The Law-bringers/Chapter 6

by G. B. Lancaster

 

CHAPTER VI

"THE YOUNG GOD FREY"

Hah-yah-ah-ah! Hah-yah-ah-ah! Hah-yah——"

Ducane dashed his cup down in the saucer with a force chat spattered the tea across the tablecloth.

"What in the name of all things d'you let that old fool into the house for?" he demanded.

Jennifer laughed the little soft laugh that soothed him always.

It's just a thanksgiving for his breakfast, dear. I told Louisa to bring him in. It must have been below zero in his shack this morning."

"Pshaw! You can't freeze a Cree Indian. Good Lord, Jenny! Stop him! And that devil's tom-tom of his, too. Tell him——"

Jennifer went out quickly. Ducane's nerves had been a ragged edge of late, and she could not draw from him the reason why. But she shielded and eased and softened him wherever her wit could do it; and if the strain showed in her face it was not Ducane who would notice it, nor yet the two in the rough draughty kitchen behind the house.

Jennifer stood a moment in the door. At the broad blackened bench running along one side of the place the slow, clumsy half-breed girl was splashing greasy water as she scraped a pot. She was a living thorn in Jennifer's flesh; a primitive thing that could not be taught, and that never lost its temper. Up in the dark rough rafters were thrust broken snow-shoes, a special hand-sled of Ducane's, a couple of bear-skins of his own curing, and many other things which belonged to the days before Jennifer came and which she had not had the courage to touch. Before the glowing stove sat the old Cree, astride of a box. His store-clothes hung loosely on his gaunt, long body. His black hair, like frayed-out carpet, fell back from the blind, seamed old face as he pointed his nose to the roof and bayed like a wolf in the night, keeping time with the tom-tom beat.

"Hah-yah-ah-ah! Hah——"

Jennifer touched the bowed shoulder.

"Meewahsin, Son-of-Lightning," she said. "Very good."

Son-of-Lightning's bony knuckles dropped from the tuneless little drum. He twisted to meet the voice.

"Meewahsin?" he said, and showed all his tobacco-blacked teeth in the grin which he gave no one but Jennifer. "Aha, Tapwa?"

"Certainly," said Jennifer. "It is truly very good." She looked at Louisa. "Tell him it is time to go out and cut kindling," she said.

Louisa interpreted in the swift guttural mutters that seem to have no terminals. The old man raised himself by sections, and Jennifer pulled her coat from the passage-peg, stepping out with him into the crisp brilliance of the spring morning.

All the world was vividly, crystally new. Under the breath of the Chinook which came eager and warm from the Rockies the trees had sloughed their winter covering, standing in delicate grey tracery against the dazzling sky. In this atmosphere the houses over at Grey Wolf stood distinct, each one, with smoke feathering straightly from the chimneys. Jennifer could see the glint of beaded moccasins on a man by the hotel door. She could catch the crack of a quirt as Kennedy went up the street on the piebald barrack pony. Snowbirds were calling gladly down the lake where the ice was thinning; and against the clearing fences and the heaps of melting snow sunshine was splintering its lances gaily. All about the feet of Spring moved; growing nearer, warmer. The air was full of promise; of life, of things to be and do, and Jennifer's blood ran riot with the joy of it as she thrust open the door of Son-of-Lightning's shack.

If the world outside was resurrection that shack most surely was the grave. But its desolation of sacking-bunk, ragged blankets, old lumber, and almost audible smell troubled her less this morning. The day was too boisterously glad. Besides, Son-of-Lightning loved it. He trod past her with the unerring feet of the blind who know their path; squatted on the floor like some furry animal; reached his knife from a tie in the wall and a dried stick from the floor, and began slicing slivers for firewood. He paused once to try the blade on his thumb, and Jennifer went away, shutting the door on the sharp, keen air. Day or dark were alike to Son-of-Lightning, and he was smoke-dried beyond all hurt from the smells.

Round the house the snow was pounded into holes and kicked to ridges by the passing of men and horses. Where the crisp surface spumed into spray about their bodies a big husky-dog was fighting two of Ducane's sled-dogs. They were bred too close to the wolf for Jennifer to care for or to heed the issue. Everything belonging to Ducane was savage and rough and unlovely as himself; everything except Jennifer. She watched them a moment with her dark brows drawn together. That husky dog was Robison's, and always his coming left Ducane inflamed with excitement or irritable with a hidden fear.

She went into the house, hearing Ducane call her from the passage.

"Jenny! Bring another cup—and some more bacon. Robison's here."

This was not the first time Ducane had bade her wait on the breed, and her temper began to stir. She gave two orders to Louisa, and met Ducane in the narrow side-passage hung with his guns and fishing-gear.

"Louisa will bring them," she said quietly. "You don't want to make me wait on Robison, do you?"

Ducane was irritable already.

"By George," he exploded. "I guess you'll leave your Toronto airs behind you up here, my girl. If Robison is good enough for me——"

"He is good enough for me. Is that what you mean?"

Under her eyes Ducane fidgeted.

"What's the matter with him?" he said sulkily.

"Nothing, perhaps—in his proper place. But his place is not in my sitting-room, and you have brought him there more than once. Nor is it in the dining-room when I am there. You would not dare attempt to make him my equal if he had not a greater hold over you than he should have."

