The Law-bringers/Chapter 13

by G. B. Lancaster

 

CHAPTER XIII

"I WANT THE WEST AGAIN"

"Mother," cried Jennifer. "Slicker has been talking North-West all the afternoon, and I'm quite drunk with it"

"My dear child," said Jennifer's mother gently. "Please say inebriated;" and then Jennifer laughed, standing in the middle of the room and pushing back her hair into a ruddy glory round her bright face.

"What a darling you are," she said. "Isn't she, Slicker? Mother mine, if I go West again you'll have to come too——"

"But you don't want to go West again, dear."

"But I do. I awfully do. You know I always would begin everything at the beginning—even a book. And they are still beginning at the beginning out there. We'll go back, and drive the trails in a democrat, and be tracked in a York boat, and have half-breed servants who don't know the English for 'Hurry up,' and—for mercy's sake, Slicker! There are visitors! Fly! Fly! I wouldn't have anybody see you in that rig for a pension."

For the benefit of Jennifer's mother Slicker had robed himself in full glory of mooseskin coat, blue shirt and moccasins. He stood his ground now, impudent and delighted.

"Land of Liberty!" he said. "Give a fellow a show, honey. I'll knock 'em in these better than in any store-clothes ever sewn."

"Don't be vulgar." Jennifer was peeping through the curtains. "Oh, it is Mrs. Barrymore and Angela. They are darlings, and I wouldn't so much mind—but Mrs. Chichester is with them, and she's always looking for something to be scandalised about. Will you go, Slicker? Martha will be showing them in just in half a minute."

Slicker sat down.

"There's a meanness about you sometimes that I don't like, Jennifer," he remarked. "Why should you disappoint Mrs. Chichester? We are all meant to make life as pleasant as we can for others."

"If you think that you'll go. Oh—it's too late."

She went forward with her charming, half-shy grace of manner, and, quailing under the suppressed emotion of the three ladies in the door, weakly introduced Slicker as "my cousin. Just come from the North-West, you know."

It was the extremely pretty girl in the middle who disconcerted Slicker for at least five minutes, and Jennifer was human enough to find spiteful delight in the knowledge. But the little feminine flutter and stir and half-finished sentences before seats and tea were provided gave him his balanc again. Six weeks ago Slicker had left Grey Wolf and come to Toronto to settle his business affairs with his uncle before joining the Police. His uncle had been displeased and had not troubled to conceal the fact. On the whole, Slicker considered that he rather obtruded it. Jennifer and her mother had been in New York, and to-day was Slicker's first chance for full appreciation and confidence. The advent of these three threatened to spoil it, and Slicker was bent on revenging himself accordingly.

Jennifer began to tremble when she saw that he attached himself unhesitatingly to Mrs. Chichester; bringing cake and tea, closing a window against the draught, and finally settling into the next chair with all the appearance of one who intends to be a fixture. Mrs. Chichester pinned him instantly under her lorgnette, and through Jennifer's conversation with the others she heard scraps of conversation which did not ease her mind.

"Why, no," said Slicker, in evident answer to some question. "I suppose I might rather call myself a missionary."

"Oh!" Mrs. Chichester's voice was dubious. "I thought missionaries were—would not—but I infer you must follow the customs of the country?"

"Oh, I hope not." The scandalised piety in Slicker's tone would have done credit to Mrs. Chichester herself. "Please don't mention the customs of the country, Mrs. Chichester."

"Why—you don't mean——"

Both voices dropped, and through the unheard conversation which followed Jennifer, as she told Slicker afterwards, "simply grilled." She broke it at last by coming across with her cup.

"I really must interrupt you," she said. "Mrs. Barrymore wants to speak to you, Slicker, and you have monopolised Mrs. Chichester quite long enough. Mrs. Barrymore is a member of the Woman's Auxiliary, Slicker. You have helped unpack some of the bales of clothing which they send out to the Anglican Missions, I know. I have heard you speak of it at Grey Wolf."

Slicker's blue eyes met hers full. They looked startlingly blue in the deep bronze of his face, and they looked wickedly amused. He had read her ruse, and he was not going to let her benefit by it. He rose promptly.

"I shall be delighted to give Mrs. Barrymore any information she may require about the best kinds of things to send up there," he said.

"Slicker," began Jennifer despairingly, and then Mrs. Barrymore smiled across the room.

"You are a convert to mission work, then?" she asked.

"Well, not exactly a convert." Slicker remembered Miss Chubb's oft-repeated assertions that he would be the death of her and that the circumstance was fierce. "I do what little I can;" his voice was modest. "Sometimes I help the deaconess sell things to the breeds and Indians. A corporal in the M. P. and I are trying to marry off some of the girls around Grey Wolf if only we could get something stylish on them to take the eye——"

Jennifer's mother created a diversion for a few moments. But Slicker returned to the attack. He was enjoying himself better than he had expected, and the pretty girl was evidently interested.

