The Quest of Narcisse Lablanche

by George T. Marsh

The QUEST of NARCISSE LABLANCHE

by George T. Marsh

"QUEY! Quey!" As he spoke, the bowman of the thirty-foot freighter bound up the Albany to Fort Matagami on the English River, rose to his feet, shading his eyes with a lean hand.

Up-stream, the far flash of dripping paddles in the July sun already low on Keewatin hills, marked an approaching canoe. "What is it, David?" called a bearded Scotchman from the stern of the big birch-bark, which bore on its curved bow the letters H. B. C.

"Four paddle! 'Jibway!" replied the half-breed after an interval, still watching intently the regularly repeated dip and swing of spruce blades driven by sinewy hands in the oncoming craft.

"Ojibway crew? It must be a Fort Hope boat, then," said the Scotchman. "Swing her inshore. We'll wait for 'em."

The bowman thrust forward his long paddle, and, with a turn, pried the nose of the canoe off the current, while five narrow Cree blades drove the boat sidling to the shore.

Shortly the nearing canoe, swept down-stream by the vicious lunge of its Ojibway crew, aided by the swift current, was within speaking distance.

Again the bowman called.

"Bo'-jo'! Bo'-jo'!" came the answer from many throats, and with a few strokes the up-river canoe was alongside.

"Hello, Craig! What brings you to Albany in July? We passed your York boats yesterday homeward bound," called the factor of Fort Matagami.

"The same reason, Walter Douglas, that brought you to the Bay with your English River brigade when you belong at home—the longing for the sight of a red Scotch beard and the taste of a drop of Highland dew."

While Douglas acquainted the Fort Hope factor with the news from the outside world brought by the spring ship to James Bay, the crews, holding the canoes against the current with propped setting poles, exchanged the gossip of the fur-posts in a medley of Ojibway, Cree, and broken English. But one, a tall French-Cree, leaning on his pole behind the bowman of the Matagami boat, took no part in the chatter. As he listened, his black eyes wandered from one to another of the up-river crew. Finally, his gaze focussed momentarily on the grizzled sternman whose sharp features, and lighter color even under the tan, marked a strong strain of French blood. Presently the low sun warned the Company men of the necessity for seeking camp-grounds and the canoes parted.

The Fort Hope boat had left the freighter slowly bucking the current and was well down-stream, when the young breed in the Matagami canoe said, in Cree, to the bowman:

"The old man in the canoe from Hope—he is no Ojibway?"

"No," replied David, over his shoulder, "he is a Frenchman. He comes from Quebec."

"Why does he work at a post in the Ojibway country?"

"I don't know. He came to the Bay many snows ago."

"What is his name?"

"They call him Black Jack."

"Black Jack?" Rising to his feet, the younger man turned with an oath toward the down-river boat.

"What's the matter with you, Narcisse? Sit down!" shouted Douglas from the stern.

Oblivious to the command, Narcisse Lablanche, his dark features distorted with hate, hurled curse after curse at the fast-disappearing canoe.

In wonder at this paroxysm of rage, the bowman turned to him:

"What you do, Narcisse? De 'mal-de-tête' get you?"

A parting grimace of mingled hatred and despair twisted the swart features of the frenzied youth as he turned from the boat speeding down the Albany trail. Then until the freighter swung into the shore for the night, the boiling of Albany-water behind his blade as he followed the quick strokes of the bowman, or the vicious drive of his pole as he threw his weight into it, alone told of the desperation and grief that obsessed him.

As the crew unloaded the long craft preparatory to turning it over on the shore, the factor spoke to him:

"Look here, Narcisse, you stick in camp to-night and don't go trailin' down-river after that Fort Hope crowd. You can't settle any old scores on this trip. If you're missing when we break camp to-morrow, there'll be trouble. Understand?"

But the silent Narcisse had no answer for his chief. Later, when the men sprawled around the fire after supper, the tall bowman sought the sullen youth, who sat apart, head in hands, gazing moodily between narrowed eyelids at the blazing birch logs.

