THE LONG LEAGUER
Shackled with cold, iron fetters that chilled the earth to its marrow, the mighty northland lay desolate beneath the brief sunshine, fantastic under the auroras. Past Fort Brondel the ghostly caribou hordes drifted rank on rank, coming from the foodless spaces, going where subsistence permitted. In phantom packs the wolves howled by, trailing the swift moose across the crusted barrens. Four-legged creatures which never hibernate foraged farther south where the snows were thinner. The winged terrors of the air followed them, preying as opportunity afforded. Survival was ordained for only the strong, the fierce-fanged, the predatory. Indented in the white surface of the forest aisles were ptarmigans' tracks and over these the long, shallow furrows left by swooping owls' wings.
A homely spot of life and warmth amid this vast desolation was the post of Brondel. All the Nor'west prisoners except Gaspard Follet, Glyndon, and Desirée had been transferred in care of a strong guard to Oxford House where they were confined under very strict surveillance in the blockhouse. The men of the guard returning brought news of how Malcolm Macleod, failing to surprise Fort Dumarge and rush its stockades, was besieging the place, hoping to starve it into surrender.
Dunvegan had hastened a messenger to Macleod, informing him of the capture of Brondel. The Factor dispatched a runner back with orders for Bruce to be ready to move on La Roche when Macleod should send him word of his coming on the completion of his own project. Realizing the danger in which he stood from the overwhelming power of his own desires, Dunvegan prayed in his heart for the fall of Fort Dumarge and the advent of the Factor. He thought he could find respite and ultimate safety in the call which would summon him to the attack of La Roche away from the lure of Desirée Lazard.
But monotonously the short days slipped into long nights, and still no word came from Malcolm Macleod. Dumarge was proving stubborn.
Nor did the tiresome fort routine offer the chief trader any relief. The unspeakable desolation all about, the inactivity, the eternal waiting, waiting for a command which failed to come, wore down by degrees the control Dunvegan had exercised over his emotions up to this stage. His pent-up passion was gradually gaining in volume. He knew that its torrent must soon sweep him away, beating to atoms the barrier of moral code which was now but an undermined protection. He was facing the certain issue, understanding the immensity of his struggle, seeing no chance of escape.
True, he contemplated asking permission of the Factor to send Glyndon and Desirée to Oxford House. But over this he hesitated long, fearing that beyond his guard Black Ferguson's cunning might prevail and that Desirée might fall into the Nor'wester's grip. But finally, driven to desperation, Bruce started a runner on the trail to the beleaguering camp outside the palisades of Dumarge, requesting the transfer of the prisoners to the home post.
Fate seemed determined to torture, to tempt, to break Dunvegan. Macleod would not hear of such a proceeding. His answer was that neither Edwin Glyndon nor Gaspard Follet must pass from confinement or out of the chief trader's sight. The one-time clerk and the spy, possessing Nor'west secrets and intimate knowledge of the enemy's affairs, were captives far too valuable in the Factor's eyes to be given the remotest opportunity of obtaining freedom. When he should have extracted much-desired information from them, Macleod planned to deal them the deserts their actions had merited. Death he had decreed for Gaspard, a hundred lashes from dried moosehide thongs, a lone journey to York Factory, and a homeward working passage on a fur barque were promised the puerile drunkard. Incidentally the runner whom Bruce had sent out mentioned the presence of two strange men at Oxford House.
"What sort of men were they?" he asked the halfbreed courier.
"W'ite mans, ver' strong," replied the shrewd breed. "Look lak dey come from ovaire de Beeg Wenipak."
And Dunvegan knew that Granger and Garfield, the hardy deputies, also awaited the success of Malcolm Macleod. Like shadows since the first had they moved across the northern reaches from obscurity to certainty, from vagueness to tangibility, omens of a coming law in the wilderness!
Also like a shadow Desirée Lazard flitted free before the chief trader in Fort Brondel. Bitter through her utter disillusionment, swept by a fire as compelling as that against which Bruce Dunvegan battled, she cared not how high ran the tide of feeling. With a woman's instinctive pride in her powers she smiled on the re-awakening of the old love, thrilled to its magnifying intensity, responded with a half guilty ecstacy to its fierce, measureless strength.