"You need to send up some real smart dashing clothes, Mrs. Barrymore," he said. "I know what a breed girl wants to make her look human. I've tried most of the bale-room things on them——"

"Oh!" Mrs. Chichester shot the word out like a bomb, and Slicker's calm voice continued: "—on top of their other clothes. They're not nice about a thing fitting too quick. And if you pinch them in one place they—they make up for it in another. Find their level, as you may say. But Dick and I would like to see them in something stylish. Not neat, plain, serviceable garments, such as you send, and not squishy things either. There's one chiffon bonnet with rosebuds that I've tried on every girl in the district—and not one of 'em but would scare a skunk in it. You have to study their requirements, you know. There are half a dozen would make a good stand in the matrimonial market if they were dressed to kill."

"You appear to take a great interest in human nature," began Mrs. Chichester acidly.

"In half of it;" Slicker's bow was as unimpeachable as his voice. But Jennifer broke in ruthlessly.

"He doesn't really know anything about it, Mrs. Barrymore. Miss Chubb never lets him into the bale-room if she can help it. She told me once that he took more watching than a hen in the flower-garden. He dressed up to-day to amuse us, and he is just trying to act the part."

"Now, Mrs. Chichester, didn't you read all about the Missions and the Mounted Police in those articles Jennifer wrote for one of the Toronto papers?"

"Slicker! I never wrote them. You know I didn't. And if I had——" Jennifer went red and white. She had been too far inside that life to speak of it lightly.

"Well, of course, you don't know the whole of it, anyway. A Mounted Policeman has to carry his life in his hand, you know. His life in one hand and his revolver in the other, and his reins between his teeth. That's why they won't let you into the Force if you have false teeth. Too much depends on their staying in. Mine are all right." Slicker smiled to prove it. "And I am joining next month. It's a tricky kind of life—but I don't want to harrow you by telling you too much about that sort of thing. We men are accustomed to danger, you know."

Jennifer looked at him with interest. His manner was certainly splendid. Even Mrs. Chichester was impressed, and Angela Barrymore never took her eyes off him.

"Of course anyone who lives constantly in such conditions cannot be exactly normal," vouchsafed Mrs. Chichester, with the air of one granting a concession.

"But I guess you don't know anything about the conditions yet. Did my cousin tell you of the river-steamers where the cabins are so small that you have to go outside to turn round, and the whole ship's company and passengers wash in one basin in the alley-way? Or about the shacks where the board-partitions are an inch apart, so that it's best to go to bed in the dark."

"That will do, Slicker!"

"Now, honey! Don't pretend you don't know. Who pinned her things up all around the walls that night at Sheridan's? Think I didn't hear about it?"

With the other ladies' cordial co-operation Jennifer turned the conversation, and Slicker subsided into a corner with Angela Barrymore. Neither seemed anxious to come out of it when the move for departure was made; and Slicker accompanied them all into the hall and waved his good-byes from the step. When he came back Jennifer was waiting for him.

"You—you perfect little beast, Slicker," she cried. "What made you do it?"

"Be easy, honey;" the familiar term, caught from Dick, stilled Jennifer's heart for a moment. "That old lady with the three cock's-tails hasn't had such a time since she doesn't know when. You'll hear all about it at half a dozen afternoons. And think what kudos you'll get for having seen it all."

"You didn't tell her anything about—me, Slicker?"

Slicker put his hand on her shoulder, looking down at her.

"You didn't think that of me, honey? Not for one little minute. That's right. Now, come and have a jaw over the fire. Where's auntie?"

"Someone came to see her on business." Jennifer let herself down beside Slicker on the hearthrug, and flung on a hickory-knot. "I just hate you for making fun of all the splendid work people do for the missions," she said. "And you were very rude about the W. A., too."

"She didn't mind, bless you. And I told Miss Barrymore some plain truth."

"Oh, I hope it wasn't too plain, you wretch. You know how you——"

"Now, honey, don't waste time. I want to get down to essentials. You're glad that I'm going into the Force?"

"Yes. Yes; I think so. But it will take——"

"I know, honey. I know it's not all ice-cream, sodas, and limelight effects. I know it's not an easy life in any one way. Tempest rubbed that into me—salted it in. But I have decided on it, and I will stick to it."

Jennifer was thinking of one man of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, and of the want of ease his life had given him.

"Did—did anyone else advise it?" she asked.

"Well—I told you what Dick Heriot said. But I didn't tell you why. Anyway, it's a life where a man has to be a man or get out. And that's attractive, you know."

"Oh, you boy! Is that all?"

"No." Slicker poked the fire until the sparks flew, and he did not look at her. "No. I've been rotting since you left, Jennifer. I had to take up something—or follow Ogilvie's trail."

"Slicker! Oh, Slicker!" Jennifer saw the boy face and figure through a sudden mist of tears. "I never thought of that for you."

"I never thought of it for myself. But it is in the air up there, some way. You know how it is, Jennifer. Nothing to do but hang around the hotel and smoke and yarn and drink. And when you were gone—well, I told you Heriot pulled me up that day of the fire. He didn't say much. But, my land, he makes a little go a long way. I wish he wasn't really such a brute."

