A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS
 
 A ROMANY 
 OF THE SNOWS 
 
 SECOND SERIES OF 
 
 AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH, BEING 
 
 A CONTINUATION OF "PIERRE AND HIS 
 
 PEOPLE " AND THE LATEST EXISTING 
 
 RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT PARKER 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1896. BY STONE ft KIMBALL 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGB 
 
 THREE COMMANDMENTS IN THE VULGAR TONGUE I 
 
 LITTLE BABICHE 31 
 
 AT POINT O' BUGLES 45 
 
 THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA 60 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE SUN DOGS 90 
 
 THE PILOT OF BELLE AMOUR IO2 
 
 THE CRUISE OF THE "NINETY-NINE" 128 
 
 A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS 167 
 
 THE PLUNDERER 192
 
 Three Commandments in the 
 
 Vulgar Tongue 
 
 I 
 
 " Read on, Pierre," the sick man said, doub- 
 ling the corner of the wolf-skin pillow so that it 
 shaded his face from the cradle. 
 
 Pierre smiled to himself, thinking of the un- 
 usual nature of his occupation, raised an eye- 
 brow as if to some one sitting at the other side of 
 the fire, though the room was empty save for 
 the two, and went on reading : 
 
 " Woe to the multitude of many people, which 
 make a noise like the noise of the sea; and to the 
 rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the 
 rushing of mighty waters! 
 
 " The nations shall rush like the rushing of 
 many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and 
 they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the 
 chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like 
 a rolling thing before the whirlwind. 
 
 "And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before 
 the morning he is not. This is the portion of them 
 that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us."
 
 2 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 The sick man put up his hand, motioning for 
 silence, and Pierre, leaving the Bible open, laid 
 it at his side. Then he fell to studying the 
 figure on the couch. The body, though reduced 
 by a sudden illness, had an appearance of late 
 youth, a firmness of mature manhood ; but the 
 hair was grey, the beard was grizzled; and the 
 face was furrowed and seamed as though the 
 man had lived a long, hard life. The body 
 seemed thirty years old, the head sixty ; the 
 man's exact age was forty-five. His most singu- 
 lar characteristic was a fine, almost spiritual in- 
 telligence, which showed in the dewy brightness 
 of the eye, in the lighted face, in the cadenced 
 definiteness of his speech. One would have said, 
 knowing nothing of him, that he was a hermit, 
 but again, noting the firm, graceful outlines of 
 of his body, that he was a soldier. Within the 
 past twenty-four hours he had had a fight for 
 life with one of the terrible " colds " which, like 
 an unstayed plague, close up the course of the 
 body, and carry a man out of the hurly-burly, 
 without pause to say how much or how little he 
 cares to go. 
 
 Pierre, whose rude skill in medicine was got 
 of hard experiences here and there, had helped 
 him back into the world again, and was himself 
 now a little astonished at acting as Scripture
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 3 
 
 reader to a Protestant invalid. Still, the Bible 
 was like his childhood itself always with him in 
 memory, and Old Testament history was as wine 
 to his blood. The lofty tales sang in his veins : 
 of primitive man, adventure, mysterious and ex- 
 alted romance. For nearly an hour, with absorb- 
 ing interest, he had read aloud from these an- 
 cient chronicles to Fawdor, who held this post 
 of the Hudson's Bay Company in the outer 
 wilderness. 
 
 Pierre had arrived at the Post three days be- 
 fore, to find a half-breed trapper and an Indian 
 helpless before the sickness which was hurrying 
 to close on John Fawdor's heart and clamp it in 
 the vice of death. He had come just in time. 
 He was now ready to learn, by what ways the 
 future should show, why this man, of such un- 
 usual force and power, should have lived at 
 a desolate post in Labrador for twenty -five 
 years. 
 
 "This is the portion of them that spoil us, 
 and the lot of them that rob us " Fawdor 
 repeated the words slowly, and then said : " It 
 is good to be out of the restless world. Do you 
 know the secret of life, Pierre ? " 
 
 Pierre's fingers unconsciously dropped on the 
 Bible at his side, drumming the leaves. His 
 eyes wandered over Fawdor's face, and presently
 
 4 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 he answered, "To keep your own command- 
 ments." 
 
 "The ten ?" asked the sick man, pointing to 
 the Bible. 
 
 Pierre's fingers closed the book. " Not the 
 ten, for they do not fit all ; but one by one to 
 make your own, and never to break comme fa/' 1 
 
 "The answer is well," returned Fawdor; 
 " but what is the greatest commandment that a 
 man can make for himself ?" 
 
 "Who can tell? What is the good of saying, 
 ' Thou shall keep holy the Sabbath day,' when a 
 man lives where he does not know the days? 
 What is the good of saying, 'Thou shall not 
 steal,' when a man has no heart to rob, and 
 there is nothing to steal? But a man should 
 have a heart, an eye for justice. It is good for 
 him to make his commandments against that 
 wherein he is a fool or has a devil. Justice, that 
 is the thing." 
 
 "'Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
 thy neighbour'?" asked Fawdor softly. 
 
 " Yes, like that. But a man must put it in 
 his own words, and keep the law which he 
 makes. Then life does not give a bad taste in 
 the mouth." 
 
 " What commandments have you made for 
 yourself, Pierre?"
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 5 
 
 The slumbering fire in Pierre's face leaped 
 up. He felt for an instant as his father, a chev- 
 alier of France, might have felt if a peasant had 
 presumed to finger the orders upon his breast. 
 It touched his native pride, so little shown in 
 anything else. But he knew the spirit behind 
 the question, and the meaning justified the 
 man. 
 
 " Thou shalt think with the minds of twelve 
 men, and the heart of one woman," he said, and 
 paused. 
 
 "Justice and mercy," murmured the voice 
 from the bed. 
 
 " Thou shalt keep the faith of food and 
 blanket." Again Pierre paused. 
 
 " And a man shall have no cause to fear his 
 friend," said the voice again. 
 
 The pause was longer this time, and Pierre's 
 cold, handsome face took on a kind of softness 
 before he said, " Remember the sorrow of thine 
 own wife." 
 
 " It is a good commandment," said the sick 
 man, " to make all women safe whether they be 
 true or foolish." 
 
 " The strong should be ashamed to prey up- 
 on the weak. Pshaw! such a sport ends in noth- 
 ing. Man only is man's game." 
 
 Suddenly Pierre added: "When you thought
 
 6 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 you were going to die, you gave me some papers 
 and letters to take to Quebec. You will get 
 well. Shall I give them back? Will you take 
 them yourself? " 
 
 Fawdor understood: Pierre wished to know 
 his story. He reached out a hand, saying, " I 
 will take them myself. You have not read 
 them?" 
 
 "No. I was not to read them till you died 
 bien?" He handed the packet over. 
 
 "I will tell you the story," Fawdor said, turn- 
 ing over on his side, so that his eyes rested full 
 on Pierre. 
 
 He did not begin at once. An Esquimaux 
 dog, of the finest and yet wildest breed, which 
 had been lying before the fire, stretched itself, 
 opened its red eyes at the two men, and, slowly 
 rising, went to the door and sniffed at the cracks. 
 Then it turned and began pacing restlessly 
 around the room. Every little while it would 
 stop, sniff the air and go on again. Once or 
 twice, also, as it passed the couch of the sick 
 man, it paused, and at last it suddenly rose, rested 
 two feet on the rude headboard of the couch, and 
 pushed its nose against the invalid's head. 
 There was something rarely savage and yet 
 beautifully soft in the dog's face, scarred as it 
 was by the whips of earlier owners. The sick
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 7 
 
 man's hand went up and caressed the wolfish 
 head. "Good dog, good Akim!" he said softly 
 in French. "Thou dost know when a storm is 
 on the way; thou dost know, too, when there is 
 a storm in my heart." 
 
