probably a hunting party. All the western tribes were friendly; more, they were my allies. I saw no necessity for caution. I raised a long halloo, and our canoes raced toward the lights.

We landed in a medley. Indians sprang from the squatting groups around the fire and ran to meet us. They were black shapes that I could not recognize. I leaped from my canoe and held up my hand in greeting. But an arm reached out and tore my musket from me. I looked up. A leering Iroquois stood over me.

I dropped my arms and stood passive. A look over my shoulder told me that Pierre and Starling had been seized and were fighting well.

"Caution!" I called. "Do not resist. Watch me."

"Where are we? What does it mean?" Starling called back. His voice was shaking.

I held out my arms to be bound. "The Iroquois!" I shouted to Pierre in dialect. "I did not know there were any within a thousand miles. Keep steady. Follow me. We may find Pemaou here."

The Indians bound us systematically, but without undue elation, so that I judged that they had many captives. They were Senecas and had the look of picked men. I understood their speech, but beyond ribald jests at our expense they said nothing. It was all swift, unreal. Owls hooted in the woods and dogs snarled at us. The groups that remained by the fire peered in our direction, but were too lethargic to come near. I tried for a word with Starling. I feared for his spirit.

"They are Senecas," I managed to say to him; "the most diplomatic nation of the Iroquois league. They will not butcher us without consideration. Keep cool."

He nodded with some patronage. He looked impressive, unshaken; yet the moment before he had been terror-stricken. I saw that I did not understand him, after all.

Having bound us, our captors raised a shout and shouldered us toward the camp. A young brave capered before us, beating his breast and singing. The braves by the fire took up the cry.

And so we were pushed into the circle of flaming light. The Indians crowded to us, and pressed their oily, grinning faces so near that I felt their breath. I stumbled over refuse, and dirt-crusted dogs blocked my way. The mangled carcass of a deer lay on the ground, and the stench of fresh blood mingled with the reek of the camp. Yet I saw only one thing clearly. In the midst of it stood the woman and Singing Arrow.

My relief caught at my throat, and the cry I gave was hoarse and strangled. But the woman heard it. My first look had shown me not only that she was unharmed, but that she was undaunted, that she stood white-faced in all the grime, and held herself above it, a thing of spirit that soil could not reach. Yet when she saw me, the cry that came from her in answer changed her from an effigy to something so warm and living that I forgot where I stood, and stopped my breath to hold her gaze to mine, and drink the moment to the full. We stood with captivity between us and torture at our elbow, but the woman looked only at me, and her lips grew red and tremulous, and her breath came fast. "You are safe. You are safe." I heard the words even among the babel, and I pulled like a wild animal at my bonds to free myself and reach her side.

But I was held fast, and while I struggled came a mighty cry from behind me, "Mary! Mary! Mary!" Starling's Goliath frame pushed by me, and his captors were hurled like pygmies to each side.

The woman was unprepared. She cried at sight of him with a deep throaty terror that sent the blood to my brain. Starling would have pressed himself to her, but she put out her unbound arms and fended him away. And then he stood with his great height bowed and pleaded to her. I had shrugged at the English for their hard reserve, but when I heard this man I learned again that it is always the dammed torrent that is to be feared. Even the Indians heard in silence.

The silence lasted. Never before nor since have I known savages to take the background and let two whites play out a tragedy unchecked. But now they formed a ring and watched. They forgot their interest in me and let me go. I could stand unheeded. An old man threw tinder on the fire, and we saw each other's faces as in the searching, red light of a storm. I watched the cords in Starling's neck tighten and relax as he talked on and on.

The drama was in pantomime to me, as to the Indians, for the cousins spoke in English. But I could understand the woman's face. She spoke in monosyllables, but I could have pitied any other man for the gulf she put between them by her look. She was more than scornful; torn and disheveled as she was, she was cruelly radiant, her eyes black-lined and her lips hard. She was unassailable. And when she met her kinsman's eye I gloried in her till I could have laid my cheek on the ground at her feet.

