FAWN AND PANTHER
Like a colossal casting in bronze Fort La Roche loomed against the bloody sunset. Brochet glimpsed it for the first time with a prescience of impending evil. Couchant on the serrated headland it lay some sixty feet above river level, commanding the waterway, grinning like a powerful monster, impregnable, austere, forbidding. Strongest of all the Nor'west posts, most cunningly built, most substantially fortified, the mere thought of bringing anyone over its stockades unresisted seemed maddest folly.
The priest had in his day seen many weird-looking dens bristling with defence, smacking of wrong-doing, smelling of spilled blood. But this impressed him above all as likely to be the abode of extreme malevolence. Even to enter it, he felt, would be like putting one's head into a wild beast's lair not knowing what minute it might be snapped off.
Brochet was glad at this crisis that he had never seen Black Ferguson. He rejoiced that the Nor'west leader had had no opportunity to set eyes on him, for in such a contingency he could not hope to blind the man's innate cunning and preserve his incognito. Recognition by two people he still had to fear. They were Flora Macleod and Gaspard Follet. Against this he drew up the hood of his black cassock to shade his features, formulating in his mind an excuse which embraced asthma and the dark evening mist for the moment when he should be questioned as to the cause.
Under the lee of the headland the Nor'wester's canoe drifted. Backwatering with his rigidly held paddle, he lay to below the rivergate. A loud voice hailed them from the watchtower.
"Halloo! Who comes?"
"It is Black Ferguson himself," whispered the Nor'west man to Brochet, studying the tall figure poised on the high wall. "He finds it harder to wait than he thought."
Then, lifting up his shout, Ferguson's messenger answered his leader.
"Cartienne!" he roared. "Cartienne comes. And with a priest!"
Wide swung the watergate in the space of a breath. Black Ferguson seemed to have fallen from the watchtower so quickly did he accomplish the descent. His eager face peered at them from the dusky landing.
"By all the saints, Cartienne!" he laughed, mightily pleased. "What did you use? Witchcraft?"
The messenger explained. Voluble with blessings on his good luck, Ferguson dismissed Cartienne and haled the priest off to the store, in a room above which Desirée Lazard was confined.
"No supper, Father," he joked, "till you have seen my bride-to-be. And knife me, she'll give you an appetite! I'll warrant that. After supper you shall marry us."
"Is she so fair, then?" ventured Brochet.
"Fair? I'll take my oath you saw none like her in all the Pontiac, Father Marcin. But you shall judge for yourself! Here is the place. Let me lead the way aloft."
Brochet looked round as he followed Ferguson up the stairway and saw, coming into the building with some trappers to barter goods, the familiar, hideous figure of Gaspard Follet. He swiftly turned his back and pulled the hood tighter. The spy's bellowing laugh made him flinch with the sickening feeling of discovery, but immediately he was ashamed of the falsity of his alarm. Gaspard's mirth held no hint of wicked triumph; nothing but harsh deviltry as he stared a second upon Ferguson and the black cassocked one.
"A priest, a marriage and afterwards—h—l!" Brochet heard the dwarf cheerfully prophesy to the trappers. Again his mawkish laugh vibrated among the hewn rafters.
Above the Nor'west leader quickly crossed the room and indicated a door.
"Here, Father! Cover your eyes lest her beauty blind you!" The tone was exultant as well as bantering.
He fumbled with the bolt, failed to shoot it, and stooped to examine, for the dark was gathering thickly so that small things could not be easily seen.
"The devil!" he cried amazedly. "It's unlocked! Now what cursed trickery is this?"
Kicked back without ceremony, the door banged and quivered. Ferguson bounded inside, the breathless priest on his heels. A single candle, burning serenely, lighted an empty room.
"Legions of fiends and devils!" blasphemed the angry Nor'wester, blundering round in sheer astonishment. "Escaped? It can't be, Father Marcin! She could not have gone through the store. My men would have seen. And yonder door, the only other way out, leads into the upper part of the fur-house where the powder is stored. It is locked! What traitor——"
The grating of a key interrupted him. Ferguson whirled at the sound. The door he had mentioned had opened and closed softly. Flora, paler than when Brochet had last seen her and with the shadow of disappointment in her eyes, quietly broke the key in the lock. She failed to recognize the priest whose face was partly concealed by his hood.