"Perhaps if you—if you knew him better, dear." Jennifer's words were uncertain here, but Slicker's answer was not.

"D'you think I don't know him a hundred times better than you do, honey? Even if I could forgive him for what he did and said to you, I can't forgive him for what he's doing to Tempest."

Jennifer made the fire up before she asked:

"What is he doing to Mr. Tempest?"

"Well—you know how crazy poor old Tempest is over Grange's Andree? Heriot is cutting him out there, lock, stock and barrel. But he hasn't the honesty to let Tempest know, and the poor old beggar is as blind as a bat where that girl is concerned. It's a beastly underhand trick to play any man. I gave up calling Heriot Dick when I got to the bottom of that."

"Oh, Slicker! You don't know what you are talking about. You never do. They were such friends——"

"That's the reason," said Slicker gloomily. "Tempest would never suspect. He's jealous of every other man, but he trusts Heriot. It's a bad business, honey, and Heriot's a bad lot. So's Andree. I can't see why fellows make such a fuss over the girl. Did I tell you I saw Robison when I came through Fort Saskatchewan? It was just a few days before he was hung. He'd been sick, you know, and that and the confinement had pulled him down. His voice was as hollow as a bottle after Ogilvie had done with it. But he didn't seem to worry any. 'How's Andree?' he asked, right away. 'Pretty as ever,' I said. 'She's shaken Tempest, and isn't wearing the willow over it either.' My! you should have seen how that brightened him up. Of course, I didn't tell him about Dick. He never loved Dick, anyway."

"I suppose not. Poke that log back, Slicker. It's smoking."

"I guess he just thinks of Andree, Andree all the time," said Slicker, obeying. "I wish somebody had drowned that girl when she was a kitten—I mean, as old as a kitten. She's done more harm than any one person has a right to, and she isn't through yet, I guess. There are stacks more fools left in the world. I suppose she is a beauty, though. Heriot has made some glorious pictures of her, Forbes says. He writes to me regularly. Rather a nice chap. You remember him, honey?"

Slicker continued his monologue, giving Jennifer time to recover her poise. It was not long since she had had a letter from Dick: one of those interesting, vivid sketches of daily life at Grey Wolf which he knew so well how to write. There had been no word of love in it. He had only gained permission to write on condition that there should be none. But neither had there been any word of Andree. After all, why should there be? What had it to do with Jennifer if Dick painted pictures of Andree, or if he turned to Andree for comfort? What should it be to her except a gladness; a relief that he was not going to spoil his years waiting for what could not be? She did not think of Tempest. There was not room for Tempest even as a background when Dick filled the foreground of her thoughts. Hastily her mind said that she did not believe it, but that she hoped it. Surely it would be the best thing that could happen. Then she returned to present life to hear Slicker say:

"And so that's the end of that story."

"How very interesting, Slicker dear." Jennifer did not hesitate long enough to be ashamed of her mendacity. "Now tell me all about Grey Wolf."

"Well, I've just told you——"

"Of course. I mean, tell me some more. I want to know about Mr. Bond, who always brought me every new wild-flower he found. And that funny old Poley at the barracks, and Mrs. Leigh. And Son-of-Lightning. I am so glad Mr. Leigh gave him that little shack in the Hudson Bay yard, Slicker. I would have hated to think of him lonely."

"You wouldn't be so glad if you were an employee of the H. B., honey. He'll drive them all to drink if they can't get the song out of him by a surgical operation or something. My, he is a caution. Well, it's very nice over here, but I'm glad I'm not going to stay, Jennifer. There's no place like the West once one has lived in it."

"Oh, Slicker. I do feel that. I do. I want to go back. Oh, I want to!"

Her voice was sharp with sudden pain. It brought Slicker's eyes on her.

"Why, honey; you had such a bad time out there, I never thought you'd want to go back."

"Well." Jennifer looked at the fire, speaking slowly. "I shall hear something about Harry some day, dear; and it is easier waiting for it out there. Here—it is a little difficult just occasionally. You see, Harry has disappeared, and—and, of course, all sorts of stories about it came East. Nearly everybody is perfectly sweet to me, but there are a few—like Mrs. Chichester—I know she just comes to see if she can find anything out——"

"Damn her," exploded Slicker. "No, I won't beg your pardon, Jennifer. Lam the man of the family, and you should have told me this before."

"Dear, there is really nothing to tell." Jennifer patted the smooth, sunburnt cheek. "Perhaps I imagine it all. But I don't feel that houses can ever take the place of trees and lakes again. I want the West. Oh, I want the West."

Slicker did not know that Jennifer had left her heart there. But he agreed.

"Go back, then, honey. You could get your old house for a song any day. Hamilton's wife hates the place, and Hamilton is a sheep. He does as he's told, and if you offered there'd be no trouble. But—there's been a lot of talk, you know."

"I know. But—in what particular way?"

"You know things were said about you and Heriot." Slicker frowned at the fire. "I know it all for lies, of course. But if you go back—you may as well know it, Jennifer—there are some who'll say that you came to hunt him up over this Andree business."