Ducane went purple. All his bullying, blustering nature flared up.

"By ——, you'll do as I tell you," he said.

"I will not," said Jennifer, and he saw the steel in her eyes.

For a moment he gasped. Then he swore again, low and in admiration.

"You've got sand, you little spitfire," he said. "You've got sand." He stared at her still. "I reckon you could jolly the lot of 'em if you were put to it, eh? They wouldn't cut any ice off you."

She shivered under the eager speculation in his eyes.

"Harry—dear——" she said, and reached her hand up to touch his cheek.

He caught it, crushing his lips to the palm.

"You'd do anything for me, Jenny?" he whispered. "Anything, if I needed it? You know I love you, Jenny. I love you."

Neither the man nor the woman knew yet if he loved himself better. Jennifer drew her hand gently away.

"Anything I could," she said. "You know that. Now, go back to Robison. Louisa has taken in the bacon."

Ducane went, and there was the lift of eagerness in his feet. For he had a whole new formula to work on; one close at hand; one which he had never thought of before. Robison looked at him with curiosity. He did not understand this man who had gone into a game for men to play and who was now afraid of it. For long they talked very low over the table-corner. Then Ducane pushed dishes and silver aside, and brought some papers from a locked drawer in a wall-cabinet.

"When the first boat goes down to Chipewyan we go too," he said. "I want some information and some photographs about that country."

"Oh," Robison rubbed his broad flat nose. "Told yer Grey Wolf was only a nibble at the beginning."

"I could have told you that. Last week I heard from a fellow in England who'd been reading some of our literature. It came under cover to Winnipeg, of course. I'm replying direct to him. He's going to have that bit of land on the Peace that you bought from Ras Taylor."

Ras Taylor was the breed whose scrip-land Robison had bought. Incidentally Ras Taylor had also been very drunk at intervals for some months. But it was known that Robison had been very good to him and had paid him in advance for part of his next year's trapping, Ras being too deeply in debt to the Hudson Bay Company to receive grace from them.

Robison nodded. This thing had been done before, although the Winnipeg Company which supplied the literature would not have warmly approved. But neither Ducane nor Robison had thought of seeking encouragement from them.

"Hand over the feller's letter, an' yer answer," said Robison. He took pains to know that Ducane reserved all his treachery for the other members of the Company, and he read the letters with deliberation.

"Looks all right," he said, and tossed them back. "Ducane, what's that Dick Heriot doing across here so often?"

"How should I know? I can't stop him or he'd suspect something."

"Do you think he ain't suspectin' everybody in Grey Wolf ever since he first got wind o' this? I heard all about him long before he come here. But you've got to watch out that he doesn't do more than suspect. See?"

Ducane's fat, ruddy face sagged and paled.

"He can't suspect. How should he? We never have——"

"Well, take care as we never do, that's all. I'm lookin' for a chance ter git even with him, but it's long a-comin'." He pulled a flat sheet of paper from his mooseskin wallet. "See that?" he said. "That's what he done to me, the——"

Ducane picked up Dick's sketch of the wood-buffalo, which was Robison. It was a little blurred by damp and rubbing, but it was unmistakable, and cruelly clever. Ducane laughed, holding it up against the light.

"By Jove, he's got his own idea of a joke," he said. "How long have you had this?"

"Never you mind." Robison leaned forward suddenly. "There's writin' on that other side. Faint pencil, an' I never saw it before. Hand it here."

He half-snatched it and read the notes in Tempest's clear writing below the "Memorandum. Royal North-West Mounted Police Force. Form No. ——."

"I never saw this before," he said weakly. "I never saw this before."

"What is it?" Ducane took it and read it. Then he sprang up with a gasp. Deadly fear had caught him, making him cringe at the far-off threat.

"They're after us," he cried. "Lord They're after us. They know what we're at."

There was sweat on his face. He brought a bottle and glasses to the table, poured himself a stiff nip, and dropped back in his chair, holding his glass with a shaking hand. Robison was watching in the impenetrable gravity of an elephant. Fear was a thing outside his understanding.

"Everyone knows Ras Taylor took scrip last year an' sold to me this," he said. "Don't make such a row."

"They wouldn't have noted it unless they were going to do something, would they? By ——, perhaps they've got the whole thing already. I shall clear out. I can't stand this. They'll get me, the brutes. They'll get me."

Robison's elemental brain felt dimly that he was rather more ignored than courtesy demanded.

"And where do I come in?" he demanded. "I reckon I'm as near caught as you, any day. But I reckon I can lie my way out of it so far. An' so must you."

His little red eyes were sharp on Ducane. It did not occur to him that any man could baulk over the telling of lies, for he did not know that this is one of the limitations which usually goes with the honour of being born a gentleman.

"It won't come to that. If this damned Heriot was spiked——"

Ducane halted suddenly, thinking of Jennifer. His face lightened a little, and he sat still. Robison heaved himself up, standing with great arms hanging, more like an ape than ever.

"We'll go on as we've gone," he said. "I'm not goin' out of this game till I have to run for it. There's money in it, all right."

"I won't do any more," Ducane looked up defiantly. "I won't go up to Chipewyan. I——"

"Yes, you will, too." Robison thrust his hairy face close. "You don't go back on me if I know it," he said.

