Marie was all for a home and some black-eyed babies, but she clung to Maren as she had ever done,--and now, in her twenty-sixth year, Maren had risen to the call as her father had done before her, and lifted her face, rapt as some pagan Priestess', toward that mystic West,--bound for the Land of the Whispering Hills, whence had come that old, vague rumour, lured alike by love of the unknown and shy, unspoken longing for the father whose heart must be the pattern of her own.

And in her train, swept together by that fire within her, touched into flame by her ever-mounting hope, her courage, and her magnetism, went that small band of men and women, all young, all of adventurous blood, all daring the odds that let reluctantly a woman into the wilderness.

Yet it has been ever women who have conquered the wilderness, for until they trod the trace the men had cut it still remained a wilderness.

So she leaned in the door of Marie's new home, this taut-strung Maren Le Moyne, and gazed away above the rim of the budding forest, and her spirit was as a chaffing steed held into quiet by a hand it knows its master.

For a year she must endure the strain,--then, as the good G.o.d willed, the leap forward, the wild breath in her nostrils, the forging into the unknown.

"Ah, yes!" she said again, "it is the spring."

"Bon jour," she nodded, unsmiling, as a slim youth swung jauntily up the hard-beaten way between the cabins.

"Eh!" said Marie, alert, "and who is that lord-high-mighty, with his red cheeks and his airs, Maren? You know, as it is always, every man in the post already. It is not so with the women, I'll wager. For instance, who lives in the tiny house there by the south bastion?"

"I know not," answered Maren, as though she humoured a child, and taking the last question first; "as for the youth, 'tis young Marc Dupre, and one of a st.u.r.dy nature. I like his spirit, though all I know of it is what sparkles from his roguish eyes. A fighter,--one to dare for love of chance."

Marie looked quickly up, ever ready to pounce on the first gleam of aught that might ripen into a love interest, but she saw Maren's eyes, cool and shining, watching the swaggering figure with a look that measured its slim strength, its suggestion of reserve, its gay joy of life, and naught else.

"A pretty fellow," she said, with a touch of disappointment.

Each and every man went by Maren just so,--eliciting only that interest which had to do apart from the personal.

But the black eyes of Marc Dupre had softened a bit under their daring as he approached the factory.

"Holy Mother!" he whispered to himself; "what a woman! No maid, but a WOMAN--for whose word one would fillip the face of Satan. She is fire--and, if I am sure, all men are tow."

CHAPTER IV THE STRANGER FROM CIVILISATION

"How goes it, little one, with Loup?"

The factor stopped a moment in the sunshine before the cabin of old France Moline.

Clad in a red skirt, brilliant in its adornment of stained quills of the porcupine got from the Indians, Francette paced daintily here and there in the clean-swept yard, now snapping her small fingers, now coaxing with soft noises in her round throat, her sparkling eyes fixed on the gaunt grey skeleton that stood on its four feet braced wide apart, wavering dizzily.

For a time she did not answer, as if he who spoke was no more than any youth of the settlement, so exaggeratedly absorbed was she.

Then, pushing back the curls from her face, a pretty motion that always wakened a look of admiration in masculine eyes beholding,--

"If he would only try, M'sieu," she said, frowning, "but he does nothing save stand and look at me like that. The strength is gone from his legs."

It seemed even as the little maid protested. Ma.s.sive, silent, contemptuous, his small eyes under the wolfish skull cold and alight with a look that sent shuddering from him the timid,--thus he had been in his hard-fought and hard-won supremacy, a great, mysterious beast brought full-grown from the s...o...b..und wilderness of the forest one famine-time by old Aquamis and sold to Bois DesCaut for a tie of tobacco.

Now he stood, a pitiable shadow, and begged mutely of the only tender hand he had known for understanding of this strange weakness that took his limbs and sent the heavens whirling.

McElroy looked long upon him.

"'Tis a shame," he said, his straight brows drawing together, "the dog is a better brute than Bois."

"Aye," flashed Francette, talking as though it were no uncommon thing for the factor to stop at the cabin of the Molines, "and no more shall the one brute serve the other. You have said, M'sieu."