"Oh!" Jennifer felt her face burn. "I never thought——" she said in a choked voice. "I never thought of—you didn't think I meant to go back, Slicker? I couldn't go there!"

Slicker slid his arm round her, drawing her head against his shoulder.

"Honey, dear, did I do it clumsily? I'm so sorry. What with brutes like Ducane and Heriot I guess you've had enough of me. Best stay where you are with the little auntie, and when I get a post I'll have you both up to keep house for me, if it's any place short of Herschel Island. I will only be at Regina three or four months, you know, and I'll write and tell you every last thing about it, honey."

He kept his word faithfully, and each week through those months of snow and frost brought her a letter headed "Regina Barracks": a letter that was a medley of boyish slang and manly thought and frank love for herself. There were fervid descriptions of "our mess," and "my horse," interlarded with tales of the "swank recruit" who "came such a buster" in riding-school, and the "tiger of a drill-sergeant who thinks he owns the universe—with all the 'h's' left out of it." Once there was mention of a corporal's love affair which came to an untimely end; and then, through dissertations on love and girls, Slicker ended: "I'm glad you're the kind of girl you are, honey. I'd have had to disown you if you were like some that a fellow runs across. By the way, what is that Miss Barrymore like, really? You might remember me to her when you see her, and ask her if she'd like some Indian moccasins. She admired mine."

Jennifer put down the letter and laughed with her eyes full.

"Oh, Slicker, Slicker," she said. "You're not going to meet girls like Angela Barrymore for years to come, dear. It will be the Mackenzie district and the Esquimaux for you, perhaps; or a little selection full of third-grade people. Or a place like Grey Wolf among the breeds and Indians. For that's the way you've chosen for your life-work, dear old Slicker."

When Christmas was past he wrote again; blotted sheets full of delight. "Just think, honey; the C. O. told me the other day that I'd probably be sent out before my time was up. Patted me on the back mota—(can't spell the beast)—and said I was a good boy, and I went and tumbled over myself in the Gym for a solid hour to work off my bloated pride. Hope my boss will be more Tempest's shape than Heriot's. And I hope it won't be too civilised. I don't want to do the goose-step along the pavement of a nasty proper little town. Guess I could keep down a better job than that. And—honey—perhaps I'll come across Ducane for myself. I won't shy off any in letting him know what I think of him, I promise."

Jennifer folded that letter with tight lips. Slicker never dared speak of Ducane to her face. And not to anyone did she dare speak of him herself. He had made life too hard; too cruelly bitter. And for his sake it must be bitter all her days.

It was long since Dick had written to her; longer still since she had written to him. The news which Slicker had brought tormented her night and day, and Dick's utter silence put the seal of truth to it.

She did not know that he was afraid to write because the cloud which hung over him would surely have darkened his words, and because he was ashamed to tell what that cloud might be.

He avoided Andree because he feared her, and he avoided Tempest for much the same reason. But his feeing towards Tempest almost deepened into hate very shortly; for Tempest had saved his honour by the very thing which had caused Dick to lose his. Tempest had taken hold of his work again. He had put personal interests from him, and flung himself into the wider, fuller river of the life about him. Labour was his salvation as it has been the salvation of many a man before him, and because his only chance lay in giving his all to it, he gave; lifelessly, sorrowfully, at first, but day by day with strengthening fibres. The very tone of Grey Wolf began to alter. It was known that the Inspector was "watching out," here and there and everywhere else, and men braced up under the flash of his eyes and the lash of his tongue when Tempest went to sweep the refuse of the hidden places out into the sunlight.

He challenged criticism and obvious retort everywhere, but he did not get it. For if he did not spare others neither did he spare himself, and his honesty there did for him what nothing else could have done. But of the real Tempest, the man of the glad ideals and the frank friendships, there seemed nothing left; and Dick knew why. He knew that Tempest could probably have forgiven and forgotten anything but that treachery; and realisation of this haunted him, driving the sin of it home to him past his attempted unconcern and impatient resentment and his cynical knowledge that he was no worse than many another.

Dick had saved Tempest at danger to himself, and that danger grew, embittering him as time went by. Andree alone made his life difficult and unpleasant, for she upbraided and pleaded and coquetted and tormented him whenever occasion arose. Once, catching him in the wood-trail by the lake on a cold evening when the sinking sun left a rose red bank along the indigo-blue clouds she threatened him; and he, being cold and tired and hungry from a long day's patrol, struck her across the clutching hands with the little switch he carried. It was a light blow, but it made her spring back, glaring like a wild cat.

"I hate you," she gasped. "I hate you. I will keel you. Some day I will make you keel."

"You are welcome to try." He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know that I want to prevent you. Will you leave me alone now?"

"To be whipped," she said through her teeth. "Ah! To be whipped! I hate you."

"That's the most cheerful thing I've heard for a long time," said Dick dryly. "Stick to it, my dear girl;" and he pushed past her and went back, leaving her standing in the trail.