David sat down at his side, produced a black plug, cut with his knife a pipeful, and handed the plug to Narcisse. Lablanche took the tobacco and filled his pipe. Then the older man drew a burning ember from the fire and lighted both pipes. For a time they smoked, until the older man spat at the fire and broke the silence.

"You never see heem before, dees Black Jack?"

The face of Narcisse remained set, the beady eyes intent on the fire. From the rigid lips came no answer.

The two smoked on. Finally, after an interval, the younger man took the pipe from his mouth, expelled a cloud of smoke, and with eyes still on the fire, said slowly:

"It ees many long snows."

Again silence, until the older man ventured:

"You not lak heem?"

Slowly came the low answer: "He be dead man now, eef I know heem to-day."

"Ah-hah!" the other murmured, exhaling a mouthful of smoke. Then, Indian-like, he threw out indirectly:

"He mak' some bad t'ings wid your famile?"

The stone-hard face of Narcisse Lablanche for the first time relaxed. His mouth shaped a bitter smile as he nodded.

"Oua, he mak' some leetle trouble wid my famile. Ah-hah! Some leetle trouble!" he repeated, and the deep-set eyes took on a far-away look as though the words of David had conjured a vision of pain out of the past—a cruel memory. Then he drew a sinewy hand across his brow as if to blot out the picture. "Oua" continued Lablanche, "he was so close to-day, I keel heem wid de knife." His lean fingers closed convulsively as if upon the throat of his enemy.

He rose, took an ember from the fire, and lit the pipe which had gone out. Then he resumed his seat beside the silent bowman and began, in the Cree tongue of their mothers:

"This I speak, for you were to me a father when I came to Fort Matagami. Never in the many moons we have journeyed by canoe and dog-team have you asked me what trouble eats at my heart. The sternman from Fort Hope, some day, I will kill as the gray wolf kills the moose that is weak from age and hunger. So!" Thrusting out his right hand in a quick movement, the speaker opened and shut his fingers, following the gesture with a turn of the wrist.

"Many moons have I camped on his trail; north up the east shore of the Big Water under the white lights where the husky sleeps in snow-tepees, and hunts in skin canoes the long-toothed fish that breathe the air, and the seal, brother to the otter, and the great bear with fur like the snow. But I never looked on his face, for they told him I had come to find him.

"Far into the Ojibway country beyond Lac Seul, to the great Lake of the Spirit, I wandered to that fort of the Company called Norway House, but, fearing me, he had gone.

"Into the south I travelled, even to the trail over which the white man drives the iron horse fed with fire; but always, he had gone. One summer I went on the Company boat to Fort Churchill, many sleeps over the Big Water toward the setting sun, for they told me he had wintered there with the French traders. But no man knew where he had journeyed. He had travelled in a Company canoe to Lac Isle-à-la-Cross, and the crew had returned without him.

"Over the north I have followed him from the day I was strong enough to voyage in Company boat or drive the dogs. Eight long snows have drifted and vanished in the sun since I left Albany and the good Père Bisant at the mission, to search for this man. And now to-day, I found him and knew him not."

Again the tense features of the speaker knotted with pain. The man at his side smoked on. In a moment the other continued:

"He was a dead man to-day, but he has gone."

Once more David ventured: "He is a bad man; he made trouble with your famile, maybe?"

Slowly came the answer: "He killed my mother."

"Ah-hah!"

"He killed my mother, and I will find and kill him if his trail reaches into the sunset even to the great Barren Grounds."

For some time the two men sat watching the fire. Then Narcisse spoke:

"I will tell you a story.

"Many snows ago a Frenchman came to Fort Albany. His dogs were better than any the Crees had. He had credit, too, with the Company, and was a good hunter and canoe-man, so the factor said who had known him in Quebec. He came from the Timiskiming country with a fine outfit—canoe, tent, traps, everything. That summer, at the mission, he married my mother, a young girl."

