The Maid of the Whispering Hills
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Vingie E. Roe >> The Maid of the Whispering Hills
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16 The Maid of the Whispering Hills
By Vingie E. Roe
Published January, 1912
To
My Mother
Who Has Been My Constant Help
My Father
Who Was Proud Of Me
And
My Little Brother,
These Two Long Asleep On The Hill At Carney--
This Book Is Lovingly Inscribed
V. E. R.
Contents
I The Venturers
II The Spring
III New Homes
IV The Stranger From Civilisation
V Nor'westers
VI Spring Trade
VII Forest News
VIII First Dawn
IX Gold Fire
X The Saskatoon
XI Leaven At Work
XII The Nakonkirhirinons
XIII "A Skin For A Skin"
XIV Fellow Captives
XV Long Trail
XVI Travel
XVII The Compelling Power
XVIII "I Am A Stone To Your Foot, Ma'amselle"
XIX The Hudson's Bay Brigade
XX The Wolf And The Caribou
XXI Tightened Screws
XXII "Choose, White Woman!"
XXIII The Painted Post
XXIV The Stone To The Foot Of Love
XXV Answered Prayers
XXVI Sanctuary
XXVII Return
XXVIII The Old Dream Once More
XXIX Bitter Aloes
XXX The Land Of The Whispering Hills
CHAPTER I THE VENTURERS
"Mercy!" shrieked little Francette, her red-rose face aghast, "he will
begin before I can bring the help!"
Like a flash of flame the maid in her crimson skirt shot up the main
way of Fort de Seviere to where the factory lay asleep in the warm
spring sun.
On its log step, pipe in mouth, young Anders McElroy leaned against the
jamb and looked smilingly out upon his settlement. Peace lay softly
upon it, from the waters of the small stream to the east where nine
canoes lay bottom up upon the pebbly shore, to the great dark wall of
the forest shouldering near on three sides. To him ran little
Francette, light on her moccasined feet as the wind in the tender pine-
tops, her eloquent small hands outstretched and clutching at his sleeve
audaciously.
None other in all the post would have dared as much, for this smiling
young man with the blue eyes was the Law at Fort de Seviere, factor of
the Company and governor of the handful of humanity lost in the vast
region of the Assiniboine. But to Francette he was Power and Help, and
she thought of naught else, as it is not likely she would have done
even at another time.
"Oh, M'sieu!" she cried, gasping from her run, "come at once beyond the
great gate! Bois DesCaut,--Oh, brute of the world!--whips that great
grey husky leader of his team, because it did but snap at his heel
beneath an idle prod! Hasten, M'sieu! He drags it, glaring, along the
shore to where lie those clubs brought for the kettles!"
In the dark eyes upraised to him there swam a mist of tears and the
heart of the little maid tore at her breast in anguish.
The smile slipped swiftly from the factor's face, leaving it grave.
"Where, little one?" he asked.
"Beyond the palisade. But hurry, M'sieu,--for the love of God!"
At the great gate in the eastern wall he paused and looked either way.
To the southward all was peaceful. An aged Indian of the Assiniboines
squatted at the water's edge mending the broken bottom of a skin canoe,
and two voyageurs, gay in the matter of sash and crimson cap, lay
lazily beneath a drowsing tree.
To the northward there flashed into McElroy's vision one of those
pictures a man sees but few times and never forgets, a picture
startling in its clear-cut strength.
Against the mellow background of the weather-beaten stockade that
surrounded the post there stood two figures, a man and a woman, and
between the two there crouched with snarling lips and flaming eyes a
huge grey dog.
Tall he was, that man, tall and broad of shoulder, but the head of the
woman, shining like blue-black satin in the morning sun, was level with
his brows.
She leaned a trifle forward and her eyes held fast to his passion-
flooded face. It was evident that she had but just reached the spot
from the fact that the club, arrested in its upward swing, still was
poised in the air.
They faced each other and the factor stopped in his tracks.
"Quick, M'sieu!" begged Francette at his side, but he put out a
commanding hand and ceased to breathe.
"Hold!" said the tall young woman at last, and her voice cut cold and
clear in the sun-filled morning. "No more! You have whipped the dog
enough."
The red face of the trapper flamed into purple and his lips opened for
an oath. Quick as the heat lightning that flutters on the waters of
Winipigoos in the hot summers the cruel club came down. McElroy heard
its dull impact, and the husky crumpled like a broken reed.