That night he tried for the fifth time to write to Jennifer. But it was of no use. His own thoughts and his own will had made of this matter a thing so sordid and dishonourable that he could not put down in words for her to read, and he could not write to her and not speak of it. He was not even sorry for Andree now. He was not even glad for Tempest. And at that moment he heard Tempest in the passage speaking to Bond.

"Certainly," said Tempest. "You may depend on me. I'll have it attended to at once."

Dick laughed a little, biting on his pipe-stem. It was he who had ensured that Tempest should speak and act so again. But where was his own reward? He had lost, half-unfolded, the big case which was to have meant so much to him. He had lost his friend; he had lost such self-respect as he had, and life seemed a deadlock, with little capacity for more pleasure or pain in it. Then, because it is not in nature that a deadlock can continue for very long, one morning when spring was near and the first waveys flew north again, Tempest sent for him into the office. There were some official letters on the desk, and Tempest's manner was fully as official.

"I am ordered to make an investigatory patrol through the uncharted land between Great Slave Lake and Fullerton," he said. "Flora, fauna, geological conditions, inhabitants, and so on. I am to take three men with me, and your name is mentioned as one of the three. We leave as soon as the rivers are clear of ice, and will be gone eight months or perhaps a year. These are my official instructions; but I am told to report if either of us are unfit for the journey. It will be a rough one, and will need picked men. Have you anything to say?"

His eyes were colder and the lines of his face harder than they used to be. But he had complete control of himself, and Dick had never seen him without it since that night which neither would forget.

"I am quite fit for the work," said Dick. He smiled slightly. "Let us hope that the other two will provide the social element."

"We will do the work. That is all which matters."

"You have always said so."

The delicate inflection of the sneer brought the blood to Tempest's face.

"I owe you recognition for what you have done for me," he said. "Do not think that I forget it—or that I forget your motive in doing it. Tell Kennedy that I want to see him at once—before he goes out."

For both men a new interest came into life after that. The ordinary futile daily complaints seemed less irritating now that there was a horizon of change to round them. As always there was the freighter who had contracted for ordinary wage in carting and who demanded more because unlooked-for conditions had arisen; there was the breed who had sold his land and who could not understand that he must not continue to live on it; there was the Indian who had traded a half-dozen skins to Moore and Holland, and who, on hearing that he could get a better price elsewhere, required them back again; and there were a thousand more of the needless, inevitable things to be got through as winter died under the breath of spring and the ice went out, and colour and life came throbbing back to the land.

And there was work to be done for this patrol also. New and specially-tested Peterborough canoes were needed. A good pair of field-glasses were indispensable; also a camera; a strong and light outfit of cooking, surveying and other equipments; besides tinned foods and everything else which could be compressed into the smallest compass. Tempest had to take a journey to Winnipeg in connection with these arrangements, and on his return he stayed an hour with Randal at Pitcher Portage. Slackness of effort and shortness of funds, combined with a divided interest at headquarters, had held back the work on the telegraph-line, and Randal still continued to live in his little shack and to connect himself with the world by his little key on the lonely river-rim of the Portage.

Randal was cooking his mid-day meal when Tempest came to the door. The shack was as crowded and uncomfortable as it ever was; but Tempest noticed a deep-worn track straight from it to the tepee among the spruces, and when he walked in he found a couple of half-Indian babies sprawling with the dogs on the earth floor and chewing strips of raw bacon. Randal pushed the living tangle of content aside with his foot and hastened to sets beans and bannock before Tempest, and Tempest smiled, remembering.

"Got the better of you at last, have they, Randal?" he asked. Randal reddened up his swarthy skin, and clattered knives and forks with embarrassment.

"Why—I guess they can't help it, the little——" he said. "Canadian-born they are, anyways." He jerked his thumb at the smaller of the two where it lay on its chest, sucking hard, and staring with round, unwinking eyes.

"Near died this winter, she did," he remarked. "Croup or colic or suthin', an' them domned parents didn't know what to do no more'n nuthin'. So I up an' het a biler o' water an' shoves her inter it. Tell her she looked cute settin' there—like a little brown squ'r'l, an' hangin' onter me finger like grim death fer a nigger. So—she pulled around, an' she a-took a shine ter me, someways. Like she was wonderin' what I'd be like s'posin' I was tried out fer good. Git away out o' this, Abosti. Git! You won't find no bootlaces ter chew here."

He lifted the little solemn armful, and Tempest chucked it under the round, brown chin.

"That's right, Randal," he said cheerfully. "After all, they are going to be our colonists, you know. We must make the best stuff we can out of them. She's not likely to be one of those hysterical nuisances who are always in the doctor's hands, anyway."

"Not much! Hoe her own row all right, won't yer, girlie? Sure, sir. I'll attend about them messages right away."

Tempest rode on into Grey Wolf with his eyes softened. Randal's life was cruelly circumscribed; terribly lonely. But he had found the compensation. Was Tempest so much a lesser man than Randal that he could not also find the compensation?

