hours after that he had no thought of sleep. He had insisted that she take possession of her cabin again, and Bateese had brought out a bundle of blankets. These he spread under the awning, and when he drowsed off, it was to dream of the lovely face he had seen last in the glow of the moon.
It was in the afternoon of the fourth day that two things happened–one that he had prepared himself for, and another so unexpected that for a space it sent his world crashing out of its orbit. With St. Pierre’s wife he had gone again to the ridge-line for flowers, half a mile back from the river. Returning a new way, they came to a shallow stream, and Marie-Anne stood at the edge of it, and there was laughter in her shining eyes as she looked to the other side of it. She had twined flowers into her hair. Her cheeks were rich with color. Her slim figure was exquisite in its wild pulse of life.
Suddenly she turned on him, her red lips smiling their witchery in his face. “You must carry me across,” she said.
He did not answer. He was a-tremble as he drew near her. She raised her arms a little, waiting. And then he picked her up. She was against his breast. Her two hands went to his shoulders as he waded into the stream; he slipped, and they clung a little tighter. The soft note of laughter was in her throat when the current came to his knees out in the middle of the stream. He held her tighter; and then stupidly, he slipped again, and the movement brought her lower in his arms, so that for a space her head was against his breast and his face was crushed in the soft masses of her hair. He came with her that way to the opposite shore and stood her on her feet again, standing back quickly so that she would not hear the pounding of his heart. Her face was radiantly beautiful, and she did not look at David, but away from him.
“Thank you,” she said.
And then, suddenly, they heard running feet behind them, and in another moment one of the brigade men came dashing through the stream. At the same time there came from the river a quarter of a mile away a thunderous burst of voice. It was not the voice of a dozen men, but of half a hundred, and Marie-Anne grew tense, listening, her eyes on fire even before the messenger could get the words out of his mouth.
“It is St. Pierre!” he cried then. “He has come with the great raft, and you must hurry if you would reach the bateau before he lands!”
In that moment it seemed to David that Marie-Anne forgot he was alive. A little cry came to her lips, and then she left him, running swiftly, saying no word to him, flying with the speed of a fawn to St. Pierre Boulain! And when David turned to the man who had come up behind them, there was a strange smile on the lips of the lithe-limbed forest-runner as his eyes followed the hurrying figure of St. Pierre’s wife.
Until she was out of sight he stood in silence and then he said:
“Come, m’sieu. We, also, must meet St. Pierre!”
XIV
David moved slowly behind the brigade man. He had no desire to hurry. He did not wish to see what happened when Marie-Anne met St. Pierre Boulain. Only a moment ago she had been in his arms; her hair had smothered his face; her hands had clung to his shoulders; her flushed cheeks and long lashes had for an instant lain close against his breast. And now, swiftly, without a word of apology, she was running away from him to meet her husband.
He almost spoke that word aloud as he saw the last of her slim figure among the silver birches. She was going to the man to whom she belonged, and there was no hesitation in the manner of her going. She was glad. And she was entirely forgetful of him, Dave Carrigan, in that gladness.
He quickened his steps, narrowing the distance between him and the hurrying brigade man. Only the diseased thoughts in his brain had made the happening in the creek anything but an accident. It was all an accident, he told himself. Marie-Anne had asked him to carry her across just as she would have asked any one of her rivermen. It was his fault, and not hers, that he had slipped in mid-stream, and that his arms had closed tighter about her, and that her hair had brushed his face. He remembered she had laughed, when it seemed for a moment that they were going to fall into the stream together. Probably she would tell St. Pierre all about it. Surely she would never guess it had been nearer tragedy than comedy for him.
Once more he was convinced he had proved himself a weakling and a fool. His business now was with St. Pierre, and the hour was at hand when the game had ceased to be a woman’s game. He had looked ahead to this hour. He had prepared himself for it and had promised himself action that would be both quick and decisive. And yet, as he went on, his heart was still thumping unsteadily, and in his arms and against his face remained still the sweet, warm thrill of his contact with Marie-Anne. He could not drive that from him. It would never completely go. As long as he lived, what had happened in the creek would live with him. He did not deny that crying voice inside him. It was easy for his mouth to make words. He could call himself a fool and a weakling, but those words were purely mechanical, hollow, meaningless. The truth remained. It was a blazing fire in his breast, a conflagration that might easily get the best of him, a thing which he must fight and triumph over for his own salvation. He did not think of danger for Marie-Anne, for such a thought was inconceivable. The tragedy was one-sided. It was his own folly, his own danger. For just as he loved Marie-Anne, so did she love her husband, St. Pierre.
He came to the low ridge close to the river and climbed up through the thick birches and poplars. At the top was a bald knob of sandstone, over which the riverman had already passed. David paused there and looked down on the broad sweep of the Athabasca.
What he saw was like a picture spread out on the great breast of the river and the white strip of shoreline. Still a quarter of a mile upstream, floating down slowly with the current, was a mighty raft, and for a space his eyes took in nothing else. On the Mackenzie, the Athabasca, the Saskatchewan, and the Peace he had seen many rafts, but never a raft like this of St. Pierre Boulain. It was a hundred feet in width and twice and a half times as long, and with the sun blazing down upon it from out of a cloudless sky it looked to him like a little city swept up from out of some archaic and savage desert land to be transplanted to the river. It was dotted with tents and canvas shelters. Some of these were gray, and some were white, and two or three were striped with broad bands of yellow and red. Behind all these was a cabin, and over this there rose a slender staff from which floated the black and white pennant of St. Pierre. The raft was alive. Men were running between the tents. The long rudder sweeps were flashing in the sun. Rowers with naked arms and shoulders were straining their muscles in four York boats that were pulling like ants at the giant mass of timber. And to David’s ears came a deep monotone of human voices, the chanting of the men as they worked.
Nearer to him a louder response suddenly made answer to it. A dozen steps carried him round a projecting thumb of brush, and he could see the open shore where the bateau was tied. Marie-Anne had crossed the strip of sand, and Bateese was helping her into a waiting York boat. Then Bateese shoved it off, and the four men in it began to row. Two canoes were already half-way to the raft, and David recognized the occupant of one of them as Andre, the Broken Man. Then he saw Marie-Anne rise in the York boat and wave something white in her hand.
He looked again toward the raft. The current and the sweeps and the tugging boats were drawing it steadily nearer. Standing at the very edge of it he saw now a solitary figure, and in the clear sunlight the man stood out clean-cut as a carven statue. He was a giant in size. His head and arms were bare, and he was looking steadily toward the bateau and the approaching York boat. He raised an arm, and a moment later the movement was followed by a voice that rose above all other voices. It boomed over the river like the rumble of a gun. In response to it Marie-Anne waved the white thing in her hand, and David thought he heard her voice in an answering cry. He stared again at the solitary figure of the man, seeing nothing else, hearing no other sound but the booming of the deep cry that came again over the river. His heart was thumping. In his eyes was a gathering fire. His body grew tense. For he knew that at last he was looking at St. Pierre, chief of the Boulains, and husband of the woman he loved.
As the significance of the situation grew upon him, a flash of his old humor returned. It was the same grim humor that had possessed him behind the rock, when he had thought he was going to die. Fate had played him a dishonest turn then, and it was doing the same thing by him now. Unless he deliberately turned his face away, he was going to see the reunion of Marie-Anne and St. Pierre.
Yesterday he had strapped his binoculars to his belt. Today Marie- Anne had looked through them a dozen times. They had been a source of pleasure and thrill to her. Now, David thought, they would be good medicine for him. He would see the whole thing through, and at close range. He would leave himself no room for doubt. He had laughed behind the rock, when bullets were zipping close to his head, and the same grim smile came to his lips now as he focused his glasses on the solitary figure at the head of the raft.
The smile died away when he saw St. Pierre. It was as if he could reach out and touch him with his hand. And never, he thought, had he seen such a man. A moment before, a flashing vision had come to him from out of an Arabian desert; the multitude of colored tents, the half-naked men, the great raft floating almost without perceptible motion on the placid breast of the river had stirred his imagination until he saw a strange picture. But there was nothing Arabic, nothing desert-like, in this man his binoculars brought within a few feet of his eyes. He was more like a viking pirate who had roved the sea a few centuries ago. One great, bare arm was raised as David looked, and his booming voice was rolling over the river again. His hair was shaggy, and untrimmed, and red; he wore a short beard that glistened in the sun–he was laughing as he waved and shouted to Marie-Anne–a joyous, splendid giant of a man who seemed almost on the point of leaping into the water in his eagerness to clasp in his naked arms the woman who was coming to him.
David drew a deep breath, and there came an unconscious tightening at his heart as he turned his glasses upon Marie-Anne. She was still standing in the bow of the York boat, and her back was toward him. He could see the glisten of the sun in her hair. She was waving her handkerchief, and the poise of her slim body told him that in her eagerness she would have darted from the bow of the boat had she possessed wings.
Again he looked at St. Pierre. And this was the man who was no match for Concombre Bateese! It was inconceivable. Yet he heard Marie-Anne’s voice repeating those very words in his ear. But she had surely been joking with him. She had been storing up this little surprise for him. She had wanted him to discover with his own eyes what a splendid man was this chief of the Boulains. And yet, as David stared, there came to him an unpleasant thought of the incongruity of this thing he was looking upon. It struck upon him like a clashing discord, the fact of matehood between these two–a condition inconsistent and out of tune with the beautiful things he had built up in his mind about the woman. In his soul he had enshrined her as a lovely wildflower, easily crushed, easily destroyed, a sweet treasure to be guarded from all that was rough and savage, a little violet-goddess as fragile as she was brave and loyal. And St. Pierre, standing there at the edge of his raft, looked as if he had come up out of the caves of a million years ago! There was something barbaric about him. He needed only a club and a shield and the skin of a beast about his loins to transform him into prehistoric man. At least these were his first impressions–impressions roused by thought of Marie-Anne’s slim, beautiful body crushed close in the embrace of that laughing, powerful-lunged giant. Then the reaction swept over him. St. Pierre was not a monster, even though his disturbed mind unconsciously made an effort to conceive him as such. There were gladness and laughter in his face. There was the contagion of joy and good cheer in the voice that boomed over the water. Laughter and shouts answered it from the shore. The rowers in Marie-Anne’s York boat burst into a wild and exultant snatch of song and made their oars fairly crack. There came a solitary yell from Andre, the Broken Man, who was close to the head of the raft now. And from the raft itself came a slowly swelling volume of sound, the urge and voice and exultation of red-blooded men a-thrill with the glory of this day and the wild freedom of their world. The truth came to David. St. Pierre Boulain was the beloved Big Brother of his people.