"I won't go to Chipewyan," cried Ducane. "I'm going to clear out of Grey Wolf right away. I'm not fool enough to be caught——"

"You'll go to Chipewyan," said Robison. "An' you'll stay on here till we're through with our little corner. See? I'm goin' to make enough out o' my pickin's to set me up. You've scooped more than your share so far. But you'll give me fair dues now, an' you won't pull out till I'm ready."

His rough voice was lowered and he scarcely moved. But Ducane recognised the enormous brute force which will fight for what it wants, regardless of consequences. If he played false with Robison the man would kill him. He had known that for some time, but he shivered and cowered under the knowledge again.

"Heriot is a dog after cunning work," he said. "He'll get me——"

"We'll light out before that. He doesn't know much or he'd have been on to us before now. This picture is near five months old. Never you mind how I know that. And you keep your mouth shut. You don't tell your wife things? You swore you didn't."

"I don't. No. But——"

"You'll do as I say," said Robison quietly, "or I guess you'll likely get hurt, Mr. Ducane."

Ducane fingered the sketch aimlessly, and Jennifer, passing the window with the gladness of the spring day in her eyes and her feet, wondered at the sullen fear on his face. But she pushed thought of him and of Robison from her as she climbed the hill where an old Indian woman was beating the frost from some fish-nets as she laid them in the sun. By the Indian burying-ground the spirit-offerings of old hardware were beginning to take shape again below the ridge-pole coverings, and all the grey tender branches of the birchwood along the hillside were blushing with new life. Jennifer knocked the snow from a brown saskatoon branch and laughed at it.

"Very soon you will be young again," she told it, and looked down into the coulée beyond, where two shacks lay like black thumb-marks on white paper. Jennifer caught her breath. One of those shacks held the ghost of the woman who was a weetigo. The other shack was Florestine's. Jennifer had seen Florestine in Grey Wolf; a tall, handsome breed with a very small baby in a moss-bag. Now the baby was dead, killed yesterday by Florestine's own hand, and in some horrible way this was connected with the weetigo. Jennifer turned sick, remembering how Ducane had been buttering his toast as he spoke of it that morning.

"The police will get hold of it to-day," he said. "Manslaughter, at the very least, of course. Maybe the girl was justified. She had to work for the kid."

"Where is her husband?" asked Jennifer, and Ducane laughed uproariously.

"Who knows," he said, and Jennifer's heart had surged up in a great wave of pity for Florestine.

She felt a reflex of that pity now in this silent world where tragedy had a way of lying so nakedly to the eye. Then, along the line of trail that snaked round to Grey Wolf, she saw something black that swung near, and very fast. A flash of light struck on brass harness; the stout lines of the barrack-sleigh shaped familiarly; and sharply, almost without her knowledge, Jennifer plunged down the snow-slope to reach the shack which was Florestine's before the chain of that unbreakable patrol should loop round it and pull it in.

On the level the way was rough with little snow-graves that buried hay-heaps, battered tins, broken harness, and loose lumber. But she stumbled over them with her heart in her throat; reached the crazy door first, and turned with her arm flung out as though to bar it against Tempest where he came up the trail behind her.

"You—you can't go in there," she said desperately.

Tempest's lips twitched in a brief smile. There was no door in all the North-West dared deny him entrance when he wished it. But his eyes were grave, for it was errands like this that bled the heart-blood out of him.

"What made you come?" he said gently.

"She is sorry." Jennifer's voice dropped to whispered pleading. "She never meant it. She did it just in a moment because she was so tired, and it cried so. She never meant to do it."

"Please——" said Tempest, and his eyes contracted. The matter was painful enough without this.

"She doesn't know any better," said Jennifer. "She only knows about the things that frighten her—about the woman who was a weetigo and who came in the night and wanted the baby—and the winds that make noises—and the husband who was unkind to her. They couldn't have her at the Mission because you know they are so short of money—and she was all alone—and the weetigo woman told her to do it—and she is so sorry."

It was the one woman's heart interpreting through this girl the mother-love of all women. Tempest recognised it. But he laid his hand on the latch.

"Do you think I have no pity for her?" he said. "But I must go in. I am as much under the law as she is."

"The law!" cried Jennifer, and bit her teeth together. "Oh! I think I hate the law."

"You are thinking of man's law," said Tempest, and smiled a little. "I wasn't meaning only that."

He pulled up the latch and stepped over the threshold with that quiet manner of his which seemed to carry the hush of finality with it. Jennifer heard the half-choked cry as Florestine saw him, and it drove home the truth of his words. In order that the world may go on sin must be punished, rooted out, crushed into death. Nature demands it, and opposite the neglect of this law she sets the extinction and the degradation of the race. Jennifer stood for a little in the great white day with bowed head. Then she followed Tempest into the shack.

It was very cold in the shack, for Florestine had made no fire since the baby died. It smelt of moose-skin and coal-oil and all airless greasiness and wood-smoke. Near the burnt-out lamp on the rough table lay a pair of half- finished moccasins with the strips of white doe-skin and the litter of beads and gay silks. Florestine had been working on them for an order when the peevish crying of the baby had started her up from the box overturned on the earth floor. There were pans and dirty pots about; a pair of snow-shoes flung off in a corner; the black shawl Florestine wore over her head when she went to Grey Wolf, and, where the light of the day swamped the darkness, Florestine on a stool, holding her baby, and Tempest kneeled on one knee beside her.