Listening in the fort, Desirée would hear Bruce's rifle talking as he hunted through the lonely woods. It spoke to her of misery, pain, and yearning. Secretly she rejoiced. Then at night her eyes shone across to him through the birch logs' glow. Her hair gleamed like the candlelight. Her lips allured through the half-dusk surrounding the crooning fireplace.
Maskwa, the wise old Ojibway, watching them thus evening after evening as the long winter months slipped away, nodded darkly.
"Nenaubosho is working in them," he observed to himself. "Soft Eyes will lose his wife unless Stern Father comes to move us."
But Fort Dumarge, feeling the pinch of hunger, still held firm against Malcolm Macleod.
As ever the evenings came round. Desirée's spell grew stronger. The attitude of the two began to be marked by all in the fort as the curb loosened imperceptibly, but surely. Out of hearing in the blockhouse or the trading room, the Hudson's Bay men commented on their leader's strange—to them—fight against his own inclination. A hard-bitten crowd, each followed impulse in the main. The only restriction they acknowledged was the Company's discipline. They were north of fifty-three, and they scorned the fine points of ecclesiastics. Two ruling powers they knew: red blood and a strong arm.
Because Bruce Dunvegan held the upper hand and wanted Desirée Lazard as he wanted nothing else on earth, they marveled that he did not get rid of the prisoner and marry her. Behind the screen of hundreds of miles of forest they had seen the thing done many times before, and no one in the outside world was the wiser.
"He goin' crazy eef somet'ing don' be happen," whispered Baptiste Verenne, one night when the winter had nearly run its course.
"'Tis always a woman as raises the divil," announced Terence Burke. "Oi was engaged wanst meself, an' Rosie O'Shea niver gave me a minnit's peace till the day she bruk it."
"Hold on there," Connear cried. "You mean you never gave her a minute's peace. 'Twould be South Sea hell to live with you, Terence—even for a man!"
"Ye ear-ringed cannibal," returned Terence belligerently. "Divil a woman would live wid ye, fer she'd be turned to rock salt by yer briny tongue."
Connear stuck out the offending member beneath his pipe stem.
"No woman will ever have the chance to do it," he declared. "I've been in a few ports in my time. I've had my lesson."
"Now you spik," smiled Baptiste. "You be t'ink of dat tale you told 'bout dat native girl w'en your boat she be stop at—w'at you call?—dose Solomon Isle!"
"Yes," the ex-sailor replied. "Made love to me in the second watch and stabbed me in the back with one hand to leave the way clear for her tribe to murder the crew and loot the vessel."
"Oi didn't hear that, Peter," Burke prompted. "Go on wid it."
"Nothing to go on with," snapped Connear. "She pinked me too high up. Knife-point struck the shoulder blade, and my pistol went off before she could give the signal yell."
"An' then?" Terence was interested.
"Nothin', I said. The crew rolled out. The night was so warm that they didn't care to sleep any more. Oh, yes, and there was a village funeral in the mornin'!"
"Whose?"
"The girl's, you blockhead. Died of fever—a night attack!"
"Howly Banshees!" stammered Burke.
Baptiste Verenne crossed himself.
"So," nodded Maskwa, unmoved. "Soft Eyes might die of fever, or cold, or the Red Death!"
South winds full of strange magic ate away the snows. Blinking evilly, the muskegs laughed in little gurglings and sucking sounds. The forest pools brimmed with black water. Fresh, blue reservoirs the big lakes shimmered, while rivers swirled in brown, sinuous torrents.
Spring! The mallards shot overhead like emerald bullets.
Spring! The geese ran a compass line across the world.
Spring! The blood of every Northerner, man or woman, rioted madly, leaping untamable as the Blazing Pine River roaring past Fort Brondel.
Through some swift necromancy the frozen wilderness turned to an arboreal paradise. Bird songs fell sweet on ears tuned to brawling blizzards. Music of rapid and waterfall seemed heavenly after the eternal hissing of the wind-freighted drifts. Hotly shone the sun, pouring vitality into the earth. Responsive the bloom came, wonderful, profligate, luxurious.