He waited, his muscles tense, his jaws set tight. Good medicine, he called it again, a righteous sort of punishment set upon him for the moral cowardice he had betrayed in falling down in worship at the feet of another man’s wife. The York boat was very close to the head of the raft now. He saw Marie-Anne herself fling a rope to St. Pierre. Then the boat swung alongside. In another moment St. Pierre had leaned over, and Marie-Anne was with him on the raft. For a space everything else in the world was obliterated for David. He saw St. Pierre’s arms gather the slim form into their embrace. He saw Marie-Anne’s hands go up fondly to the bearded face. And then–
Carrigan cut the picture there. He turned his shoulder to the raft and snapped the binoculars in the case at his belt. Some one was coming in his direction from the bateau. It was the riverman who had brought to Marie-Anne the news of St. Pierre’s arrival. David went down to meet him. From the foot of the ridge he again turned his eyes in the direction of the raft. St. Pierre and Marie-Anne were just about to enter the little cabin built in the center of the drifting mass of timber.
XV
It was easy for Carrigan to guess why the riverman had turned back for him. Men were busy about the bateau, and Concombre Bateese stood in the stern, a long pole in his hands, giving commands to the others. The bateau was beginning to swing out into the stream when he leaped aboard. A wide grin spread over the half-breed’s face. He eyed David keenly and laughed in his deep chest, an unmistakable suggestiveness in the note of it.
“You look seek, m’sieu,” he said in an undertone, for David’s ears alone, “You look ver’ unhappy, an’ pale lak leetle boy! Wat happen w’en you look t’rough ze glass up there, eh? Or ees it zat you grow frighten because ver’ soon you stan’ up an’ fight Concombre Bateese? Eh, coq de bruyere? Ees it zat?”
A quick thought came to David. “Is it true that St. Pierre can not whip you, Bateese?”
Bateese threw out his chest with a mighty intake of breath. Then he exploded: “No man on all T’ree River can w’ip Concombre Bateese.”
“And St. Pierre is a powerful man,” mused David, letting his eyes travel slowly from the half-breed’s moccasined feet to the top of his head. “I measured him well through the glasses, Bateese. It will be a great fight. But I shall whip you!”
He did not wait for the half-breed to reply, but went into the cabin and closed the door behind him. He did not like the taunting note of suggestiveness in the other’s words. Was it possible that Bateese suspected the true state of his mind, that he was in love with the wife of St. Pierre, and that his heart was sick because of what he had seen aboard the raft? He flushed hotly. It made him uncomfortable to feel that even the half-breed might have guessed his humiliation.
David looked through the window toward the raft. The bateau was drifting downstream, possibly a hundred feet from the shore, but it was quite evident that Concombre Bateese was making no effort to bring it close to the floating mass of timber, which had made no change in its course down the river. David’s mind painted swiftly what was happening in the cabin into which Marie-Anne and St. Pierre had disappeared. At this moment Marie-Anne was telling of him, of the adventure in the hot patch of sand. He fancied the suppressed excitement in her voice as she unburdened herself. He saw St. Pierre’s face darken, his muscles tighten–and crouching in silence, he seemed to see the misshapen hulk of Andre, the Broken Man, listening to what was passing between the other two. And he heard again the mad monotone of Andre’s voice, crying plaintively, “HAS ANY ONE SEEN BLACK ROGER AUDEMARD?”
His blood ran a little faster, and his old craft was a dominantly living thing within him once more. Love had dulled both his ingenuity and his desire. For a space a thing had risen before him that was mightier than the majesty of the Law, and he had TRIED to miss the bull’s-eye–because of his love for the wife of St. Pierre Boulain. Now he shot squarely for it, and the bell rang in his brain. Two times two again made four. Facts assembled themselves like arguments in flesh and blood. Those facts would have convinced Superintendent McVane, and they now convinced David. He had set out to get Black Roger Audemard, alive or dead. And Black Roger, wholesale murderer, a monster who had painted the blackest page of crime known in the history of Canadian law, was closely and vitally associated with Marie-Anne and St. Pierre Boulain!
The thing was a shock, but Carrigan no longer tried to evade the point. His business was no longer with a man supposed to be a thousand or fifteen hundred miles farther north. It was with Marie-Anne, St. Pierre, and Andre, the Broken Man. And also with Concombre Bateese.
He smiled a little grimly as he thought of his approaching battle with the half-breed. St. Pierre would be astounded at the proposition he had in store for him. But he was sure that St. Pierre would accept. And then, if he won the fight with Bateese–
The smile faded from his lips. His face grew older as he looked slowly about the bateau cabin, with its sweet and lingering whispers of a woman’s presence. It was a part of her. It breathed of her fragrance and her beauty; it seemed to be waiting for her, crying softly for her return. Yet once had there been another woman even lovelier than the wife of St. Pierre. He had not hesitated then. Without great effort he had triumphed over the loveliness of Carmin Fanchet and had sent her brother to the hangman. And now, as he recalled those days, the truth came to him that even in the darkest hour Carmin Fanchet had made not the slightest effort to buy him off with her beauty. She had not tried to lure him. She had fought proudly and defiantly. And had Marie- Anne done that? His fingers clenched slowly, and a thickening came in his throat. Would she tell St. Pierre of the many hours they had spent together? Would she confess to him the secret of that precious moment when she had lain close against his breast, her arms about him, her face pressed to his? Would she speak to him of secret hours, of warm flushes that had come to her face, of glowing fires that at times had burned in her eyes when he had been very near to her? Would she reveal EVERYTHING to St. Pierre– her husband? He was powerless to combat the voice that told him no. Carmin Fanchet had fought him openly as an enemy and had not employed her beauty as a weapon. Marie-Anne had put in his way a great temptation. What he was thinking seemed to him like a sacrilege, yet he knew there could be no discriminating distinctions between weapons, now that he was determined to play the game to the end, for the Law.
When Carrigan went out on deck, the half-breed was sweating from his exertion at the stern sweep. He looked at the agent de police who was going to fight him, perhaps tomorrow or the next day. There was a change in Carrigan. He was not the same man who had gone into the cabin an hour before, and the fact impressed itself upon Bateese. There was something in his appearance that held back the loose talk at the end of Concombre’s tongue. And so it was Carrigan himself who spoke first.
“When will this man St. Pierre come to see me?” he demanded. “If he doesn’t come soon, I shall go to him.”
For an instant Concombre’s face darkened. Then, as he bent over the sweep with his great back to David, he chuckled audibly, and said:
“Would you go, m’sieu? Ah–it is le malade d’amour over there in the cabin. Surely you would not break in upon their love-making?”
Bateese did not look over his shoulder, and so he did not see the hot flush that gathered in David’s face. But David was sure he knew it was there and that Concombre had guessed the truth of matters. There was a sly note in his voice, as if he could not quite keep to himself his exultation that beauty and bright eyes had played a clever trick on this man who, if his own judgment had been followed, would now be resting peacefully at the bottom of the river. It was the final stab to Carrigan. His muscles tensed. For the first time he felt the desire to shoot a naked fist into the grinning mouth of Concombre Bateese. He laid a hand on the half-breed’s shoulder, and Bateese turned about slowly. He saw what was in the other’s eyes.
“Until this moment I have not known what a great pleasure it will be to fight you, Bateese,” said David quietly. “Make it tomorrow– in the morning, if you wish. Take word to St. Pierre that I will make him a great wager that I win, a gamble so large that I think he will be afraid to cover it. For I don’t think much of this St. Pierre of yours, Bateese. I believe him to be a big-winded bluff, like yourself. And also a coward. Mark my word, he will be so much afraid that he will not accept my wager!”
Bateese did not answer. He was looking over David’s shoulder. He seemed not to have heard what the other had said, yet there had come a sudden gleam of exultation in his eyes, and he replied, still gazing toward the raft,
“Diantre, m’sieu coq de bruyere may keep ze beeg word in hees mout’! See!–St. Pierre, he ees comin’ to answer for himself. Mon Dieu, I hope he does not wring ze leetle rooster’s neck, for zat would spoil wan great, gran’ fight tomorrow!”
David turned toward the big raft. At the distance which separated them he could make out the giant figure of St. Pierre Boulain getting into a canoe. The humped-up form already in that canoe he knew was the Broken Man. He could not see Marie-Anne.
Very lightly Bateese touched his arm. “M’sieu will go into ze cabin,” he suggested softly. “If somet’ing happens, it ees bes’ too many eyes do not see it. You understan’, m’sieu agent de police?”
Carrigan nodded. “I understand,” he said.
XVI
In the cabin David waited. He did not look through the window to watch St. Pierre’s approach. He sat down and picked up a magazine from the table upon which Marie-Anne’s work-basket lay. He was cool as ice now. His blood flowed evenly and his pulse beat unhurriedly. Never had he felt himself more his own master, more like grappling with a situation. St. Pierre was coming to fight. He had no doubt of that. Perhaps not physically, at first. But, one way or another, something dynamic was bound to happen in the bateau cabin within the next half-hour. Now that the impending drama was close at hand, Carrigan’s scheme of luring St. Pierre into the making of a stupendous wager seemed to him rather ridiculous. With calculating coldness he was forced to concede that St. Pierre would be somewhat of a fool to accept the wager he had in mind, when he was so completely in St. Pierre’s power. For Marie-Anne and the chief of the Boulains, the bottom of the river would undoubtedly be the best and easiest solution, and the half- breed’s suggestion might be acted upon after all.
As his mind charged itself for the approaching struggle, David found himself staring at a double page in the magazine, given up entirely to impossibly slim young creatures exhibiting certain bits of illusive and mysterious feminine apparel. Marie-Anne had expressed her approbation in the form of pencil notes under several of them. Under a cobwebby affair that wreathed one of the slim figures he read, “St. Pierre will love this!” There were two exclamation points after that particular notation!
David replaced the magazine on the table and looked toward the door. No, St. Pierre would not hesitate to put him at the bottom of the river, for her. Not if he, Dave Carrigan, made the solution of the matter a necessity. There were times, he told himself, when it was confoundedly embarrassing to force the letter of the law. And this was one of them. He was not afraid of the river bottom. He was thinking again of Marie-Anne.
The scraping of a canoe against the side of the bateau recalled him suddenly to the moment at hand. He heard low voices, and one of them, he knew, was St. Pierre’s. For an interval the voices continued, frequently so low that he could not distinguish them at all. For ten minutes he waited impatiently. Then the door swung open, and St. Pierre came in.