Early in the next month came the last night at Grey Wolf, and Tempest walked for long under the cottonwoods, seeing the lights which he would not know any more blink out along the dimming street. For it was not likely that he would ever come back to Grey Wolf, and it was not likely that after to-morrow he would ever again see Grange's Andree. The whole of him was shrinking from the future which would possibly be Andree's. He seldom spoke to her now, and he seldom spoke to Dick. He could ask no questions there. He could only fear. He could only hate with a bitter helplessness the man whom Andree loved. And he could do nothing more. He with his hands tied, and the great silent North waiting to swallow him.

For long he walked under the cotton-woods, and then, sharply, leaping through his brain came the thought:

"She was a good woman—and young enough to understand. Perhaps she would look after Andree."

He wheeled; went swiftly into his office, and wrote one of his direct, clearly-put letters to Jennifer.

Dick also wrote to Jennifer that evening. He had meant to go without it, but in his packing he had come on the little millboard painting of her which he had always carried until shame made him put it away. In the little bunk-room he stood still, staring down on the bright face in the candlelight, and his eyes were grim. For the difference between the centre of effort and the centre of lateral direction was too great in Dick. He needed a hand on the tiller, and Fate had denied him the only two hands which he would have allowed there. Or was it his own reckless temper which had denied him?

Suddenly Kennedy came clattering upstairs cheerfully, and Dick thrust the picture back in his breast and finished his packing. But before he slept he wrote a few brief lines to Jennifer.

That letter went East by the same mail as Tempest's; but when they lay in her lap together Jennifer opened Tempest's first. And after that she picked up the sheet and the torn envelope and the other envelope with that familiar black writing, and carried them all up to her room and locked the door on herself. Twice over she read Tempest's letter. Its quiet, curbed language told very little; not much more than Slicker had told. But it made her fear to open that other letter. Her pulses beat until they stifled her, and her eyes were blurred. She knew, with a sharpness, with a terrible sureness, that Dick meant more to her than anything—than anyone. And was this written to say that she did not mean anything to him any more? She set her teeth in her lip, ripped the envelope, and pulled out the big sheet with its strong black writing. There were only a few lines in the middle of it.

 

"I go North in the morning for perhaps a year. I have tried to pull a man out of the mud and got further in myself than I expected. You will understand that this was likely to happen to me. And understand that you are in my life and my heart and my very soul. I could not tear you out though I tried until the world's end, Jennifer."

 

The heavy twist of his initials finished it, and Jennifer stared at it with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. She had no right to be glad. But she was glad; frankly, gloriously glad. This good-bye of his on the edge of one of those long plunges into the unknown held none of the suave, idle words with which he could cover his thoughts so well. It was a flagrant disobedience of her commands. It was a daring defiance of all which Tempest's letter told. It gave no explanation, no apology, no penitence. She had no right to be glad. She should have been angry, for he flung his words at her, challenging her to love him the less for all his misdeeds and his failures and his selfishness. And instead she laughed a little; knowing that she could not, and knowing, too, the glory of that renunciaition which forbade them ever to tell each other these things face to face.

That night, kneeling by her mother's bed in the dark, Jennifer spoke of her desire to go back to Grey Wolf. She could not tell the reason. But she knew that the duty which Dick owed to Grange's Andree and which Tempest, without laying undue stress, had clearly lined, was hers to discharge. How deep that obligation might be she did not know. Why she resented it so little she did not know. But she did know that little lonely Grey Wolf by the faraway northern river called her as no other place on earth had ever called her. Of all this she said nothing to her mother, but there was much understood between the two which even the tenderest love must leave unsaid. The elder woman laid her widowed hand on the young hand which was so infinitely worse than widowed.

"This may be too hard for you, Jennifer," she said. "And for more than you. Have you thought of that?"

"Yes, dear. But I must go. Over there I shall hear—little things. And I can't do without them. They are all that is left in my life."

The mother was silent. She had neither right nor power to venture here. It was beyond her control, beyond her understanding. Her daughter had won her way down strange paths where neither love nor guarding could hedge her in. But one thing she knew, and she spoke it.

"If you do go I will go with you, Jennifer."

"Oh, mother of mine, would you? Truly, would you? But you might get your dear aristocratic nose frost-bitten in the winter. And there are so few of the comforts you're accustomed to."

"You are the principal comfort which I'm accustomed to. I can do without the other things, but not without you, darling."

Jennifer put her lips to the fine old face.

"I don't want to be selfish," she said. "But I shall blow the roof off something if I have to stay here much longer. And you'll love the Indian babies, mother mine. I'll steal one in a moss-bag for you. Mrs. Grange has got so many that she'd never miss two or three."

She mentioned Moosta's name easily, but she could not speak of Andree. Her mother could neither help nor understand there. She could not be expected to. For Jennifer's own need she had found the solution to the thing which had troubled her. Dick had redeemed Tempest at the cost of some dishonour to himself, and possibly some well-deserved shame, and he had been man enough not to ask forgiveness where it was not likely to be accorded. But, because Grange's Andree was also a woman who loved him and who could never come near him in life, Jennifer felt a thrill of joy and thankfulness that it should be for her to give comfort here and to untie the threads that Dick's careless hands had knotted.