With stern face the factor started forward, while the little maid
covered her pretty eyes and whimpered.
But quicker than his stride retribution leaped to meet DesCaut.
He saw the woman's arm shoot out and her strong hand, smooth and tawny
as finest tanned buckskin, double itself hard and leap in where the jaw
turns downward into the curve of the throat.
The stroke of a man it was, clean and sharp and well delivered, and
DesCaut, catching his heel on a buried stone's sharp jut, went backward
with his head in the young grass of the sloping shore.
For a moment she stood as it had left her, leaning forward, and there
was a shine of satisfaction in her eyes.
Then as the man essayed to rise there was a mighty laughter from the
two youths on the river bank and the spell was broken.
McElroy went forward.
"DesCaut," he said sharply, and his words cut like the lash of the long
dog-whips, "you deserves death but you have been beaten by a woman. Go,
and boast of your strength. It is sufficient."
DesCaut stood a moment swaying drunkenly with the force of passion
within him, his lips snarling back from his teeth and his eyes
measuring the factor unsteadily then he snatched off the little cap he
wore and hurled it at him.
Turning on his heel he swung down toward the gate and the two voyageurs
now standing and still laughing merrily.
One look at his bloodshot eyes sobered their mirth, and Pierre Garcon
reached involuntarily for the knife in his sash.
But Bois DesCaut, savage to silence, swung past them into the fort.
McElroy watched him until he disappeared, fearing he knew not what.
Then he faced the little scene again.
Down on her knees little Francette had lifted the heavy head with its
dull eyes and pitiful hanging tongue, lifted it to her breast, weeping
and smoothing the short ears deaf to her soft words, and sat rocking to
and fro in an ecstasy of grief. Beyond SHE stood, that tall woman,
stood silent and frowning, looking down upon the two, and the factor
saw with a strange thrill that the hand, yet doubled, was flecked with
blood.
"Ma'amselle," he said, "is of the new people who arrived last night
from Portage la Prairie?"
Then they were lifted for the first time to his face, those dark eyes
smouldering like banked fires, and he saw their marvellous beauty.
"Of a surety," she said slowly, and there was a subtle tone in her
deep-throated voice that made the blood stir vaguely within the
factor's veins, "does M'sieu have so many strangers passing through his
gates that he is at loss to place each one?"
And with that word she turned deliberately away, walked down toward the
gate, and entered the stockade.
McElroy watched her go, until the last glint of her sober dress, plain
and clinging easily to the magnificent shoulders that swung slightly
with her free walk, had passed from view. And not alone he, for the two
voyageurs alike gazed after her, this new-comer from the farther ways
of civilisation who dared the brute DesCaut and struck like a man.
Then the factor bent above the little Francette.
"Sh!" he said gently, "little one, let go. The dog is dead, poor beast.
Come away."
But the maid would not give up the battered body, and with the audacity
of her beauty and life-long spoiling, besought the young factor for
help.
"There is yet life, M'sieu. See! The breath lifts in his sides. Is
there naught to be done when one sleeps, so? He is so strong at the
sledges and he did not whimper,--no, not once,--when DesCaut was
beating him to death. Is there nothing, M'sieu?"
Very pretty she was in her pleading, the little Francette, with her
misty eyes and the frank tears on her cheeks; and McElroy went to the
river and filled his cap with water. This he poured into the open jaws
and sopped over the blood-clotted head, wetting the limp feet and
watching for the life she so bravely proclaimed.
And presently it was there, twitching a battered muscle; lifting the
side with its broken ribs, fluttering the lids over the fierce eyes;
for this was Loup, the fiercest husky this side of the Athabasca.
With pity McElroy gathered up the great dog, staggering under the load,
for it was that of a big-framed man, and entered the post, the little
maid at has side. Near the gate a running crowd met them, for the tale
had spread apace and wondering eyes looked on.
Down to the southern wall where lived the family of Francette they
went, and the factor laid Loup in the shade of the cabin.
"If he lives, little one, he shall be yours," said he, "for he is worth
a tender hand. We'll try its power."
And as he turned away he caught a glimpse of the tall stranger looking
at them from a distance.
Small it was and crowded, this little trading post of the great
Hudson's Bay Company in that year of 1796, and a goodly stream of
beaver found its way through it to the mighty outside world.
Squatted alone on the shores of the Assiniboine, shouldering back the
wilderness with the spirit of the conqueror, it faced the rising sun
with its square stockade, strong and well built, log by log, its great,
brass-studded gate in the eastern centre, its four bastions rising at
its corners.