 Even as he spoke a wind came crying round 
 the house, and the parchment windows gave 
 forth a soft booming sound. Outside, Nature 
 was trembling lightly in all her nerves; belated 
 herons, disturbed from the freshly frozen pool, 
 swept away on tardy wings into the night and 
 to the south; a herd of wolves trooped by the 
 hut, passed from a short, easy trot, to a low, long 
 gallop, devouring, yet fearful. It appeared as 
 though the dumb earth were trying to speak, 
 and the mighty effort gave it pain, from which 
 came awe and terror to living things. 
 
 So, inside the house, also, Pierre almost 
 shrank from the unknown sorrow of this man 
 beside him, who was about to disclose the story 
 of his life. The solitary places do not make 
 men glib of tongue; rather, spare of words. 
 They whose tragedy lies in the capacity to suf- 
 fer greatly, being given the woe of imagination, 
 bring forth inner history as a mother gasps life 
 into the world. 
 
 " I was only a boy of twenty-one," Fawdor 
 said from the pillow, as he watched the dog
 
 8 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 noiselessly travelling from corner to corner, 
 " and I had been with the Company three years. 
 They had said that I could rise fast; I had 
 done so. I was ambitious; yet I find solace in 
 thinking that I saw only one way to it, by 
 patience, industry and much thinking. I read 
 a great deal, and cared for what I read; but I 
 observed also, that in dealing with men I might 
 serve myself and the Company wisely. 
 
 " One day the governor of the Company 
 came from England, and with him a sweet lady, 
 his young niece, and her brother. They ar- 
 ranged for a tour to the Great Lakes, and I was 
 chosen to go with them in command of the 
 boatmen. It appeared as if a great chance had 
 come to me, and so said the factor at Lachine 
 on the morning we set forth. The girl was as 
 winsome as you can think, not of such wonder- 
 ful beauty, but with a face that would be finer 
 old than young; and a dainty trick of humour 
 had she as well. The governor was a testy man ; 
 he could not bear to be crossed in a matter; yet, 
 in spite of all I did not think he had a wilful 
 hardness. It was a long journey, and we were 
 set at our wits to make it always interesting; but 
 we did it somehow, for there were fishing and 
 shooting, and adventure of one sort and an- 
 other, and the lighter things, such as singing
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 9 
 
 and the telling of tales, as the boatmen rowed 
 the long river. 
 
 " We talked of many things as we travelled, 
 and I was glad to listen to the governor, for he 
 had seen and read much. It was clear he liked 
 to have us hang upon his tales and his grand 
 speeches, which seemed a little large in the 
 mouth; and his nephew, who had a mind for 
 raillery, was now and again guilty of some witty 
 impertinence; but this was hard to bring home 
 to him, for he could assume a fine childlike look 
 when he pleased, confusing to his accusers. 
 Towards the last he grew bolder, and said many 
 a biting thing to both the governor and myself, 
 which more than once turned his sister's face 
 pale with apprehension, for she had a nice sense 
 of kindness. Whenever the talk was at all gen- 
 eral, it was his delight to turn one against the 
 other. Though I was wary, and the girl under- 
 stood his game, at last he had his way, 
 
 I knew Shakespeare and the Bible very well, 
 and, like most bookish young men, phrase and 
 motto were much on my tongue, though not 
 always given forth. One evening, as we drew to 
 the camp-fire, a deer broke from the woods and 
 ran straight through the little circle we were 
 making, and disappeared in the bushes by the 
 riverside. Someone ran for a rifle; but the gov-
 
 IO An Adventurer of the North 
 
 ernor forbade, adding, with an air, a phrase 
 with philosophical point. I, proud of the chance 
 to show I was not a mere backwoodsman at such 
 a sport, capped his aphorism with a line from 
 Shakespeare's Cymbeline. 
 
 " ' Tut, tut 1' said the governor smartly: ' you 
 haven't it well, Mr. Fawdor ; it goes this way,' 
 and he went on to set me right. His nephew 
 at that stepped in, and, with a little disdainful 
 laugh at me, made some galling gibe at my 
 ' distinguished learning.' I might have known 
 better than to let it pique me, but I spoke up 
 again, though respectfully enough, that I was 
 not wrong. It appeared to me all at once as if 
 some principle were at stake, as if I were the 
 champion of our Shakespeare, so will vanity de- 
 lude us. 
 
 "The governor I can see it as if it were 
 yesterday seemed to go like ice, for he loved 
 to be thought infallible in all such things as well 
 as in great business affairs, and his nephew was 
 there to give an edge to the matter. He said, 
 curtly, that I would probably come on better in 
 the world if I were more exact and less cock-a- 
 hoop with myself. That stung me, for not only 
 was the young lady looking on with a sort of 
 superior pity, as I thought, but her brother was 
 murmuring to her under his breath with a pro-
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 1 1 
 
 voking smile. I saw no reason why I should be 
 treated like a schoolboy. As far as my knowl- 
 edge went it was as good as another man's, were 
 he young or old, so I came in quickly with my 
 reply. I said that his excellency should find 
 rne more cock-a-hoop with Shakespeare than 
 with myself. ' Well, well,' he answered, with a 
 severe look, 'our Company has need of great 
 men for hard tasks.' To this I made no answer, 
 for I got a warning look from the young lady, 
 a look which had a sort of reproach and com- 
 mand too. She knew the twists and turns of 
 her uncle's temper, and how he was imperious 
 and jealous in little things. The matter dropped 
 for the time; but as the governor was going to 
 his tent for the night, the young lady said to me 
 hurriedly, ' My uncle is a man of great reading 
 and power, Mr. Fawdor. I would set it right 
 with him, if I were you.' For the moment I 
 was ashamed. You cannot guess how fine an 
 eye she had, and how her voice stirred one ! 
 She said no more, but stepped inside her tent; 
 and then I heard the brother say over my shoul- 
 der, 'Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be 
 proud!' Afterwards, with a little laugh and a 
 backward wave of the hand, as one might toss a 
 greeting to a beggar, he was gone also, and I 
 was left alone."
 
 12 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 Fawdor paused in his narrative. The dog 
 had lain down by the fire again, but its red eyes 
 were blinking at the door, and now and again it 
 growled softly, and the long hair at its mouth 
 seemed to shiver with feeling. Suddenly 
 through the night there rang a loud, barking 
 cry. The dog's mouth opened and closed in a 
 noiseless snarl, showing its keen, long teeth, and 
 a ridge of hair bristled on its back. But the 
 two men made no sign or motion. The cry of 
 wild cats was no new thing to them. 
 