The speaker paused as if to control the emotion that memory roused in him, then continued:

"It was the winter of the rabbit-plague. We were camped far on the headwaters of the Drowning River. There were three of us. I had seen four summers, but there was no other child. The snow came early and was the longest in many years. Toward spring, the salt goose and dried fish were gone, and the moose and caribou had left the country. It was hard to travel, for the snow kept filling up the trails after they were hardened. Never had there been so much snow. Although my mother set her rabbit-snares for many miles around our camp, because of the plague she caught few; and the partridge and ptarmigan were starving and scarce."

Lablanche was silent for a space, then began again.

"It was the moon of the breaking of the snowshoes. The ice still held in the river, but the trails were too soft for travel with the sled, and besides we had eaten our dogs. We caught few fish in the net under the ice or with bait, and were slowly starving. Unless my father found moose or caribou soon, the river would open too late for us to reach Henley House.

"I was very young, but I remember, now, the look in my mother's eyes when she put me in the blankets at night. That I might eat she starved. The rabbits she snared she often hid from him, that I might have enough, for my father needed much food to give him strength to hunt. Often, when he found me eating, they quarrelled. But she loved her son and was not afraid.

"At last, one night, when he returned with no game, they talked long in the tepee by the fire. Before daylight, my father left to hunt for caribou, as he had to travel far before the sun softened the snow. Days we waited, my mother and I, living on a rabbit and a few fish."

Lablanche sat long, with his head in his hands. Then he finished his story.

"She never saw him again. His heart was rotten, like the spring ice in the lakes. After many sleeps, he crawled, half dead, into Henley House and fattened there, while his wife and child starved far on the Drowning River. She took food from herself that I might live. When the ice went out, she caught a few fish, and a rabbit now and then, but there came a sun when she was too weak to go to the snares. One night she took me in her arms and lay down in our blankets. In the morning when I cried to her, she heard me not. I touched her face. It was cold.

"She would starve no more that her son might live. She had gone to the Happy Valley where there are no long snows and men with the hearts of wolverines, to wait for me. Later some Crees found our tepee and brought me to Henley House."

The speaker stopped, then, turning to the man at his side, said:

"He left us that he might fill his belly. We could not all reach the post, until the river opened, so he went away alone. Some day I will have his throat here in my two hands, so, and as he begs for life and chokes, I will say: 'This is for the little starved mother and the child you deserted on the Drowning River. This child you gave life, now gives you death for the woman you forgot.'"

"You do well to keel heem. He ees a ver' bad man," David said.

 

One afternoon, weeks later, a birch-bark was slowly poled up the rapids below Martin's Falls on the middle Albany. The lean face of the half-breed voyageur lighted with a smile as he turned a bend and recognized the buildings of the loneliest fur-post in Ontario, huddled on the high shore above the white water. Swiftly his long pole drove the light craft against the current, the practise of years making easy what would have been an impossible feat for one less skilled. Greeted at the shore by a pack of half-wild huskies which he kicked out of his way, he climbed the path leading to the stockade and trade-house.

"Quey! Quey!" grunted the half-breed factor, surprised at the appearance of a single Company Indian at this season on the middle Albany.

"De old man from Fort Hope, he has passed on his return?" was the eager question.

"No, he's down-river still. What you doin' up here? I t'o't you were a Matagami man."

"I carry letter for old man at Fort Hope. When I reach de Albanee, I tink he gone by, and I come up six sleeps."

"Six sleeps? By Gar! you travel fast."

By sunrise on the following morning many a mile of racing river separated the canoe of Narcisse from the post at Martin's Falls. Three days he travelled before sighting his quest far below the mouth of the English. Then one late afternoon, beneath a flock of gray geese swinging down-stream into the far distance, he saw the flash of paddles.

"Ah-hah!" he muttered. "At last he comes to me. One sleep will see de end of dees 'malade' in de heart of Narcisse Lablanche." He turned his canoe to the shore and hid it in the thick brush. Then he waited.

It was after sundown when the Fort Hope boat came abreast of the watcher in the willows. As they followed the west shore of the wide river, seeking a camp-ground, the faces of the crew were indistinguishable, but there in the stern stood the man whom for eight years he had hunted through the wide north. The eyes of the half-breed glittered as he watched them poling slowly against the current. His heart tortured him with its pounding.