"You—you!" Ferguson shrieked, choking with terrible wrath.
"I," she answered unflinchingly. "I told you that you would never marry her. Neither shall you! Had I been able to spirit her out of La Roche, it would have been done. Failing that, I have placed her beyond your earthly reach. You cannot kiss her living lips!"
"What! You she-fiend," shouted the Nor'wester, thoughts of evil dealing leaping into his bewildered brain, "do you dare tell me——"
But Flora stopped him with an imperious gesture.
"Don't misunderstand me," she returned contemptuously. "Go look for her in the powder-room."
At that, enlightenment swept him. He leaped forward, madly incensed, with fists clenched to strike her. Father Brochet had just time to throw himself between.
"Softly," the priest cautioned, whispering low that the Factor's daughter might not know his voice; "you must not offer a blow to a woman. I thought a prospective bridegroom had been more gentle with the sex."
"Your pardon, Father," he begged.
But he was barely containing himself. The judgment for the woman who was his wife leaped out.
"I'll suffer you here no longer," he snarled. "Leave La Roche at dawn. That's my last word to you!"
But the gleaming devil in his eye leered back at him in the steady contemptuous gaze of Malcolm Macleod's daughter.
Downstairs in wild, inconsiderate haste the Nor'wester dragged the priest. Dark had fallen on La Roche, a deep darkness of velvety, impenetrable gloom peculiar to the North. A drifting pall of mist that beaded the stockades and dripped from the blockhouse eaves added to the intensity of the night. Suggestive of tragedy, symbolic of disaster, prophetic of unknown calamity, the weird atmosphere chilled the men as with a breath of fatalism. Both felt it, but neither stopped long enough to analyze the feeling. Brochet attributed the odd sensation to his delicate position which in the event of discovery would become fatal. Black Ferguson thought the impression was simply attendant upon his abnormal excitement as he raced across the yard to the fur-house.
There the priest sweated with a very natural fear when they met a group of Indians who had been storing bales by torchlight. Trooping back from their work, the red gleam licking across their coppery features, Brochet saw Running Wolf, his hot-tempered son Three Feathers and others of the Cree tribe from the Katchawan.
Veering a little, the priest walked on Ferguson's right side on the edge of the ring of light. Thus he avoided encountering them fairly and escaped keen eyes that would have undoubtedly recognized him even under his muffling capote.
"Bo' jou', bo' jou'," the Crees grunted, and stalked on.
Into the fur-house between rows of strong-odored pelts the Nor'wester hurried through the dark with Brochet. Up the long ladder which was wide enough for both to climb abreast they hastened. Ferguson threw back the ceiling trapdoor with a resounding clang. The tableau that met the two men's eyes as they pushed up their heads was one to be stamped indelibly on their memories.
A candle gleaming beside her in a sconce on the wall, Desirée Lazard crouched behind a heap of powder kegs in the middle of the room. The top of the central keg had been broken in. The powder's black crystals shone with an awesome refraction of light. And, white-lipped, tense-fibered, Desirée held the great pistol in her hand so that its muzzle was buried in the deadly stuff.
Her eyes lightened with recognition at sight of Brochet's colorless face in the dark square of the trapdoor's space. But, being behind Ferguson's shoulder, he placed a finger on his lips so that the girl understood and gave no sign.
First the Nor'wester cursed in helplessness and baffled anger. Then his powers of entreaty were exhausted to no betterment. His handsome, diabolical countenance was set with a rigid glare almost maniacal in distortion.
"Are you mad, girl?" he screamed, his voice more animal-like than human.
"No, but you are," Desirée retorted scornfully, "if you think to approach me. Remember! A crook of my finger and Fort La Roche goes!"
To Brochet it was splendid—the soft woman holding at certain bay the wily Nor'wester whom none had ever baffled before. Her courage sent a glow through his own frame, but instantly he shivered at the thought that this could not last any great length of time. The situation was impossible. Yet such as it was, Desirée was mistress of it!
