_ CHAPTER IX. GOLD FIRE
If that time in the tuneful spring was crowded full to the brim of emotions scarce bearable to McElroy, how much more wonderful was it to Maren Le Moyne, for the first time in her life trembling in all her being from the touch of a man's lips?
To the outward world there was no sign of the tumult within her as she came and went about the business of the new cabin by the stockade wall, but in her virgin heart there stirred strange new things that filled her calm eyes with wonder.
In the seclusion of the little room to the east she spread out on the patchwork quilt the Indian garment and looked at it with a new meaning.
Never before in her life had she thought of a man's eyes as she thought of McElroy's, thrilling to the very tips of her fingers at memory of the blue fire in them, and never before had she been conscious of anything as she was conscious of the flesh on her shoulders where his hands had rested, her lips sealed under the warm caress of his. Verily, there was nowhere another such man as this one who knew the longing of the wild as did she, whose heart responded to the same call of the great wilderness.
Night and day she thought of him, and the memory of that day in the forest glade haunted her like a golden melody newly heard.
Yet something within her held her back from his sight, kept her eyes from that part of the small settlement where stood the factory with its wide doorway. She could not bear to look upon him yet in the newness of this awakening.
And McElroy, deep in the work of the trading, was eaten by a thousand qualms and torments. All those doubts that beset lovers tore at his heart and made of his days a nightmare.
With the cooling of his exalted intoxication what time the touch of the girl's young body had fired him with all confidence, came a thousand condemnations for his blundering haste, his stupid boasting of conquest.
To what depths of scorn might he not now be fallen in the mind of such a girl as Maren Le Moyne with her calm judgment; how far might he not be from the object of his longing!
And the fact that he could catch no sight of her, no matter how often he stepped near the door nor how diligently he sought for a glimpse of the shining braids and plain garment among the women at the well, but added fuel to the fire that scorched him.
But the times were getting very busy at Fort de Seviere. Before the Assiniboines were ready to depart back up the waterways down which they had come, their canoes laden with the wealth of the coming season, other flotillas were on the little waves of the river, other chiefs made their entrance up the main way of the post, and the goods of the Hudson's Bay Company went out in a stream as the priceless pelts came in.
"Lad," said Edmonton Ridgar with that easy probing of the well-known friend, "there is something eating at your mind these days. The trade goes differently from that of last year. It is not so all-absorbing. I fear me that the Nor'westers, with their plundering and their tales of deportation, have entered a wedge of worry."
"'Tis not of the Nor'westers I give a thought, Ridgar," he smiled, accepting the veiled raillery, "for you well know that we of the Company are above them, though it was but yesterday that an Indian brought word of a trapper at Isle a La Crosse being maltreated in the woods by a couple of their sneaking cutthroats and two packs of beaver taken from him for which they laughingly offered him in payment a bundle of mangy skins cast out from the summer's pickings. 'Twas Peter Brins and I'll wager that those two are marked for a long reckoning when the tables turn. And by the same Indian I hear that the young blade from Montreal with his light-haired brigade who stumbled upon us a while back, has reached his post on the Saskatchewan and has taken hold with a high hand, doing his utmost to intercept our Indians and turn the tide of the Company's furs into the trading-rooms of the Nor'westers. I think it will be a bootless process, for we hold our people with the hand of surety."
"Aye, but what of the Nakonkirhirinons, making their initial trip by way of Rapid River and Deer Lake, coming through the country of the Saskatchewan and held by no bond of loyalty? I see trouble ahead if this young De Courtenay gets wind of their coming, for they will be rich in peltry and they are a warlike tribe."
"But they are to celebrate the Peace Dance in the lodges of the Assiniboines. Surely they will come straight to their friends before trusting their trade to any."
Edmonton Ridgar shook his head.
"Hey fear nothing, these Nakonkirhirinons, and would as soon enter trade with one as another, having come for trade, if the values were above those at York and Churchill. I hope they swing eastward to Winipigoos and thus miss that young hot-brain on the Saskatchewan."
"By the way, Ridgar, Pierre Garcon says that Bois DesCaut is at Seven Isles on the Qui Appelle with Henderson. Since telling that wanton lie to the Nor'wester he has not had enough to show his face here. A bad lot Bois, and one to be watched for tricks."
"Aye, a bad lot, but salted with a prudence that savours of cowardice. His tricks are all turncoats that slip danger like an old garment."
But for all Ridgar's hope, at that very moment the great tribe from the far north country, even twelve leagues beyond the Oujuragatchousibi, was swinging down through the wilderness bound for the lodges of the Assiniboines, burdened with a wealth of peltry to make a trader's eyes stand out and clad in all the glory of the visiting tribes, and it was heading straight for the country of the Saskatchewan.
Towering head-dresses swept above their moving columns, pomp and ceremony showed in the panoply of carved spear-heads, feathered shafts, and slung bows of the white ash which decked them on their peaceful mission, while underneath fringed garments of buckskin, stained and beaded with porcupine quills, were bands and stripes of war-paint. They were ready for anything that might happen in this unknown country into which they journeyed at the word of their friends the Assiniboines, given at the buffalo hunt the fall before, above the Great Slave Lake.
Never before had the Nakonkirhirinons been so far in the south.
And long before they reached Deer Lake word had been brought to that new venturer in his post on the Saskatchewan, Alfred de Courtenay, and he was keenly alert.
About the same time a half-breed trapper came into Fort de Seviere, loud in his lamentations, and sought McElroy.