Not a hundred yards above him they landed on the opposite shore and made camp. Where the watcher lay, the laughter of the crew, as they busied themselves with their cooking and pitched the leaking seams of the birch-bark, drifted across on the twilight air. When the dusk fell, the light of their fire against the background of spruce marked his goal to the one who had waited years for this moment.

Stars pierced the purple sky as night closed in on the restless river. Pipes were smoked and the light from the fire went low. Dark shapes passed to and fro, and finally he knew that they were rolled in their blankets.

For two hours he waited that they might lie deep in sleep when he crossed. Then, putting his canoe into the water, he paddled swiftly down-stream to the opposite shore. The river ran too strong for paddling against the current and he dared not pole, so he waded silently, drawing the canoe behind him. A hundred yards below the camp he left the boat on the the beach and crept toward the sleepers. The fire was almost dead, but the weaning light from the red embers threw into relief the white mosquito tent of the factor. Waiting a moment with ear strained for the breathing of the crew, he rose to his knees behind some low willows and looked. There, rolled in their blankets near the fire, they lay. But the man he sought—which was he?

Narcisse stood upright to obtain a better view, when a snore and a groan from a sleeper dropped him flat on his chest. The "Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo" of a gray owl held him there, scarcely breathing. A wood-mouse skimmed over the leaves. Then, like a blanket, silence fell again.

After years of fruitless search this man whom he hunted should not escape him through too much haste. The night was young; so he lay, shaken by his laboring heart as a boat by its engine.

Later he stole into the friendly depth of some young balsam that he might study the sleeping shapes. But not a face was exposed. Indian-fashion, and to escape the flies, they slept with blankets over their heads. There lay four men—three Ojibways and a Frenchman. Which was his man?

Learning nothing where he was, he began to crawl on his stomach nearer. He had his knife in his teeth now, for it was swift work and a quick flight that lay before him. No slow strangling while the terror in his victim's eyes faded into the glassy stare of death. No one should know; David would keep his secret safe at Matagami. A deep thrust home, and daylight would overtake him a day's journey down the river.

He raised his head to look at the two men who lay near him, side by side. Their moccasins were Ojibway. A Frenchman in summer would sleep in his socks. Again he circled back, and approached from the rear the remaining two sleepers. An Ojibway moccasin, poked out of a blanket, covered the foot of one. Besides, this was a large man, too large to be the one he sought.

As he lay within striking distance of the other a wave of exultation swept him. Trembling with the joy of the moment, Narcisse Lablanche forgot his danger and long trail he had taken to reach this man. Memory gripped like fingers of steel at his throat. He saw a hollow-cheeked little mother in a tepee, on the Drowning River, feeding her son while she starved. His face set hard. His teeth bit at the blade of his knife. Closer he wormed his way to the sleeping form. He was within arm's length of his goal when the sleeper moved, groaning in his dreams, In a flash Lablanche had his knife at the muffled throat. Again the sleeper groaned, mumbling in Ojibway.

The pounding heart of Narcisse, checked, turned to ice. He became desperate. Could he have made a mistake? He must see the sleeper's face at the hazard of waking him and the whole camp.

The regular snoring was resumed. Narcisse took a position at full length by the side of his victim. If any of them waked but partially and saw him, he would be mistaken for one of the crew. A stockinged foot showed beneath the blanket. The rest wore Ojibway moccasins. It was he whom he sought.

Slowly, with great care, he began cutting a slit in the soft Company blanket which, tucked under, covered the back of the sleeper's head. If the hair was grizzled, it was his man, and he would drive the knife deep in under the left shoulder-blade, and make for the canoe.

He had cut the two sides of a flap that would expose the hair, when the sleeper moaned and changed his position. Burying his face in his arm, Narcisse snored loudly, watching from the corner of his eye. With a grunt the man sank again in slumber. For a long while the hunter lay motionless, then he carefully turned back the flap he had cut in the blanket.

Pain stabbed his heart as his knife would have pierced that of his victim. The hair beneath was black as a crow's wing.