It was plain they were kinsmen. I had marked the strange blood resemblance between them when I first saw the man, and it was doubly to be noted now. It was blood against blood as they faced each other. And it came to me that it was more than a personal duel. No wrong is so unforgivable as one from our own family whose secret weaknesses we know and share, and I felt that the repulsion in the woman's eyes was part for herself and part for her pride of race. Yet I was uncertain of the issue. The tie of blood is strong, and after a few minutes I thought that Starling was gaining ground. His great personality enwrapped us all, and his strange, compelling voice went on and on and on, pleading, pleading in a tongue that I could not understand. His eyes never left the woman's, and in time hers fell. I tried to clench my bound hands, for my pride in her was hurt; yet I could understand his power.

It was just then that the savages wearied of the spectacle and hustled Starling away. They saw that he was English, and they unbound his arms, and began to take counsel concerning him. In a flash I saw my path clear. They were friendly to the English. The woman was English. I must not let her identify herself with me. And so when her glance crept back to me, I was prepared. I would not stop to read what her look might say. I shook my head at her and dropped my eyes. I made the same signal to Singing Arrow. The Indian would understand my motive; I could not be sure about the woman.

And then I turned and mingled with the crowd, with my heart beating strangely but my brain cool. The interest was centring in Starling, and the older men had their calumets in hand and were preparing for the council. I saw that for a few hours at least I should have life and semi-liberty. There was no possibility of my escape, so, bound as I was, I was free to wander within limits. I would keep as near the women as possible and try and herd my faction together.

I had been too absorbed to use my eyes, but now I saw that a captive was lying near my feet. He was closely tied on two pieces of rough wood shaped like a St. Andrew's cross, and was a hideous sight with his tongue protruding and his eyes beginning to glaze. Dogs were scrambling and tearing at him, and I edged nearer and tried to drive them away. I examined him as closely as I dared, and judged by the dressing of his long hair that he was a Miami. In that case the war party must have come from the south by way of the Ohio and the Illinois country, and they were probably working their way north to reach Michillimackinac on its unguarded side. I saw it was a war party, for there were no women with them, and the Iroquois carry their families on all hunting trips.

I looked at the dying man and wished for my knife. So they tortured Indian captives while they let me, a Frenchman, go lightly bound. Well, my turn was yet to come. My white skin probably gave me importance enough so that I would be referred to the council. I would not look ahead. I would plan for the moment, and open eyes and ears.

There were many captives, I saw now, and my anxiety for Leclerc and Labarthe grew keen. I made my slow way around the bound figures. Some were pegged to the ground by their out-stretched hands and feet, and some were stretched on crosses. But all were Indians. I saw more Miamis, a few Kickapoos, and some whom I did not know; I learned later that they were Mascoutens. And then I saw Labarthe. He was tied to a tree, Leclerc beside him. Leclerc, who was ever a fool, would have motioned to me, but Labarthe struck down his arm and gave a blank stare. So I was able to get near them. They looked blood-stained and jaded, but practically unhurt, and I saw a half-eaten chunk of meat in Leclerc's hand. They had been fed and reasonably well treated. But that meant nothing as guide to what might come.

I had not made my way alone. Starling was the chief attraction, but I, too, was the centre of a curious, chaffering crowd. The braves were unwontedly good-humored, childishly pleased with the evening's excitement, and I amused them still further by shrugging at them and making great faces of contempt. When one offered me a meal cake I kicked at him and trampled the food into the ground, and as I swaggered away I heard him tell the others that I was a bear for courage. I could have smiled at that, for I was acting more like a blustering terrier than any nobler animal, but I would not let them see that I understood their tongue.

And so I pushed my way about. But wherever I went, or whatever else my eyes were doing, I kept watch upon the woman. She stood quiet with Singing Arrow and waited for what might come. Her fate was hanging with Starling's at the council ring, and I knew that I must keep away from her. That was not easy. Each time that I let my glance rest upon the foulness of the camp I felt that I must go to her and blind her eyes. But I never made more than one step. I had only to look at her to understand that her spirit had learned in these months to hold itself above the body. What was passing did not touch her; she lived in the fortress of her splendidly garrisoned pride. Singing Arrow stood equally aloof, intrenched in her stoicism, but I think the root motives of the two were different, though the outside index was the same. Indeed, we all had different wellsprings for our composure. Pierre's stolidity was largely training. Starling's quiet might mean instinctive imitation, but I feared it was something more sinister. While mine—— But I had no composure. I swaggered and shrugged and played harlequin and boaster.