Here was a little world of itself, a small community of voyageurs,
trappers, coureurs du bois, and a11 those that cast their lot in the
wild places.
Adventurers from the Old World often passed through it on their way to
the farther west, lured by the tales of dreamers who spoke of the
Northwest Passage and the world that opened beyond the setting sun;
renegades of the lakes and forest came for and found its ready
hospitality, and into it came at all seasons those Indians whose skill
and cunning accounted for so much of that great fur trade which made
for wealth in the distant cities beyond the eastern sea.
Too small for a council, it gave allegiance wholly to its factor, young
Anders McElroy, at whose right hand for sage advice and honest
friendship stood that most admirable of men, Edmonton Ridgar, chief
trader and anything else from accountant to armourer. Beneath them and
in good command were some thirty able men whose families lived in the
neat log cabins within the stockade.
With its back to the western wall there stood in the centre the factory
itself, a good log building of somewhat spacious size; its big room,
divided by a breast-high solid railing, with a small gate in the
middle, serving as office and general receiving-place. Beyond the
railing, in the smaller space toward the north, there stood the great
wooden desk of the factor, its massive book of accounts always open on
its face, its hand-made drawers filled with the documents of the
Company. Here McElroy was wont to take account of the furs brought in,
to distribute recompense, and to enforce the simple law. Attached to
this room on the south was the great store-room, packed with those
articles of merchandise most likely to seem of worth in savage eyes and
brought, with such infinite labour by canoe and portage, from those
favoured lower points whose waters admitted the yearly ships--namely,
rifles and ammunition, knives of all sorts, bolts of bright cloth and
beads of the colour of the rainbow, great iron kettles such as might
hang most fittingly above an open fire, and bright woven garments made
by hands across seas.
At the back of the big room was the small one where McElroy and Ridgar
had their living, furnished scantily with a bed and table, an open
fireplace and crane, some rude, hand-made chairs, and a shelf of books.
And to this post of De Seviere had come in the dusk of the previous
night a little company of people.
They were tired and travel-stained, with their belongings in packs on
the shoulders of the men, and the joy of the venturer in their eager
faces.
From far down in the country below the Rainy River they had come,
pushing to the west in that hope of gain and desire of travel which
opens the wilderness of every land. They had met the factor at the
great gate and entered in to rest and feast, as is the rule of every
fire. By morning had come the leaders of the party to McElroy, and
there had been talk that ended in an agreement, and the tired venturers
had dropped their burden of progress.
When they had rested, there were to be three new cabins squeezed
somehow into the already overcrowded stockade, and five more men and
six women would belong to Fort de Seviere.
As he walked toward the factory the young man was thinking of all this.
Of a surety the tall girl, had come with the strangers, yet he had not
noticed her until that moment outside the stockade wall, when he had
caught the striking picture in the morning sun.
Name? Most certainly it would be in that list which the leader of the
party had promised him by noon. When he entered the big room the man
was there before him, a picturesque figure of a man, big and graceful
and dark of brow, with long black curls beneath his crimson cap. As
McElroy went forward he straightened up from his lounging position
against the railing and held out the paper he had promised.
"For enrollment, M'sieu," he said simply.
The factor took the proffered slip and read eagerly down its length,
done neatly in a finished hand.
"Adventurers," he read, "from Grand Portage on Lake Superior, bound for
the west,--agreed to stop for the length of one year at Fort de Seviere
on the Assiniboine River,--Prix Laroux and wife Ninette, Pierre and Cif
Bordoux and their wives Anon and Micene, Franz LeClede and wife Mora,
Henri Baptiste and wife Marie, and Maren Le Moyne, an unmarried woman
and sister to Marie Baptiste."
A sudden little light flamed for a moment in the young factor's blue
eyes.
For some unknown reason it had pleased him, that last ingenious
sentence.
"Prix Laroux," he said, turning to his new acquisition, "we will get to
the work of our contract."
CHAPTER II THE SPRING
Springtime lay over the vast region of lake and forest. Along the
shores of the little rivers the new grass was springing, and in nook
and sheltered corner of rock and depression shy white flowers lifted
their pretty heads to the coaxing sun. Deep in the budding woods birds
in flocks and bevies called across the wilderness of tender green,
while at the post the youths sang snatches of wild French songs and all
the world felt the thirst of the new life.