Jennifer halted, half-ashamed. For Florestine needed no rescue from the mercilessness of the law-bringer. Tempest was stroking the brown scrap of flesh that made the infinitely cold baby cheek with a gentle forefinger, and his tone as he spoke in his broken Cree-French was tenderness made wise.

He had drawn from her with such skill that she did not know it the few necessary words he wanted, and now he was trying to draw from her the dead child. For her long bitter journey to Fort Saskatchewan must begin in the morning. The girl was numb with the cold and dazed with hunger and terror. The ghost of the woman who was a weetigo had shrieked at her hourly, demanding the soft body as well as the life already given. She clutched it, staring at Tempest with eyes that were softening.

"Astum," said Tempest, and slid his firm hands about it. "Ah, le petit napasis. I take him, Florestine. So——"

A moment Florestine rebelled. Then she let go. Jennifer held her breath. There was no denying that quiet power. Tempest stood up with his light burden, and Florestine spoke.

"I want him not cry—and now I want him cry," she said in the mixed language that Tempest only understood. And he had no answer for it, because it was the unexplainable tragedy of impatient human life in a sentence.

The grunt of runners packing in the snow came from without sharpened by the snap of a whip as Kennedy pulled the pie-bald barrack pony back on its haunches. Dick ploughed through the snow to the door where Tempest met him, and Florestine's eyes followed in the dumb submission of a dog. Tempest spoke low and quickly. Both men looked at Jennifer, and then Tempest came to her.

"I am taking Florestine back with me," he said. "And you'd best go home at once, Mrs. Ducane. There's a storm corning, I fancy. Those look like snow-clouds."

Jennifer realised suddenly that the sun was gone and that a cold restless wind was plucking at the shack-corners. But she did not heed.

"Who is taking her down to Fort Saskatchewan?" she asked.

"Kennedy. To-morrow morning."

Jennifer glanced at the ruddy youth.

"Oh, will he know enough?" she said. "Will he be kind to her?"

"Why, he'll do his best," Tempest smiled. "He's a good lad. But I'll speak to him if you like."

He beckoned Kennedy.

"Mrs. Ducane is very anxious that this poor girl should be well looked after," he said. "I told her you'd do your best. Isn't that so?"

"Aha," said Kennedy, scarlet with shyness. "All right, Sergeant. Cert'nly."

Tempest's glance passed to the motionless Florestine.

"I think you would be wise to go, Mrs. Ducane," he said. " We may get bad snow out of this. You know what the spring storms are."

Jennifer went obediently, with a curious sense of impotence. These men whose ways lay so much among rough men and rough work needed no teaching from her in the matters of gentleness and forethought. She could not have handled Florestine as Tempest had done, and she believed that Tempest had made more of the storm so that she should not have the pain of seeing them take Florestine away.

Then she realised that the storm was very much more than a thing of Tempest's imagination, and along the flank of the hill she hurried with all her strength, feeling the chill bite of the wind on her face. A flake of wet snow, chill as the forerunner of a blizzard, struck her, and she lowered her head, pushing against it with her long swift snow-shoe swing. Already the distances were shortening down with the mist that brought the snow. The wind in her skirts held her back and tired her, and the cold began to strike home to her thinly-clad body. It had been so warm this morning, she told herself. No one would have expected this. And there were four miles of bare saddle-backs before her yet. Four miles where she would catch the storm full. But she dared not go back to the shacks. There would be no one there now but the ghost of the woman who was a weetigo. All about her the trees were moaning; bending uneasily in the wind-puffs, and sloughing the snow where they could, as though in preparation for what was coming. Then the snow began in earnest. Sleety masses with the wetness of spring in them, but cold enough for mid-winter. The wind buffeted and blinded her and took her breath.

"I must go on," she gasped. "I must. But it's so cold. It's so cold." She was sobbing in her throat; stumbling, numb, worn-out with her struggle and the grasp of the cold on her. Her skirts grew wet and dragged her down. She dropped at last; too exhausted to care, though it meant death. That wind was beating the breath out of her. And the snow was cold. So cold.

Then strong arms came round her, and someone swung her up, holding her close, and a human voice came to her out of somewhere.

"There's a shack down here. We'll get under shelter. All right. It's all right now."

Jennifer was past words. She clung to Dick weakly as to something warm and alive. And then the tearing noisy storm was shut out with the banging of the shack door and she slid down on a pile of musty blue-joint grass. Dick was pulling his gloves off and rubbing her cheeks between his strong warm hands.

"You've half-frozen," he said. "You poor child. Why did we let you go? Why did we let you go! Is that better? I can see the blood coming back. Now your hands. And how about your feet? I'll get a fire directly. You poor child."

"I would have died," she sobbed. "I would have died if you hadn't come."

"Not you. These storms don't last long enough. But you might have got badly chilled. Wait a minute and I'll make a fire."

He brought branches with the snow knocked off them; fed a small flame in the chimney-place with the grass, and presently the fire leapt up, warm and ruddy. Jennifer was shivering and trembling, and her skirt dripped as she stood up.

"Put on my slicker," said Dick, and flung off the long yellow waterproof he wore. "And get out of those skirts at once, while I bring some more wood."