"The minute that you or your men show foot above those ladder rungs, I fire," she declared with an intense earnestness which the Nor'wester did not for an instant doubt. "Your priest there may come up. But no other!"
Devil that he was, Black Ferguson began to test her nerve, prancing on the rounds upward, ever upward, showing his waist, his hips, knees, even ankles, while Father Brochet trembled for the sake of the girl. He expected every instant to hear the thunderous reverberation that would carry destruction and death. Once the Nor'west leader rose on the last rung till his boot-tops levelled the floor, balanced thus, grinning to see how little he had to spare.
The priest noted Desirée's hand whitening on the pistol butt, noted the weapon's muzzle thrusting deeper into the powder. Involuntarily his fingertips went to his ears. But the explosion did not come. Laughing a grim, satisfied laugh, Black Ferguson dropped down a rung or so alongside Brochet.
"You should not do that," the latter reproved. "A slip of your foot or a nervous quiver of the girl's hand and we would all be in Heaven!"
"You and the girl might, Father. I would be in a fitter place."
Ferguson's face was insolent. He had no fear, neither had he any reverence.
"Hard as you are," the priest went on, "I give you credit for your courage."
"Give Desirée credit too! There is a woman of steel, Father. A fit mate for a Nor'wester!"
"But most unwilling, it seems!"
"Her will must break."
Black Ferguson turned again to glimpse her fully. He played again his trick of mounting the ladder rungs.
Brochet thought the Nor'wester was baiting her out of sardonic recklessness. This was partially the truth, but had the priest followed Black Ferguson's eyes more closely, he would have seen that the cunning giant had an ulterior purpose in his baiting. Once more he dropped back to Brochet's side without betraying that purpose.
"Beautiful and brave!" he gloated. "Brave and beautiful! Did you ever see her like, Father Marcin? I'll wager not. Not even in the Pontiac! Yet look what madness it is—this standing at bay. I don't want her destroyed. Nor the fort. She knows that. But how long can she play this pretty game? Soon she will need food, and with that she-fiend who planted her here gone, she will never get it. What then? What then, my worthy priest? You see it is no use. Go up and reason with her, Father. You have wisdom. She will listen. As for me I can wait a little longer!"
He urged Brochet through the opening and closed the trapdoor. His heavy boots clattered down the ladder. The outer door of the fur-house opened and shut.
Dropping her weapon, Desirée swayed forward on unsteady feet and, sobbing with nerve-strain, collapsed on the priest's breast.
"My child, my child," murmured Father Brochet.
And when she lay a little quieter in his arms, he whispered in her ear a word about Dunvegan and Dreaulond.
"They can't be far off," he explained. "A few miles behind Cartienne's canoe! That would be all—just enough to keep well out of sight or sound. And I shouldn't wonder if they're about La Roche now!"
"But what can two men do?" cried Desirée, utterly hopeless. "He—he will only sacrifice himself. And for me in the end it will be this." She motioned to the powder, and then drawing away from Brochet with a return of strength went and seated herself upon the keg.
"You had—you had the pistol," ventured the priest.
"Yes," she returned quietly, "but I could not use it even on a beast. You yourself would not have me use it so, Father!"
"No, daughter, not so! Nor yet the other way—the powder! Pray God he gives Dunvegan strength to do something."
Brochet paced up and down in a distracted manner. There was little he could say. Reason with her the Nor'wester had ordered! The priest would rather see her press the trigger above the keg than reason her into the arms of the Nor'wester lord. He began to question her as to the details of the attack upon the York Factory packet. Desirée explained how they had been waylaid, for since she was in the hands of the victors after the skirmish she could better learn how they had fulfilled their plans than could Basil Dreaulond who had escaped. She shuddered when she told of the accident to Glyndon which happened afterwards as they made speed to Fort La Roche.
For accident it was in Desirée's eyes. How could she know that the men of the party had had their orders from Black Ferguson before they departed on their mission? Father Brochet did not enlighten her.
She went on to tell of the arrival at the Nor'west stronghold, of Ferguson's greeting with his offer of marriage. Her eyes flashed as she spoke of it.
