_ CHAPTER XIX. THE HUDSON'S BAY BRIGADE
The two days that followed were heavy ones to Maren.
No farther did they dare venture lest they pass to the west and miss the brigade coming down from the north and entering the lake at the northeast extremity.
So they waited on the shore in anxiety of spirit, watching the bright waters with eyes that ached with the intensity of the vigil, and Dupre hunted in the forest and over the sand dunes, among the high meadows that broke the heavy woods in this region, and down along the reaches of the water.
"Farther with each day!" thought Maren to herself. "Holy Mother, send the brigade!"
And Dupre echoed the thought in sadness of soul.
"More pain for her heart in each hour's delay. Would the trial were done!"
About three of the clock on the first day of waiting there came sounds of singing and a string of canoes rounded a bend of the shore at the south.
"M'sieu!" cried Maren swiftly; "who comes?"
Dupre, tinkering at the canoe overturned on the pebbly beach, straightened and looked in the direction she indicated.
He looked long with hand to eye, and presently turned quietly.
"Nor'westers, I think, Ma'amselle. They come from Fort William to the Wilderness."
Fort William!
Back along the trail went memory with mention of the post on the distant shore of Lake Superior. How oft had she peeped with fascinated eyes from behind her father's forge at sturdy men in buckskins who spoke with the blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she felt the old yearning for the unknown.
And this was it,--this gleaming stretch of inland sea, one man who stood by her and another who betrayed her with a kiss, yet who drew her after him as the helpless leaf, fallen to the stream, is whirled into the white destruction of the rapids.
Aye, verily, this was the unknown.
She was looking down the lake with the sun on her uncovered head, on the soft whiteness of the doeskin garment, and to young Dupre she had never seemed so near the divine, so far and unattainable.
"Ma'amselle," he said presently, "if these newcomers speak us, heed you not what I may say. There are times in the open ways when a man must lie for the good of himself--or others."
The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his face. It was grave and quiet.
"Assuredly," she said after a moment's scrutiny. "Had I best hide in the bushes, M'sieu?"
"No, they have seen us."
Sweeping forward, the brigade of the Nor'westers, for such it proved to be, headed near in a circle and the head canoe turned in to shore.
"Friend?" called a man in the prow; whom Dupre knew for a wintering partner by the name of McIntosh of none too savoury report.
"Hudson's Bay trapper, M'sieu," he said politely, going a step nearer the water. "I wait, with Madame my wife, the coming of our brigade from York, now one day overdue."
"Ah,--my mistake. I had thought the H. B. C.'s this fortnight gone down. As ever, they are a trifle behind."
While he addressed Dupre his bold eyes were fastened on Maren, where she hung a dressed fish on a split prong.
"Not behind, M'sieu," said the young man gently. "They but take the time of certainty. A Saulteur passing this way at daylight reported them as at McMillan's Landing."
"Then your waiting is short. I am glad,--for Madame. So lone a camp must be hard for a woman."
With the words the Nor'wester scanned the girl's face with a glance that pierced her consciousness, though her eyes were fixed on her task. Not a tinge of deeper colour came to her cheeks. There was no betrayal of the part Dupre had assigned her, and with a word of parting the canoe swung out to its place, though McIntosh's eyes clung boldly to her beauty so long as he could see her.
"Ah-h,--a close shave!" thought the trapper as he picked up a splinter and once more fell to upon the boat.
Twenty-four hours later there came out of the north the thrice blessed brigade of the H. B. C., bound down the lake to Grand Rapids, where the canoes would separate into two parties, one going up the Saskatchewan to Cumberland House, the other down to the country of the Assiniboine.
Eager as a hound for the quarry Maren stood forth beside Dupre to hail them.
Head of the brigade was Mr. Thomas Mowbray, a gentleman of fine presence and of gentle manners.
In answer to the hail from shore he came to, and presently he stood in the prow of his boat listening to an appeal that lightened his grave eyes.
"Men we must have, M'sieu," Maren was saying passionately; "men of the Hudson's Bay. Against all odds we go of a truth, but strategy and wit accomplish much, and the Nakonkirhirinons have no thought of rescue. Besides, the farther north they get the less keen will be their vigilance. With men, M'sieu, we may retake, by strategy alone of course, the factor of Fort de Seviere. Therefore have we come across your way, In the Name of Mary, M'sieu, I beg that you refuse me not!"
She was like some young priestess as she stood in the westering light on the green-fringed shore, one hand caught in the buckskin fringe at her throat and her eyes on Mr. Mowbray's upright face.
"Upon my word, Madame--?" he said when she had finished.
"Ma'amselle, M'sieu," she corrected simply.
"Ma'amselle,--your pardon,--upon my word, have I never seen such appalling courage! Do you not know that you go upon a quest as hopeless as death? This tribe,--I have heard a deal too much about them, and once they came to York two seasons back,--are unlike any others of the Indians of the country. Ruled by a peculiar justice which takes 'a skin for a skin'--not ten or an hundred as do the Blackfeet or the Sioux,--they yet surpass all others in the cruelty of that taking. Have you not heard tales of this surpassing cruelty, Ma'amselle?"
"Aye, we have heard. It hastens our going. M'sieu the factor awaits that cruelty in its extremest manner with the reaching of the Pays d'en Haut."
"Mother of God!" said Mr. Mowbray wonderingly. "And yet,--I see!"
"And he is Hudson's Bay, M'sieu," said the girl sharply; "a good factor. Would the Company not make an effort to save such, think you?"
Mr. Mowbray stood a moment, many moments, thinking with a line drawn deep between his eyes. Out on the burnished water the canoes lay idly, the red kerchiefs of the trappers making bright points of colour against the blue background.