"Oh, thank you. Thank you. How good you are to me. And you came after me through that storm——"

"I'd go through more than that." He broke the sentence. "Take those wet things off," he said, and went out hurriedly.

Outside he stood still with his back to the storm, and a curious light in his eyes. Those moments when he held Jennifer in his arms had shaken him much. He seemed to feel the softness and the lightness of her there yet. Some months ago he had been startled when he first realised that Jennifer was becoming a factor in his life. Then he had been amused. He had played with the idea, letting it grow, interested to find that the sound of her step and of her voice could give him so much pleasure. He believed that the power to love; the power to be excited; the power to feel very warmly about anything on earth had gone out from him. He rejoiced in the thought that it had come back. It seemed to lift the chill that was deadening his life.

"I can care still," he told himself. "Tempest—I am sure I care for Tempest. And now this little girl."

The thought delighted him. It seemed to put colour into existence once more. He was in love with love. He felt like a man who walks again after a long illness. And then gradually the amusement and the pleasure faded off the sensation, leaving him face to face with the naked fact. This love was not any longer a thing to be played with and petted. It was flaming into a strength that he had not believed was left in him. And it flamed the fiercer because he saw how little she guessed at it, and saw, too, where she stood just now, unguarded, undefended, with her love for Ducane crumbling round her.

Jennifer was laughing over the fire when he came back.

"I couldn't help being such a baby," she said. "I really did feel as if I'd got to the end of all things."

"Doesn't it feel like a horrible slump back to earth now?"

"It hardly seemed like earth when you picked me up and ran with me."

Dick turned quickly. But her eyes were frank as Slicker's own.

"We are going to be late for dinner," she said. "And I'm hungry already. You haven't got anything edible about you, have you?"

"Only tobacco, I'm sorry to say. But the worst of it is over. Did you wring your skirts out? Let me do it." He did it with a serene self-possession which made her laugh again.

"How many varied chores do you police have to do through your time of service?" she asked.

"Why—I think it is as well they are not tabulated for us beforehand. It would take a brave man to face them in the bulk. It is a queer life, and we get inside some funny family histories. Are you warm now?" He took her hand. "I feel that this is partly my fault, you know," he said.

"Oh, no;" she smiled at him. "But it was so good of you to come."

She looked such a little thing with the wet crisping on her bright hair above the collar of his slicker and the glow of the cold on her cheeks. The touch and the look of her moved him powerfully. Then he stooped to the fire again. For the moment he could not trust himself to speak.

But Jennifer chattered gaily. The adventurous spirit in her delighted in even such a small thing as this, and she talked until presently her tongue strayed on Ducane's name.

"I hope he won't be anxious. He was with Robison, and he didn't see me go."

"Are you sure?" Dick looked round suddenly.

"Why, certainly. I called in to him through the dining-room window, but he didn't hear. He was looking over one of your sketches, I think. An animal—it looked like a buffalo. And Robison was scowling so."

Dick's face was accustomed to hide what his brain felt.

"That sounds to be rather a left-handed compliment," he said. "People are usually good enough to say they don't have to guess twice at my efforts."

"Well, if you ask them they couldn't do less."

"You could, I think," said Dick, smiling.

"That is left-handed—straight from the shoulder. It did really look like a buffalo, but if you'll tell me you meant it for a pig I'll agree to that, too. I can't discourage you when you've been so nice to me."

"You discourage me every time I see you."

"I do? How?"

Before those clear, astonished eyes his own fell.

"Because I can never make out the real colours in your hair and eyes, and I'm supposed to be more or less of an artist," he said.

Jennifer laughed, and over the fire the talk slid down more intimate channels than it had touched yet. It had set them on a new but undefined basis when the storm was passed and Dick took her home under a sullen sky, leaving her on the threshold with an excuse when she would have made him come in. He preferred to take the long walk straight back to the barracks, for the last few hours had shaken him out of his usual cynical indifference more than he believed possible. The poise of Jennifer's head; her quick movements; her merry laugh and ways, and that alluring allusive tragedy in her eyes had fired the very depths of him. He would not think of her now. He would not think of what it was going to mean when she knew what he was doing for Ducane; when she knew what he was making her do. Resolutely he turned his mind from her on to Ogilvie and Robison. For that sketch was with- out doubt the missing sketch of Robison, and therefore, equally without doubt, one or both of those two men had seen Ogilvie after he was supposed to have disappeared from mortal knowledge. The eager light came back to his eyes, and he walked fast, with that hound-mind of his snuffing swiftly along this new bend in the trail.

Ducane met Jennifer in the passage. He had missed her, and had gone to the whiskey-bottle for comfort, as he had done too often of late. He caught her arm, speaking high and thickly.

"Where have you been? Where have you been, Jenny? I wanted you. Was that Heriot with you? Jenny, he's going to get me cornered, that fellow. He's going to get me if you can't switch him off. He's going——"

"Hush!" She drew him into the sitting-room and shut the door. "What is it? Why are you afraid of Mr. Heriot?"

Ducane dropped his red face in his hands and whimpered.

"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't, Jenny, girl. There are too many in it besides me. And I promised. I—I don't know what to do. We might fool Tempest. He knows something, likely. But the other fellow's the devil. You could never bounce him and you could never square him. A man hasn't the ghost of a chance with him. But a woman could handle him. I've heard what he's like. You could keep him off me——"

"Stop!" said Jennifer. She struck her shut hands down by her sides, and her teeth snapped together. "Oh, you coward!" she cried. "You coward! You coward!"