"Yes," laughed the factor, "I have said and it shall be so. I will buy the dog from Bois if he speaks of the matter. Take good care of him, little one," and McElroy turned down toward the gate. As he moved away, free of step and straight as an Indian, he filliped away a small budding twig of the saskatoon which one of the youths had brought in to show how the woods were answering the call of the warm sun, and which he had dandled in his fingers as he walked. It fell at the edge of the beaded skirt and quick as thought the hand of Francette shot out and covered it. A hot flush mounted under the silken black curls and she dropped her eyes, peering under their lashes to see if any observed. She drew the faded sprig toward her and hid it in her breast.

Before the cabin of the Baptistes, Jean Saville touched his cap and stopped.

"Yes?" said the factor; "what is it, Jean?"

"a.s.suredly, M'sieu, has the tide of the spring set in. Pierre but now reports the coming of a band of strangers down the river. They come in canoes, five of them, well manned and armed as if the country of the a.s.siniboine were bristling with dangers instead of being the abode of G.o.d's chosen. Within the hour they will arrive at the landing."

"Thank you, Jean," said McElroy; "I will prepare for the meeting."

The trapper touched his cap and pa.s.sed.

"Ah," smiled the factor to himself, "I like this bustle of pa.s.sage. It is good after the winter's housing, and who knows? There may be those among the strangers who bring word from Hudson Bay."

He turned briskly back and gave word to Jack de Lancy and his wife Rette to cook a great meal, also to see that the store-room was cleared sufficiently by the more orderly packing back of the goods to allow of five canoe-loads of men sleeping upon the floor. Then he pa.s.sed down the main way, out of the gate in the warm sun and took his place at the landing to look eagerly down stream for the first coming of the strangers. Not far from the enthusiasm of boyhood was this young factor of Fort de Seviere.

And within the hour, as Jean had said, they came, rounding the distant bend in an even distanced string, long narrow craft, each bearing the regular complement of five men, a bowman, a steersman, and three middlemen whose paddles shone like crystal as they sank and lifted evenly. Strangers they were in very truth, as McElroy saw at the first glance.

Never had they been bred in the wilderness, these men, unless it were the two guides in the first and fourth canoe, picked out readily by their swarthy skins, their crimson caps, and their rugged litheness.

Fairer, all, were the rest, paler of skin, more loose of muscle, shown by the very way they bent to their work. Their garments, too, as they drew nearer brought a smile to the watcher's lips, a smile of memory.

Those coats, brave in their gilt braid, had a.s.suredly come across seas.

Thus might one behold them on the Strand.

Ah! These were, without doubt, part of the fall ship's load of adventurers come to the new continent filled with the fire of achievement and excitement that brought so many youths over seas. They had, most like, come down from the great bay by way of G.o.d's Lake and the house there, traversed the length of Winnipeg, come along the river at the southern end, and at last turned westward into the a.s.siniboine.

A long rest they would no doubt take at Fort de Seviere, and there would be news of the outside world.

McElroy was at the water's very edge as the first canoe of the string curved gracefully in and cut slimly up to the landing.

"Welcome, M'sieurs," called the factor of Fort de Seviere, using unconsciously the speech of the region, which had become his own in five years, "in to the right a bit,--so! Well done!"

The word was not so sincere as he would have made it, for the bowman, jumping out into the knee-deep water to keep the boat from touching bottom, had floundered like an ox, thereby proving his newness at the business. On the face of the swarthy Canuck guide who sat in the stern there was a weary contempt.

"Friends, M'sieurs?" called McElroy tardily, scarcely deeming such precaution necessary, yet giving the hail from force of habit.

They looked for the most part Scottish, these men, save here and there among them one who might be anything of the motley that came across each year.

In the first canoe a figure had risen and stood tall and straight among the bales of goods with which the craft was seen to be close packed from bow to stern, a figure striking in its lack of kinship to its surroundings, yet commanding in its beauty. Garments of cloth, of a gay blue shade and much adorned with tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of gold braid, fitted close to the slender form of the man. His limbs from the knee were encased in leggings made, most evidently, in some leather shop, while tilted on his splendid head he wore a hat of so wide a brim that no sunlight touched either face or throat, while from beneath this covering there fell to his shoulder long curls of hair that shone like silk. This, evidently, was the leader of the party.

"Friends," he said, "bound for the west and the country of the Saskatchewan."

For all his appearance he spoke with the accent of the French, and for a moment McElroy looked closely at him.

"Of the Company?" he asked sharply.

"Aye," said the other, with a little of wonder in voice and look, "of the Company, M'sieu most a.s.suredly."