Slowly and coolly David rose to meet him, and at the same moment the chief of the Boulains closed the door behind him. There was no greeting in Carrigan’s manner. He was the Law, waiting, unexcited, sure of himself, impassive as a thing of steel. He was ready to fight. He expected to fight. It only remained for St. Pierre to show what sort of fight it was to be. And he was amazed at St. Pierre, without betraying that amazement. In the vivid light that shot through the western windows the chief of the Boulains stood looking at David. He wore a gray flannel shirt open at the throat, and it was a splendid throat David saw, and a splendid head above it, with its reddish beard and hair. But what he saw chiefly were St. Pierre’s eyes. They were the sort of eyes he disliked to find in an enemy–a grayish, steely blue that reflected sunlight like polished flint. But there was no flash of battle-glow in them now. St. Pierre was neither excited nor in a bad humor. Nor did Carrigan’s attitude appear to disturb him in the least. He was smiling; his eyes glowed with almost boyish curiosity as he stared appraisingly at David–and then, slowly, a low chuckle of laughter rose in his deep chest, and he advanced with an outstretched hand.
“I am St. Pierre Boulain,” he said. “I have heard a great deal about you, Sergeant Carrigan. You have had an unfortunate time!”
Had the man advanced menacingly, David would have felt more comfortable. It was disturbing to have this giant come to him with an extended hand of apparent friendship when he had anticipated an entirely different sort of meeting. And St. Pierre was laughing at him! There was no doubt of that. And he had the colossal nerve to tell him that he had been unfortunate, as though being shot up by somebody’s wife was a fairly decent joke!
Carrigan’s attitude did not change. He did not reach out a hand to meet the other. There was no responsive glimmer of humor in his eyes or on his lips. And seeing these things, St. Pierre turned his extended hand to the open box of cigars, so that he stood for a moment with his back toward him.
“It’s funny,” he said, as if speaking to himself, and with only a drawling note of the French patois in his voice. “I come home, find my Jeanne in a terrible mix-up, a stranger in her room–and the stranger refuses to let me laugh or shake hands with him. Tonnerre, I say it is funny! And my Jeanne saved his life, and made him muffins, and gave him my own bed, and walked with him in the forest! Ah, the ungrateful cochon!”
He turned, laughing openly, so that his deep voice filled the cabin. “Vous aves de la corde de pendu, m’sieu–yes, you are a lucky dog! For only one other man in the world would my Jeanne have done that. You are lucky because you were not ended behind the rock; you are lucky because you are not at the bottom of the river; you are lucky–“
He shrugged his big shoulders hopelessly. “And now, after all our kindness and your good luck, you wait for me like an enemy, m’sieu. Diable, I can not understand!”
For the life of him Carrigan could not, in these few moments, measure up his man. He had said nothing. He had let St. Pierre talk. And now St. Pierre stood there, one of the finest men he had ever looked upon, as if honestly overcome by a great wonder. And yet behind that apparent incredulity in his voice and manner David sensed the deep underflow of another thing. St. Pierre was all that Marie-Anne had claimed for him, and more. She had given him assurance of her unlimited confidence that her husband could adjust any situation in the world, and Carrigan conceded that St. Pierre measured up splendidly to that particular type of man. The smile had not left his face; the good humor was still in his eyes.
David smiled back at him coldly. He recognized the cleverness of the other’s play. St. Pierre was a man who would smile like that even as he fought, and Carrigan loved a smiling fighter, even when he had to slip steel bracelets over his wrists.
“I am Sergeant Carrigan, of ‘N’ Division, Royal Northwest Mounted Police,” he said, repeating the formula of the law. “Sit down, St. Pierre, and I will tell you a few things that have happened. And then–“
“Non, non, it is not necessary, m’sieu. I have already listened for an hour, and I do not like to hear a story twice. You are of the Police. I love the Police. They are brave men, and brave men are my brothers. You are out after Roger Audemard, the rascal! Is it not so? And you were shot at behind the rock back there. You were almost killed. Ma foi, and it was my Jeanne who did the shooting! Yes, she thought you were another man.” The chuckling, drum-like note of laughter came again out of St. Pierre’s great chest. “It was bad shooting. I have taught her better, but the sun was blinding there in the hot, white sand. And after that–I know everything that has happened. Bateese was wrong. I shall scold him for wanting to put you at the bottom of the river–perhaps. Oui, ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut–that is it. A woman must have her way, and my Jeanne’s gentle heart was touched because you were a brave and handsome man, M’sieu Carrigan. But I am not jealous. Jealousy is a worm that does not make friendship! And we shall be friends. Only as a friend could I take you to the Chateau Boulain, far up on the Yellowknife. And we are going there.”
In spite of what might have been the entirely proper thing to do at this particular moment, Carrigan’s face broke into a smile as he drew a second chair up close to the table. He was swift to readjust himself. It came suddenly back to him how he had grinned behind the rock, when death seemed close at hand. And St. Pierre was like that now. David measured him again as the chief of the Boulains sat down opposite him. Such a man could not be afraid of anything on the face of the earth, even of the Law. The gleam that lay in his eyes told David that as they met his own over the table. “We are smiling now because it happens to please us,” David read in them. “But in a moment, if it is necessary, we shall fight.”
Carrigan leaned a little over the table. “You know we are not going to the Chateau Boulain, St. Pierre,” he said. “We are going to stop at Fort McMurray, and there you and your wife must answer for a number of things that have happened. There is one way out– possibly. That is largely up to you. Why did your wife try to kill me behind the rock? And what did you know about Black Roger Audemard?”
St. Pierre’s eyes did not for an instant leave Carrigan’s face. Slowly a change came into them; the smile faded, the blue went out, and up from behind seemed to come another pair of eyes that were hard as steel and cold as ice. Yet they were not eyes that threatened, nor eyes that betrayed excitement or passion. And St. Pierre’s voice, when he spoke, lacked the deep and vibrant note that had been in it. It was as if he had placed upon it the force of a mighty will, chaining it back, just as something hidden and terrible lay chained behind his eyes.
“Why play like little children, M’sieu Carrigan?” he asked. “Why not come out squarely, honestly, like men? I know what has happened. Mon Dieu, it was bad! You were almost killed, and you heard that poor wreck, Andre, call for Roger Audemard. My Jeanne has told you about that–how I found him in the forest with his broken mind and body. And about my Jeanne–” St. Pierre’s fists grew into knotted lumps on the table. “Non, I will die–I will kill you–before I will tell you why she shot at you behind the rock! We are men, both of us. We are not afraid. And you–in my place–what would YOU do, m’sieu?”
In the moment’s silence each man looked steadily at the other.
“I would–fight,” said David slowly. “If it was for her, I am pretty sure I would fight.”
He believed that he was drawing the net in now, that it would catch St. Pierre. He leaned a little farther over the table.
“And I, too, must fight,” he added. “You know our law, St. Pierre. We don’t go back without our man–unless we happen to die. And I would be stupid if I did not understand the situation here. It would be quite easy for you to get rid of me. But I don’t believe you are a murderer, even if your Jeanne tried to be.” A flicker of a smile crossed his lips. “And Marie-Anne–I beg pardon!–your wife–“
St. Pierre interrupted him. “It will please me to have you call her Marie-Anne. And it will please her also, m’sieu. Dieu, if we only had eyes that could see what is in a woman’s heart! Life is funny, m’sieu. It is a great joke, I swear it on my soul!”
He shrugged his shoulders, smiling again straight into David’s eyes. “See what has happened! You set out for a murderer. My Jeanne makes a great mistake and shoots you. Then she pities you, saves your life, brings you here, and–ma foi! it is true–learns to care for you more than she should! But that does not make me want to kill you. Non, her happiness is mine. Dead men tell no tales, m’sieu, but there are times when living men also keep tales to themselves. And that is what you are going to do, M’sieu Carrigan. You are going to keep to yourself the thing that happened behind the rock. You are going to keep to yourself the mumblings of our poor mad Andre. Never will they pass your lips. I know. I swear it. I stake my life on it!” St. Pierre was talking slowly and unexcitedly. There was an immeasurable confidence in his deep voice. It did not imply a threat or a warning. He was sure of himself. And his eyes had deepened into blue again and were almost friendly.
“You would stake your life?” repeated Carrigan questioningly. “You would do that?”
St. Pierre rose to his feet and looked about the cabin with a shining light in his eyes that was both pride and exaltation. He moved toward the end of the room, where the piano stood, and for a moment his big fingers touched the keys; then, seeing the lacy bit of handkerchief that lay there, he picked it up–and placed it back again. Carrigan did not urge his question, but waited. In spite of his effort to fight it down he found himself in the grip of a mysterious and growing thrill as he watched St. Pierre. Never had the presence of another man had the same effect upon him, and strangely the thought came to him that he was matched–even overmatched. It was as if St. Pierre had brought with him into the cabin something more than the splendid strength of his body, a thing that reached out in the interval of silence between them, warning Carrigan that all the law in the world would not swerve the chief of the Boulains from what was already in his mind. For a moment the thought passed from David that fate had placed him up against the hazard of enmity with St. Pierre. His vision centered in the man alone. And as he, too, rose to his feet, an unconscious smile came to his lips as he recalled the boastings of Bateese.
“I ask you,” said he, “if you would really stake your life in a matter such as that? Of course, if your words were merely accidental, and meant nothing–“
“If I had a dozen lives, I would stake them, one on top of the other, as I have said,” interrupted St. Pierre. Suddenly his laugh boomed out and his voice became louder. “M’sieu Carrigan, I have come to offer you just that test! Oui, I could kill you now. I could put you at the bottom of the river, as Bateese thinks is right. Mon Dieu, how completely I could make you disappear! And then my Jeanne would be safe. She would not go behind prison bars. She would go on living, and laughing, and singing in the big forests, where she belongs. And Black Roger Audemard, the rascal, would be safe for a time! But that would be like destroying a little child. You are so helpless now. So you are going on to the Chateau Boulain with us, and if at the end of the second month from today you do not willingly say I have won my wager–why– m’sieu–I will go with you into the forest, and you may shoot out of me the life which is my end of the gamble. Is that not fair? Can you suggest a better way–between men like you and me?”
“I can at least suggest a way that has the virtue of saving time,” replied David. “First, however, I must understand my position here. I am, I take it, a prisoner.”
“A guest, with certain restrictions placed upon you, m’sieu,” corrected St. Pierre.
The eyes of the two men met on a dead level.