Rage and fear whipped Ducane up on his feet.

"Don't you take that tone with me," he blustered. "I'm doing my share, and why shouldn't you do yours? Damn it, is it all to fall on me? If I can manage to stand it out a couple more months we'll skip, and then they can take Robison if they like."

"Oh! Robison is what they call a fence for you, is he?"

"Don't I tell you there are more than me—Jenny, don't look at me that way, my girl. I love you. I—I can't get along without you, Jenny. By ——, I love you too much for that. Don't be mad with me, little girl."

He came to her unsteadily with his hands out. Jennifer stood very still. In some strange way Ducane's misery seemed to pass her by, leaving her cold. She found herself wondering how Dick would behave if any man tried to corner him. Or—what was it Harry had said? He couldn't be bounced or squared, but a woman could handle him. Was that true? She laid her hand on Ducane's arm.

"Sit down and tell me all you can about it, Harry," she said gently.

To Tempest, driving Florestine back to the barracks, came a sudden glimpse of that tragedy which is often wound up with the simplest of lives. In the woods where the mist drove now on the snowy wind, his pony shied from a trapper who had dragged his hand-sled off the trail, standing to watch them pass. At Tempest's side Florestine gave a little cry and pulled her shawl over her face. Then the pony sprang past, snorting and fighting the bit, and Tempest looked down at the girl.

"Who was it?" he asked. "Not your husband, Florestine?"

"Tommy Joseph," breathed Florestine through her shawl. But the name being unfamiliar to Tempest, he thought no more of it until Kennedy ushered Tommy Joseph into the office where he made up his reports a half hour later.

Tempest pushed aside his papers and looked up, remembering the man vaguely as one of the many sturdy trappers who came in each spring for the Hudson Bay tracking.

"You wanted to see me?" he asked.

Tommy Joseph nodded. He had spent three days at Grey Wolf at the New Year. Then he had gone again for the spring hunt, and now he had come back, hauling his loaded sled of furs a hundred miles and over for the prospect of regular meals and regular work when he and the men of last season would sail the big scows north behind the outgoing ice to bring again the furs of fall. He was thin with starvation and hard work in the woods, and all the cheer was out of his gaunt, dark face. His clothes were ragged utterly, and he gripped his fur cap in both hands as he spoke with a struggle to find his English.

"You say to me where est l'homme de Florestine?" he began, and Tempest saw the muscles working in his strong throat.

"I do not know," said Tempest. "He went trapping last fall. She has not heard of him since."

"Urrrh!" said Tommy Joseph. Then he shifted on the tired feet that had carried him thirty miles that day. "Him bad," he said. "S'pose vous know dat? Florestine no laike heem. I want her come wit me to de trapping by'm bye apres de Nouvelle Year. She mak' cry; mais she no come."

He looked straight at Tempest with the bright keen eyes of his kind.

"She goot girl," he said.

And Tempest, not forgetting that which had been in the shack, said, "I believe you."

Tommy Joseph twisted his cap rapidly, as though trying to engender some new force to aid him.

"S'pose vous let go?" he burst out at last. "She goot girl."

Tempest leant over the desk.

"You know better than to ask that, don't you?" he said, compassionately.

Tommy Joseph twirled his cap again.

"Mebbe si moi was in dat shack moi mak' keel dat bébé," he suggested.

"Maybe," agreed Tempest. "But you were not. She will have to go down to Fort Saskatchewan, Tommy. But I am glad you told me this. I will certainly put it in the report."

"I mak' weesh to been in dat shack, moi," said Tommy Joseph. Then, underbreath, "Mak' take, no can let go. Fonny, dat." He backed to the door with head bent. "Merci much," he said, and went out in silence.

Tempest drew out the report carefully. But this naked little tragedy could not hold him for long. Because he had been a lonely reserved man for so many years the thought and sense of Andree filled his world up now, and her with drawals and desperate shynesses fitted the delicacy of his dream too well. He never saw her as other men saw her, and he never spoke with her as other men spoke, so that Dick, busy with his own troubles, knew nothing of this thing until Slicker pulled the scales from his eyes one day at the English Mission School.

In the bale-room the deaconess was selling to a succession of Reserve Indians the mixed contents of the bales which came up yearly from the Eastward side, and Slicker was driving her to the verge of hysterics under the loudly-expressed belief that he was "helping." Dick laughed, and knelt on one knee to tie a slant-eyed solid girl into a white silk baby bonnet.

"Now, now," he said; "when we're doing the parents yeoman service, too! This girl has never had her points properly shown up before. How much for the bonnet, Meyo? One dollar? Don't you think it? Two, Meyo, when you hev' such a very attractive piece of live goods to hang it on."

The faded, black-shawled mother and the brawny husband grinned doubtfully, and Miss Chubb snatched the bonnet away.

"You've a right to be ashamed of yourself, Corporal," she cried. "Why, I was just beginning to take an interest in that girl," complained Dick. "Sell her that blue ki- mono thing, too, and she'll get a husband to-morrow. You've spoiled a promising career, Miss Chubb. Hallo, kiddy!"