We were soon to learn that Starling's quiet was not impervious. I saw him start. His hand flew to where his knife had been, and his teeth showed like a jackal's. A figure that had lain, blanket-shrouded in the shadow, had risen and come forward. It was Pemaou. He had pleased his humor by being an unseen auditor and letting us play out our various forms of resistance and despair for his delight. Now he would make a dramatic entry. He was dressed for the part in a loin cloth, a high laced hat of scarlet, and the boots of a captain of dragoons. He stopped before Starling and grinned silently. Then he held his hat, French fashion, and made a derisive bow. The Englishman forgot his dignity and cursed. I wished that I had been near enough to hold up a warning hand.

I knew my turn was next, so was prepared. Pemaou sought me, and stood before me, but I would not see him; I looked through him as through glass. He spoke to me in French, but I was deaf. I heard the Senecas grunt with amusement.

Pemaou heard it too, and his war plume quivered. He gave an order in Huron, and one of his men came behind me and unbound my hands. I could have jeered at the childishness of his open purpose. He hoped that, with my hands free, I would spring at him, impotent and vengeful as a caged rattlesnake, and that then he could turn me over to the sport and torture of the mob. I stretched my freed arms, laughed to myself, and turned away. My laugh was genuine. It was wine to me that he should have shown weakness in this fashion, when in some ways he had proved himself a better general than I. It was a small victory, but it cheered me.

I do not know how long the council lasted, but it seemed hours. The old men rose at last, and going to Starling, patted him, grunted over him, and examined him. I could not hear what they said, but it was evidently pacific; they led him off in the direction of the largest lodge.

And then came the woman's turn. I knew that my face was strained, though I strove to keep it sneering. I saw the oldest man give instructions, then he went to the two women and pointed the way before him. I pushed along as best I could. He took them to a small hut of bark and motioned them within, while he himself dropped the mat in front of the opening. They were safe for that night at least.

The savages were wearied now and turned to Pierre and me with yawns. They made short work of us. I was bound to the arm of a stout warrior, and he dragged me under a tree and dropped on the ground. He was snoring before I had finished building a barricade of cloak between us to keep as much as possible of his touch and smell away.

The camp quieted rapidly, and I soon had only silence between me and the stars. My mind was active but curiously placid. Inch by inch I went over the ground of the last twenty-four hours. I stated the case to myself as a foreigner translates a lesson. It is sometimes a help to put a situation in the concrete, to phrase it as to a stranger. In that way you stand aloof and see new light. So I put the matter in category, sharing it with the stars, and with the back of the snoring Indian.

We were in Pemaou's hands. He had known that the Iroquois were coming; had probably known it months before, and had instigated this campaign. He wished an alliance with the English, and, though he could work to that end through the Iroquois, he would find an English prisoner a material aid. I could see how useful I had been to him in keeping the Englishwoman away from Michillimackinac,—where he would have had ado to hold his title of possession to her,—and I could not but respect the skill with which he had timed his blow, and brought her to the Iroquois camp at the right moment. Yes, I had served him well, from the time when I had assisted him to hear Longuant's speech in the Ottawa camp to the present hour. The accident that had strengthened him still further by throwing Lord Starling into his hands he also owed to me. But I looked up at the stars and did not lose courage. The game was not over; the score was yet to be paid.

I had many plans to arrange. Day was coming, and I watched the horizon breaking and felt that the morning would bring new opportunity.

And then, just as I needed all my wit and presence, I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.



CHAPTER XXII

THE PRICE OF SLEEP

I do not know that, after all, I can call that sleep which fell upon me. Sleep is merely a blessed veiling of the faculties; this was collapse, deadness. The Indian beside me must have been equally worn, for he lay like a log. We were huddled close to a tree, so were unnoticed, or at least undisturbed. The sun was hours high when I opened my eyes.

I sprang to my feet, dragging the Indian to his knees. He grunted, rubbed his eyes, and feeling sluggish and uncomfortable from the warmth of the morning, found me an incubus. He grunted again, untied the thongs that bound us, and went, stretching and yawning, to find his breakfast.

I stood for a moment marshaling my wits. The bright day and the noise confused me, for I had been deep sunk in unconsciousness, and grasped the real world unsteadily. The camp was even larger than the night had shown, and it took some looking to find the woman's lodge. It was empty; the mat was pulled down from before the door.