 Presently the other continued: "I sat by 
 the fire and heard beasts howl like that, I list- 
 ened to the river churning over the rapids be- 
 low, and I felt all at once a loneliness that turned 
 me sick. There were three people in a tent near 
 me; I could even hear the governor's breathing; 
 but I appeared to have no part in the life of any 
 human being, as if I were a kind of outlaw of 
 God and man. I was poor; I had no friends; 
 I was at the mercy of this great Company; if I 
 died there was not a human being who, so far as 
 I knew, would shed a tear. Well, you see I was 
 only a boy, and I suppose it was the spirit of 
 youth hungering for the huge, active world and 
 the companionship of ambitious men. There is 
 no one so lonely as the young dreamer on the 
 brink of life.
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 13 
 
 " I was lying by the fire. It was not a cold 
 night, and I fell asleep at last without covering. 
 I did not wake till morning, and then it was to 
 find the governor's nephew building up the fire 
 again. 'Those who are born great,' said he, 
 'are bound to rise.' But perhaps he saw that I 
 had had a bad night, and felt that he had gone 
 far enough, for he presently said, in a tone more 
 to my liking, ' Take my advice, Mr. Fawdor ; 
 make it right with my uncle. It isn't such fast 
 rising in the Company that you can afford to 
 quarrel with its governor. I 'd go on the other 
 tack; don't be too honest.' I thanked him, and 
 no more was said ; but I liked him better, for I 
 saw that he was one of those who take pleasure 
 in dropping nettles more to see the weakness of 
 human nature than from malice. 
 
 "But my good fortune had got a twist, and 
 it was not to be straightened that day ; and be- 
 cause it was not straightened then it was not to 
 be at all ; for at five o'clock we came to the post 
 at Lachine, and here the governor and the 
 others were to stop. During all the day I had 
 waited for my chance to say a word of apology 
 to his excellency, but it was no use; nothing 
 seemed to help me, for he was busy with his 
 papers and notes, and I also had to finish up my 
 reports. The hours went by, and I saw my
 
 14 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 chances drift past. I knew that the governor 
 held the thing against me, and not the less be- 
 cause he saw me more than once that day in 
 speech with his niece. For she appeared anx- 
 ious to cheer me, and indeed I think we might 
 have become excellent friends had our ways run 
 together. She could have bestowed her friend- 
 ship on me without shame to herself, for I had 
 come of an old family in Scotland, the Sheplaws 
 of Canfire, which she knew, as did the governor 
 also, was a more ancient family than their own. 
 Yet her kindness that day worked me no good, 
 and I went far to make it worse, since, under 
 the spell of her gentleness, I looked at her far 
 from distantly, and at the last, as she was get- 
 ting from the boat, returned the pressure of her 
 hand with much interest. I suppose something 
 of the pride of that moment leaped up in my 
 eye, for I saw the governor's face harden more 
 and more, and the brother shrugged an ironical 
 shoulder. I was too young to see or know that 
 the chief thing in the girl's mind was regret that 
 I had so hurt my chances ; for she knew, as I 
 saw only too well afterwards, that I might have 
 been rewarded with a leaping promotion in hon- 
 our of the success of the journey. But though 
 the boatmen got a gift of money and tobacco 
 and spirits, nothing came to me save the formal
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 1 5 
 
 thanks of the governor, as he bowed me from 
 his presence. 
 
 "The nephew came with his sister to bid me 
 farewell. There was little said between her and 
 me, and it was a long, long time before she 
 knew the end of that day's business. But the 
 brother said, 'You've let the chance go by, Mr. 
 Fawdor. Better luck next time, eh ? And,' he 
 went on, ' I 'd give a hundred editions the lie, 
 but I 'd read the text according to my chief offi- 
 cer. The words of a king are always wise while 
 his head is on,' he declared further, and he drew 
 from his scarf a pin of pearls and handed it to 
 me. ' Will you wear that for me, Mr. Fawdor ? ' 
 he asked ; and I, who had thought him but a 
 stripling with a saucy pride, grasped his hand 
 and said a God-keep-you. It does me good now 
 to think I said it. I did not see him or his sis- 
 ter again. 
 
 "The next day was Sunday. About two 
 o'clock I was sent for by the governor. When I 
 got to the Post and was admitted to him, I saw 
 that my misadventure was not over. ' Mr. Faw- 
 dor,' said he coldly, spreading out a map on the 
 table before him, 'you will start at once for Fort 
 Ungava, at Ungava Bay, in Labrador.' I felt 
 my heart stand still for a moment, and then 
 surge up and down, like a piston-rod under a
 
 16 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 sudden rush of steam. 'You will proceed, now,' 
 he went on, in his hard voice, 'as far as the vil- 
 lage of Pont Croix. There you will find three 
 Indians awaiting you. You will go on with 
 them as far as Point St. Saviour and camp for the 
 night, for if the Indians remain in the village 
 they may get drunk. The next morning at sun- 
 rise, you will move on. The Indians know the 
 trail across Labrador to Fort Ungava. When 
 you reach there, you will take command of the 
 Post and remain till further orders. Your clothes 
 are already at the village. I have had them 
 packed, and you will find there also what is nec- 
 essary for the journey. The factor at Ungava 
 was there ten years ; he has gone to heaven.' 
 
 "I cannot tell what it was held my tongue 
 silent, that made me only bow my head in assent 
 and press my lips together. I knew I was pale 
 as death, for as I turned to leave the room I 
 caught sight of my face in a little mirror tacked 
 on the door, and I hardly recognized myself. 
 
 " ' Good-day, Mr. Fawdor,' said the governor 
 handing me the map. 'There is some brandy 
 in your stores; be careful that none of your In- 
 dians get it. If they try to desert, you know 
 what to do.' With a gesture of dismissal he 
 turned, and began to speak with the chief trader. 
 
 "For me, I went from that room like a man
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 17 
 
 condemned to die. Fort Ungava in Labrador, 
 a thousand miles away, over a barren, savage 
 country, and in winter, too; for it would be 
 winter there immediately. It was an exile to 
 Siberia, and far worse than Siberia ; for there are 
 many there to share the fellowship of misery, 
 and I was likely to be the only white man at 
 Fort Ungava. As I passed from the door of 
 the Post, the words of Shakespeare which had 
 brought all this about sang in my ears." He 
 ceased speaking, and sank back wearily among 
 the skins of his couch. Out of the enveloping 
 silence Pierre's voice came softly : 
 
 " Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve 
 men, and the heart of one woman." 
 
 II 
 
 " The journey to the village of Pont Croix 
 was that of a man walking over graves. Every 
 step sent a pang to my heart, a boy of twenty- 
 one, grown old in a moment. It was not that I 
 had gone a little lame from a hurt got on the 
 expedition with the governor, but my whole life 
 seemed suddenly lamed. Why did I go ? Ah, 
 you do not know how discipline gets into a 
 man's bones, the pride, the indignant pride of 
 obedience. At that hour I swore that I should
 
 1 3 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 myself be the governor of that Company one 
 day, the boast of loud -hearted youth. I had 
 angry visions, I dreamed absurd dreams, but I 
 did not think of disobeying. It was an unheard- 
 of journey at such a time, but I swore that I 
 would do it, that it should go into the records 
 of the Company. 
 
 " I reached the village, found the Indians, 
 and at once moved on to the settlement where 
 we were to stay that night. Then my knee be- 
 gan to pain me. I feared inflammation ; so in 
 the dead of night I walked back to the village, 
 roused a trader of the Company, got some lini- 
 ment and other trifles, and arrived again at St. 
 Saviour before dawn. My few clothes and 
 necessaries came in the course of the morning, 
 and by noon we were fairly started on the path 
 to exile. 
 