Slicker presented a two-year-old buttoned into trousers that swept the floor.

"I imagine that'll about do the trick," he said. "Keep him warm right alone till he's grown up, eh? Hallo, sonny. Don't walk all over yourself."

"Sakes," gasped Miss Chubb. "Oh, this is fierce. Slicker, it's a girl."

She collapsed weakly on a bale of quilts and laughed, mopping her eyes. "What in the nation am I to do with you two?" she said.

"Take us into partnership," suggested Dick unabashed. "We'd get through more trade in a day than you would in three weeks. Hustle around that fellow over there, Slicker. He's tried on every mortal garment that we have, and his pockets are bulging with bills yet."

Miss Chubb looked round the bale-room where the rows of shelves dripped the unfolded ends of every kind of garment. For over two hours brown fingers had pulled and brown critical eyes stared at them and brown flat noses smelt them. She was needed in the school-yard where the children were quarrelling shrilly; she was needed in the kitchen where her young helper struggled to make up a meal for ten hungry mouths on limited resources; she was needed in the sewing-room where piles of kneeless knickerbockers and toeless stockings gaped for her. And she was needed here so long as the swarthy breeds and silent Indians chose to circle those walls and buy the worth of a dollar.

"Oh, it's fierce," she said again. "And here are some more coming."

Slicker looked from the window. Then he hugged himself.

"Tell me all the things you want to get rid of," he said. "Quick! I'll make Mrs. Taemana buy them. She can't ever say no."

"Happy Taemana," murmured Dick. "Was it a kiss you asked for, Slicker?"

"No. This was at the Hudson Bay Indian kick-up at New Year. I stroked her for an hour and she never let up to take breath. I—I—well, frankly, I did think she'd burst. 'Aha,' she said to everything I brought. 'Aha.’"

"Sorry I can't assure you that your persuasive manner was to blame," said Dick lazily. "My dear Slicker, don't you know that it is vulgar for an Indian to refuse food? Mrs. Taemana, being a specimen of high-bred society, couldn't refuse if she died for it. By the bye, I did hear that de Choiseaux was called in afterwards. Not that that has any connection, of course."

"She's a dear old soul," said Miss Chubb. "I'm very fond of her, Mr. Heriot."

"It is constant balm to a man to find how fond women are of their sex," said Dick. "Now, practically the only bond between men is the struggle for existence. We grant a man the right to live—off us, if he's clever enough; but we don't take much personal interest in the matter. It is the ladies who provide the encouragement—and the need for it."

Miss Chubb did not care to look at his eyes. She had never cared to look at them since she caught them watching her one day when Tempest passed.

"I'll give you plenty of encouragement to remove Slicker right now," she said. "He keeps me too busy to do anything."

Dick departed with his fingers down Slicker's collar; but outside the yard where the school-children played at the swings, noisy with the fret of spring that would soon call them to the woods again, Slicker freed himself.

"I have been wanting to catch you alone for a week, Dick," he said. "Of course you know what people are saying about Tempest and Grange's Andree?"

Dick shrugged his shoulders. The idle talk had galled him extremely; but he had never considered it his mission to interfere in the affairs of other men.

"Your perspicacity does you credit," he said dryly.

Slicker flushed. His eyes had not lost the look of youth's dreams; but he was growing more conscious of his manhood every day.

"You must stop it," he cried. "I hate to have anything said against Tempest."

"Do you? Well, so do I, Slicker. But don't you understand that no silly talk can touch him? He fathers and mothers the whole of Grey Wolf, and if Andree gets more than her share—well, she is uncommonly pretty, you know. As men of the world, Slicker, we must allow Tempest a few human failings. His virtues insist that they shall be very few, poor devil."

"But he loves her."

"That remark," said Dick, lighting his pipe, "is unworthy of your intellect."

"But it's true! I saw him kissing her hands only yesterday."

"You what?"

Slicker repeated his assertion, and Dick dropped the match and put his foot on it. He would have put it on Andree with as little compunction just then. Tempest and Jennifer were the only beautiful things in his world, and the mere suggestion of this sickened him. He looked at the boy narrowly.

"Of course he was only taking out a sliver," he said. "But even so it is hardly worth talking about, is it? And the kind of scandal Grey Wolf amuses itself with is hardly worth dabbling in, either."

He went on, leaving Slicker abashed and unconvinced, and totally unaware of the shock which he had given the elder man. And it was a severe shock. Dick, walking fast through the forest-trail, acknowledged it. His punishment for the many wrong-doings of his life was the punishment of the young god Frey who sat in Odin's seat and saw too far and too clear for his comfort. Dick had elected to sit in Odin's seat of wisdom, and he saw to the heart of this thing, swift and sure. Looking on Tempest as plain man it was quite likely true, for all things are possible to a plain man. Looking on him as Dick had learned to look the thing was unthinkable—a blasphemy. With a queer quirk of the mind he remembered Miss Chubb's favourite expletive.

"It's fierce," he heard her saying. Then laughed.

"By all means let us believe in the gods until we see their graves," he said.

