Gale uttered a great cry and went to meet them, but the soldier could move nothing save his lips, and stood dazed and disbelieving. He saw them dimly coming towards him, and heard Poleon's voice as if at a great distance, saw that the Frenchman's eyes were upon him, and that his words were directed to him.
"I bring her back to you, M'sieu'!"
Doret laid Necia's hand in that of her lover, and Burrell saw her smiling shyly up at him. Something gripped him chokingly, and he could utter no sound. There was nothing to say-she was here, safe, smiling, that was all. And the girl, beholding the glory in his eyes, understood.
Gale caught her away from him then, and buried her in his arms.
A woman came running into the store, and, seeing the group, paused at the door—a shapeless, silent, shawled figure in silhouette against the day. The trader brought the girl to her foster-mother, who began to talk in her own tongue with a rapidity none of them had ever heard before, her voice as tender as some wild bird's song; then the two women went away together around the store into the house. Poleon had told Necia all the amazing story that had come to him that direful night, all that he had overheard, all that he knew, and much that he guessed.
The priest came into the store shortly, and the men fell upon him for information, for nothing was to be gained from Poleon, who seemed strangely fagged and weary, and who had said but little.
"Yes, yes, yes!" laughed Father Barnum. "I'll tell you all I know, of course, but first I must meet Lieutenant Burrell and take him by the hand."
The story did not lose in his telling, particularly when he came to describe the fight on the gravel bar which no man had seen, and of which Poleon had told him little; but the good priest was of a militant turn, and his blue eyes glittered and flashed like an old crusader's.
"It was a wondrous combat," he declared, with all the spirit of a spectator, "for Poleon advanced bare-handed and beat him down even as the man fired into his face. It is due to the goodness and mercy of God that he was spared a single wound from this desperado—a miracle vouchsafed because of his clean heart and his righteous cause."
"But where is Runnion?" broke in Burrell.