 "I remember that we came to a lofty point 
 on the St. Lawrence just before we plunged into 
 the woods, to see the great stream no more. I 
 stood and looked back up the river towards the 
 point where Lachine lay. All that went to make 
 the life of a Company's man possible was there ; 
 and there, too, were those with whom I had 
 tented and travelled for three long months, 
 eaten with them, cared for them, used for them 
 all the woodcraft that I knew. I could not
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 19 
 
 think that it would be a young man's lifetime 
 before I set eyes on that scene again. Never 
 from that day to this have I seen the broad, 
 sweet river where I spent the three happiest 
 years of my life. I can see now the tall shining 
 heights of Quebec, the pretty, wooded Island of 
 Orleans, the winding channel, so deep, so strong. 
 The sun was three-fourths of its way down in 
 the west, and already the sky was taking on the 
 deep red and purple of autumn. Somehow, the 
 thing that struck me most in the scene was a 
 bunch of pines, solemn and quiet, their tops bur- 
 nished by the afternoon light. Tears would 
 have been easy then. But my pride drove them 
 back from my eyes to my angry heart. Besides, 
 there were my Indians waiting, and the long 
 journey lay before us. Then, perhaps because 
 there was none nearer to make farewell to, or I 
 know not why, I waved my hand towards the 
 distant village of Lachine, and, with the sweet 
 maid in my mind who had so gently parted from 
 me yesterday, I cried, ' Good-bye, and God bless 
 you.'" 
 
 He paused. Pierre handed him a wooden 
 cup, from which he drank, and then con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "The journey went forward. You have seen 
 the country. You know what it is : those bare
 
 2O An Adventurer of the North 
 
 ice-plains and rocky unfenced fields stretching 
 to all points, the heaving wastes of treeless coun- 
 try, the harsh frozen lakes. God knows what 
 insupportable horror would have settled on me 
 in that pilgrimage had it not been for occasional 
 glimpses of a gentler life for the deer and 
 caribou which crossed our path. Upon my soul, 
 I was so full of gratitude and love at the sight 
 that I could have thrown my arms round their 
 necks and kissed them. I could not raise a gun 
 at them. My Indians did that, and so incon- 
 stant is the human heart that I ate heartily of the 
 meat. My Indians were almost less companion- 
 able to me than any animal would have been. 
 Try as I would, I could not bring myself to like 
 them, and I feared only too truly that they did 
 not like me. Indeed, I soon saw that they 
 meant to desert me, kill me, perhaps, if they 
 could, although I trusted in the wholesome and 
 restraining fear which the Indian has of the 
 great Company. I was not sure that they were 
 guiding me aright, and I had to threaten death 
 in case they tried to mislead me or desert me. 
 My knee at times was painful, and cold, hunger, 
 and incessant watchfulness wore on me vastly. 
 Yet I did not yield to my miseries, for there en- 
 tered into me then not only the spirit of endur- 
 ance, but something of that sacred pride in
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 21 
 
 Buffering which was the merit of my Covenant- 
 ing forefathers. 
 
 " We were four months on that bitter travel, 
 and I do not know how it could have been made 
 at all, had it not been for the deer that I had 
 heart to eat and none to kill. The days got 
 shorter and shorter, and we were sometimes 
 eighteen hours in absolute darkness. Thus you 
 can imagine how slowly we went. Thank God, 
 we could sleep, hid away in our fur bags, more 
 often without a fire than with one, mere mum- 
 mies stretched out on a vast coverlet of white, 
 with the peering, unfriendly sky above us ; 
 though it must be said that through all those 
 many, many weeks no cloud perched in the 
 zenith. When there was light there was sun, and 
 the courage of it entered into our bones, helping 
 to save us. You may think I have been made 
 feeble-minded by my sufferings, but I tell you 
 plainly that, in the closing days of our journey, 
 I used to see a tall figure walking beside me, 
 who, whenever I would have spoken to him, 
 laid a warning finger on his lips ; but when 
 I would have fallen, he spoke to me, always 
 in the same words. You have heard of him, 
 the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills. It was 
 he, the Sentinel of the North, the Lover of 
 the Lost. So deep did his words go into my
 
 22 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 heart that they have remained with me to this 
 hour." 
 
 " I saw him once in the White Valley," Pierre 
 said, in a low voice. " What was it he said to 
 you ? " 
 
 The other drew a long breath, and a smile 
 rested on his lips. Then, slowly, as though lik- 
 ing to linger over them, he repeated the words 
 of the Scarlet Hunter : 
 
 " ' O son of man, behold ! 
 If thorn shouldst stumble on the nameless trail, 
 The trail that no man rides, 
 Lift up thy heart, 
 Behold, O son of man, thou hast a helper near ! 
 
 " ' O son of man, take heed ! 
 If thou shouldst fall upon the vacant plain, 
 The plain that no man loves, 
 Reach out thy hand, 
 
 Take heed, O, son of man ! strength shall be given 
 thee! 
 
 " ' O son of man, rejoice ! 
 If thou art blinded even at the door, 
 The door of the Safe Tent, 
 Sing in thy heart, 
 Rejoice, O son of man, thy pilot leads thee home ! ' 
 
 " I never seemed to be alone after that 
 call it what you will, fancy or delirium. My 
 head was so light that it appeared to spin like a
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 23 
 
 star, and my feet were so heavy that I dragged 
 the whole earth after me. My Indians seldom 
 spoke. I never let them drop behind me, for 
 I did not trust their treacherous natures. But in 
 the end, as it would seem, they also had but one 
 thought, and that to reach Fort Ungava ; for 
 there was no food left none at all. We saw 
 no tribes of Indians and no Esquimaux, for we 
 had not passed in their line of travel or settle- 
 ment. 
 
 " At last I used to dream that birds were sing- 
 ing near me a soft, delicate whirlwind of 
 sound ; and then bells all like muffled silver rang 
 through the aching, sweet air. Bits ok prayer 
 and poetry I learned when a boy flashed through 
 my mind ; equations in algebra ; the tingling 
 scream of a great buzz-saw; the breath of a racer 
 as he nears the post under the crying whip ; my 
 own voice dropping loud profanity, heard as a 
 lad from a blind ferryman ; the boom ! boom ! 
 of a mass of logs as they struck a house on a 
 flooding river and carried it away. . . . 
 
 " One day we reached the end. It was near 
 evening, and we came to the top of a wooded 
 knoll. My eyes were dancing in my head 
 with fatigue and weakness, but I could see 
 below us, on the edge of the great bay, a 
 large hut, Esquimaux lodges and Indian tepees
 
 24 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 near it. It was the Fort, my cheerless prison- 
 house." 
 
 He paused. The dog had been watching 
 him with its flaming eyes ; now it gave a low 
 growl, as though it understood and pitied. In 
 the interval of silence the storm without broke. 
 The trees began to quake and cry, the light snow 
 to beat upon the parchment windows, and the 
 chimney to splutter and moan. Presently, out 
 on the bay they could hear the young ice break 
 and come scraping up the shore. Fawdor list- 
 ened a while, and then went on, waving his hand 
 to the door as he began : " Think ! this, and 
 like that always, the ungodly strife of nature, 
 and my sick disconsolate life." 
 
 "Ever since ?" asked Pierre. 
 
 " All the time." 
 
 " Why did you not go back ? " 
 
 " I was to wait for orders, and they never 
 came." 
 
 " You were a free man, not a slave." 
 