Through the white silence about him came the clang of the wild geese flying north, ever north to those long rivers he knew so well. Their "honk-honk" dropped down from sheer overhead as they passed; a wedge driven fast and far through the crystal air, with eager necks and high-beating hearts. Down in the trail the man who had learnt too much felt his heart leap up to them with longing. They took their straight-way; unknowing; unafraid. No wrong-doing bore their white wings down; no shame slacked their impulses. They forswore no good and learnt the grief thereof. They passed by no God and learnt the fear. These things were reserved for mankind; for Dick; for Tempest; for Jennifer. Because to them had been given the inestimable privilege of a soul.

Down in the narrow trail among the dark pines Dick smothered a sigh that was half a curse, and went on with the softening snow slipping under his feet.

On the outskirts of Grey Wolf he met a freighter suffering from over-indulgence in toilet vinegar and vanilla-essence.

"It gives a chap the good feel," he explained, as Dick helped him into the barracks and applied drastic remedies. "A man must drink something."

"My friend," said Dick. "There you speak a great truth. But usually the last thing that man drinks is repentance. Now, I should advise you to get into the abstinence business right away or you'll be all tied up again before you know it. Good-night to you."

And then he went down to Grange's bar and stayed there long. For the knowledge of the young god Frey was heavy on him.

His lagging feet halted him at the mess-room door before he went upstairs that night. Tempest was there; smoking, and dreaming over a ragged little book of Norse verse. Dick watched him through the door, and his heart lightened. Tempest was sure; sure as the moon and the stars, and as high above earth.

He looked up at Dick's tread, waving his pipe.

"Come on, come on," he said. "I've got an idea here."

It was the impetuous manner of the days when they had loved without doubt or pain. The other man felt the call of it to his heart again, and his eyes were sombre as he dropped into a chair and stretched his legs. Life had broken him, but he felt a shudder of deadly fear at the thought that it might break Tempest.

"You remember your Edda geography, Dick?" Tempest was glowing with his idea. "Niflheim, the land of snow eternal in the north, and Muspelheim, the land of quenchless fire in the south——"

"And Ginungagap, the bottomless abyss separating them," yawned Dick.

"Yes. But don't you see why? That's the germ of it, and it never struck me before. It was there so they couldn't meet in an earthly way. You remember how those two great forces did meet? In mid-air, with all of coarseness sloughed off them. The cold clear spray of Niflheim and the transparent pure heat of Muspelheim. Refined and purified they met in mid-air and made life. And that life made the world and was the world. Understand? There's no way to the higher life along the earthly plane—that chucks us into the abyss. But the soul-essence—the thing distilled away from the heat of the blood and the barren ice of selfishness—My God! That is the thing! That is life!"

He walked the room now with his light nervous steps. His head was flung back and his eyes shone. Dick thought suddenly of a Browning-sick girl who used to call Tempest "Sun-treader," and the smile on his lips had lost its cynicism, although his words had not.

"Very pretty," he said. "Unfortunately the bulk of us go into Ginungagap. Partly for the sake of company, and partly because we are still gross enough to prefer the heat of the blood unrefined. And partly because the habit of wanting to get to the bottom of things seems more ineradicable than the habit of wanting to get to the top."

"It is not. That's just where we mistake. When we can lose that idea we will be——"

"God's," suggested Dick suavely.

"No, you irreligious owl. But we will be able to see Life and Love is——"

"Not human love. You couldn't put that into such a universe, old man."

Tempest stopped to laugh. There were many days when he felt the great barrier between himself and this man. But there were a few when he felt the ancient bond. He felt it to-night, with the flush of his excitement on him, and he talked eagerly for an hour, urged on by Dick's idly-dropped comments. He went away at last, glad-eyed and buoyant still. But Dick sat on with his pipe burnt out and stared at the opposite wall.

He did not usually care to analyse emotions in himself. But he knew that he was shaken just now. This man, three years older than himself, was a century younger in heart. He had kept his ideals, and those ideals were going to slay him now unless someone interfered. All unguessing Tempest had shown his heart to the man who knew too much. One of earth's chosen men was failing in his trust for very sake of those grossness which he repudiated. One of those men to whom knighthood was more than a name was carrying into the lists a favour for which he must not fight. Dick had not studied men and women all his life without having seen by now where Tempest's real call lay. Tempest belonged to Canada. He loved it with that ardent love which some few men can give their land. He was one of those born to serve her need. He was fit to serve in those places where the server's work is so infinitely higher than the master's. He was fit to give heart-blood and body-sweat to her making. He was fit to travail and suffer that order might be wrought from choas, plenty from poverty. He was fit to be made himself into one of those mighty men whose name will ring along the land long after their feet cease to echo on it.

Dick bit softly on his pipe-stem, and there was a curious half-cruel, half-tender look in his eyes. Tempest could be saved for all this—if anyone took the trouble to save him. He could be set to bear his banner and his high heart through to a lonely Calvary. He could be set to do the things that other men shirked—by anyone who had wit enough to nail him flat on the cross of other men's sins and shortcomings. It was just that Tempest should hang there, because he was worthy, and the great punishments of earth have always fallen upon her noblest. For the little people of little soul do their eating and their sleeping and their dying, and let the world go by.

There was humour in this to Dick, and temptation. He had the skill to block Tempest if he chose. He had the skill to make Tempest the thing which he himself could not Be. He laughed softly, with the cruelty deepening in his eyes. Then suddenly, with a sigh that was half a sob, he dropped his face in his hands, and so sat silent for very long.