"Did you ever see a panther stalk a fawn?" she cried. "That was it! But I defied him. I scorned him. I—I spurned him. Yet defiance seemed only to increase his appetite. He laughed at my fear. He roared at my fury. He thrust me into a locked chamber to change my mind before the priest arrived. He said I was lucky to have a priest——"
She paused, interrupted by a slight sound which seemed to come up from the river. The wall trembled never so slightly. "What is it?" she whispered.
Brochet had stepped swiftly to the other end of the powder room and laid ear to a loop-hole. Suddenly his left hand beckoned. Desirée tip-toed across.
"What?" she panted. "Who?" She breathed in little gasps.
"I don't know, daughter," murmured the priest, his voice tremulous with excitement. "Dunvegan—maybe. He swore he would carry you over these walls."
"What madness!" Desirée gasped. "Think of the cliffs. The stockades are fifty feet above the water. It would require a miracle!"
"You forget there is a God who still works miracles. And through earthly instruments! Remember the fur-chute!"
"But it is drawn up every night," the girl protested.
"To-night it cannot be, for the noise is coming from it. The Crees and voyageurs were unloading fur-bales. They have been careless and left it down. Or perhaps they have not finished. Pray Heaven they may not come back too soon!"
Undoubtedly the noise, as of someone crawling, was coming from the fur-chute, the long box-pipe of pine that projected like a spout from the lower room of the fur-house and slanted down over the stockades to within a few feet of the river's surface. It was used for the loading and unloading of pelts carried in canoes, the huge bales being hoisted or lowered by a stout rope which ran through the center on a pulley. The height of Fort La Roche above the water made such a contrivance necessary. It effected a tremendous saving of time and portaging up the steep.
The only drawback was that it afforded means of ingress to enemies, since an active man could pull himself up by the rope, and this the Nor'westers had overcome by hinging the fur-house end on a great wooden pin. Thus at will the spout could be raised like the arm of a derrick out of reach from anyone below.
That the chute was not raised now could hardly have been an oversight. Brochet knew that Ferguson was far too careful for that. It must mean that there was still work to be done. The priest sweated at every distant echo of voice or footfall for fear it heralded the return of the Nor'west voyageurs.
The scraping, crawling noise continued. While they strained to hear, their ears tense as those of listening deer, they caught a faint metallic sound from the room downstairs.
"Bolts," muttered Brochet, straightening up suddenly. "Now what does that mean?"
He was shown! The trapdoor behind them flew open and Black Ferguson's head and shoulders rose up. He had worked the ruse of coming back unheard. In his hand the priest could see a piece of binding cord drawn taut as if fastened to something under the powder-room's floor.
"Ho! Ho!" His huge laugh reverberated among the rafters. "Ho! Ho!"
Desirée dashed toward the kegs, but the Nor'wester swiftly jerked on the cord he held. A gap yawned in the floor before her feet. Kegs and pistol tumbled down into the fur-room.
"Ho! Ho!" roared Ferguson. "It's an old trapdoor where the ladder used to be. I put a string to the bolt. What do you think of my reasoning, Father? Better than yours, what?"
He had reached the floor and was rushing across to them.
"The candle, Father! The candle!" Desirée shrieked. For keg on keg of powder, many of them open, was still up-piled around the room.
She sprang for it. Black Ferguson sprang also and wrested the flaming taper from her fingers. Still laughing, he shoved her aside with one great paw and replaced the light in the sconce on the wall.
"There's a spitfire, Father Marcin," he exulted. "There's spirit for you. It's the spirit I want. By heaven you'll marry us now. I ask no better chancel."
And he leaped after the retreating girl.
"Wait till I get her in these arms," he cried hoarsely, his cheeks aflame, his eyes shining with desire. "Else will she not stand quiet for the vows!"
Fawn and panther!—the comparison Desirée herself had made! As tawny, as cruel, as strong, and as fierce to feed as any beast of prey the Nor'wester ran round the yawning floor-gap to seize her. As slim, as supple, as tender as any fawn Desirée crouched and trembled an instant before him. Then she leaped straight down through the opening.