 "The human heart has pride. At first, as 
 when I left the governor at Lachine, I said, " I 
 will never speak ; I will never ask nor bend the 
 knee. He has the power to oppress ; I can obey 
 without whining as fine a man as he.' " 
 
 " Did you not hate ? " 
 
 " At first, as only a banished man can hate.
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 25 
 
 I knew that if all had gone well I should be a 
 man high up in the Company, and here I was, 
 living like a dog in the porch of the world, 
 sometimes without other food for months than 
 frozen fish ; and for two years I was in a 
 place where we had no fire lived in a snow- 
 house, with only blubber to eat. And so year 
 after year no word ! " 
 
 " The mail came once every year from the 
 world ? " 
 
 " Yes, once a year the door of the outer life 
 was opened. A ship came into the bay, and by 
 that ship I sent out my reports. But no word 
 came from the governor, and no request went 
 from me. Once the captain of that ship took 
 me by the shoulders, and said, ' Fawdor, man, 
 this will drive you mad. Come away to Eng- 
 land leave your half-breed in charge and 
 ask the governor for a big promotion.' He did 
 not understand. Of course I said I could not 
 go. Then he turned on me he was a good 
 man and said, 'This will either make you 
 madman or saint, Fawdor.' He drew a Bible 
 from his pocket and handed it to me. 'I 've 
 used it twenty years,' he said, ' in evil and out 
 of evil, and I 've spiked it here and there ; it 's 
 a chart for heavy seas, and may you find it so, 
 my lad.'
 
 26 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 " I said little then ; but when I saw the sails 
 of his ship round a cape and vanish, all my pride 
 and strength were broken up, and I carae in a 
 heap to the ground, weeping like a child. But 
 the change did not come all at once. There 
 were two things that kept me hard." 
 
 "The girl?" 
 
 " The girl, and another. But of the young 
 lady after. I had a half-breed whose life I had 
 saved. I was kind to him always ; gave him as 
 good to eat and drink as I had myself ; divided 
 my tobacco with him ; loved him as only an 
 exile can love a comrade. He conspired with 
 the Indians to seize the Fort and stores, and 
 kill me if I resisted. I found it out." 
 
 "Thou shalt keep the faith of food and 
 blanket," said Pierre. " What did you do with 
 him?" 
 
 "The fault was not his so much as of his 
 race and his miserable past. I had loved him. 
 I sent him away ; and he never came back." 
 
 " Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve 
 men, and the heart of one woman." 
 
 "For the girl. There was the thing that 
 clamped my heart. Never a message from her 
 or her brother. Surely they knew, and yet 
 never, thought I, a good word for me to the 
 governor. They had forgotten the faith of food
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 27 
 
 and blanket. And she she must have seen 
 that I could have worshiped her had we been 
 in the same way of life. Before the better days 
 came to me I was hard against her ; hard and 
 rough at heart." 
 
 " Remember the sorrow of thine own wife." 
 Pierre's voice was gentle. 
 
 " Truly, to think hardly of no woman should 
 be always in a man's heart. But I have known 
 only one woman of my race in twenty-five 
 years ! " 
 
 " And as time went on ? " 
 
 "As time went on, and no word came, I 
 ceased to look for it. But I followed that chart 
 spiked with the captain's pencil, as he had done 
 it in season and out of season, and by and by 
 I ceased to look for any word. I even became 
 reconciled to my life. The ambitious and ach- 
 ing cares of the world dropped from me, and I 
 stood above all alone in my suffering, yet not 
 yielding. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Un- 
 der it a man " 
 
 "Goes mad or becomes a saint a saint!" 
 Pierre's voice became reverent. 
 
 Fawdor shook his head, smiling gently. "Ah 
 no, no. But I began to understand the world, 
 and I loved the north, the beautiful hard 
 north ! "
 
 28 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "But there is more?" 
 
 "Yes, the end of it all. Three days before 
 you came I got a packet of letters, not by the 
 usual yearly mail. One announced that the gov- 
 ernor was dead. Another " 
 
 "Another?" urged Pierre 
 
 "was from Her. She said that her brother, 
 on the day she wrote, had by chance come across 
 my name in the Company's records, and found 
 that I had been here a quarter of a century. 
 It was the letter of a good woman. She said 
 she thought the governor had forgotten that he 
 had sent me here as now I hope he had, for 
 that would be one thing less for him to think of 
 when he set out on the journey where the only 
 weight a man carries is the packload of his sins. 
 She also said that she had written to me twice 
 after we parted at Lachine, but had never heard 
 a word, and three years afterwards she had gone 
 to India. The letters were lost, I suppose, on 
 the way to me, somehow who can tell ? Then 
 came another thing, so strange, that it seemed 
 like the laughter of the angels at us. These 
 were her words : ' And dear Mr. Fawdor, you 
 were both wrong in that quotation, as you no 
 doubt discovered long ago.' Then she gave me 
 the sentence as it is in Cymbeline. She was 
 right, quite right ; we were both wrong. Never
 
 Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue 29 
 
 till her letter came had I looked to see. How 
 vain, how uncertain and fallible is man ! " 
 
 Pierre dropped his cigarette and stared at 
 Fawdor. " The knowledge of books is foolery, " 
 he said, slowly. " Man is the only book of life. 
 Go on." 
 
 " There was another letter from the brother, 
 who was now high up in the Company, asking 
 me to come to England, and saying that they 
 wished to promote me far, and that he and his 
 sister, with their families, would be glad to see 
 me." 
 
 " She was married, then ? " 
 
 The rashness of the suggestion made Faw- 
 dor wave his hand impatiently. He would not 
 reply to it. " I was struck down with all the 
 news," he said. " I wandered like a child out 
 into a mad storm. Illness came ; then you, who 
 have nursed me back to life. . . . And now I 
 have told all." 
 
 " Not all, Hen sur. What will you do ? " 
 
 " I am out of the world ; why tempt it all 
 again ? See how those twenty-five years were 
 twisted by a boy's vanity and a man's tyranny ! " 
 
 " But what will you do ? " persisted Pierre. 
 " You should see the faces of women and chil- 
 dren again. No man can live without that 
 sight, even as a saint."
 
 3O An Adventurer of the North 
 
 Suddenly Fawdor's face was shot over with a 
 storm of feeling. He lay very still, his thoughts 
 busy with a new world which had been disclosed 
 to him. " Youth hungers for the vanities," he 
 said, "and the middle-aged for home." He 
 took Pierre's hand. " I will go," he added. "A 
 door will open somewhere for me." 
 
 Then he turned his face to the wall. The 
 storm had ceased, the wild dog huddled quietly 
 on the hearth, and for hours the only sound was 
 the crackling of the logs as Pierre stirred the 
 fire.
 
 Little Babiche 
 
 " No, no, m'sieu' the governor, they did not 
 tell you right. I was with him, and I have 
 known Little Babiche fifteen years as long as 
 I 've known you. ... It was against the time 
 when down in your world there they have feast- 
 ings, and in the churches the grand songs and 
 many candles on the altars. Yes, Noel, that is 
 the word the day of the Great Birth. You 
 shall hear how strange it all was the thing, the 
 time, the end of it." 
 
 The governor of the great Company settled 
 back in a chair, his powerful face seamed by 
 years, his hair grey and thick still, his keen, 
 steady eyes burning under shaggy brows. He 
 had himself spent long solitary years in the wild 
 fastnesses of the north. He fastened his dark 
 eyes on Pierre, and said : " Monsieur Pierre, I 
 shall be glad to hear. It was at the time of Noel 
 yes?" 
 