A somewhat hard winter it had been, long and cold, with crackling frost
of nights and the snow piled deep around the stockade, and the gracious
release was very welcome.
The somewhat fickle stream of the Assiniboine had loosed its locks of
ice and rolled and gurgled, full to its low banks, as if the late
summer would not see it shrunk to a lazy thread, refusing sometimes
even the shallow canoes and barely licking the parched lips of the
land.
In gay attire the maids of De Seviere ventured beyond the gates to
stray a little way into the forest and come back laden with tiny green
sprays of the golden trailer, with wee white blossoms and now and again
a great swelling bud of the gorgeous purple flower of the death plant.
"Bien! It is of a drollness, mes cheries," laughed Tessa Bibye one day,
stopping at the cabin by the south wall; "how Francette does but sit in
the shade and nurse that half-dead wolf. Is it by chance because of the
owner, or that hand which carried it here, Francette? Look for the man
behind Francette's devotion ever!"
Whereat there was a laugh and crinkling of pretty dark eyes at the
little maid's expense, but she sprang to her feet and faced her mates
in anger.
"Begone, you Tessa Bibye!" she cried hotly; "'tis little you know
beyond the thought of a man truly, and that because you have lacked one
from the cradle!"
Tessa flushed and drew away, vanquished. Merry laughter, turned as
readily upon her, wafted back on the golden wind. Francette, her eyes
flaming with all too great a fire, set a pan of cool water beneath the
fevered muzzle of the husky and glanced, scowling, across her shoulder
toward the factory.
Five days had passed since the episode beside the stockade, and Bois
DesCaut had said no word, of his property. In fact, the great dog was
seemingly scarce worth a thought, much less a word. Helpless, bruised
from tip to tip, one side flat under its broken ribs, he lay sullenly
in the shade; of the cabin where McElroy had put him down, covered at
night from the cool air by Francette's' own blanket of the gorgeous
stripes, fed by her small loving hands bit by bit, submitting for the
first time in his hard and eventful life to the touch of woman,
thrilling in his savage heart to the word of tenderness.
Gently the little maid stroked the rough grey fur and scowled toward
the factory.
So intent was she with her thought that she did not hear the step
beside her, springing quickly up when a voice spoke, cool and amused,
behind. "Well said, little maid," it praised; "that was a neat turn."
The tall stranger, Maren Le Moyne, stood smiling down upon her.
Francette, sharpest of tongue in all the settlement, was at sudden loss
before this woman. She looked up into her face and stood silent,
searching it with the gaze of a child.
It was a wondrous face, dark as her own, its cheeks as dusky red, but
in it was a baffling something that held her quick tongue mute, a look
as of great depth, of wondrous strength, and yet of fitful tenderness,
--the one playing through the other as flame about black marble, and
with the rest a smile.
More than little Francette had beheld that baffling expression and
squirmed beneath its strangeness. Francette looked, and the scowl drew
deeper.
She saw again this woman leaning slightly forward, her eyes a-glitter
on the prostrate DesCaut, her strong hand doubled and flecked with
blood, with Loup at her feet,--and quick on the heels of it she saw the
look in the factor's eyes as he had commanded her to silence with a
motion.
"So?" she flamed at last, recovering her natural audacity, for the maid
was spoiled to recklessness by reason of her beauty; "I meant it to be
neat."
At the look which leaped into the eyes of the stranger her own began to
waver, to shift from one to the other, and lastly dropped in confusion.
"But spoiled at the end by foolishness," said Maren Le Moyne, and all
the pleasure had slipped from her deep voice, leaving it cold as steel.
Abruptly she turned away, her high head shining in the sun, her strong
shoulders swinging slightly as she walked.
Francette looked after her, with small hands clinched and breast
heaving with, anger, and there had the stranger made her second enemy
in Fort de Seviere within the first fortnight.
Along the northern wall there was much bustle and scurry, the noise of
voices and of preparation, for the men were busy with the raising of
the first new cabin. As some whimsical fate would have it, there were
the hewn logs that Bard McLellan had prepared a year back for his own
new house when he should have married the pretty Lila of old McKenzie,
who sickened suddenly in the early autumn when the leaves were dropping
in the forest and fled from his eager arms. No heart had been left in
the breast of the trapper after that and the logs lay where he had
felled them.
Now McElroy, tactful of tongue and gentle, touched the sore spot, and
Bard gave sad consent to their use.
"Take them, M'sieu," he said wearily; "my pain may save another's
need."
So the first new cabin went up apace.