I should have expected nothing else, for the morning was far advanced, but I felt baffled, belated, like one whose long unconsciousness had carried him hopelessly out of touch with his surroundings. Most of the Indians were gathered at the shore, and I made my way toward them. I went but slowly, for I had to feign indifference. I knew that every step was watched. Perhaps the woman herself was watching. I burned with shame to think she should have seen me sleep so soddenly. I expected every moment to see her in the crowd.

But when I reached the beach the crowd was straying as if the excitement were over. Far out on the water to the northeast was a flotilla of canoes fast disappearing. Whom did they carry? Had they left from the camp? I cursed myself for my lost hours. The threads of the situation had slipped from my hand, and all my feeling of competence and hope of the night before had gone with them. I could see no sign of the woman nor of Starling. Pierre's red head was a beacon, but I dared not go to him. He was bending over a caldron of boiling meat, and I saw that my man was himself again, and that the trencher called him more winningly than any voice of mine. I shrugged, and went to the beach to make what toilet I could. The cold water recreated me. I was more a man when I strolled back in the crowd.

And then I saw Labarthe. He was unbound and mingling with the Indians. Leclerc was close beside him, shuffling and docile; he, too, was free, as was Pierre. Four of us, and our hands at liberty. This looked better. I hummed a tune, clapped a brave on the shoulder, and motioned him to bring me meat and meal. But where was the woman?

I saw Labarthe working toward me with his eyes the other way, so I knew he had news. He was nimbler witted than Pierre, though less valuable on a long stretch. I dreaded Leclerc, for he could not be trusted even for good sense, and I heartily wished him elsewhere. But Pierre came to the rescue; he called Leclerc boldly, and drew him to the meat caldron. I was satisfied. Three of us were working in unison,—and we had worked together in this way before, and won. But where were Pemaou, and Starling, and the woman?

Labarthe made his way near, and stood with his back toward me. I remembered a roundelay that we had sung in camp. I whistled it, picking, in the meantime, at the bone the Indian had brought. I whistled the tune once, twice, several times. Then I fitted words to it.

"Where is the woman? Where is the Englishman? Tell me." I sang the words boldly, but in bastard French with clipped accents. I feared that among all these Senecas there might be one or more who had some smattering of the French tongue.

Labarthe did not answer at once nor look around, so I went on singing. Nonsense words now, with no coherence or meaning, and all in French that a cowherd would have been ashamed to own.

I worked at last to a crescendo of sound that gave Labarthe his cue. He turned and laughed, as if noticing me for the first time. He cocked his head like a game bird, planted his legs apart, and joined the song. He had the biggest voice from Montreal to Chambly, and he sung with full lung power and at breathless speed. It was a torrent of sound; my ears were strained to follow it.

"Five large canoes left this morning," he warbled. "They carried madame, the Englishman, Pemaou, and his Hurons, and a detachment of the Senecas,—some seventy-five in all. They went to Michillimackinac."

The news hit me like a bullet, and I must have whitened, but I kept on singing. I nodded at Labarthe, and sang, I think, of spring and running brooks. Then I flung a jeer at him and ate my breakfast. I ate it systematically and stolidly, though it would not have tempted any but a starving man. I was a fool and a dullard. I had slept away my opportunities, and I could not see that my strength was important to any one. But I determined to preserve it.

If I kept up jest and laughter for the next hours—and I have some memory that I did—it was automatic. For I more nearly touched despair than ever before. I did not need the sentences that I picked up further among the Indians to tell me what had happened. The Senecas, under Pemaou's guidance, had gone to Michillimackinac; had put their heads into the bear's mouth, and yet were as safe as in their own village, for the bear's teeth were drawn, and the Senecas were armored. They traveled with Pemaou, and they had two English prisoners. That insured them protection from the Hurons, who desired the English alliance and had leanings toward the Iroquois. As to the Ottawas,—there was Singing Arrow as hostage. It was significant that the Senecas had allowed Singing Arrow to go unbound. They desired an alliance with the Ottawas. I remembered Longuant's speech, and his indicated policy of casting his strength with the winning side, and I thought it probable they would succeed.

