Brochet shivered a little even in the sheltered place where he stood.
"It is ill weather for a siege," he commented, "and the Nor"westers are as cunning as wolves. You know, I suppose, about--about Glyndon?"
Dunvegan"s face was hard as a mask. By this time he had curbed his emotion tightly.
"I know--that is, I heard," he answered slowly. "Tell me all about that marriage, Brochet!"
The priest raised his hand in a deprecating fashion and shook his head out of sad pity for his friend"s disappointment.
"There is nothing to tell," was his low response. "It was a swift, eager wooing--a sort of autumn dream! The golden woods and the white moons were theirs for an uninterrupted, rapturous s.p.a.ce. The fascination was intense. Its durability I cannot judge. The climax compelled their marriage. My hope is that Glyndon may prove worthy!"
"Amen," Dunvegan breathed. He seemed desirous of hearing no more, and signaled for the trains to move on.
"If on your return from Loon Lake the Company"s banner flaps over Fort Brondel, give me a call," was his parting word to Father Brochet.
"Indeed, yes," the kindly priest promised. "And watch carefully, my son!
Guard your person against the enemy, and guard your pa.s.sions as well.
Remember that he who conquers himself is greater than the lord of all the Hudson"s Bay districts."
Three miles farther the cavalcade wound with the frozen river. Dunvegan, brooding within himself as had been his custom of late, took little note of its progress. The leadership had devolved for the moment upon Maskwa.
Presently the tall Ojibway answered the call of his stomach. He stopped beneath a jutting headland and looked once at the sun. Then with his native stoicism and abruptness he twisted his heels from the loops of his snowshoes.
"Camp here!" he decided.
CHAPTER XV
MASKWA"S FIND
A fork of fire leaped up under the quick hands of the Indians. The dead spruce boughs crackled merrily. Baptiste Verenne lay back on a pile of green branches before the flames and hummed to the kettles that they might the more quickly melt their contents of snow into steam and boil the tea. His high tenor voice chanted the air of _L"Exile_, a song of far-off France. Very softly and dreamily he sang:
"_Combien j"ai douce souvenance Du joli lieu de ma naissance!
Ma coeur, qu"ils etaient beaux, les jours de France!
O mon pays! sois mes amours, O mon pays! sois mes amours. Toujours!_"
Over the spruce fire the kettles began to drone to his music as he went on more tenderly:
"_Te souvient-il que notre mere, Au foyer de notre chaumiere, Nous pressait sur son coeur joyeux Ma chere?
Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux.
Tous deux._"
Almost while Baptiste sang, the meal was ready. The Hudson"s Bay men thawed their strips of jerked caribou over the coals and washed the meat down with small pails of hot tea. They s.n.a.t.c.hed a few whiffs from their pipes before the command to march was given.
The afternoon sun shed abundance of light but afforded no warmth. The traveling was through a cheerless cold that intensified by degrees. The toil of marching had begun to tell on the men; they moved with less elasticity, their limbs began to lag as from some indefinable hindering pressure. This pressure seemed to come from without like unfriendly hands holding them back, but they knew it was really the weakening fibers protesting from within.
Only three of the travelers were untouched by this peculiar lethargy.
Maskwa ran as ever with his unchanging, lurching stride. Dunvegan, knowing not the hint of weariness, traveled mechanically, his mind dwelling on personal things. And Baptiste Verenne still hummed of his sunny France, asking:
"_Te souvient-il du lac tranquille Que" effleurait l"hirondelle agile, Du vent qui courbait le roseau Mobile, Et du soleil couchant sur l"eau. Si beau?
Ma coeur, te souv_----"
"G"wan, Baptiste, ye Frinch rogue," cried Terence Burke, "ye"ve no sister here to ask that. An" phwat the divil"s the use o" askin"? Shure it"s not France but Greenland we"re in. An" it"s on a howly treadmill o"
snow we"re walkin"."
Pete Connear kicked the Irishman"s calves from behind with the toes of his snowshoes.
"Walk faster, man," he urged. "It makes it twice as easy and the frost doesn"t touch you then."
But Terence shivered in the trail. The sweat of the morning"s travel had chilled on him at the noonday halt, and he felt the lowering temperature keenly.
"It"s so beastly cowld," he groaned dismally, "that me thoughts freeze "fore Oi can express thim."
The sailor kicked him again to cheer him on. "Bucko! Bucko!" he growled.
And Baptiste Verenne, smiling, flashed white teeth over his shoulder and remarked:
"Mebbe you don" lak remembaire somet"ing lak dat in your own countree!
Eh, dat so, M"sieu Burke?"
Terence frowned. Baptiste"s smile grew more mischievous as he continued:
"_Te souvient-il de cette amie, Douce compagne de ma vie?
Dans les bois, en cueillant la fleur Jolie, Helene appuyait sur mon coeur. Son coeur._
_Oh, qui rendra mon Helene, Et la montagne, et le grand chene?
Leur souvenir fait tous les jours ma peine.
Mon pays sera mes amours. Toujours!_"
The latter half of the day wore to a desolate grayness. The Hudson"s Bay force was now in Nor"west country, and a strict lookout had to be maintained. Night approached quickly as the sun dipped. Maskwa, keeping closer to the main body, signaled that he had found something. Dunvegan ran up to him hastily.
The Indian stood pointing to the tracks made by a single person on snowshoes. The marks lay diagonally across their line of progress.
"Strong Father, see," Maskwa requested.
"Some trapper," commented the chief trader. "The shoes are Ojibway pattern."
"Yes," a.s.sented Maskwa, quietly. "I made the shoes."
Dunvegan scanned him sharply in the gathering dark.
"You?" he cried, astonished. "How do you know that?"
"By the knots," Maskwa answered, stooping to point out little dents in the snow pattern. "See how they lie in a curve? No one but Maskwa makes them that way!"
"Whose feet?" demanded Dunvegan, with swift suspicion. "Whose feet are in those shoes?"