Presently he said slowly
"What you ask is against all precedent, Ma'amselle, and I may lose my head for tampering with my orders,--but I will see what can be done."
The brigade drew in, and when dusk fell upon the wilderness a dozen fires kept company with the lone little spiral from Dupre's camp.
Sitting upon the shingle with her hands clasped hard on her knees, Maren shook her head when the young trapper brought her the breast of a grouse, roasted brown, along with tea and pemmican from the packs of the H. B. men.
"I thank you, my friend," she said uncertainly; "but I cannot--not now. Not until I know, M'sieu. Without many hands at the paddles how can we overtake the Nakonkirhirinons?"
Thus she sat, alone among men, staring into the fire, and it seemed as if the heart in her breast would burst with its anxiety. A woman was at all times a thing of overwhelming interest in the wilderness, and such a woman as this drew every eye in the brigade to feast upon her beauty, each according to the nature of the man, either furtively, with tentative admiration, or openly, with boldness of daring.
And presently, after the meal was over, she saw Mr. Mowbray gather his men in a group. For a few moments he spoke to them, and a ripple of words, of ejaculations and exclamations, went across the assemblage like a wave.
"Nom de Dieu! Not alone?"
"To the Pay d'en Haut,--those two?"
"A woman? Mother of God!"
Wondering eyes turned to the figure in the glow of the fire, to the brown hands hard clasped, the face with its flame-lit eyes.
"Five men and a good canoe I send with them," said Mowbray quietly; "who goes? Know you it is a quest of death."
"Who goes, M'sieu?" cried a French trader. "I! 'Tis worth a year of the fur trade!"
"And I!"
"And I!"
"And I!"
Once more she had made her appeal to man, man in the abstract, and once more he had come to her, this maid of dreams.
Mr. Mowbray had lost half his brigade had he not fixed on those who were the strongest among the volunteers, the best canoe-men, the best shots.
Such were these men of the wilderness, excitable, ready for any hazard, drawn by the longest odds, and to serve a woman gave the last zest to danger.
Seldom enough did a woman appeal to them in such romantic wise.
"Brilliers,--Alloybeau,--Wilson," picked out Mr Mowbray, with a finger pointing his words; "McDonald,--Frith,--make ready the fourth canoe, Take store of pemmican and all things necessary for light travel and quick. From to-morrow you will answer to Ma'amselle. When she is through with you report to me, either at Cumberland or York, according to the time."
And he left his men to walk over and seat himself beside Maren Le Moyne on the shingle.
It was dark of the moon and the night was thick with stars and forest sounds. Out on the lake beyond the ranged canoes at the water's edge, the fish were slapping.
"Ma'amselle," said Mr. Mowbray gravely, "I have detailed you five men, a canoe, and stores. May God grant that they may serve your purpose."
A long sigh escaped the girl's lips.
"And may He forever hold you in His grace, M'sieu!" she said tremulously; "and bless you at the hour of death!"
"And now, Ma'amselle," he said gently, "tell me more of this strange adventure. How comes it that a young maid, alone but for a youthful trapper, goes to the Pays d'en Haut after a factor, of the Company? Why did this duty not fall to the men of the post?"
"They said, as you, M'sieu, but an hour back, that it was a quest of death. They love life. I love the factor."
She made her explanation simply, in all innocence, looking gravely into the fire, and Mr. Mowbray gasped inwardly.
"I see. So Anders McElroy is your lover. A fine man, worthy of the love of such a woman, and blessed above men in its possessing if I may make so bold, Ma'amselle."
"Nay,--you mistake."
Maren shook her head.
"Not my lover. I but said that I love the factor He does not love me, M'sieu."
"What? Heaven above us! What was that? Does not love you! And yet you go into the Pays d'en Haut after the North Indians? You speak in riddles."
"Why, what plainer? Life would die in me, M'sieu, did I leave him to death by torture. I can do no less."
Mr. Mowbray sat in silence, amazed beyond speech.
When he rose an hour later to go to his camp he laid a hand on the beaded shoulder wet with the night dew.
"Ma'amselle," he said, "I have seen a glimpse of God through the blind eyes of a woman. May Destiny reward you."
Thus it came that before the dawn reddened the east the camp of the brigade broke up for the start to the south and west, and one big canoe with six men waited at the shore for one woman, who held both the hands of Mr. Mowbray in her own and thanked him without words.
As the lone craft shot forth upon the steel-blue waters the leader of the Hudson's Bay brigade looked after the figure in the bow, glimmering whitely in the mists, and an unaccustomed tightness gripped his throat.
He had two daughters of his own, sheltered safe in London,--two maids as far from this woman of the wild as darkness from the light, soft, gentle creatures, and yet he wondered if either were half so gentle, so truly tender.
Ere the paddles dipped, the men in the canoes with one accord, touched off by some quick-blooded French adventurer, set up a chanson,--a beating rhythmic song of Love going into Battle,--and every throat took it up.
It flowed across the lightening face of the waters, circled around the lone canoe and the woman therein, and seemed to waft her forward with the God-speed of the wilderness.
She lifted her hand above her without turning her head, and it shone pale in the mist, an eerie beacon, and thus the boat passed from view in the greyness, though as the paddles dipped for the start the song still rung forth, beating along the shore.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"Men," said Maren Le Moyne at the first stop, "this is a trail of great hazard. There is in it neither gift nor gain, only a mighty risk. Yet I have asked you forth upon it as men of the H. B. C. because the man I would save is a factor of the Great Company."
"Ma'amselle," said Bitte Alloybeau, a splendid black-browed fellow, "it is enough."
"Aye,--and more." So was bound their simple allegiance. _