Gay as any of the mating birds Baptiste Verenne sang about the Post. And when even the veins of squaw and husky thrilled with excess of vigor, the tremendous swelling and merging of the passion that absorbed Desirée and Dunvegan could be vaguely gauged. As surely as the glowing warmth of spring was increasing to febrile summer heat, the man was being drawn to the woman. The distance between them gradually lessened. Dumarge had not fallen.
Then from the South in the dusk of an evening came the canoe express bearing the York Factory Packet in charge of Basil Dreaulond. Since Brondel now belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, that place had been added to the posts of call.
Baptiste Verenne sighted Basil and his bronzed paddlers far up the Blazing Pine before ever they reached the landing. Instantly Fort Brondel was in an uproar, but in accordance with the rule in troublesome times no one passed beyond the stockade to greet arrivals. The dangers of surprise was not courted.
Yet Baptiste had not been mistaken. Dreaulond and his men hailed the post cheerily.
"Holá!" was the cry. "Voyez le pacquet de la Compagnie."
"Oui, mes camarades," shouted Verenne as sentinel from the high stockades. "Entrez! Entrez vite!"
Joyfully Brondel received them. "Lettres par le Grand Pays," shrieked the volatile French-Canadians.
Bruce Dunvegan met Dreaulond in the store where he had his office as factor of the fort.
"What news?" he questioned, gripping Basil's brown palm.
"Dumarge she be taken," replied the smiling courier.
"When?" Pain not joy filled Dunvegan to his bewilderment. He began to think that he did not really understand himself or his feelings.
"'Fore I leave," Dreaulond responded. "De Factor send de word in de pacquet."
A startled, feminine cry echoed behind the men. Bruce swung on his heel. Her eyes brooding with half-formed fear, Desirée Lazard was regarding them.
The chief trader motioned her out. She did not obey.
"He has won? The Factor has won at last?" Her manner was that of a person who faces a calamity long-feared, hard-hated.
Dully Bruce nodded.
"The papers!" she exclaimed. "Open them! See when the force moves."
He broke the thongs of the packet like thread, rummaged the bundle, and found the documents directed to him.
"Macleod will be here in two days," was his answer. "Now will you go!"
The intensity of Dunvegan bordered on savagery. Desirée slipped to the door. Outwardly conquered, she disappeared, but victory still lurked in her glance.
Basil Dreaulond wondered much at the chief trader's apparent mood, for he was always gentle in the extreme when dealing with women. The courier could not know that this was the bitterness of renunciation. He too went softly away and left Dunvegan alone.
An Indian had taken Baptiste Verenne's position as sentinel, and Baptiste, hurrying through the yard, met Basil coming out of the fort.
"Got de fiddle ready, Baptiste?" asked the tanned courier, grinning.
It was the custom at the posts to hold a dance upon the arrival of the packet. These festivals marked, as it were, the periods of relief and relaxation from the toil and danger of the long, arduous packet route.
"Oui, for sure t'ing," Verenne replied. "I be beeg mans dis night, mon camarade!"
And a big man Baptiste was as, perched high on a corner table, he drew the merry soul of him out across the strings of his instrument.
As he played, he smiled jubilantly down upon the light-hearted maze that filled the great floor of the trading room. The huge hall was decorated by the quick hands of women for the occasion. Varicolored ribbons ran round the walls after the manner of bunting and fell in festoons from the beamed ceiling. Candles stood in rows upon mantels and shelves, shedding soft, silver light from under tinselled shades. Evergreens were thrust in the fireplace and banked about with wild roses and the many flaming flowers of the wilderness. A sweet odor filled the air, an Eden smell, the fragrance of the untainted forest.
Riotously, exuberantly the frolic began. Blood pulsed hotly. Feet were free. Lips were ready. The Nor'westers' wives, the French-Canadian girls, the halfbreed women swung madly through the square and string dances with the Brondel men of their choice.