 Pierre began : " You have seen it beautiful 
 and cold in the north, but never so cold and 
 beautiful as it was last year. The world was white 
 
 31
 
 32 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 with sun and ice ; the frost never melting, the 
 sun never warming just a glitter, so lovely, so 
 deadly. If only you could keep the heart warm, 
 you were not afraid. But if once just for a 
 moment the blood ran out from the heart and 
 did not come in again, the frost clamped the 
 doors shut, and there was an end of all. Ah, 
 m'sieu', when the north clinches a man's heart 
 in anger there is no pain like it for a mo- 
 ment." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; and Little Babiche ? " 
 " For ten years he carried the mails along the 
 route of Fort Ste. Mary, Fort O' Glory, Fort St. 
 Saviour, and Fort Perseverance within the circle 
 just one mail once a year, but that was enough. 
 There he was with his Esquimaux dogs on the 
 trail, going and coming, with a laugh and a word 
 for anyone that crossed his track. ' Good-day, 
 Babiche!' ' Good-day, m'sieu'!' ' How do you, 
 Babiche?' 'Well, thank the Lord, m'sieu'!' 
 * Where to and where from, Babiche ? ' 'To the 
 Great Fort by the old trail, from the Far-off 
 River, m'sieu'.' 'Come safe along, Babiche?' 
 ' Merci, m'sieu' ; the good God travels north, 
 m'sieu'.' 'Adieu, Babiche!' 'Adieu, m'sieu'!' 
 That is about the way of the thing, year after 
 year. Sometimes a night at a hut or a post, but 
 mostly alone alone except for the dogs. He
 
 Little Babiche 33 
 
 slept with them, and they slept on the mails 
 to guard : as though there should be highway- 
 men on the Prairie of the Ten Stars ! But no ! 
 it was his way, m'sieu'. Now and again I crossed 
 him on the trail, for have I not traveled to every 
 corner of the north ? We were not so great 
 friends, for well, Babiche is a man who says 
 his aves, and never was a loafer, and there was 
 no reason why he should have love for me ; but 
 we were good company when we met. I knew 
 him when he was a boy down on the Chaudiere, 
 and he always had a heart like a lion and a 
 woman. I had seen him fight ; I had seen him 
 suffer cold, and I had heard him sing. 
 
 " Well, I was up last fall to Fort St. Saviour. 
 Ho, how dull was it ! Macgregor, the trader 
 there, has brains like rubber. So, I said, I will 
 go down to Fort O' Glory. I knew some one 
 would be there it is nearer the world. So I 
 started away with four dogs and plenty of jerked 
 buffalo, and so much brown brandy as Mac- 
 gregor could squeeze out of his eye! Never, never, 
 was there such days the frost shaking like 
 steel and silver as it powdered the sunlight, the 
 white level of snow lifting and falling, and fall- 
 ing and lifting, the sky so great a travel away, 
 the air which made you cry out with pain one 
 minute and gave you joy the next. And all so
 
 34 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 wild, so lonely ! Yet I have seen hanging in 
 those plains cities all blue and red, with millions 
 of lights showing, and voices, voices everywhere, 
 like the singing of soft masses. After a time 
 in that cold up there you are no longer yourself 
 no. You move in a dream. 
 
 " Eh Hen, m'sieu', there came, I thought, a 
 dream to me one evening well, perhaps one 
 afternoon, for the days are short so short, the 
 sun just coming over a little bend of sky, and 
 sinking down like a big orange ball. I come out 
 of a tumble of little hills, and there over on the 
 plains I saw a sight ! Ragged hills of ice were 
 thrown up, as if they'd been heaved out by the 
 breaking earth, jutting here and there like 
 wedges like the teeth of a world. Alors, on 
 one crag, shaped as an anvil, I saw what struck 
 me like a blow, and I felt the blood shoot out 
 of my heart and leave it dry. I was for a min- 
 ute like a pump with no water in its throat to 
 work the piston and fetch the stream up. I 
 got sick and numb. There on that anvil of 
 snow and ice I saw a big white bear, one such 
 as you shall see within the Arctic Circle. His 
 long nose fetching out towards the bleeding sun 
 in the sky, his white coat shining. But that 
 was not the thing there was another. At 
 the feet of the bear was a body, and one
 
 Little Babiche 35 
 
 clawed foot was on that body of a man. So 
 clear was the air, the red sun shining on the 
 face as it was turned towards me, that I wonder 
 I did not at once know whose it was. You can- 
 not think, m'sieu', what that was like no. 
 But all at once I remembered the Chant of the 
 Scarlet Hunter. I spoke it quick, and the blood 
 came creeping back in here." He tapped his 
 chest with his slight forefinger. 
 
 " What was the chant ? " asked the governor, 
 who had scarce stirred a muscle since the tale 
 began. 
 
 Pierre made a little gesture of deprecation. 
 " Ah, it is perhaps a thing of foolishness, as you 
 may think " 
 
 "No, no. I have heard and seen in my 
 day," urged the governor. 
 
 " So ? Good. Yes, I remember ; you told 
 me years ago, m'sieu'. . . . 
 
 "'The blinding Trail and Night and Cold are 
 man's : mine is the trail that finds the Ancient Lodge. 
 Morning and Night, they travel with me ; my camp 
 is set by the pines, its fires are burning are burning. 
 The lost, they shall sit by my fires, and the fearful 
 ones shall seek, and the sick shall abide. I am the 
 Hunter, the Son of the North ; I am thy lover where 
 no man may love thee. With me thou shalt journey, 
 and thine the Safe Tent.'
 
 36 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "As I said, the blood came back to ray 
 heart. I turned to my dogs and gave them a 
 cut with the whip to see if I dreamed. They 
 sat back and snarled, and their wild red eyes, 
 the same as mine, kept looking at the bear and 
 the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. 
 Tell me, can you think of anything like it ? 
 the strange light, the white bear of the Pole, 
 that has no friends at all except the shooting 
 stars, the great ice plains, the quick night hur- 
 rying on, the silence such silence as no man 
 can think ! I have seen trouble flying at me in 
 a hundred ways, but this was different yes. 
 We come to the foot of the little hill. Still the 
 bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my 
 knives and my gun, the dogs began to snarl with 
 anger, and for one little step I shivered, for the 
 thing seems not natural. I was about two hun- 
 dred feet away from the bear when it turned 
 slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body. 
 The dogs all at once come huddling about me, 
 and I dropped on my knee to take aim, but the 
 bear stole away from the man and come mov- 
 ing down past us at an angle, making for the 
 plain. I could see his deep shining eyes, and 
 the steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very 
 slow and heavy, like as if he see no one and 
 care for no one, he shambled down, and in a
 
 Little Babiche 37 
 
 minute was gone behind a boulder. I ran on to 
 the man " 
 
 The governor was leaning forward, looking 
 intently, and said now, " It 's like a wild dream 
 but the north! the north is near to the 
 Strangest of All ! " 
 
 " I knelt down and lifted him up in my arms, 
 all a great bundle of furs and wool, and I got 
 my hand at last to his wrist. He was alive. It 
 was Little Babiche ! Part of his face was frozen 
 stiff. I rubbed out the frost with snow, and then 
 I forced some brandy into his mouth good 
 old H. B. C. brandy and began to call to him: 
 ' Babiche ! Babiche ! Come back, Babiche ! 
 The wolf's at the pot, Babiche!' That's the 
 way to call a hunter to his share of meat. I was 
 afraid, for the sleep of cold is the sleep of death, 
 and it is hard to call the soul back to this world. 
 But I called, and kept calling, and got him on 
 his feet, with my arm around him. I gave him 
 more brandy , and at last I almost shrieked in 
 his ear. Little by little I saw his face take on 
 the look of waking life. It was like the dawn 
 creeping over white hills and spreading into 
 day. I said to myself, What a thing it will be 
 if I can fetch him back ! For I never knew 
 one to come back after the sleep had settled on 
 them. It is too comfortable all pain gone, all
 