Anders McElroy looked over his settlement day by day and there was
great satisfaction in his eyes. Fort de Seviere was none so strong that
it could afford to look carelessly on the acquisition of five good men
and hardy trappers, and, beside, somehow there was a pleasanter feeling
to the warm spring air since they had arrived-a new sense of bustle and
accomplishment.
Often he stood in the door of the factory and looked to where the women
sang at their work or carried the shining pails full of water from the
one deep well of the settlement, situated near the gate in the eastern
wall, and the smiles were ever ready in his blue eyes.
A handsome man was this factor of Fort de Seviere, tall and well
formed, with that grace of carriage which speaks of perfect manhood;
his head, covered with a thick growth of sun-coloured hair curling
lightly at the ends, tossed ever back, ready to laugh. Scottish blood,
mingled with a strong Irish strain, ran riot in him, giving him at once
both love of life and honour.
They had known what they were doing, those lords of the H. B. Company,
when they had sent this young adventurer from Fenchurch Street to the
new continent, and, after five years among the hardships of the trade,
he found himself factor of Fort de Seviere,--lord of his little world,
even though that world were but one tiny finger of the great system
spreading itself like a stretching hand outward from the shores of the
Bay to that interior whose fringed skirts alone had been explored.
A high station it was for so young a man, for his twenties were not yet
behind him, and the pride of his heart, its holding.
Therefore, life was a living wine to Anders McElroy, and the small
world of his post a kingdom. And into it, with that travel-tired band
of venturers from Rainy Lake, had passed a princess.
Not yet did he know this,--not for many days, in which he looked from
the factory door among the women, singling out one who wore no
brilliant garment, yet whose shining head drew the eyes of the men like
a magnet.
Slowly speech grew among them, very slowly, as if something held back
the usual comment of the trappers, concerning this Maren Le Moyne.
"Look you, Pierre," ventured Marc Dupre to Pierre Garcon, as they
beached their canoe one dusk after a short trip up the river; "yonder
is the young woman of the strong arm. A high head, and eyes like a
thunderous night,--Eh? Is there love, think you, asleep anywhere within
her?"
Whereat Pierre glanced aside under his cap to where Maren hauled up the
bucket from the well, hand over hand, with the muscles slipping under
her tawny skin like whipcords.
"Nom de Dieu!" ejaculated Pierre under his breath; "if there is, I
would not be the one to awaken it and not be found its master! It would
be a thing of flame and fury."
"Ah!" laughed the other, "but I would. It would be, past all chance, a
thing to remember, howe'er it went! But it is not like that you or I
will be the one to wake it. Milady, though clad in seeming poverty,
fixes those disdainful eyes upon the clouds."
CHAPTER III NEW HOMES
The work of raising the new cabins went forward merrily. Every one lent
a hand, and by the end of May the new families were installed and
living happily. In that last house near the northeast corner of the
post dwelt Henri and Marie Baptiste and Maren Le Moyne.
A goodly place it was, divided into two rooms and already the hands of
the two sisters had fashioned of such scant things as they possessed
and dared buy from the factory on the year's debt, a semblance of
comfort.
In the other cabins the rest of the party managed to double, each
family taking one of the two rooms in each, and the women at least drew
a sigh of content that the long trail had at last found an end, however
unstable of tenure.
"Ah, Maren," said Marie Baptiste, sitting on the shining new log step
of her domicile, "what it is to have a home! Does it not clutch at your
heart sometimes, ma cherie, the desire for a home, and that which goes
with it, the love of a man?"
She raised her eyes to the face of Maren leaning above her against the
lintel, and they were full of a puzzled question.
Maren answered the look with a swift smile, toying lightly with a fold
of the faded sleeve rolled above her elbow.
"Home for me, Marie, is the wide blue sky above, the wind in the
tossing trees, the ripple of soft waters on the bow of a canoe. For
me,--I grieve that we have stopped. Not this year do we reach the Land
of the Whispering Hills."
A swift change had fallen into the depth of her golden voice, a subtle
wistfulness that sang with weird pathos, and the eyes raised toward the
western rim of the forest were suddenly far and sombre.
"Forgive!" said her sister gently; "I had forgot. I know the dream, but
is it not better that we rest and gain new strength for another season?
Here might well be home, here on this pretty river. We have come a
mighty length already. What could be fairer, cherie,--even though we
leave another to win to the untracked West."
A small spasm drew across the features of Maren, a twitching of the
full lips.
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