And if they succeeded? Well, Cadillac had his two hundred regulars. Yet he could not hope to win, and he would do what he could to hold off the necessity of trying. He would not dare seize the Senecas. No, the league of the Long House had won. Their braves could sit in our garrison at their leisure and exchange peace belts with our Indians under our eyes. I set my teeth and wondered what part Starling had played in it all. He had grown curiously at ease when he had found himself in an Iroquois camp. I had no choice but to believe that Pemaou had tricked and deceived him, as he had said, but that did not mean that he had not been in league with Pemaou in the beginning. Pemaou was capable of tricking a confederate. No Englishman understands an Indian, and if he had patronized Pemaou the Huron would have retaliated in just this way. I grew sick with the maze of my thought. But one thing I grasped. With part of the Senecas in the French camp, we Frenchmen would be spared for a time. We would be convenient for exchange, or to exact terms of compromise. They might torture us, but they would keep us alive till the issue of this expedition was known.

All about me were preparations for a permanent camp. This puzzled me for a time, but I soon worked out the reason. They were afraid to march with their full force on Michillimackinac, for they feared the friendship of the western tribes for the French, and thought that if a large war party marched openly toward the garrison these tribes would rally to Cadillac's defense. So this camp was kept as watch-dog for the western region. I prayed that Cadillac keep his judgment cool.

One thing brought smiles that I had to turn into vacant and misleading laughter. Through all the talk ran my name,—that they did not know was mine. They had heard that I was stirring among the western tribes, and that I was making them dangerous. They spoke of my knowledge of Indian tongues, and added apocryphal tales of my feats of wit and daring. My image loomed large, and it was no wonder that they did not connect this mythical Colossus with the swaggering royster who played buffoon for their mirth. I wondered that Pemaou had not told them, but I reflected that there is a mutual distrust among Indians that takes the place of reticence, and that that had saved me. I had escaped for the moment, but the ice was thin. I should be given short shrift once my name was known.

The day passed, warm and lovely in the woods and on the water, hideous and sweltering in the stench of the camp. I saw captives die of heat and flies, but I could do nothing. My men took cue from me, and we all laughed and chaffered. I even took a turn at spear throwing, but was too discreet to win. I gained some good-will, perhaps, but nothing more, and when the stars came out that night I ground my teeth to think of how little I had accomplished, and of the slender opportunity ahead.

But the next morning I saw a straw to grasp. Up to that time we had been left to the guardianship of all the camp, but the second day I saw that the huge brave to whom I was tied at night followed me incessantly. I watched, and saw that my men had similar attendants. This was a gain, as I said to Labarthe. I did not try to have connected speech with the men, but by saying a word at a time as we passed we could patch together a few sentences.

From that on I gave the day to winning my special jailer. He was an intelligent Indian and inclined to be good-humored. I amused him, and when I took a net and motioned that we go to the swamp to fish he grunted and agreed.

The swamp lay on the north of the camp, and was, I was sure, part of the great rice field on which the Malhominis had their village to the west. The swamp was flooded so that it would bear a canoe, and it teemed with fish. I took the net,—it was ingeniously woven of nettles pounded to a fibre and then spun into cords,—and showed the Indian how to swing it across an eddy and draw it under with a swift, circular sweep that would entangle any fish. I had success, and the Indian warmed to the sport and tried it himself. He could not do it; he could not get the twist of the hand that was the whole secret, and I had to show him again. He improved and grew ambitious. A few braves wandered over to look at us, but my jailer was jealous of his new accomplishment, and we took a canoe and paddled out of sight. We spent most of the day in the swamp.

That evening I went boldly to Pierre and said a few swift words. I told him to keep as near the swamp as possible, and to tell the other men to do the same. In about two days, if my plans carried, we should be able to accomplish something. In the meantime they must appear contented, and try for the confidence of their guards.

Now my plan was simple. I had in my shirt the bottle of laudanum that all traders carry, and it was my only weapon. Pierre had shown me a small flask of rum which the Indians had not discovered, and which he had had the unexpected self-control to leave untouched. I hoped that when my Indian had learned the casting of his net his vanity could be played on to invite the other Frenchmen and their guards to see his prowess, and that we should then have opportunity to treat the Indians to the laudanum-dosed rum. It was a crazy scheme, but worth a trial. If we could get possession of the canoe, there was some hope that we could make our way to the Malhominis village.

No teacher was ever more zealous than I for my net-thrower. Early the next morning I winked toward the swamp, and jerked my thumb over my shoulder. The Indian came willingly. Why should he not? I was unarmed, and he had knife and hatchet and was my peer in strength. He thought me a strange fool, but useful.