“Tomorrow morning I am going to fight Bateese,” said David. “It is a little sporting event we have fixed up between us for the amusement of–your men. I have heard that Bateese is the best fighting man along the Three Rivers. And I–I do not like to have any other man claim that distinction when I am around.”
For the first time St. Pierre’s placidity seemed to leave him. His brow became clouded, a moment’s frown grew in his face, and there was a certain disconsolate hopelessness in the shrug of his shoulders. It was as if Carrigan’s words had suddenly robbed the day of all its sunshine for the chief of the Boulains. His voice, too, carried an unhappy and disappointed note as he made a gesture toward the window.
“M’sieu, on that raft out there are many of my men, and they have scarcely rested or slept since word was brought to them that a stranger was to fight Concombre Bateese. Tonnerre, they have gambled without ever seeing you until the clothes on their backs are in the hazard, and they have cracked their muscles in labor to overtake you! They have prayed away their very souls that it would be a good fight, and that Bateese would not eat you up too quickly. It has been a long time since we have seen a good fight, a long time since the last man dared to stand up against the half- breed. Ugh, it tears out my heart to tell you that the fight can not be!”
St. Pierre made no effort to suppress his emotion. He was like a huge, disappointed boy. He walked to the window, peered forth at the raft, and as he shrugged his big shoulders again something like a groan came from him.
The thrill of approaching triumph swept through David’s blood. The flame of it was in his eyes when St. Pierre turned from the window.
“And you are disappointed, St. Pierre? You would like to see that fight!”
The blue steel in St. Pierre’s eyes flashed back. “If the price were a year of my life, I would give it–if Bateese did not eat you up too quickly. I love to look upon a good fight, where there is no venom of hatred in the blows!”
“Then you shall see a good fight, St. Pierre.”
“Bateese would kill you, m’sieu. You are not big. You are not his match.”
“I shall whip him, St. Pierre–whip him until he avows me his master.”
“You do not know the half-breed, m’sieu. Twice I have tried him in friendly combat myself and have been beaten.”
“But I shall whip him,” repeated Carrigan. “I will wager you anything–anything in the world–even life against life–that I whip him!”
The gloom had faded from the face of St. Pierre Boulain. But in a moment it clouded again.
“My Jeanne has made me promise that I will stop the fight,” he said.
“And why–why should she insist in a matter such as this, which properly should be settled among men?” asked David.
Again St. Pierre laughed; with an effort, it seemed, “She is gentle-hearted, m’sieu. She laughed and thought it quite a joke when Bateese humbled me. ‘What! My great St. Pierre, with the blood of old France in his veins, beaten by a man who has been named after a vegetable!’ she cried. I tell you she was merry over it, m’sieu! She laughed until the tears came into her eyes. But with you it is different. She was white when she entreated me not to let you fight Bateese. Yes, she is afraid you will be badly hurt. And she does not want to see you hurt again. But I tell you that I am not jealous, m’sieu! She does not try to hide things from me. She tells me everything, like a little child. And so–“
“I am going to fight Bateese,” said David. He wondered if St. Pierre could hear the thumping of his heart, or if his face gave betrayal of the hot flood it was pumping through his body. “Bateese and I have pledged ourselves. We shall fight, unless you tie one of us hand and foot. And as for a wager–“
“Yes–what have you to wager?” demanded St. Pierre eagerly.
“You know the odds are great,” temporized Carrigan.
“That I concede, m’sieu.”
“But a fight without a wager would be like a pipe without tobacco, St. Pierre.”
“You speak truly, m’sieu.”
David came nearer and laid a hand on the other’s arm. “St. Pierre, I hope you–and your Jeanne–will understand what I am about to offer. It is this. If Bateese whips me, I will disappear into the forests, and no word shall ever pass my lips of what has passed since that hour behind the rock–and this. No whisper of it will ever reach the Law. I will forget the attempted murder and the suspicious mumblings of your Broken Man. You will be safe. Your Jeanne will be safe–if Bateese whips me.”
He paused, and waited. St. Pierre made no answer, but amazement came into his face, and after that a slow and burning fire in his eyes which told how deeply and vitally Carrigan’s words had struck into his soul.
“And if I should happen to win,” continued David, turning a bit carelessly toward the window, “why, I should expect as large a payment from you. If I win, your fulfillment of the wager will be to tell me in every detail why your wife tried to kill me behind the rock, and you will also tell me all that you know about the man I am after, Black Roger Audemard. That is all. I am asking for no odds, though you concede the handicap is great.”
He did not look at St. Pierre. Behind him he heard the other’s deep breathing. For a space neither spoke. Outside they could hear the soft swish of water, the low voices of men in the stern, and a shout and the barking of a dog coming from the raft far out on the river. For David the moment was one of suspense. He turned again, a bit carelessly, as if his proposition were a matter of but little significance to him. St. Pierre was not looking at him. He was staring toward the door, as if through it he could see the powerful form of Bateese bending over the stern sweep. And Carrigan could see that his face was flaming with a great desire, and that the blood in his body was pounding to the mighty urge of it.
Suddenly he faced Carrigan.
“M’sieu, listen to me,” he said. “You are a brave man. You are a man of honor, and I know you will bury sacredly in your heart what I am going to tell you now, and never let a word of it escape– even to my Jeanne. I do not blame you for loving her. Non! You could not help that. You have fought well to keep it within yourself, and for that I honor you. How do I know? Mon Dieu, she has told me! A woman’s heart understands, and a woman’s ears are quick to hear, m’sieu. When you were sick, and your mind was wandering, you told her again and again that you loved her–and when she brought you back to life, her eyes saw more than once the truth of what your lips had betrayed, though you tried to keep it to yourself. Even more, m’sieu–she felt the touch of your lips on her hair that day. She understands. She has told me everything, openly, innocently–yet her heart thrills with that sympathy of a woman who knows she is loved. M’sieu, if you could have seen the light in her eyes and the glow in her cheeks as she told me these secrets. But I am not jealous! Non! It is only because you are a brave man, and one of honor, that I tell you all this. She would die of shame did she know I had betrayed her confidence. Yet it is necessary that I tell you, because if we make the big wager we must drop my Jeanne from the gamble. Do you comprehend me, m’sieu?
“We are two men, strong men, fighting men. I–Pierre Boulain–can not feel the shame of jealousy where a woman’s heart is pure and sweet, and where a man has fought against love with honor as you have fought. And you, m’sieu–David Carrigan, of the Police–can not strike with your hard man’s hand that tender heart, that is like a flower, and which this moment is beating faster than it should with the fear that some harm is going to befall you. Is it not so, m’sieu? We will make the wager, yes. But if you whip Bateese–and you can not do that in a hundred years of fighting–I will not tell you why my Jeanne shot at you behind the rock. Non, never! Yet I swear I will tell you the other. If you win, I will tell you all I know about Roger Audemard, and that is considerable, m’sieu. Do you agree?”
Slowly David held out a hand. St. Pierre’s gripped it. The fingers of the two men met like bands of steel.
“Tomorrow you will fight,” said St. Pierre. “You will fight and be beaten so terribly that you may always show the marks of it. I am sorry. Such a man as you I would rather have as a brother than an enemy. And she will never forgive me. She will always remember it. The thought will never die out of her heart that I was a beast to let you fight Bateese. But it is best for all. And my men? Ah! Diable, but it will be great sport for them, m’sieu!”
His hand unclasped. He turned to the door. A moment later it closed behind him, and David was alone. He had not spoken. He had not replied to the engulfing truths that had fallen quietly and without a betrayal of passion from St. Pierre’s lips. Inwardly he was crushed. Yet his face was like stone, hiding his shame. And then, suddenly, there came a sound from outside that sent the blood through his cold veins again. It was laughter, the great, booming laughter of St. Pierre! It was not the merriment of a man whose heart was bleeding, or into whose life had come an unexpected pain or grief. It was wild and free, and filled with the joy of the sun-filled day.
And David, listening to it, felt something that was more than admiration for this man growing within him. And unconsciously his lips repeated St. Pierre’s words.
“Tomorrow–you will fight.”
XVII
For many minutes David stood at the bateau window and watched the canoe that carried St. Pierre Boulain and the Broken Man back to the raft. It moved slowly, as if St. Pierre was loitering with a purpose and was thinking deeply of what had passed. Carrigan’s fingers tightened, and his face grew tense, as he gazed out into the glow of the western sun. Now that the stress of nerve-breaking moments in the cabin was over, he no longer made an effort to preserve the veneer of coolness and decision with which he had encountered the chief of the Boulains. Deep in his soul he was crushed and humiliated. Every nerve in his body was bleeding.
He had heard St. Pierre’s big laugh a moment before, but it must have been the laugh of a man who was stabbed to the heart. And he was going back to Marie-Anne like that–drifting scarcely faster than the current that he might steal time to strengthen himself before he looked into her eyes again. David could see him, motionless, his giant shoulders hunched forward a little, his head bowed, and in the stern the Broken Man paddled listlessly, his eyes on the face of his master. Without voice David cursed himself. In his egoism he had told himself that he had made a splendid fight in resisting the temptation of a great love for the wife of St. Pierre. But what was his own struggle compared with this tragedy which St. Pierre was now facing?
He turned from the window and looked about the cabin room again– the woman’s room and St. Pierre’s–and his face burned in its silent accusation. Like a living thing it painted another picture for him. For a space he lost his own identity. He saw himself in the place of St. Pierre. He was the husband of Marie-Anne, worshipping her even as St. Pierre must worship her, and he came, as St. Pierre had come, to find a stranger in his home, a stranger who had lain in his bed, a stranger whom his wife had nursed back to life, a stranger who had fallen in love with his most inviolable possession, who had told her of his love, who had kissed her, who had held her close, in his arms, whose presence had brought a warmer flush and a brighter glow into eyes and cheeks that until this stranger’s coming had belonged only to him. And he heard her, as St. Pierre had heard her, pleading with him to keep this man from harm; he heard her soft voice, telling of the things that had passed between them, and he saw in her eyes–
With almost a cry he swept the thought and the picture from him. It was an atrocious thing to conceive, impossible of reality. And yet the truth would not go. What would he have done in St. Pierre’s place?
He went to the window again. Yes, St. Pierre was a bigger man than he. For St. Pierre had come quietly and calmly, offering a hand of friendship, generous, smiling, keeping his hurt to himself, while he, Dave Carrigan, would have come with the murder of man in his heart.