 38 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 trouble, the world forgot, just a kind weight in 
 all the body, as you go sinking down, down to 
 the valley, where the long hands of old com- 
 rades beckon to you, and their soft, high voices 
 cry, " Hello ! hello-o ! ' ^ 
 
 Pierre nodded his head towards the distance, 
 and a musing smile divided his lips on his white 
 teeth. Presently he folded a cigarette, and went 
 on 
 
 " I had saved something to the last, as the great 
 test ; as the one thing to open his eyes wide, if 
 they could be opened at all. Alors, there was 
 no time to lose, for the Wolf of Night was driv- 
 ing the red glow-worm down behind the world, 
 and I knew that when darkness came altogether 
 darkness and night there would be no help for 
 him. Mon Dieu ! how one sleeps in the night 
 of the north, in the beautiful wide silence ! . . . 
 So, m'sieu', just when I thought it was the time, 
 I called : ' Corinne ! Corinne ! ' Then once 
 again I said, 'P 'tite Corinne ! P 'tite Corinne ! 
 Come home ! come home ! P 'tite Corinne ! ' I 
 could see the fight in the jail of sleep. But at 
 last he killed his jailer ; the doors in his brain 
 flew open, and his mind came out through his 
 wide eyes. But he was blind a little and dazed, 
 though it was getting dark quick. I struck his 
 back hard, and spoke loud from a song that we
 
 Little Babiche 39 
 
 used to sing on the Chaudiere Babiche and 
 all of us, years ago. Mon Dieu! how I remem- 
 ber those days ! 
 
 " ' Which is the way that the sun goes ? 
 
 The way that my little one come. 
 Which is the good path over the hills ? 
 
 The path that leads to my little one's home 
 To my little one's home, m'sieu', m'sieu'!' 
 
 " That did it. ' Corinne, ma p 'the Corinne ! ' 
 he said ; but he did not look at me only 
 stretch out his hands. I caught them, and squeeze 
 them, and shook him, and made him take a step 
 forward ; then I slap him on the back again, and 
 said loud, 'Come, come, Babiche, don't you 
 know me ? See, Babiche, the snow's no sleeping- 
 bunk, and a polar bear 's no good friend.' ' Cor- 
 inne ! ' he went on, soft and slow. ' Ma p 'tite 
 Corinne ! ' He smiled to himself ; and I said, 
 ' Where 've you been, Babiche ? Lucky I found 
 you, or you 'd have been sleeping till the Great 
 Mass.' Then he looked at me straight in the 
 eyes, and something wild shot out of his. His 
 hand stretched over and caught me by the shoul- 
 der, perhaps to steady himself, perhaps because 
 be wanted to feel something human. Then he 
 looked round slow all round the plain, as if 
 to find something. At that moment a little of 
 the sun crept back, and looked up over the wall
 
 40 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 of ice, making a glow of yellow and red for a 
 moment ; and never, north or south, have I 
 seen such beauty so delicate, so awful. It was 
 like a world that its Maker had built in a fit of 
 joy, and then got tired of, and broke in pieces, 
 and blew out all its fires, and left ah yes 
 like that ! And out in the distance I I only 
 saw a bear travelling eastward." 
 The governor said slowly : 
 
 " ' And I took My staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, 
 that I might break My covenant which I had made 
 with all the people. ' ' 
 
 "Yes like that." Pierre continued : " Ba- 
 biche turned to me with a little laugh, which 
 was a sob too. ' Where is it, Pierre ? ' said he. 
 I knew he meant the bear. ' Gone to look for 
 another man,' I said, with a gay look, for I saw 
 that he was troubled. ' Come,' said he, at once. 
 As we went, he saw my dogs. He stopped short 
 and shook a little, and tears came into his eyes. 
 ' What is it, Babiche ? ' said I. He looked back 
 towards the south. ' My dogs Brandy-wine, 
 Come-along, 'Poleon, and the rest died one 
 night all of an hour. One by one they crawl 
 over to where I lay in my fur bag, and die there, 
 huddling by me and such cries such cries ! 
 There was poison or something in the frozen 
 fish I 'd given them. I loved them every one ;
 
 Little Babiche 41 
 
 and then there was the mails, the year's mails 
 how should they be brought on ? That was a 
 bad thought, for I had never missed never in 
 ten years. There was one bunch of letters which 
 the governor said to me was worth more than all 
 the rest of the mail put together, and I was to 
 bring it to Fort St. Saviour, or not show my face 
 to him again. 
 
 " 'I leave the dogs there in the snow, and came 
 on with the sled, carrying all the mails. Ah, 
 the blessed saints, how heavy the sled got, and 
 how lonely it was ! Nothing to speak to no 
 one, no thing, day after day. At last I go to 
 cry to the dogs, " Come-along ! 'Poleon ! Bran- 
 dy-wine ! " like that ! I think I see them there, 
 but they never bark and they never snarl, and 
 they never spring to the snap of the whip. . . . 
 I was alone. Oh, my head ! my head ! If there 
 was only something alive to look at, besides the 
 wide white plain, and the bare hills of ice, and 
 the sun-dogs in the sky ! Now I was wild, next 
 hour I was like a child, then I gnashed my teeth 
 like a wolf at the sun, and at last I got on my 
 knees. The tears froze my eye-lids shut, but I 
 kept saying, "Ah, my great Friend, my Je"su, just 
 something, something with the breath of life ! 
 Leave me not all alone ! " And I got sleepier 
 all the time.
 
 42 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 '"I was sinking, sinking, so quiet and easy, 
 when all at once I felt something beside me ; I 
 could hear it breathing, but I could not open my 
 eyes at first, for, as I say, the lashes were froze. 
 Something touch me, smell me, and a nose was 
 push against my chest. I put out my hand ver* 
 soft and touch it. I had no fear ; I was so glad 
 I could have hugged it, but I did not I drew 
 back my hand quiet and rub my eyes. In a little 
 I can see. There stand the thing a polar bear 
 
 not ten feet away, its red eyes shining. On 
 my knees I spoke to it, talk to it, as I would to 
 a man. It was like a great wild dog, fierce, yet 
 kind, and I fed it with the fish which had been 
 for Brandy-wine and the rest but not to kill 
 it ! and it did not die. 
 
 " 'That night I lie down in my bag no, I was 
 not afraid ! The bear lie beside me, between me 
 and the sled. Ah, it was warm ! Day after day 
 we travel together, and camp together at night 
 
 ah, sweet Sainte Anne, how good it was, my- 
 self and the wild beast such friends, alone in the 
 north ! But to-day a little while ago some- 
 thing went wrong with me, and I got sick in the 
 head, a swimming like a tide wash in and out. I 
 fell down asleep. When I wake I find you 
 here beside me that is all. The bear must 
 have drag me here.' "
 
 Little Babiche 43 
 
 Pierre stuck a splinter into the fire to light 
 another cigarette, and paused as if expecting the 
 governor to speak, but no word coming, he con- 
 tinued : " I had my arm around him while we 
 talked and come slowly down the hill. Soon he 
 stopped and said, ' This is the place.' It was a 
 cave of ice, and we went in. Nothing was there 
 to see except the sled. Babiche stopped short. 
 It come to him now that his good comrade was 
 gone. He turned, and looked out, and called, 
 but there was only the empty night, the ice, and 
 the stars. Then he come back, sat down on the 
 sled, and the tears fall. ... I lit my spirit- 
 lamp, boiled coffee, got pemmican from my bag, 
 and I tried to make him eat. No, he would only 
 drink the coffee. At last he said to me, ' What 
 day is this, Pierre ? ' ' It is the day of the Great 
 Birth, Babiche,' I said. He made the sign of 
 the cross, and was quiet, so quiet ! but he smile 
 to himself, and kept saying in a whisper, ' Ma 
 p'tite Corinne ! Ma p'tite Corinne ! ' The 
 next day we come on safe, and in a week I was 
 back at Fort St. Saviour with Babiche and all 
 the mails, and that most wonderful letter of the 
 governor's." 
 