But that morning the lesson went badly. The Indian was clumsy, and being ashamed of himself, grew surly and indifferent. The sun was hot, the water dazzling, and mosquitoes rose in clouds. The Indian wanted to go back to camp, and I cudgeled my wits for expedients to keep him there.

And then I bethought me of an accomplishment which I had shown Indians before. Quickness of hand is my greatest resource, and I had been known to noose a fish. I tore my handkerchief in ribands, made a weighted sling, and had the Indian swing the canoe over a ripple where a great bass lay. I waited my time, then plunged my hand down with the weighted noose. I drew it up, with the fish caught through the gills.

The Indian was pleased. He grunted and exclaimed in his own speech, though he thought I could not understand.

"They say the Frenchman, Montlivet, can do that." Then he looked at me and light dawned.

"You are Montlivet!"

I wasted no time. I do not know how I did it, but I sprang the length of the canoe and was on him before he could reach his knife. The canoe rocked, but righted itself. I knotted my fingers in the Indian's throat, and my body pinioned his arms.

The surprise of my attack gave me a second's vantage, and in it I snatched at the vial in my shirt, and drew the stopper with my teeth. It was difficult, for the great, naked frame was writhing under me, and the canoe pitched like a cork in an eddy. I felt the Indian's hot breath, and his teeth snapping to reach me. His arm was working free and his knife unsheathed. I threw my whole weight on his chest, released my clutch on his neck, and taking both hands, forced his mouth open and dashed the contents of my laudanum vial down his throat. Then I sprang into the water, dragging Indian and canoe after me.

I felt the slash of a knife in my right shoulder as I touched the water, and the Indian's wiry grasp on my coat. I rolled and grappled with him, and the canoe floated away. Hugging each other like twining water snakes, we sank down through the reeds to the slimy ooze of the bottom.

Down there we wrestled for a second, blinded and choking. Then self-love conquered hate, and we kicked ourselves free and spluttered to the surface. My shoulder was stinging, and I could not tell how long I could depend on it. I made a desperate stroke or two, dived, and put myself in the cover of the reeds.

The Indian splashed after me, but the water flowed through the reeds in a dozen channels, and he took the wrong one. He would find his mistake in a moment. I swam a few paces under water, then lay quiet, holding myself up by the reeds, and keeping my mouth to the air. Piece by piece I freed myself of my clothing and let it drop. The cut in my shoulder was raw and made me faint. It was not dangerous, but deep enough to give me trouble, and would make my swimming slow, if, indeed, I could swim at all. I felt the water swash against me and knew the Indian was swimming back. There was only a thin wall of reeds between us, and in a moment he would come to where the channels joined and see my floating garments. I could not stop to secure them, though I had hoped to tie them in a bundle on my back. I dropped under the water and swam away.

I have often marveled how I distanced that Indian so easily. It may have been his discomfort from the opiate, though I have never known how much of what I splashed over him went into his mouth, nor what effect it had. But after a little I heard no sound of pursuit. I thought that perhaps the Indian had gone back to spread the alarm, and I took no risks. I swam as fast as I had strength, resting occasionally by holding on to the reeds, and trying to keep my course due northwest.

And hour by hour passed, and still I kept on swimming. It was torture after the first. I could rest as often as I needed, but the cold water palsied me, and I feared cramp. My shoulder was feverish, and the pain of it sapped my strength. Occasionally I found a log tangled in the reeds, and I pulled myself up on it into the sun. If I had not been able to do that I could not have gone on.

With chill and fever and pain I had light-headed intervals. These came as the afternoon waned, and while they lasted I thought that the woman was in the Seneca camp, and that I must get back to her. Then I would turn and swim with the current, losing in a few minutes as much as I had gained in double the time. Fortunately these seizures were brief, but they would leave me sick and shaken and grasping the reeds for support. Another illusion came at this time: I would hear the woman calling, calling my name. Sometimes she cried that I had forsaken her. That left me weaker than the fever of my wound.

It was impossible to see where I was going, for the reeds were high above my head, but so long as my reason lasted I steered by the sun. I presume that I doubled many times, and lost much space, but that I do not know, for toward the end I traveled like an automaton. I could not fix my mind on where I was going or why, but I kept repeating to myself that I must push against the current, and so, though I lost the idea at times, and found myself drifting, I think that I went some distance after my brain had ceased to direct.