His eyes passed from the canoe to the raft, and from the big raft to the hazy billows of green and golden forest that melted off into interminable miles of distance beyond the river. He knew that on the other side of him lay that same distance, north, east, south, and west, vast spaces in an unpeopled world, the same green and golden forests, ten thousand plains and rivers and lakes, a million hiding-places where romance and tragedy might remain forever undisturbed. The thought came to him that it would not be difficult to slip out into that world and disappear. He almost owed it to St. Pierre. It was the voice of Bateese in a snatch of wild and discordant song that brought him back into grim reality. There was, after all, that embarrassing matter of justice–and the accursed Law!
After a little he observed that the canoe was moving faster, and that Andre’s paddle was working steadily and with force. St. Pierre no longer sat hunched in the bow. His head was erect, and he was waving a hand in the direction of the raft. A figure had come from the cabin on the huge mass of floating timber. David caught the shimmer of a woman’s dress, something white fluttering over her head, waving back at St. Pierre. It was Marie-Anne, and he moved away from the window.
He wondered what was passing between St. Pierre and his wife in the hour that followed. The bateau kept abreast of the raft, moving neither faster nor slower than it did, and twice he surrendered to the desire to scan the deck of the floating timbers through his binoculars. But the cabin held St. Pierre and Marie- Anne, and he saw neither of them again until the sun was setting. Then St. Pierre came out–alone.
Even at that distance over the broad river he heard the booming voice of the chief of the Boulains. Life sprang up where there had been the drowse of inactivity aboard the raft. A dozen more of the great sweeps were swiftly manned by men who appeared suddenly from the shaded places of canvas shelters and striped tents. A murmur of voices rose over the water, and then the murmur was broken by howls and shouts as the rivermen ran to their places at the command of St. Pierre’s voice, and as the sweeps began to flash in the setting sun, it gave way entirely to the evening chant of the Paddling Song.
David gripped himself as he listened and watched the slowly drifting glory of the world that came down to the shores of the river. He could see St. Pierre clearly, for the bateau had worked its way nearer. He could see the bare heads and naked arms of the rivermen at the sweeps. The sweet breath of the forests filled his lungs, as that picture lay before him, and there came into his soul a covetousness and a yearning where before there had been humiliation and the grim urge of duty. He could breathe the air of that world, he could look at its beauty, he could worship it–and yet he knew that he was not a part of it as those others were a part of it. He envied the men at the sweeps; he felt his heart swelling at the exultation and joy in their song. They were going home–home down the big rivers, home to the heart of God’s Country, where wives and sweethearts and happiness were waiting for them, and their visions were his visions as he stared wide- eyed and motionless over the river. And yet he was irrevocably an alien. He was more than that–an enemy, a man-hound sent out on a trail to destroy, an agent of a powerful and merciless force that carried with it punishment and death.
The crew of the bateau had joined in the evening song of the rivermen on the raft, and over the ridges and hollows of the forest tops, red and green and gold in the last warm glory of the sun, echoed that chanting voice of men. David understood now what St. Pierre’s command had been. The huge raft with its tented city of life was preparing to tie up for the night. A quarter of a mile ahead the river widened, so that on the far side was a low, clean shore toward which the efforts of the men at the sweeps were slowly edging the raft. York boats shot out on the shore side and dropped anchors that helped drag the big craft in. Two others tugged at tow-lines fastened to the shoreside bow, and within twenty minutes the first men were plunging up out of the water on the white strip of beach and were whipping the tie-lines about the nearest trees. David unconsciously was smiling in the thrill and triumph of these last moments, and not until they were over did he sense the fact that Bateese and his crew were bringing the bateau in to the opposite shore. Before the sun was quite down, both raft and house-boat were anchored for the night.
As the shadows of the distant forests deepened, Carrigan felt impending about him an oppression of emptiness and loneliness which he had not experienced before. He was disappointed that the bateau had not tied up with the raft. Already he could see men building fires. Spirals of smoke began to rise from the shore, and he knew that the riverman’s happiest of all hours, supper time, was close at hand. He looked at his watch. It was after seven o’clock. Then he watched the fading away of the sun until only the red glow of it remained in the west, and against the still thicker shadows the fires of the rivermen threw up yellow flames. On his own side, Bateese and the bateau crew were preparing their meal. It was eight o’clock when a man he had not seen before brought in his supper. He ate, scarcely sensing the taste of his food, and half an hour later the man reappeared for the dishes.
It was not quite dark when he returned to his window, but the far shore was only an indistinct blur of gloom. The fires were brighter. One of them, built solely because of the rivermen’s inherent love of light and cheer, threw the blaze of its flaming logs twenty feet into the air.
He wondered what Marie-Anne was doing in this hour. Last night they had been together. He had marveled at the witchery of the moonlight in her hair and eyes, he had told her of the beauty of it, she had smiled, she had laughed softly with him–for hours they had sat in the spell of the golden night and the glory of the river. And tonight–now–was she with St. Pierre, waiting as they had waited last night for the rising of the moon? Had she forgotten? COULD she forget? Or was she, as he thought St. Pierre had painfully tried to make him believe, innocent of all the thoughts and desires that had come to him, as he sat worshipping her in their stolen hours? He could think of them only as stolen, for he did not believe Marie-Anne had revealed to her husband all she might have told him.
He was sure he would never see her again as he had seen her then, and something of bitterness rose in him as he thought of that. St. Pierre, could he have seen her face and eyes when he told her that her hair in the moonlight was lovelier than anything he had ever seen, would have throttled him with his naked hands in that meeting in the cabin. For St. Pierre’s code would not have had her eyes droop under their long lashes or her cheeks flush so warmly at the words of another man–and he could not take vengeance on the woman herself. No, she had not told St. Pierre all she might have told! There were things which she must have kept to herself, which she dared not reveal even to this great-hearted man who was her husband. Shame, if nothing more, had kept her silent.
Did she feel that shame as he was feeling it? It was inconceivable to think otherwise. And for that reason, more than all others, he knew that she would not meet him face to face again–unless he forced that meeting. And there was little chance of that, for his pledge with St. Pierre had eliminated her from the aftermath of tomorrow’s drama, his fight with Bateese. Only when St. Pierre might stand in a court of law would there be a possibility of her eyes meeting his own again, and then they would flame with the hatred that at another time had been in the eyes of Carmin Fanchet.
With the dull stab of a thing that of late had been growing inside him, he wondered what had happened to Carmin Fanchet in the years that had gone since he had brought about the hanging of her brother. Last night and the night before, strange dreams of her had come to him in restless slumber. It was disturbing to him that he should wake up in the middle of the night dreaming of her, when he had gone to his bed with a mind filled to overflowing with the sweet presence of Marie-Anne Boulain. And now his mind reached out poignantly into mysterious darkness and doubt, even as the darkness of night spread itself in a thickening canopy over the river.
Gray clouds had followed the sun of a faultless day, and the stars were veiled overhead. When David turned from the window, it was so dark in the cabin that he could not see. He did not light the lamps, but made his way to St. Pierre’s couch and sat down in the silence and gloom.
Through the open windows came to him the cadence of the river and the forests. There was silence of human voice ashore, but under him he heard the lapping murmur of water as it rustled under the stern and side of the bateau, and from the deep timber came the never-ceasing whisper of the spruce and cedar tops, and the subdued voice of creatures whose hours of activity had come with the dying out of the sun.
For a long time he sat in this darkness. And then there came to him a sound that was different than the other sounds–a low monotone of voices, the dipping of a paddle–and a canoe passed close under his windows and up the shore. He paid small attention to it until, a little later, the canoe returned, and its occupants boarded the bateau. It would have roused little interest in him then had he not heard a voice that was thrillingly like the voice of a woman.
He drew his hunched shoulders erect and stared through the darkness toward the door. A moment more and there was no doubt. It was almost shock that sent the blood leaping suddenly through his veins. The inconceivable had happened. It was Marie-Anne out there, talking in a low voice to Bateese!
Then there came a heavy knock at his door, and he heard the door open. Through it he saw the grayer gloom of the outside night partly shut out a heavy shadow.
“M’sieu!” called the voice of Bateese.
“I am here,” said David.
“You have not gone to bed, m’sieu?”
“No.”
The heavy shadow seemed to fade away, and yet there still remained a shadow there. David’s heart thumped as he noted the slenderness of it. For a space there was silence. And then,
“Will you light the lamps, M’sieu David?” a soft voice came to him. “I want to come in, and I am afraid of this terrible darkness!”
He rose to his feet, fumbling in his pocket for matches.
XVIII
He did not turn toward Marie-Anne when he had lighted the first of the great brass lamps hanging at the side of the bateau. He went to the second, and struck another match, and flooded the cabin with light.
She still stood silhouetted against the darkness beyond the cabin door when he faced her. She was watching him, her eyes intent, her face a little pale, he thought. Then he smiled and nodded. He could not see a great change in her since this afternoon, except that there seemed to be a little more fire in the glow of her eyes. They were looking at him steadily as she smiled and nodded, wide, beautiful eyes in which there was surely no revelation of shame or regret, and no very clear evidence of unhappiness. David stared, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
“Why is it that you sit in darkness?” she asked, stepping within and closing the door. “Did you not expect me to return and apologize for leaving you so suddenly this afternoon? It was impolite. Afterward I was ashamed. But I was excited, M’sieu David. I–“
“Of course,” he hurried to interrupt her. “I understand. St. Pierre is a lucky man. I congratulate you–as well as him. He is splendid, a man in whom you can place great faith and confidence.”
“He scolded me for running away from you as I did, M’sieu David. He said I should have shown better courtesy than to leave like that one who was a guest in our–home. So I have returned, like a good child, to make amends.”
“It was not necessary.”
“But you were lonesome and in darkness!”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And besides,” she added, so quietly and calmly that he was amazed, “you know my sleeping apartment is also on the bateau. And St. Pierre made me promise to say good night to you.”
“It is an imposition,” cried David, the blood rushing to his face. “You have given up all this to me! Why not let me go into that little room forward, or sleep on the raft and you and St. Pierre– “
“St. Pierre would not leave the raft,” replied Marie-Anne, turning from him toward the table on which were the books and magazines and her work-basket. “And I like my little room forward.”
“St. Pierre–“
He stopped himself. He could see a sudden color deepening in the cheek of St. Pierre’s wife as she made pretense of looking for something in her basket. He felt that if he went on he would blunder, if he had not already blundered. He was uncomfortable, for he believed he had guessed the truth. It was not quite reasonable to expect that Marie-Anne would come to him like this on the first night of St. Pierre’s homecoming. Something had happened over in the little cabin on the raft, he told himself. Perhaps there had been a quarrel–at least ironical implications on St. Pierre’s part. And his sympathy was with St. Pierre.