She dreamed that night of the ways whereby that life which the great North was absorbing should cross tracks with her own again. The stray word of a breed who had passed him on the rivers. Indians coming in with the winter furs, who knew the trails he went. A factor, or a missionary, perhaps, at whose house he had stayed. Letters brought by the steamer and written long months before. The wide brooding majesty of the North closed round her, and those long, calm days on the Athabaska were clear to Jennifer as she fell asleep; and in place of the rattling cars she heard again the water parting at the prow, and instead of the flaring light across the street she saw the moon-reflection, deep and serene and glorious, in the bosom of the drowsing river.

Three telegrams and two letters secured the old house on the Lake to Jennifer again, and in the midst of her packing came another letter from Slicker, written from Saskatoon. He enclosed, for Jennifer's benefit, young Forbes' description of the leaving of the Long Patrol from Grey Wolf and Grange's Andree's part in the matter.

"I guess it was a pretty shady thing for Dick to chuck her away as he did," commented Slicker. "Of course, Andree is the limit, all right. But it must have been a shindy, as you'll see from what Lin Forbes says.

"‘They'd been keeping their mouth shut with both hands as to date and time of leaving,' wrote young Forbes. 'But it leaked out somehow; and when we all got down to the steamer Andree was waltzing around like a crazy thing. She froze on to Dick—gave him a devil of a time. And there was Tempest standing on the wharf and waiting. I tell you it was pretty sick to see. I don't guess he ever meant more than a bit of fooling. That's Dick, you know. He has an eye for every pretty girl, and Andree is uncommonly pretty, though she has gone off a bit lately. But he got served for it. She was all out. Let him have it good and strong. He made the best of it, I guess. Just laughed, and kissed her in front of us all, and told her not to be a little fool. Then the boat backed off, and there was Andree running over her ankles into the water, and crying out, "Dick! Dick!" But he'll never come back to her. He knows a trick worth two of that. But he wiped Tempest's eye over the business, and I reckon Tempest has too much grit to forgive him easily. Those two are about as friendly as a couple of wolf-bred huskies these days.'

 

"I guess there'll be something doing before they part company," added Slicker. "Dick'll be sorry for his deviltry before he's done. Of course she was ruining Tempest, and this has straightened him up again. But I don't imagine Dick went into it just for that. He isn't built of the stuff they make martyrs out of."

Because all human nature is irrational Jennifer did not attempt to explain to herself why she felt more pity than anger over this. Dick might have treated her as he had treated Andree, and she could have forgiven him; not only because the elements of submission and self-renunciation are very strong in the nature of most women, but because, seeing all things through the glass of her own clear heart, she believed that the man must suffer the more keenly of the two. A little while she stood, with her dainty clothes strowed round her on floor and bed and in the open boxes. Simple they were, but one and all bore just that nameless, elusive charm which was Jennifer's own: that charm which made a man, standing on the deck of a little steamer that chug-chugged its way down the Great Slave River, forget all that he had done and would not do, and hold the memory of her before him, hour by silent hour, drawing his strength for the future therefrom.

There were comments which it was better that Jennifer should not hear when she came again to Grey Wolf. But because she had guessed at them, and met them in her heart long since, she did not quail at them now. Son-of-Lightning was re-installed in his shack behind the kitchen, and his tuneless singing warmed Jennifer's spirit, although it made her mother laugh until she cried, and then say:

"You must make him exercise his voice at regular hours only, Jennifer. Hours when I go walking or driving. He will kill me dead if I have to hear him more than once a week."

"I could never make him understand all that, dear," said Jennifer. "But I might explain that it would be a terrible thing for him to damage his throat by over-exertion if Clara is any good as a medium."

Clara was the breed provided by Mrs. Leigh in place of the original Louisa. She lived in the kitchen and drove the staid Toronto servant to despair five times a day. "But," as Jennifer said, "she kept Susan from being lonely, and even something to worry one is better than isolation."

Leigh had also stocked up the necessary horses and pigs and the necessary hired man. Moosta's last baby but one was borrowed for a week, "just to help settle them in," according to Jennifer's plea; and then Jennifer took breath and looked round on the dear familiar world out of which the dearest and most familiar elements had dropped. Moosta's baby was the deep-laid plan whereby she hoped to trap Andree. For she knew that if Grange's Andree cared for any things on earth those things were Grange's babies. And this proved true. In the beginning of the second week Andree stopped Jennifer outside the Hudson Bay Store and spoke to her.

"Are you meaning to keep Moosta's Rosario all the time?" she asked abruptly.

Jennifer looked at her with a quickening heart-beat. This was the girl who, if talk told truth, loved Dick even as Jennifer loved him, and by a better right.

"Why, no," she said hastily. "Did you want him back, Andree?"

"I gave him his name," said Andree. "Saw it in a book. It does seem like the back-parlour is empty without him."