God of it all, Baptiste smiled perpetually over the tumult, quickening his music to a faster time, quivering the violin's fibres with sonorous volume. Mad hornpipes he shrilled out, sailors' tunes which Pete Connear stepped till the rafters shook with the clatter. Snappy reels he unwound in which Terence Burke led, throwing antics of Irish abandon that convulsed the throng. Also, Baptiste voiced the songs he loved, airs of his own race, dances he had whirled in old years with the belles of the Chaudiere and the Gatineau.
Out of sympathy for the prisoners, Glyndon and Follet, when all the amusement was going on above, Bruce Dunvegan had ordered them to be brought up. For the one evening they were allowed the freedom of the fort, but wherever they went two Indian guards stalked always at their elbows.
And Glyndon went most frequently where the rum flowed freest. After the abstinence imposed by confinement since the week-long debauch his thirst was a parching one. Half fuddled, he met Desirée threading her way through the crowd. He put out both hands awkwardly to bar her progress.
"What do you want?" she cried, drawing suddenly back as she would recoil from a snake.
"You," Glyndon answered thickly. "Can a man not speak with his wife?"
"Wife!" Desirée echoed. "Go find one of your halfbreed wenches. Speak with her!"
Disgust, contempt, revulsion were in Desirée's voice and manner. She darted aside and avoided him in the crowd.
Yet again he found her seated at a table between Dunvegan and Basil Dreaulond where she thought to be secure. He threw his arms about her neck, attempting a maudlin kiss, but instead of meeting her full, red lips his own insipid mouth met Dreaulond's great paw, swiftly thrust out to close upon his blotched cheekbones and whirl him into a seat on the courier's other side.
"Ba gosh, ma fren', you ain' be fit for kiss no woman," Basil observed sternly. "You got be mooch sobaire first. Eh, mon ami? Sit ver' still—dat's w'at I said."
Inwardly flaming, Dunvegan remained immovable, as if the incident were none of his concern. But though apparently so calm he was the victim of raging emotions. The magnetic personality of the woman beside him was a poignant thing. Her propinquity proved masterful beyond belief. He could hear her heart beating under restraint; interpret the heaving of her bosom; feel the hot pulsing of her blood; read her very thoughts as her mind evolved them. Conscious of the spell which grew stronger with every minute, Bruce sat there unable to tear himself away.
Presently, seeking to divert his mind from the cause of the unrest, the chief trader opened a few bottles of aged wine which he had found in the cellars of Fort Brondel that were stored with the Nor'wester's liquor. This he had carefully kept to celebrate the first visit of the Hudson's Bay Company's packet.
The amount was not large, yet a little to each the time-mellowed vintage brought from across the seas by way of Montreal went round.
"To the York Factory packet," Dunvegan cried, proposing the toast.
Cheers thundered out, hearty, loyal, sincere. Then reverently the toast was sipped.
"And Basil Dreaulond," Bruce added. A shout this time loud with great-hearted friendliness and comradeship! Strong pride of the northland race burned in their eyes as they drank to the finest type of it, the virile courier.
Now in fullness of spirit each voiced the toast that appealed to him personally.
"Scotia!—Scots wha hae!" shrilled two Highlanders of Dunvegan's band.
"The Emerald Isle," Terence Burke roared aggressively.
"The Eagle," yelled Pete Connear. "Drat your landsmen's eyes, drink with me. To the American Eagle and the salt of the sea!"
"La France! La France!" Voyageurs shrieked like mad.
"Old England," stammered Edwin Glyndon, pounding the table.
"Old fren's," spoke Basil Dreaulond, with quiet modesty.
"Old lovers!" Clear as a clarion Desirée's toast rang through the din, thrilling Dunvegan by its audacity, its fervor. As consuming flames her eyes drew him, withering stout resolves, melting his will. He bent his head lower, lower, glorying in the complete confession those two swift words had made.
"Ah, yes!" called Glyndon, leering evilly, "you seem to know that toast—too well."
She sprang from her seat in a fury. He sprang from his, ugly in his mood.
"You dog!" Her nostrils quivered. "You coward!"
