For love of him,--what would she not have done, what would she not do still for love of him,--he who had sold her for a kiss; and for it there came something,--she could not define it,--something that seemed to live in the atmosphere, to taint the glory of the sunshine, to speak under every word and whisper.

Never again did she cook at the fire with the others, but had her own on the outskirts, and Sheila O'Halloran came and cooked with her, talked and comforted and hovered about Anders McElroy where he lay in a silence like death, his fair face flushed with fever and his strong hands plucking at everything within their reach.

"Don't ye worry, dear, he'll not die. 'Twouldn't be accordin' to th'

rights av life,--not afther all ye've done f'r him. He'll opin his blessid eyes some day an' know ye, an' Heaven itself will not be like thim f'r glory."

But Maren only looked tragically down upon him.

What would they say, those eyes that she had thought so earnest, so all-deserving in their eager honesty, if they should open to her alone?

Would they lie as they had done before, with the thought of Francette behind their blue clearness?

Ah, well,--it was all in the day's march.

This day at noon camp she came upon, close to a fallen tree, a wee red flower nodding on its slender stalk. She sighed and broke it.

"In memory of a brave man," she said sadly. "Oh, a very brave man!"

CHAPTER XXVII RETURN

Eastward through the little lakes, across the portages where McElroy was carried by means of pole and blanket swung from st.u.r.dy shoulders, they went at hurried pace, and never a man of Maren's small command but watched the sadness of her face, that seemed to grow with the days and to feel an aching counterpart of it within his own heart.

"Take my coat for your head, Ma'amselle," when she rested among the thwarts,--"Let me, Ma'amselle," when she would do some little task.

Thus they served her from the old desire that sight of her face had ever stirred in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of men, she who had never played at the game of love, nor knew its simplest trick.

Southward, presently, up the rivers hurrying to the great bay at the north, and at last out upon the broad waters of Winnipeg, and never for an hour had McElroy's wandering soul come back to his suffering body.

Day by day Maren tended him, feeding him as one feeds a helpless babe, shielding him from the sun by her own shadow when the branches gathered at morn withered ere noon, wetting the fair head with its waving sunburnt hair with water dipped from overside, and praying constantly for his life.

As they neared the southern end, where Winnipeg narrows like the neck of a bottle, his tongue loosened from its silence and he began to babble and talk in broken sentences, and it was all about De Courtenay and a remorse that ate the troubled soul.

"I owe you apologies, M'sieu,--'tis a sorry plight and I alone am to blame. And yet I have a score,--gladly would I take my will of you for that one fault,--another time,--another place. Still have I no right, save as one man who,--But I have a plan,--one may escape,--listen--when I grapple with this guard, do you make for the river--with all speed--My G.o.d! My G.o.d! M'sieu! Why did you not run?" And so he muttered and sighed, and Maren bent above with wide eyes.

Something there was between these two, some enmity that followed even into the land of shadows and yet held them gentlemen through it all, offering and rejecting some chance of escape. A weary, weary tangle.

Again he would fancy himself back in De Seviere and always there was De Courtenay with his smiling face and tantalizing beauty.

"Welcome, M'sieu, to our post! Seldom do we meet so gay a guest!"

Often the wandering words would stumble among his accounts at the factory and he would give directions to the clerks, and then Ridgar's name would come, only to carry him instantly to the camp of the savages on Deer River.

"Edmonton,--friend of my heart,--alone! and you pa.s.s me without speech!

Ah,--that look! That look! I'd stake my soul--"

And once in the cool twilight of an ended day, with the tall trees above and the river lapping below, he cried out her name,

"Maren!" and once again, "Maren!" with a world of change between the two words.

The first plunged the girl's heart to her throat with its pa.s.sion, the second chilled her like a cool wind.

And all at once he said, after a pause, "What is it, little one?"

So pa.s.sed the days of the return.

Hour by hour the bright waters of the lake spoke to the girl with voices of regret and sadness. The blue sky above seemed to mirror the dark face of Marc Dupre, the wind from the sh.o.r.es to be his low voice, each pa.s.sing shadow among the trees his slender figure returning from the hunt for her.

Her heart was sore that Fate had willed it so, and yet, looking down at the face of this man at her feet, she knew it had to be and that she would do again all that she had done.

And ever before her pa.s.sed the scornful face of the fair woman who had set the little undertone to all the world.

It troubled her, and for hours together she sat in silence reasoning it all out, while Mowbray's men dipped the shining blades and here and there the voyageurs and Indians who wore no feathers sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, now a chanson of the trail and rapid, again a wordless monotony of savage notes.

The evening camps were short s.p.a.ces of blessed quietude and converse when Sheila O'Halloran sat beside her and they talked of many things,--chiefly the dear little Island whose green sod would soon again receive the feet of "herself an' Terence."

"'Tis thankful I am, me dear, to be out av this forsaken land alive wid me hair on me head instid av on a hoop painted green wid little red arrows on th' stretched shkin inside! 'Tis a sorry counthry an' fit f'r no woman, but whin Terence must come on some mysterious business av th'

government,--an' niver, till this minute, accushla, do I know whut it is,--a cryin' shame 'tis, too, wid me, his devoted wife!--I must come along or die. Wurra! Many's th' time I thought I'd do th' thrick here! But now are th' dangers pa.s.sin' wid ivery mile,--hark to th' men singin'! 'Tis bad business whin men do not sing at th' day's work. 'Tis glad I am f'r safe deliverance from that counthry av nightmares wid its outlandish name,--Athabasca,--where Terence must moon from post to post av th' Hudson's Bay--"

"Athabasca!"

Maren's head was up and she was looking at the little woman with an eager wistfulness.

"The Land of the Whispering Hills!"

"Thrue,--'tis th' Injun word,--but a woild, woild land f'r all that."

"But beautiful, Madame,--oh! it is beautiful, is it not?"

"Fair,--wid high hills an' a great blue lake an' woildness!--Ah!"

But the tall leader was calling and camp was breaking for another stretch.

And under the travelling stars of that night there awoke in the heart of the maid of the trail something of the old love, the old longing for that goal of her life's ambition.

She had turned aside from it, only to be taught a lesson whose scars would stay deep in her soul so long as life lasted.

At last came an hour when the party under O'Halloran must turn to the east, where the bottle-neck of Winnipeg split in two, going down that well-worn way which led to Lake of the Woods, Rainy River, and at last to the wide lakes, whose sparkling waves would waft them on to the great outside world.

There was a scene at parting, when the warmhearted Irishwoman clung to Maren and wept against her bosom, calling her all the hundred words for "darling" in the Celtic and vowing to remember her always.

The fair woman, wife of a Scotchman who acted as some sort of secretary to O'Halloran, sat apart in cold silence.

"M'sieu," said Maren, at the last, "I have no words to thank you for this that you have done. I but cast it into the balance of G.o.d, which must hang heavy with your goodness."

She had given her hand to the leader, and that impulsive son of the ould sod kissed it gallantly.

"'Tis little we did, la.s.s, for you and your poor lad yonder, and 'twas in our hearts to do more. But here's luck to you both,--an early weddin'

an' st.u.r.dy sons!"