Jennifer knew that there were a round dozen more in that back-parlour. But she understood. It is not the number which fill up a place, but the one.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "Would you like to come over and fetch him back, Andree? You can drive out with me, and I'll bring you back before dark."

Andree drew back, shy and alarmed. She was more the wild wood animal than ever. The olive oval of her face was thinner and paler, and there was a strange, deeper look in her eyes.

"I—I guess it no matter that much," she stammered. "Peut-etre you bringing him back soon."

"Well," said Jennifer artfully, "Mrs. Grange said I could keep him as long as I liked, and I don't think it would be quite civil to take him back yet. She might think I was tired of him. Of course if you run off with him that is a different matter."

"Moosta would hardly notice s'pose he back or not," said Andree, and Jennifer smothered a smile.

"Come out and see him, anyway," she said. "He calls your name, Andree. It is the only word he says."

"Ah! Mon petit!" The girl's face lighted up. "He is not to forget, the blessed one. No! Mon petit ami Rosario."

Then she recollected herself swiftly.

"Maybe I will come to-morrow—or some next day," she said, and disappeared into the dark of the side-passage again.

In the dusk of two evenings later Jennifer saw Andree haunting the shadows round Son-of-Lightning's shack, and she ran out and brought the girl in to the warm lighted room where Rosario lay before the fire, kicking blissfully on his little back. It brought Jennifer's laugh on a sob to see the girl go down on her knees and tangle her curls in the chubby fingers, and coo the soft Indian baby-talk which was so alien to the white woman. And Rosario chuckled and crowed; tossing his arms until Andree looked up with the beautiful face laughing through her hair.

"Il m'aime," she cried. "He do like me best. Dieu! It is me best."

Later she gathered him into her arms; sitting on the floor and rocking and crooning until he fell asleep. She took no count of Jennifer. Women never entered much into Andree's calculation unless they got in her way, and Jennifer was deeply thankful that the girl did not know how much this woman who slipped down on the rug beside her stood in her way.

"Andree," she said; "Mrs. Grange showed me a very pretty picture of you. I should think it would make you feel so proud. Mr. Heriot painted it, didn't he?"

"Oui," said Andree on a long-drawn breath.

"And he painted others too." Jennifer's voice faltered a little. She was striving to crush down an unworthy doubt. But the girl beside her was so beautiful, so very beautiful. And she knew that she was plain. "Won't you show me the others some day, Andree?"

For a little the girl was silent. Jennifer saw the colour pulsing in her face and the flutter of her breast. Then Andree cast Rosario aside with that impetuosity to which he was so accustomed that it did not break his sleep and hid her face in her hands.

"It makes me go seeck inside to talk 'bout him," she wailed. "I do not know. I do not know. I not care for people to call me belle any more."

Jennifer breathed sharply. The bent, dark head blurred before her eyes. Then she put her arm round the shoulders and drew Andree's head against her.

"Tell me," she said gently, "is it because he had to go away? He could not help that, Andree."

As usual under pressure Andree sloughed off all reserve and flung her heart bare to Jennifer as she had done to Dick.

"I love him," she cried. "I do love him so I could keel him. And he laugh at me. He kiss me—and laugh. The place burn. It burn now. One day he say, 'I love you, Andree.' Now he laugh—and for two-three months before he go he no speak to me. And one day he hit me with his whip. I hate him. I hate him—ah, mon Dieu, I love him so."

Jennifer controlled her voice with difficulty.

"And you think he does not love you, Andree?" she asked.

"I not know. Perhaps—and perhaps again. But I think he hate me. And I hate him. But if again he smile at me—ah," she broke into violent sobbing; "ah, Dick, come back. I not hate you. Oh, come back from so far away."

"If he told you that he loved you——" Jennifer could not finish.

"Oh, mais vous savez, what are men. To-day to kiss, to-morrow to hit. Dick did hit when he kiss. He was not like the others. They did pray to me. Dick made me pray to him. Ah!" she shook herself free, and sat up, biting her lips. "When he come again to Grey Wolf I will kill him. He no good, anyway. Before he go he drink—he drink too much sometimes. He no good. And he make game of me. Très bien! I make much game of him. There are plenty more love Andree. Ah! I do hate him. Mon Dieu!"

Jennifer could not handle this mood any more than Dick could handle the softer mood of that other night. She shivered, going white under the tense fury of the words. Dimly she recognised that there were elements in Andree which she could never understand, even as there were elements in Dick. For the rugged rocks and the fierce winds and the deep secret woods were the forbears of their souls in the days when Andree's Indian fathers and the roystering gentlemen adventurers who were responsible for Dick had known this young land of Canada as no men of a later day could know it.

Andree stood up, knotting back her curls with swift, skilful fingers.

"It is another day I will come for Rosario," she said, and then Jennifer found her feet and her courage together.

"Come soon, Andree," she said. "And talk to me as much as ever you want to. And by and by, perhaps, you will not be so unhappy. You say that there are plenty more people who care for you."

"Mais—they are not Dick," said Andree, and went away out into the night.