From the flats south of the Capot River, where he had wintered amid a band of Blackfoot Indians, a rare thing for a white man, he had come laden with rich furs from that unopened country, bound for De Seviere, and on the banks of the Qui Appelle three men had come upon him who had shared his lonely campfire. Rollicking fellows they were, brawny of form and light of head, and they had carried much liquor in flasks in their leg-straps, which liquor flowed freely amid songs and fireglow.
In the morning when he awoke late with, Mon Dieu! such a head! there were no three men, who had vanished like dreams of the liquor, likewise there was no well-strapped pack of fat winter beaver!
The man, a French half-breed, whimpered and cursed in impotent wrath, and showed McElroy one of the flasks that had been in the leg-straps of his visitors. It was covered with a fine light wicker weave, of the same pattern as that jug which De Courtenay had left at the post gate that morning in early spring.
"Ridgar," said the factor, showing the thing to him, "our friend from Montreal is taking a high hand with the country. The freedom of the wild has gone to his head."
Indeed it seemed as though that were true, for the tales of the reckless doings of that post of the Nor'westers on the Saskatchewan over which De Courtenay presided became more frequent and always they were characterised by a wildness and folly that were only exceeded by their daring.
The young adventurer had already made a headlong sally into the fringes of that country which came too near his Tom-Thumb garrison, and along which roving bands of the sullen Blackfeet trailed with a watching eye on the white men at the forts, and returned without two of those long curls of which he was so proud, a spear-head pinning them in the trunk of a tree which happened to form a convenient background.
To add to the small resentment against him which began to rankle in McElroy's heart, and which had never really left it since that evening in De Seviere when Maren Le Moyne had passed behind the cabin of the Savilles with some voyageur's tot on her shoulder and the handsome gallant from Montreal had lost his manners staring, one day in this same week a Bois-Brules came to the post gates and asked for one Maren Le Moyne.
He stood without and stubbornly refused to give his message, and at last McElroy himself went to the cabin of the Baptistes.
He had not seen the girl since that day in the forest, and his heart beat to suffocation as he neared the open door and caught the sound of her voice singing a French love song. He stopped on the step, and for a moment his glance took in the interior: By a window to the north she stood at a table, its wooden surface soft and white as doeskin from water and stone, and prepared the meal for ash-cakes, her sleeves, as usual, rolled to her shoulder and the collar of her dress open at the throat.
To the young factor's eyes she was a sight that weakened the knees beneath him and set him quaking with a new fear. He dared not speak and bring her gaze upon him, the memory of his boastful words in the forest was too poignant.
But it needed not speech. Had he but known the wonder that had lived within her all these days he would have understood the force that presently stopped the song on her lips, as if her soul listened unconsciously for tangible knowledge of the presence it already felt near, that slowed her nimble brown fingers in the pan, that presently lifted her head and turned her face to him.
Instantly a warm flush leaped up to the dark cheeks, and McElroy felt its answer in his own.
"Ma'amselle," he stammered, far from that glib "Maren" of the glade, "there is one at the gate who demands speech of you."
The words were commonplace enough and the girl did not get their import for the intensity of her gaze into the eyes whose blue fire had set her first wondering and then a-thrill with these strange emotions.
"Eh, M'sieu?" she smiled, and McElroy, revived through all his being with that smile, repeated his message.
She took her hands from the yellow meal and dusted them on a hempen towel, and was ready to go forth beside him.
That short walk to the stockade gate was silent with the silence of shy new joy, and once the factor glanced sidewise at the drooped lashes above the dusky cheeks.
"Had you expected any messenger, Ma'amselle?" he asked indifferently as they neared the portal with its fringe of peeping women and saw beyond them the tall figure of the Bois-Brule, his lank hair banded back by a red kerchief.
"Nay, M'sieu," replied the girl, and went forward to stand in the gate.
The messenger from the woods asked in good French if she were Maren Le Moyne, and being answered in the affirmative, he took from his hunting shirt a package wrapped in broad green leaves and placed it in her hands.
The leaves were wilted with the heat of the man's body and came easily off in her fingers, disclosing a small square box cunningly made from birchbark and stained after the Indian fashion in brilliant colours. A tiny lid was fastened with a thong of braided grass.
Wonderingly she slipped the little catch and lifted the cover.
Inside upon a bed of dampened moss there lay a wee red flower, the exact counterpart of that one which Alfred de Courtenay had fastened in her hair that morning by the well.
McElroy, at her shoulder, looked down upon it, and instantly the warmth in his heart cooled.
When Maren looked up it was to find his eyes fixed on the messenger whose tall figure swung away up the river's bank toward the north forest, and they were coolly impersonal.
She was unversed in the ways of men where a maid is concerned, this woman of the trail and portage, and she only knew vaguely that something had gone wrong with sight of the little flower.
She stood, holding the box in her hand, among the women craning their necks for a glimpse of the contents, and looked in open perplexity at McElroy until a light laugh from the fringe behind her broke the silence.
"A gift!" cried the little Francette, her childish voice full of a concealed delight; "a gift from the forest; and where do such trinkets come from save the lower branch of the Saskatchewan! It savours of our pretty man of the long gold curls! Mon Dieu! The cavalier has made good time!"
Whereat there was a stirring at the gate, and the peeping fringe drew back while the factor turned on his heel and strode away toward the factory, leaving the tall girl alone at the portal, holding her gift.
There was a devilish light in the dancing eyes of Francette as she flirted away.
But Maren Le Moyne walked slowly back to the cabin, wondering. _