Dazed, and in his disappointment reckless now of the danger of being caught, he rose and carefully examined the three men he had passed by. They were all Ojibways.

Despair crushed him. The one he sought had escaped. Raising his hands to the stars, he shook his clenched fists at the Fate that so ironically thwarted him, and stole back to his canoe.

 

Four days later, at Albany, Père Bisant walked before his mission on the river shore, with a kindly arm across the shoulders of a tall half-breed.

"Yes, he came with the Fort Hope boat, but went to Moose in a Company canoe, and is, no doubt, headed for Timiskiming and the settlements."

"He knew that I would not let him live at Fort Hope till the long snow," said the voyageur bitterly. "I have lost him again."

"My son, when will you put this revenge from your heart, this fire that consumes you? Have I not told you these many years that the Great Father will not forgive one who slays him who has given him life?"

"Yes, father, but the hunger and the thirst and the pain will not die. It is always here." The speaker struck his chest with clenched fist. "Always the face of that little starving mother is in my thoughts. Always those eyes, so sad, so big, look at me. I will hunt him till I can run no longer with the dogs or journey in the Company boats. I will follow his trail while this arm can strike with the knife, or these fingers sink into his throat."

"My son, from the time I taught you as a child in the mission school, I have loved you, and it grieves me that this demon still rages in your heart. I would that the man would die and give you peace."

 

Six years later Narcisse Lablanche, head voyageur at Fort Matagami, drove the Fort Albany winter packet around to the trade-house to get the mail-bag and his provisions for the trip. Douglas, the factor, was finishing a letter to the commissioner at Winnipeg as the courier entered the store.

"Narcisse, David's rheumatism is too bad for the Albany trail; you'll have to take the dogs through alone. I don't think the old man will be good for many hard winter trails again," said the factor, closing the mail-bag and handing it to Narcisse.

"It looks like dirty weather. You'd better take two weeks' rations. You'll likely run into a northwester."

Narcisse lashed the provision-bags, tent, and blankets on the light sled, with whitefish for the dogs, and, shaking hands with the factor, shouted a "Bo'-jo'!" to the post people. Cracking his long dog-whip, he turned the team down into the river trail and was off on a swinging trot.

Except for the position of honor that he now held in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, as head Company man at Fort Matagami, time had made little change. The best bowman on the English and lower Albany River, and a hardened dog-runner, he had long been indispensable to the great Company. Having no family of his own, he sat, when at the post, in the cabin of old David, while the children of David's children crawled over him, and he shared David's tepee when they trapped together during the months the Company's service did not require them. Long since he had put from his heart the hope of finding the man who had deserted his wife and child, for the news had come to Albany years before that the Frenchman, "Black Jack" Lablanche, had been drowned in the Montreal River near Lake Timiskiming, far to the south-east toward the settlements.

Cracking his whip at the lead-dog's ears, he swung down the hard sled-trail of the English River, with pleasant anticipation of a few days at Albany with his old friend, Père Bisant, of the Oblat Mission.

Behind him fled the white miles, for his dogs were fast. At times, where the wind had beaten the snow from the ice, he rode on the sled, urging on the too willing huskies, who were as keen for the trail as a thoroughbred for the thrill of the race.

On the third day out of Matagami the Albany packet ran into the blizzard. Through the afternoon, before the snow had made deep enough for the drive and swirl of the northwester to block the trail with drifts, Narcisse forced the dogs, head on, into it. Then, when the fierce cold froze the powdery flakes into a needle-pointed scourge which beat blood from the faces of man and dogs, and the team, refusing to face the torture longer, swung round in their traces with thick-coated backs to the torment, Narcisse gave up and made camp in the spruce timber of the shore where he waited for the withering wind to spend its fury.

One afternoon, days later, the Albany mail was jingling again into the north, now floundering through white ridges, shoulder-high, now racing over the icy shell of the river, swept naked of snow by the unleashed wind. For sometime the dogs had been slowly making their way behind their master who broke trail through a long stretch of new snow. Suddenly the lead-dog threw up his muzzle and sniffed, then yelped. This action was followed by the dogs behind.