He caught suddenly a little tremble at the corner of Marie-Anne’s mouth as her face was turned partly from him, and he stepped to the opposite side of the table so he could look at her fairly. If there had been unpleasantness in the cabin on the raft, St. Pierre’s wife in no way gave evidence of it. The color had deepened to almost a blush in her cheeks, but it was not on account of embarrassment, for one who is embarrassed is not usually amused, and as she looked up at him her eyes were filled with the flash of laughter which he had caught her lips struggling to restrain. Then, finding a bit of lace work with the needles meshed in it, she seated herself, and again he was looking down on the droop of her long lashes and the seductive glow of her lustrous hair. Yesterday, in a moment of irresistible impulse, he had told her how lovely it was as she had dressed it, a bewitching crown of interwoven coils, not drawn tightly, but crumpled and soft, as if the mass of tresses were openly rebelling at closer confinement. She had told him the effect was entirely accidental, largely due to carelessness and haste in dressing it. Accidental or otherwise, it was the same tonight, and in the heart of it were the drooping red petals of a flower she had gathered with him early that afternoon.
“St. Pierre brought me over,” she said in a calmly matter-of-fact voice, as though she had expected David to know that from the beginning. “He is ashore talking over important matters with Bateese. I am sure he will drop in and say good night before he returns to the raft. He asked me to wait for him–here.” She raised her eyes, so clear and untroubled, so quietly unembarrassed under his gaze, that he would have staked his life she had no suspicion of the confessions which St. Pierre had revealed to him.
“Do you care? Would you rather put out the lights and go to bed?”
He shook his head. “No. I am glad. I was beastly lonesome. I had an idea–“
He was on the point of blundering again when he caught himself. The effect of her so near him was more than ever disturbing, in spite of St. Pierre. Her eyes, clear and steady, yet soft as velvet when they looked at him, made his tongue and his thoughts dangerously uncertain.
“You had an idea, M’sieu David?”
“That you would have no desire to see me again after my talk with St. Pierre,” he said. “Did he tell you about it?”
“He said you were very fine, M’sieu David–and that he liked you.”
“And he told you it is determined that I shall fight Bateese in the morning?”
“Yes.”
The one word was spoken with a quiet lack of excitement, even of interest–it seemed to belie some of the things St. Pierre had told him, and he could scarcely believe, looking at her now, that she had entreated her husband to prevent the encounter, or that she had betrayed any unusual emotion in the matter at all.
“I was afraid you would object,” he could not keep from saying. “It does not seem nice to pull off such a thing as that, when there is a lady about–“
“Or LADIES.” She caught him up quickly, and he saw a sudden little tightening of her pretty mouth as she turned her eyes to the bit of lace work again. “But I do not object, because what St. Pierre says is right–must be right.”
And the softness, he thought, went altogether out of the curve of her lips for an instant. In a flash their momentary betrayal of vexation was gone, and St. Pierre’s wife had replaced the work- basket on the table and was on her feet, smiling at him. There was something of wild daring in her eyes, something that made him think of the glory of adventure he had seen flaming in her face the night they had run the rapids of the Holy Ghost.
“Tomorrow will be very unpleasant, M’sieu David,” she cried softly. “Bateese will beat you–terribly. Tonight we must think of things more agreeable.”
He had never seen her more radiant than when she turned toward the piano. What the deuce did it mean? Had St. Pierre been making a fool of him? She actually appeared unable to restrain her elation at the thought that Bateese would surely beat him up! He stood without moving and made no effort to answer her. Just before they had started on that thrilling adventure into the forest, which had ended with his carrying her in his arms, she had gone to the piano and had played for him. Now her fingers touched softly the same notes. A little humming trill came in her throat, and it seemed to David that she was deliberately recalling his thoughts to the things that had happened before the coming of St. Pierre. He had not lighted the lamp over the piano, and for a flash her dark eyes smiled at him out of the half shadow. After a moment she began to sing.
Her voice was low and without effort, untrained, and subdued as if conscious and afraid of its limitations, yet so exquisitely sweet that to David it was a new and still more wonderful revelation of St. Pierre’s wife. He drew nearer, until he stood close at her side, the dark luster of her hair almost touching his arm, her partly upturned face a bewitching profile in the shadows.
Her voice grew lower, almost a whisper in its melody, as if meant for him alone. Many times he had heard the Canadian Boat Song, but never as its words came now from the lips of Marie-Anne Boulain.
“Faintly as tolls the evening chime, Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time. Soon as the woods on shore look dim, We’ll sing at St. Ann’s our parting hymn; Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast, The rapids are near, and the daylight’s past.”
She paused. And David, staring down at her shining head, did not speak. Her fingers trembled over the keys, he could see dimly the shadow of her long lashes, and the spirit-like scent of crushed violets rose to him from the soft lace about her throat and her hair.
“It is your music,” he whispered. “I have never heard the Boat Song like that!”
He tried to drag his eyes from her face and hair, sensing that he was a near-criminal, fighting a mighty impulse. The notes under her fingers changed, and again–by chance or design–she was stabbing at him; bringing him face to face with the weakness of his flesh, the iniquity of his desire to reach out his arms and crumple her in them. Yet she did not look up, she did not see him, as she began to sing “Ave Maria.”
“Ave, Maria, hear my cry! O, guide my path where no harm, no harm is nigh–“
As she went on, he knew she had forgotten to think of him. With the reverence of a prayer the holy words came from her lips, slowly, softly, trembling with a pathos and sweetness that told David they came not alone from the lips, but from the very soul of St, Pierre’s wife. And then–
“Oh, Mother, hear me where thou art, And guard and guide my aching heart, my aching heart!”
The last words drifted away into a whisper, and David was glad that he was not looking into the face of St. Pierre’s wife, for there must have been something there now which it would have been sacrilege for him to stare at, as he was staring at her hair.
No sound of opening door had come from behind them. Yet St. Pierre had opened it and stood there, watching them with a curious humor in eyes that seemed still to hold a glitter of the fire that had leaped from the half-breed’s flaming birch logs. His voice was a shock to Carrigan.
“PESTE, but you are a gloomy pair!” he boomed. “Why no light over there in the corner, and why sing that death-song to chase away the devil when there is no devil near?”
Guilt was in David’s heart, but there was no sting of venom in St. Pierre’s words, and he was laughing at them now, as though what he saw were a pretty joke and amused him.
“Late hours and shady bowers! I say it should be a love song or something livelier,” he cried, closing the door behind him and coming toward them. “Why not En Roulant ma Boule, my sweet Jeanne? You know that is my favorite.”
He suddenly interrupted himself, and his voice rolled out in a wild chant that rocked the cabin.
“The wind is fresh, the wind is free, En roulant ma boule! The wind is fresh–my love waits me, Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant! Behind our house a spring you see, In it three ducks swim merrily, And hunting, the Prince’s son went he, With a silver gun right fair to see–“
David was conscious that St. Pierre’s wife had risen to her feet, and now she came out of shadow into light, and he was amazed to see that she was laughing back at St. Pierre, and that her two fore-fingers were thrust in her ears to keep out the bellow of her husband’s voice. She was not at all discomfited by his unexpected appearance, but rather seemed to join in the humor of the thing with St. Pierre, though he fancied he could see something in her face that was forced and uneasy. He believed that under the surface of her composure she was suffering a distress which she did not reveal.
St. Pierre advanced and carelessly patted her shoulder with one of his big hands, while he spoke to David.
“Has she not the sweetest voice in the world, m’sieu? Did you ever hear a sweeter or as sweet? I say it is enough to get down into the soul of a man, unless he is already half dead! That voice–“
He caught Marie-Anne’s eyes. Her cheeks were flaming. Her look, for an instant, flashed lightning as she halted him.
“Ma foi, I speak it from the heart,” he persisted, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Am I not right, M’sieu Carrigan? Did you ever hear a sweeter voice?”
“It is wonderful,” agreed David, wondering if he was hazarding too much.
“Good! It fills me with happiness to know I am right. And now, cherie, good-night! I must return to the raft.”
A shadow of vexation crossed Marie-Anne’s face. “You seem in great haste.”
“Plagues and pests! You are right, Pretty Voice! I am most anxious to get back to my troubles there, and you–“
“Will also bid M’sieu Carrigan good-night,” she quickly interrupted him. “You will at least see me to my room, St. Pierre, and safely put away for the night.”
She held out her hand to David. There was not a tremor in it as it lay for an instant soft and warm in his own. She made no effort to withdraw it quickly, nor did her eyes hide their softness as they looked into his own.
Mutely David stood as they went out. He heard St. Pierre’s loud voice rumbling about the darkness of the night. He heard them pass along the side of the bateau forward, and half a minute later he knew that St. Pierre was getting into his canoe. The dip of a paddle came to him.
For a space there was silence, and then, from far out in the black shadow of the river, rolled back the great voice of St. Pierre Boulain singing the wild river chant, “En Roulant ma Boule.”
At the open window he listened. It seemed to him that from far over the river, where the giant raft lay, there came a faint answer to the words of the song,
XIX
With the slow approach of the storm which was advancing over the wilderness, Carrigan felt more poignantly the growing unrest that was in him. He heard the last of St. Pierre’s voice, and after that the fires on the distant shore died out slowly, giving way to utter blackness. Faintly there came to him the far-away rumbling of thunder. The air grew heavy and thick, and there was no sound of night-bird over the breast of the river, and out of the thick cedar and spruce and balsam there came no cry or whisper of the nocturnal life waiting in silence for the storm to break. In that stillness David put out the lights in the cabin and sat close to the window in darkness.
He was more than sleepless. Every nerve in his body demanded action, and his brain was fired by strange thoughts until their vividness seemed to bring him face to face with a reality that set his blood stirring with an irresistible thrill. He believed he had made a discovery, that St. Pierre had betrayed himself. What he had visioned, the conclusion he had arrived at, seemed inconceivable, yet what his own eyes had seen and his ears had heard pointed to the truth of it all. The least he could say was that St. Pierre’s love for Marie-Anne Boulain was a strange sort of love. His attitude toward her seemed more like that of a man in the presence of a child of whom he was fond in a fatherly sort of way. His affection, as he had expressed it, was parental and careless. Not for an instant had there been in it a betrayal of the lover, no suggestion of the husband who cared deeply or who might be made jealous by another man.
