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.