Narcisse turned, looking in the direction of their pointed noses. No tepee smoke of storm-bound traveller rose above the silent spruce forest. The dogs had caught the scent of some animal on the near shore, and were excited. There might be moose or caribou in there stalled by the blizzard. The thought of fresh meat spurred him.

Unlashing his rifle in its skin case from the sled, he drove the team to the shore and, much against their protest, tied them with their traces to trees. In the deep, soft snow they would only hinder his hunting. Then he circled far back up-wind, hoping to strike a fresh trail. But the snow lay unmarked as the storm had left it, except by the tracks of furred creatures, who, on the previous night, had sought to break a three days' fast.

Narcisse had reached the river shore again, above his team, and was approaching, when their excited yelping broke out anew. He hurried to them and loosed their traces. On being freed the lead-dog at once ran down the shore a few hundred yards, followed by his mates, and disappeared in the spruce, where the yelping began again.

The curiosity of Narcisse was aroused. They had found something in that silent forest that had escaped him. Following their trail into the thick timber, he discovered them scratching at a tepee half buried in the snow. Out of a drift near the tent stuck the end of a sled and the webbed toe of a snow-shoe. All other signs of human habitation were obliterated by the snow.

With the shoe Narcisse hurriedly shovelled down to the tent-opening, knowing too well what horror might lie within. Tearing open the frozen caribou-skin flap, he peered inside. There, muffled in blankets, lay a body beside the dead embers of a fire. Scattered about with cooking-utensils were fragments of bones, which had been broken and boiled for their marrow. It was a starvation camp on which he had stumbled, and not the first.

Crawling into the tepee, Narcisse turned back the blankets from the huddled body. A mat of long gray hair and beard obscured the sunken features of an old half-breed. Hurriedly he examined the body for signs of life. Detecting a faint flutter of the heart, the Company man vigorously set to work in a struggle with the white death for the life of the man he had found.

Bringing up his sled, he soon had a fire going under kettles of tea and pemican. Then he started in to rub the circulation back into the shrivelled limbs of the old breed. Soon he could distinguish the faint beating of the heart, and redoubled his efforts. For an hour Narcisse battled for the life that he barely held from snuffing out by a hair. At length the quivering of sunken eyelids told him he would win. When he was able to get the half-conscious man to swallow some hot tea, the fight was over.

Late that night the stricken one opened his eyes and muttered a few words in Cree, then sank into a peaceful sleep. With the aid of the life-giving tea and steaming soup, Narcisse had conquered starvation and the white death.

For days the packet camped in the spruce, while the starved man was gaining sufficient strength to ride on the sled to Albany. Anxious as he was to reach the fort and his friends there, Lablanche patiently nursed the old man without regret at the delay, for of the unwritten laws of the north none is more rigidly observed than that commanding the succor of those worsted by the relentless hand of nature. From Labrador to Bering Sea, while there is game for the kettle or bannocks for the pan, to ask is to be fed.

Gradually the old Indian regained his strength and began to talk. He said he had been trapping alone on the head-waters of a small river. Some time back the scarcity of game had wiped out his provisions to such an extent that he had started for Albany. On the way down-stream to the Albany River he had fallen and hurt his leg. This had prevented him from travelling, and he had been forced to eat his dogs. The last dog went before the blizzard. He was a French-Cree with relations who traded at Albany, but no living family. Starvation had completed what the strain of winter and summer portage had left of life and strength in his aged frame.

At length the old man was strong enough to ride on the sled, on which Narcisse had fashioned a cariole body of wooden strips lashed with caribou hide, taken from the sled of the Indian.

 

So one January afternoon, at dusk, the Matagami winter mail jingled up to the trade-house at Fort Albany with its human freight. Narcisse drove his team at once to the Oblat Mission below the post to turn over the invalid to his friend, Père Bisant.

At the door of the mission stood the bearded priest awaiting them.