Sitting in darkness thickening with the nearer approach of storm, David recalled the stab of pain mingled with humiliation that had come into the eyes of St. Pierre’s wife when she had stood facing her husband. He heard again, with a new understanding, the low note of pathos in her voice as in song she had called upon the Mother of Christ to hear her–and help her. He had not guessed at the tragedy of it then. Now he knew, and he thought of her lying awake in the gloom beyond the bulkhead, her eyes were with tears. And St. Pierre had gone back to his raft, singing in the night! Where before there had been sympathy for him, there rose a sincere revulsion. There had been a reason for St. Pierre’s masterly possession of himself, and it had not been, as he had thought, because of his bigness of soul. It was because he had not cared. He was a splendid hypocrite, playing his game well at the beginning, but betraying the lie at the end. He did not love Marie-Anne as he, Dave Carrigan, loved her. He had spoken of her as a child, and he had treated her as a child, and was serenely dispassionate in the face of a situation which would have roused the spirit in most men. And suddenly, recalling that thrilling hour in the white strip of sand and all that had happened since, it flashed upon David that St. Pierre was using his wife as the vital moving force in a game of his own–that under the masquerade of his apparent faith and bigness of character he was sacrificing her to achieve a certain mysterious something it the scheme of his own affairs.
Yet he could not forget the infinite faith Marie-Anne Boulain had expressed in her husband. There had been no hypocrisy in her waiting and her watching for him, or in her belief that he would straighten out the tangles of the dilemma in which she had become involved. Nor had there been make-believe in the manner she had left him that day in her eagerness to go to St. Pierre. Adding these facts as he had added the others, he fancied he saw the truth staring at him out of the darkness of his cabin room. Marie- Anne loved her husband. And St. Pierre was merely the possessor, careless and indifferent, almost brutally dispassionate in his consideration of her.
A heavy crash of thunder brought Carrigan back to a realization of the impending storm. He rose to his feet in the chaotic gloom, facing the bulkhead beyond which he was certain St. Pierre’s wife lay wide awake. He tried to laugh. It was inexcusable, he told himself, to let his thoughts become involved in the family affairs of St. Pierre and Marie-Anne. That was not his business. Marie- Anne, in the final analysis, did not appear to be especially abused, and her mind was not a child’s mind. Probably she would not thank him for his interest in the matter. She would tell him, like any other woman with pride, that it was none of his business and that he was presuming upon forbidden ground.
He went to the window. There was scarcely a breath of air, and unfastening the screen, he thrust out his head and shoulders into the night. It was so black that he could not see the shadow of the water almost within reach of his hands, but through the chaos of gloom that lay between him and the opposite shore he made out a single point of yellow light. He was positive the light was in the cabin on the raft. And St. Pierre was probably in that cabin.
A huge drop of rain splashed on his hand, and behind him he heard sweeping over the forest tops the quickening march of the deluge. There was no crash of thunder or flash of lightning when it broke. Straight down, in an inundation, it came out of a sky thick enough to slit with a knife. Carrigan drew in his head and shoulders and sniffed the sweet freshness of it. He tried again to make out the light on the raft, but it was obliterated.
Mechanically he began taking off his clothes, and in a few moments he stood again at the window, naked. Thunder and lightning had caught up with the rain, and in the flashes of fire Carrigan’s ghost-white face stared in the direction of the raft. In his veins was at work an insistent and impelling desire. Over there was St. Pierre, he was undoubtedly in the cabin, and something might happen if he, Dave Carrigan, took advantage of storm and gloom to go to the raft.
It was almost a presentiment that drew his bare head and shoulders out through the window, and every hunting instinct in him urged him to the adventure. The stygian darkness was torn again by a flash of fire. In it he saw the river and the vivid silhouette of the distant shore. It would not be a difficult swim, and it would be good training for tomorrow.
Like a badger worming his way out of a hole a bit too small for him, Carrigan drew himself through the window. A lightning flash caught him at the edge of the bateau, and he slunk back quickly against the cabin, with the thought that other eyes might be staring out into that same darkness. In the pitch gloom that followed he lowered himself quietly into the river, thrust himself under water, and struck out for the opposite shore.
When he came to the surface again it was in the glare of another lightning flash. He flung the water from his face, chose a point several hundred yards above the raft, and with quick, powerful strokes set out in its direction. For ten minutes he quartered the current without raising his head. Then he paused, floating unresistingly with the slow sweep of the river, and waited for another illumination. When it came, he made out the tented raft scarcely a hundred yards away and a little below him. In the next darkness he found the edge of it and dragged himself up on the mass of timbers.
The thunder had been rolling steadily westward, and David crouched low, hoping for one more flash to illumine the raft. It came at last from a mass of inky cloud far to the west, so indistinct that it made only dim shadows out of the tents and shelters, but it was sufficient to give him direction. Before its faint glare died out, he saw the deeper shadow of the cabin forward.
For many minutes he lay where he had dragged himself, without making a movement in its direction. Nowhere about him could he see a sign of light, nor could he hear any sound of life. St. Pierre’s people were evidently deep in slumber.
Carrigan had no very definite idea of the next step in his adventure. He had swum from the bateau largely under impulse, with no preconceived scheme of action, urged chiefly by the hope that he would find St. Pierre in the cabin and that something might come of it. As for knocking at the door and rousing the chief of the Boulains from sleep–he had at the present moment no very good excuse for that. No sooner had the thought and its objection come to him than a broad shaft of light shot with startling suddenness athwart the blackness of the raft, darkened in another instant by an obscuring shadow. Swift as the light itself David’s eyes turned to the source of the unexpected illumination. The door of St. Pierre’s cabin was wide open. The interior was flooded with lampglow, and in the doorway stood St. Pierre himself.
The chief of the Boulains seemed to be measuring the weather possibilities of the night. His subdued voice reached David, chuckling with satisfaction, as he spoke to some one who was behind him in the cabin.
“Pitch and brimstone, but it’s black!” he cried. “You could carve it with a knife, and stand it on end, AMANTE. But it’s going west. In a few hours the stars will be out.”
He drew back into the cabin, and the door closed. David held his breath in amazement, staring at the blackness where a moment before the light had been. Who was it St. Pierre had called sweetheart? AMANTE! He could not have been mistaken. The word had come to him clearly, and there was but one guess to make. Marie- Anne was not on the bateau. She had played him for a fool, had completely hoodwinked him in her plot with St. Pierre. They were cleverer than he had supposed, and in darkness she had rejoined her husband on the raft! But why that senseless play of falsehood? What could be their object in wanting him to believe she was still aboard the bateau?
He stood up on his feet and mopped the warm rain from his face, while the gloom hid the grim smile that came slowly to his lips. Close upon the thrill of his astonishment he felt a new stir in his blood which added impetus to his determination and his action. He was not disgusted with himself, nor was he embittered by what he had thought of a moment ago as the lying hypocrisy of his captors. To be beaten in his game of man-hunting was sometimes to be expected, and Carrigan always gave proper credit to the winners. It was also “good medicine” to know that Marie-Anne, instead of being an unhappy and neglected wife, had blinded him with an exquisitely clever simulation. Just why she had done it, and why St. Pierre had played his masquerade, it was his duty now to find out.
An hour ago he would have cut off a hand before spying upon St. Pierre’s wife or eavesdropping under her window. Now he felt no uneasiness of conscience as he approached the cabin, for Marie- Anne herself had destroyed all reason for any delicate discrimination on his part.
The rain had almost stopped, and in one of the near tents he heard a sleepy voice. But he had no fear of chance discovery. The night would remain dark for a long time, and in his bare feet he made no sound the sharpest ears of a dog ten feet away might have heard. Close to the cabin door, yet in such a way that the sudden opening of it would not reveal him, he paused and listened.
Distinctly he heard St. Pierre’s voice, but not the words. A moment later came the soft, joyous laughter of a woman, and for an instant a hand seemed to grip David’s heart, filling it with pain. There was no unhappiness in that laughter. It seemed, instead, to tremble in an exultation of gladness.
Suddenly St. Pierre came nearer the door, and his voice was more distinct. “Chere-coeur, I tell you it is the greatest joke of my life,” he heard him say. “We are safe. If it should come to the worst, we can settle the matter in another way. I can not but sing and laugh, even in the face of it all. And she, in that very innocence which amuses me so, has no suspicion–“
He turned, and vainly David keyed his ears to catch the final words. The voices in the cabin grew lower. Twice he heard the soft laughter of the woman. St. Pierre’s voice, when he spoke, was unintelligible.
The thought that his random adventure was bringing him to an important discovery possessed Carrigan. St. Pierre, he believed, had been on the very edge of disclosing something which he would have given a great deal to know. Surely in this cabin there must be a window, and the window would be open–
Quietly he felt his way through the darkness to the shore side of the cabin. A narrow bar of light at least partly confirmed his judgment. There was a window. But it was almost entirely curtained, and it was closed. Had the curtain been drawn two inches lower, the thin stream of light would have been shut entirely out from the night.
Under this window David crouched for several minutes, hoping that in the calm which was succeeding the storm it might be opened. The voices were still more indistinct inside. He scarcely heard St. Pierre, but twice again he heard the low and musical laughter of the woman. She had laughed differently with HIM–and the grim smile settled on his lips as he looked up at the narrow slit of light over his head. He had an overwhelming desire to look in. After all, it was a matter of professional business–and his duty.
He was glad the curtain was drawn so low. From experiments of his own he knew there was small chance of those inside seeing him through the two-inch slit, and he raised himself boldly until his eyes were on a level with the aperture.
Directly in the line of his vision was St. Pierre’s wife. She was seated, and her back was toward him, so he could not see her face. She was partly disrobed, and her hair was streaming loose about her. Once, he remembered, she had spoken of fiery lights that came into her hair under certain illumination. He had seen them in the sun, but never as they revealed themselves now in that cabin lamp glow. He scarcely looked at St. Pierre, who was on his feet, looking down upon her–not until St. Pierre reached out and crumpled the smothering mass of glowing tresses in his big hands, and laughed. It was a laugh filled with the unutterable joy of possession. The woman rose to her feet. Up through her hair went her two white, bare arms, encircling St. Pierre’s neck. The giant drew her close. Her slim form seemed to melt in his, and their lips met.
And then the woman threw back her head, laughing, so that her glory of hair fell straight down, and she was out of reach of St. Pierre’s lips. They turned. Her face fronted the window, and out in the night Carrigan stifled a cry that almost broke from his lips. For a flash he was looking straight into her eyes. Her parted lips seemed smiling at him; her white throat and bosom were bared to him. He dropped down, his heart choking him as he stumbled through the darkness to the edge of the raft. There, with the lap of the water at his feet, he paused. It was hard for him to get Breath. He stared through the gloom in the direction of the bateau. Marie-Anne Boulain, the woman he loved, was there! In her little cabin, alone, on the bateau, was St. Pierre’s wife, her heart crushed.