"And liar!" Dunvegan's menacing face eager to avenge the insult rose behind her shoulder.
Uttering a wild, inarticulate cry, Glyndon struck the scornful face of the woman. Desirée gave a little moan and fell half stunned against the table.
The Brondel men roared in anger. As one man they sprang forward with the single purpose of rending Edwin Glyndon. But Dunvegan was quicker than they. White to his lips, he had leaped at the former clerk. His first savage impulse was to strike, to maim, to kill! One blow with all his mighty strength and Glyndon would never have spoken again.
Spoken! That was it. The quick realization pierced his brain even in the moment of obsessing anger. Glyndon was a prisoner. He must be produced before Malcolm Macleod. Macleod had questions to ask of him. Dead men could not answer questions.
Thus did sanity temper Dunvegan's rage. It was only his open palm that knocked the sot ten feet across the room.
Then fearfully he lifted Desirée. She stirred at the touch. The light of a smile came into the wan face with the red weal upon it. Her fortitude permitted not the slightest expression of pain, and Dunvegan's soul went out to her at knowledge of her woman's bravery. What before had seemed to him as only his human weakness now became the strength of duty. As if she had been a child, he raised Desirée in his arms and left the gaping crowd.
A murmur ran among the men when he was gone. They scowled as Glyndon staggered up.
Came an instant's silence and the piping of a thin voice. "Now my toast!"
Everyone looked to see Gaspard Follet grinning like an ogre at the foot of the table. He thrust his owlish face over the board and shook the wine in his glass till in the light it sparkled like rubies.
"To the devil!" he chuckled.
The feasters started and sat back silent, grave, awed by the vital significance of that last toast.
Outside the challenge of the Indian sentinel interrupted the quiet. They heard the clatter of the gates. Someone had arrived.
In the living room above the store where he had ascended on the first strange night of his coming into Brondel, Dunvegan laid Desirée on the lounge covered with fur robes. He sat by her, tenderly bathing the red weal with some soothing herbal mixture that the squaws were accustomed to brew. It relieved the pain, and she smiled up at him, her lustrous eyes innocent with their depth of love.
"By the God that makes and breaks hearts," Dunvegan breathed, "you'll never look on him again. You belong to me by first and only right of worship."
There sounded a step on the stairs. Whoever had arrived was coming up.
The door opened softly. Father Brochet stepped in.
"My son, my son," he murmured reproachfully but compassionately.
They had told him all below. He came across the room, clasping hands with Bruce, greeting Desirée parentally.
"Go to bed, child," he ordered kindly, assuming authority over the odd situation. "You look tired out. Go to bed! Bruce and I want to talk."
Wondering at her own obedience, Desirée vanished into the adjoining chamber. Marveling at his own sufferance, Dunvegan watched her go.
He turned to Brochet. "Everything unexpected seems to be happening to-night!" he exclaimed. "But I didn't think you were near. Where have you come from, Father?"
"From Loon Lake."
"You knew we had captured Fort Brondel, then?"
"Yes. The Indians gave me the news. As I was on my return journey to Oxford House, I thought I would pay you a call according to my promise. It seems, my son, that I have arrived very opportunely. You have ruled yourself for many months! Are you, in one mad moment, going to lose your grip?"
He linked an arm in the chief trader's and walked the floor with him, talking, talking, priming him with the wisdom of his saner years till Desirée in the next room fell asleep to the sound of their voices and the regular shuffle of their feet.
And by dawn Father Brochet felt the pulse of victory. Something of soul-light replaced the fevered gleam in Dunvegan's eyes. Not yet had he lost his grip!
"But she must go to her uncle, Pierre Lazard," he declared. "Seeing her, I cannot keep this strength you have given me."
"Pierre is at York Factory," the priest replied. "He could not bide the post long after his niece was gone. So Macleod let him go to the Factory. He passed through my Indian camp at Loon Lake before the winter trails broke."
"So much the better," sighed Dunvegan, with relief. "There she will be safe from Black Ferguson. She can go in the canoe express with Basil Dreaulond and his packeteers."