"My son, it gladdens my heart to see you," cried the father in Cree, gripping Narcisse's hand. "We feared for you when the northwester struck in. A dog-team was to go up-river to look for you in a day or two. But what have you here?" the priest asked, peering into the dusk at the blanketed form on the sled.

"Old Indian, starved out, father," replied the courier. "He was too weak to travel." Then under his breath: "He is a very old man, and I think will take the long trail soon."

"Take him into the hospital, my son; we have two there who were brought in yesterday."

Narcisse unlashed his passenger and carried him into the log hospital of the Oblat Mission, where two lay brothers took the old man and placed him in a bunk by the roaring stove.

Then the voice of Père Bisant called Lablanche to the priest's private room,

"Come to me, my son, that I may look at your face in the light. It is indeed good to see you again, straight and strong as ever. It is many moons since you were at Albany." He spoke in Cree.

"Yes, father, and your face shows much worry for your children, while the snow falls thick upon your brow."

"My cares are many. The winter has been lean for my people, and word has come that already there are many starvation camps on the Elkwan. But, come, let us look to your man; what is his name?"

"He told me his French name was Joe Brazeau," said Narcisse, following Père Bisant into the bunk-room.

The old man lay asleep where the light from a large lantern fell full on his face, Seating himself on the cot, the priest pushed back the tangled gray hair from the emaciated features. He looked long at the famine-pinched face. Presently he turned as if to speak to Lablanche, who stood with back toward him warming his hands at the stove. For a moment Père Bisant sat deep in thought, then he hurriedly exposed the neck of the sleeping man. A long scar crossed the left collar-bone. Again the priest carefully examined the face before him.

"Come!" he commanded, rising and moving to the door, his dark eyes strangely bright. When they were alone in the priest's room, Père Bisant took the astonished Lablanche into his arms. "My son," he cried, "at last my prayers are answered. You have put the demon from your heart."

The half-breed held the priest at arm's length.

"What words do you spik, father?"

"Mock me not, my son. I have loved you since I taught you as a child here at Albany. And when you went into the north, seeking one you would destroy, it grieved me much. But now——"

"By Gar! What you say?" The perplexed Narcisse trembled with a great fear that suddenly swept him.

It was the priest's turn to be amazed. "Do you not know?" he asked.

"Oh, no! No!" groaned the one to whom the light was coming as a knife comes to the breast. "Dat ole man in dere, et ees not he. He were drown' long ago, long ago. No! No! Eet ees not he!"

Narcisse buried his face on the priest's shoulder.

A great disappointment made heavy the heart of Père Bisant as he sighed: "And you did not know, my son, who this man was?"

"I nevaire see heem but one tam in all dese year I hunt for heem."

As he finished, Narcisse strode to the room where the man he had saved slept. Fearing his intentions, the priest followed. With face picturing the hate that was in his breast, the half-breed stood with clenched hands menacing the man who had left his wife and child to a wilderness death that he might live. Then the priest led him away.

 

Late that night they sat and talked—the priest and the victim of fate's irony. The good medicine of this kindly physician of souls was working its cure at last. The wound in the heart of the sufferer, open and raw for years, had begun to heal.

As they parted the priest said: "Remember, my son, she once loved you both. She would have it as it is. From the Happy Valley where she looks out to-night, she sees you together here, and is glad. Yes, she would have it so."

 

Long alone sat Narcisse after his friend left him. Many and far trails he travelled in memory; from a lone tepee on the Drowning River, north up the east coast, where the white lights veil the stars; south to the iron rails; west where the sun sets in the great barrens. Over these his fancy hurried him by phantom dog-team and canoe, always seeking one who eluded him. Again he lived through the torture of those goalless years as he pursued his quest. Twice in the night, when the old hate momentarily mastered the growing peace in his heart, he went to the bedside of the man he had sworn to kill. Twice the last words of the Oblat father sent him back to his vigil in the other room.

At last the vision of one in the Happy Valley conquered the bitterness. Rising, he went to the sleeping man. Stretching forth his arms, with eyes that beheld a mother and child in snow-enveloped tepee on a desolate river shore, deserted, he groaned:

"Maybe de good père spiks true. She would have eet so."