And in this cabin on the raft, forgetful of her degradation and her grief, was the vilest wretch he had ever known–St. Pierre Boulain. And with him, giving herself into his arms, caressing him with her lips and hair, was the sister of the man he had helped to hang–CARMIN FANCHET!
XX
The shock of the amazing discovery which Carrigan had made was as complete as it was unexpected. His eyes had looked upon the last thing in the world he might have guessed at or anticipated when they beheld through the window of St. Pierre’s cabin the beautiful face and partly disrobed figure of Carmin Fanchet. The first effect of that shock had been to drive him away. His action had been involuntary, almost without the benefit of reason, as if Carmin had been Marie-Anne herself receiving the caresses which were rightfully hers, and upon which it was both insult and dishonor for him to spy. He realized now that he had made a mistake in leaving the window too quickly.
But he did not move back through the gloom, for there was something too revolting in what he had seen, and with the revulsion of it a swift understanding of the truth which made his hands clench as he sat down on the edge of the raft with his feet and legs submerged in the slow-moving current of the river. The thing was not uncommon. It was the same monstrous story, as old as the river itself, but in this instance it filled him with a sickening sort of horror which gripped him at first even more than the strangeness of the fact that Carmin Fanchet was the other woman. His vision and his soul were reaching out to the bateau lying in darkness on the far side of the river, where St. Pierre’s wife was alone in her unhappiness. His first impulse was to fling himself in the river and race to her–his second, to go back to St. Pierre, even in his nakedness, and call him forth to a reckoning. In his profession of man-hunting he had never had the misfortune to kill, but he could kill St. Pierre–now. His fingers dug into the slippery wood of the log under him, his blood ran hot, and in his eyes blazed the fury of an animal as he stared into the wall of gloom between him and Marie-Anne Boulain.
How much did she know? That was the first question which pounded in his brain. He suddenly recalled his reference to the fight, his apology to Marie-Anne that it should happen so near to her presence, and he saw again the queer little twist of her mouth as she let slip the hint that she was not the only one of her sex who would know of tomorrow’s fight. He had not noticed the significance of it then. But now it struck home. Marie-Anne was surely aware of Carmin Fanchet’s presence on the raft.
But did she know more than that? Did she know the truth, or was her heart filled only with suspicion and fear, aggravated by St. Pierre’s neglect and his too-apparent haste to return to the raft that night? Again David’s mind flashed back, recalling her defense of Carmin Fanchet when he had first told her his story of the woman whose brother he had brought to the hangman’s justice. There could be but one conclusion. Marie-Anne knew Carmin Fanchet, and she also knew she was on the raft with St. Pierre.
As cooler judgment returned to him, Carrigan refused to concede more than that. For any one of a dozen reasons Carmin Fanchet might be on the raft going down the river, and it was also quite within reason that Marie-Anne might have some apprehension of a woman as beautiful as Carmin, and possibly intuition had begun to impinge upon her a disturbing fear of a something that might happen. But until tonight he was confident she had fought against this suspicion, and had overridden it, even though she knew a woman more beautiful than herself was slowly drifting down the stream with her husband. She had betrayed no anxiety to him in the days that had passed; she had waited eagerly for St. Pierre; like a bird she had gone to him when at last he came, and he had seen her crushed close in St. Pierre’s arms in their meeting. It was this night, with its gloom and its storm, that had made the shadowings of her unrest a torturing reality. For St. Pierre had brought her back to the bateau and had played a pitiably weak part in concealing his desire to return to the raft.
So he told himself Marie-Anne did not know the truth, not as he had seen it through the window of St. Pierre’s cabin. She had been hurt, for he had seen the sting of it, and in that same instant he had seen her soul rise up and triumph. He saw again the sudden fire that came into her eyes when St. Pierre urged the necessity of his haste, he saw her slim body grow tense, her red lips curve in a flash of pride and disdain. And as Carrigan thought of her in that way his muscles grew tighter, and he cursed St. Pierre. Marie-Anne might be hurt, she might guess that her husband’s eyes and thoughts were too frequently upon another’s face–but in the glory of her womanhood it was impossible for her to conceive of a crime such as he had witnessed through the cabin window. Of that he was sure.
And then, suddenly, like a blinding sheet of lightning out of a dark sky, came back to him all that St. Pierre had said about Marie-Anne. He had pitied St. Pierre then; he had pitied this great cool-eyed giant of a man who was fighting gloriously, he had thought, in the face of a situation that would have excited most men. Frankly St. Pierre had told him Marie-Anne cared more for him than she should. With equal frankness he had revealed his wife’s confessions to him, that she knew of his love for her, of his kiss upon her hair.
In the blackness Carrigan’s face burned hot. If he had in him the desire to kill St. Pierre now, might not St. Pierre have had an equally just desire to kill him? For he had known, even as he kissed her hair, and as his arms held her close to his breast in crossing the creek, that she was the wife of St. Pierre. And Marie-Anne–
His muscles relaxed. Slowly he lowered himself into the cool wash of the river, and struck out toward the bateau. He did not breast the current with the same fierce determination with which he had crossed through the storm to the raft, but drifted with it and reached the opposite shore a quarter of a mile below the bateau. Here he waited for a time, while the thickness of the clouds broke, and a gray light came through them, revealing dimly the narrow path of pebbly wash along the shore. Silently, a stark naked shadow in the night, he came back to the bateau and crawled through his window.
He lighted a lamp, and turned it very low, and in the dim glow of it rubbed his muscles until they burned. He was fit for tomorrow, and the knowledge of that fitness filled him with a savage elation. A good-humored love of sport had induced him to fling his first half-bantering challenge into the face of Concombre Bateese, but that sentiment was gone. The approaching fight was no longer an incident, a foolish error into which he had unwittingly plunged himself. In this hour it was the biggest physical thing that had ever loomed up in his life, and he yearned for the dawn with the eagerness of a beast that waits for the kill which comes with the break of day. But it was not the half-breed’s face he saw under the hammering of his blows. He could not hate the half-breed. He could not even dislike him now. He forced himself to bed, and later he slept. In the dream that came to him it was not Bateese who faced him in battle, but St. Pierre Boulain.
He awoke with that dream a thing of fire in his brain. The sun was not yet up, but the flush of it was painting the east, and he dressed quietly and carefully, listening for some sound of awakening beyond the bulkhead. If Marie-Anne was awake, she was very still. There was noise ashore. Across the river he could hear the singing of men, and through his window saw the white smoke of early fires rising above the tree-tops. It was the Indian who unlocked the door and brought in his breakfast, and it was the Indian who returned for the dishes half an hour later.
After that Carrigan waited, tense with the desire for action to begin. He sensed no premonition of evil about to befall him. Every nerve and sinew in his body was alive for the combat. He thrilled with an overwhelming confidence, a conviction of his ability to win, an almost dangerous, self-conviction of approaching triumph in spite of the odds in weight and brute strength which were pitted against him. A dozen times he listened at the bulkhead between him and Marie-Anne, and still he heard no movement on the other side.
It was eight o’clock when one of the bateau men appeared at the door and asked if he was ready. Quickly David joined him. He forgot his taunts to Concombre Bateese, forgot the softly padded gloves in his pack with which he had promised to pommel the half- breed into oblivion. He was thinking only of naked fists.
Into a canoe he followed the bateau man, who turned his craft swiftly in the direction of the opposite shore. And as they went, David was sure he caught the slight movement of a curtain at the little window of Marie-Anne’s forward cabin. He smiled back and raised his hand, and at that the curtain was drawn back entirely, and he knew that St. Pierre’s wife was watching him as he went to the fight.
The raft was deserted, but a little below it, on a wide strip of beach made hard and smooth by flood water, had gathered a crowd of men. It seemed odd to David they should remain so quiet, when he knew the natural instinct of the riverman was to voice his emotion at the top of his lungs. He spoke of this to the bateau man, who shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
“Eet ees ze command of St. Pierre,” he explained. “St. Pierre say no man make beeg noise at–what you call heem–funeral? An’ theese goin’ to be wan gran’ fun-e-RAL, m’sieu!”
“I see,” David nodded. He did not grin back at the other’s humor.
He was looking at the crowd. A giant figure had appeared out of the center of it and was coming slowly down to the river. It was St. Pierre. Scarcely had the prow of the canoe touched shore when David leaped out and hurried to meet him. Behind St. Pierre came Bateese, the half-breed. He was stripped to the waist and naked from the knees down. His gorilla-like arms hung huge and loose at his sides, and the muscles of his hulking body stood out like carven mahogany in the glisten of the morning sun. He was like a grizzly, a human beast of monstrous power, something to look at, to back away from, to fear.
Yet, David scarcely noticed him. He met St. Pierre, faced him, and stopped–and he had gone swiftly to this meeting, so that the chief of the Boulains was within earshot of all his men.
St. Pierre was smiling. He held out his hand as he had held it out once before in the bateau cabin, and his big voice boomed out a greeting.
Carrigan did not answer, nor did he look at the extended hand. For an instant the eyes of the two men met, and then, swift as lightning, Carrigan’s arm shot out, and with the flat of his hand he struck St. Pierre a terrific blow squarely on the cheek. The sound of the blow was like the smash of a paddle on smooth water. Not a riverman but heard it, and as St. Pierre staggered back, flung almost from his feet by its force, a subdued cry of amazement broke from the waiting men. Concombre Bateese stood like one stupefied. And then, in another flash, St. Pierre had caught himself and whirled like a wild beast. Every muscle in his body was drawn for a gigantic, overwhelming leap; his eyes blazed; the fury of a beast was in his face. Before all his people he had suffered the deadliest insult that could be offered a man of the Three River Country–a blow struck with the flat of another’s hand. Anything else one might forgive, but not that. Such a blow, if not avenged, was a brand that passed down into the second and third generations, and even children would call out “Yellow-Back– Yellow-Back,” to the one who was coward enough to receive it without resentment. A rumbling growl rose in the throat of Concombre Bateese in that moment when it seemed as though St. Pierre Boulain was about to kill the man who had struck him. He saw the promise of his own fight gone in a flash. For no man in all the northland could now fight David Carrigan ahead of St. Pierre.
David waited, prepared to meet the rush of a madman. And then, for a second time, he saw a mighty struggle in the soul of St. Pierre. The giant held himself back. The fury died out of his face, but his great hands remained clenched as he said, for David alone,