And then I found peace. My mind, freed of the burden of thinking of its surroundings, turned to the woman. She called to me, talked to me, sometimes she walked the reeds at my side. She was all smiles and lightness, and her tongue had never a barb. I forgot to struggle. The narrow channel where I had been fighting my way opened now into a broader passage, and the current flowed under me like an uplifting hand. The woman's voice called me from down-stream; I turned on my back, and floated, dreamy and expectant, toward the river's mouth.



CHAPTER XXIII

I ENCOUNTER MIXED MOTIVES

I was called to semi-consciousness by the tinkling clamor of small bells, and by feeling my feet caught in something clinging yet yielding. Then my body swung into it. It was a web. I pulled at it, and tried to brush it away. And all the while the bells kept ringing, ringing. A shower of arrows fell around me, and one grazed my foot.

A man must be far gone indeed when an arrow point will not sting him to life. I was no longer a fever-riven log of driftwood. I knew where I was and what was happening. I had reached the Malhominis village. Working through the rice swamp, I had come into the main river too far to the west, but following the woman's voice I had floated back. I was caught in one of the nets that the Malhominis strung with small bells, and stretched across the stream to keep both fish and enemies in bounds. I set my teeth hard.

"It is Montlivet. It is Montlivet," I called.

Had I thought the Malhominis stolid and none too intelligent! They heard me call, they pushed a canoe to my rescue, and they carried me to a warm lodge. I remember that I bandied words with them as they carried me. They made sport to see me naked, for on my former visit I had rebuked them severely on that score. But they were tender of my shoulder.

The time for the next few hours—indeed for the night—is confused. My shoulder was dressed and bound with herbs, and I was laid on a bed of rushes. Outchipouac, the Malhominis war chief, knew from former acquaintance with me that I had prejudices and would not lie where it was not clean, and so he humored me and gave orders that the rushes be freshly cut. By this I knew that he had not only respect for me, but something that was like affection, since savages are indolent and intolerant, and will not bestir themselves for Europeans unless they are unwontedly interested. I treasured this kindness. One meets little that savors of personal regard in the wilderness, and I was ill.

Now, savages know little of the laws of health and abuse what they know, but in the matter of herbs they can be trusted. The herb drink which they gave me had virtue, for I woke with my head clear. A gourd of water stood beside my pallet, and I drained it and called lustily for another. A man pushed aside the skins and came in. It was Pierre. Pierre, alive, clothed, and with every hair of his flamingo head bristling and unharmed! He answered my cry with a huge smile, and then because he had a gypsy mother in the background of his nature, he put his great hands before his face, and I saw tears pushing between the fingers.

That made me fear ill news. I half rose, and would have shaken his tidings out of him like corn out of a bag. But the pain of my shoulder sent me back again with my teeth jammed hard together.

"What has happened? Out with it!" I cried.

But Pierre was inarticulate. He came to my pallet and mumbled something between tears about my shoulder.

—"and the master with no clothes but a dirty Indian's!" he finished.

So I was the cause of this demonstration. I patted his hand.

"But your escape, Pierre? Where are the other men?"

"Master, I do not know."

"But where did you come from? How did you get here? Talk, man!"

"The master does not give me time. I came by land. It is a fine land. They raise great squashes. Yes, and grain and vegetables! I have never seen their like in France. If I had a farm here I could have more than I could eat the whole year round."

I took time to curse. I had never heard my giant prate of agriculture; the camp and the tap-room had been his haunts. This appeared to be a method of working toward ill news. I lay back on my rushes and tried to fix his eye.

"Pierre, answer. Where is Labarthe?"

"I told the master"—

"Answer!"

"I don't know."

"Did he escape with you?"

Pierre rubbed his sleeve across his face. "The master will not listen. I do not know about Labarthe. I saw him at camp yesterday morning. The master saw him at the same time. Then the master went to the swamp, and I went, too, with my Indian. But I kept behind. By and by I saw the canoe upside down, and the master's cloak floating on the water; by that I knew that the master was drowned or had got away. I thought he had gone to the Malhominis, and I wanted to go, too. So I killed my Indian, and hid him in the grass. I came by land."

I rose on my elbow, careless of my shoulder. "How could you kill the Indian? You had no weapon."

Pierre stretched out his arms, knotted like an oak's branches, and illustrated. "I hugged him. Once I broke the ribs of a bear."