NOT IN THE BONDS OF GOD
"Who speaks!" called Dunvegan from the watchtower to the noisy fellows who were shouting and beating upon the gates with the ostensible object of awakening the sleepy post.
"Messengers from Fort La Roche," they screeched.
"La Roche? Ah! With what news?"
"A message for Brondel's factor."
"Well?"
"Ferguson, our leader, orders his transfer to Fort La Roche. He is to occupy the same position there."
The chief trader roared outright with laughter.
"It seems that I arrived none too soon," he commented ironically, half to himself and half to Maskwa, standing silent by his shoulder.
"Sir?" the couriers interrogated. But Bruce failing to answer, studied some sudden idea grimly and at length.
"Strong Father," interrupted the Ojibway softly, "bid me open the gates, let these French Hearts enter, and thus make them prisoners."
Dunvegan shook his head. "No," he returned. "They shall go back to La Roche. The shock Ferguson receives will be well worth the warning."
To the Nor'west messengers he cried whimsically: "The password?"
"Marseillaise," they answered without hesitation.
Again the chief trader chuckled, drawing something of humor from the situation.
"An hour ago that countersign would have let you in," he observed. "Now it is of no use whatever for the post is in possession of the Hudson's Bay Company."
He paused, looking into the up-turned, surprised faces of the couriers quite visible in the strengthening daylight.
"Go back to Black Ferguson," Dunvegan directed. "Tell him that you delivered the message he sent to the lord of Fort Brondel, but explain that the lord of Fort Brondel is Bruce Dunvegan. Explain also that the men of the fort lie in babiche bonds; that Glyndon is a prisoner; that Glyndon's wife is a captive. Announce to your leader the leaguer of Fort Dumarge. By the time he hears the news, it, too, will have fallen. And advise him in conclusion that the Hudson's Bay forces from these two posts will shortly combine before La Roche's stockades."
The Nor'west messengers fell away from the gates, astonishment mastering their speech.
"Never fear," Dunvegan reassured them. "If I wished to take you prisoners it would have been done long ago. Now go back as I bade you. And one more message for Black Ferguson! Tell him he did a foolish thing in bribing a drunkard to join his ranks that he might steal the drunkard's wife. Tell him that, and tell him Bruce Dunvegan said it."
Swiftly the couriers retraced the track they had furrowed in the deep-snowed slope. Their movements were furtive, and in spite of Bruce's assurance of safety, they cast many backward glances.
As the chief trader and the Ojibway quitted the watchtower, Maskwa spoke in a voice of protestation.
"Was that a wise doing, Strong Father?" he asked.
"How, my brother?"
"To send your enemy warning?"
Dunvegan smiled. "I could not forbear the thrust," he declared. "I could not help but let him know that his well-made plans had miscarried; that the woman he thought to seize was again under the protection of the mighty Company."
Maskwa ruminated.
"Then Strong Father has unknowingly accomplished what the French Heart would have done," he mused aloud. "It is well. It is even better than having Soft Eyes, the husband, fall in the fight."
"Ah! you mistake my meaning, Maskwa," observed the chief trader hastily. "The woman is in my protection, not in my possession."
"So!" the fort runner exclaimed with a slight inflection of surprise. "The French Heart may steal, but Strong Father steals not. How is that?"
"We are different men," answered Bruce, as they entered the store.
Desirée still waited beside the door. Maskwa passed her by without a look, making his way toward the trading room. Had she had the beauty of all the angels, her fairness would have commanded no homage from his cunning, leathery heart.
But Dunvegan, more susceptible, stopped at her word, his hungry eyes dwelling on her beauty, which even after the wearing night appeared faultless.
"Who were those messengers at the gates?" she inquired.
"Men of Black Ferguson's with a drafting order for Brondel's factor."
"Ah!" she gasped, "to—to——"
"To La Roche," Bruce supplied. "You see I was right. I came just in time."
With an impulsive, winning gesture Desirée put her hands in Dunvegan's.
"I ought to be thankful," she began, brokenly. "And I am! Heaven knows I am! But I should also be frank. After greeting you as I did in my room I must explain."
"Not unless you wish, unless——"
"It is my wish, my will," she interrupted.
"I need relief; I must give someone my confidence. Otherwise I shall go mad!"
"There is another who should receive your confidence."
"You think so?" she cried bitterly. "Even if he could comprehend no single word of it? If he were sunk in debauchery from the very day of our marriage? From the moment of flight?"
"What!" exclaimed the thunderstruck chief trader. "What's that you say?"
Desirée tottered. "Let me sit down on this bench," she begged. "I'm weak somehow and—and faint."
Dunvegan leaned back against the store counter.
"God," he breathed—"no wonder!"
The woman looked up beneath the hand which soothed her hammering temples.
"You love Glyndon," Bruce burst out unguardedly.
Her fist descended viciously on the bench where she sat.
"No! My God, who could—now?" Vehemence, abhorrence, disgust, filled her voice.
"You did," he persisted, rather cruelly and with an ultra-selfish motive.
"Infatuation," Desirée cried, "for the clean mask that he wore. But love?—Ah! no, can one love a sot, a beast?"
"Tell me," Dunvegan urged.
She caught her breath a few times helplessly in the stress of emotion, her eyes roving round the big store which held none but themselves. Her gaze stopped on Bruce's face. Her sentences came from her lips mechanically.
"I think his beauty and his old-world manners dazzled me," was her frank, pride-dissolving confession. "For the time I—I forgot you, Bruce. I imagined I cared more for the other. My indecision could not brook his mad wooing. For remember that change, absence, and pressure are the three things which convert any woman's will."
Desirée paused, a pleading for pity in her glance.
"I took refuge behind my vow," she continued after a second. "But that gave me no stability. If I would marry him, he promised to leave Oxford House immediately and join the Nor'westers. You see Ferguson had already approached him through Gaspard Follet."
"That," Dunvegan observed, "should have shown you his true character."
"I was blind," she lamented. "I deemed it sacrifice. In a way it was, I suppose. How could I know that the plan arranged by Ferguson through Gaspard Follet was the very thing that suited his evil intentions? He offered Edwin command of Brondel. I thought it safe enough to be the factor's wife in a post removed from Fort La Roche."
Bruce made a disdainful gesture. "Those messengers showed you how safe it was," he remarked acridly.
"Father Brochet married us," Desirée went on stonily. "It was in the evening. At once we fled from Oxford House, the sentry thinking we were only taking a turn on the lake with the dogs. But in the forest a Nor'west guide from Brondel met us with another sledge as agreed, and the flight began in earnest. The Nor'wester had rum with him. I rode on one sledge. The thing I had married rode on the other, gulping down the rum. You can imagine what happened!"
"Ah!" breathed Dunvegan pityingly.
"When we made camp near dawn he was drunk! He rolled off the sled, while the Nor'wester built a fire, in order to greet his bride——"
Bruce's smothered oath interrupted.
"What?" Desirée asked.
"Nothing," he murmured, the veins of his neck swelling and nearly choking him.
"Instead," Desirée resumed, "he greeted my pistol muzzle. Day and night since he has greeted it also."
Struck with the lightning significance of her speech, Bruce Dunvegan leaped across the intervening floor space. Like some cherished possession of his own he snatched her palms. "Desirée! Desirée!" he panted.
The danger note was in his voice, the danger fire in his look. Recklessly she met the sweet menace. Facing each other for a long minute, secret thoughts were read to the full.
"Yet you are married to him," breathed Dunvegan.
"Not in the bonds of God!" she declared.