 " The letter was to tell a factor that his sick 
 child in the hospital at Quebec was well," the
 
 44 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 governor responded quietly : " Who was ' Ma 
 p'tite Corinne,' Pierre ? " 
 
 "His wife in heaven; and his child on 
 the Chaudiere, m'sieu'. The child came and 
 the mother went on the same day of the Great 
 Birth. He has a soft heart that Babiche ! " 
 
 " And the white bear so strange a thing ! " 
 
 " M'sieu', who can tell? The world is young 
 up here. When it was all young, man and beast 
 were good comrades, maybe." 
 
 " Ah, maybe. What shall be done with Little 
 Babiche, Pierre?" 
 
 " He will never be the same again on the old 
 trail, m'sieu' ! " 
 
 There was silence for a long time, but at last 
 the governor said, musing, almost tenderly, for 
 he never had a child : " Ma p'tite Corinne ! 
 Little Babiche shall live near his child, Pierre. 
 I will see to that." 
 
 Pierre said no word, but got up, took off his 
 hat to the governor, and sat down again.
 
 At Point o' Bugles 
 
 "John York, John York, -where art thou gone, 
 John York?" 
 
 " What 's that, Pierre ? " said Sir Duke Law- 
 less, starting to his feet and peering round. 
 
 " Hush ! " was Pierre's reply. " Wait for the 
 rest. . . . There!" 
 
 " King of my heart, king of my heart, I am 
 out on the trail of thy bugles" 
 
 Sir Duke was about to speak, but Pierre lifted 
 a hand in warning, and then through the still 
 night there came the long cry of a bugle, rising, 
 falling, strangely clear, echoing and echoing 
 again, and dying away. A moment, and the call 
 was repeated, with the same effect, and again a 
 third time ; then all was still, save for the flight 
 of birds roused from the desire of night, and the 
 long breath of some animal in the woods sinking 
 back to sleep. 
 
 Their camp was pitched on the south shore 
 of Hudson's Bay, many leagues to the west of 
 Rupert House, not far from the Moose River. 
 Looking north was the wide expanse of bay, 
 
 45
 
 46 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 dotted with sterile islands here and there ; to the 
 east were the barren steppes of Labrador, and all 
 round them the calm, incisive air of a late Septem- 
 ber, when winter begins to shake out his frosty cur- 
 tains and hang them on the cornice of the north, 
 despite the high protests of the sun. The two 
 adventurers had come together after years of 
 separation, and Sir Duke had urged Pierre to 
 fare away with him to Hudson's Bay, which he 
 had never seen, although he had shares in the 
 great Company, left him by his uncle the ad- 
 miral. 
 
 They were camped in a hollow, to the right a 
 clump of hardy trees, with no great deal of foli- 
 age but some stoutness ; to the left a long finger 
 of land running out into the water like a wedge, 
 the most eastern point of the western shore of 
 Hudson's Bay. It was high and bold, and, 
 somehow, had a fine dignity and beauty. From 
 it a path led away north to a great log-fort called 
 King's House. 
 
 Lawless saw Pierre half rise and turn his head, 
 listening, Presently he too heard the sound 
 the soft crash of crisp grass under the feet. He 
 raised himself to a sitting posture and waited. 
 
 Presently a tall figure came out of the dusk 
 into the light of their fire, and a long arm waved 
 a greeting at them. Both Lawless and Pierre
 
 At Point o' Bugles 47 
 
 rose to their feet. The stranger was dressed in 
 buckskin, he carried a rifle, and around his 
 shoulder was a strong yellow cord, from which 
 hung a bugle. 
 
 "How.'" he said, with a nod, and drew near 
 the fire, stretching out his hands to the blaze. 
 
 "How!" said Lawless and Pierre. 
 
 After a moment Lawless drew from his blanket 
 a flask of brandy, and without a word handed it 
 over the fire. The fingers of the two men met 
 in the flicker of the flames, a sort of bond by fire, 
 and the stranger raised the flask. 
 
 " Chin-chin/" he said, and drank, breathing a 
 long sigh of satisfaction afterwards as he handed 
 it back ; but it was Pierre that took it, and 
 again fingers touched in the bond of fire. Pierre 
 passed the flask to Lawless, who lifted it. 
 
 " Chin-chin /" he said, drank, and gave the 
 flask to Pierre again, who did as did the others, 
 and said "Chin-chin!" also. 
 
 By that salutation of the east, given in the far 
 north, Lawless knew that he had met one who 
 had lighted fires where men are many and close 
 to the mile as holes in a sieve. 
 
 They all sat down, and tobacco went round, 
 the stranger offering his, while the two others, 
 with true hospitality, accepted. 
 
 "We heard you over there it was you?"
 
 48 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 said Lawless, nodding towards Point o' Bugles, 
 and glancing at the bugle the other carried. 
 
 "Yes, it was me," was the reply. "Some one 
 always does it twice a year: on the 25th Sep- 
 tember and the 25th March. I 've done it now 
 without a break for ten years, until it has got to 
 be a sort of religion with me, and the whole 
 thing 's as real as if King George and John York 
 were talking. As I tramp to the point or swing 
 away back, in summer barefooted, and in winter 
 on my snow-shoes, to myself I seem to be John 
 York on the trail of the king's bugles. I 've 
 thought so much about the whole thing, I 've 
 read so many of John York's letters and how 
 many times one of the king's! that now I 
 scarcely know which is the bare story, and which 
 the bits I 've dreamed as I 've tramped over the 
 plains or sat in the quiet at King's House, spell- 
 ing out little by little the man's life, from the 
 cues I found in his journal, in the Company's 
 papers, and in that one letter of the king's." 
 
 Pierre's eyes were now more keen than those 
 of Lawless : for years he had known vaguely of 
 this legend of Point o' Bugles. 
 
 "You know it all," he said. "Begin at the 
 beginning : how and when you first heard, how 
 you got the real story, and never mind which is 
 taken from the papers and which from your own
 
 At Point o' Bugles 49 
 
 mind if it all fits in it is all true, for the lie 
 never fits in right with the square truth. If you 
 have the footprints and the handprints you can 
 tell the whole man ; if you have the horns of a 
 deer you knoAv it as if you had killed it, skinned 
 it, and potted it." 
 
 The stranger stretched himself before the fire 
 nodding at his hosts as he did so, and then 
 began : 
 
 "Well, a word about myself, first," he said, "so 
 you'll know just where you are. I was full up 
 of life in London town and India, and that 's a 
 fact. I'd plenty of friends and little money, and 
 my will was n't equal to the task of keeping out 
 of the hands of the Jews. I did n't know what 
 to do, but I had to go somewhere, that was clear. 
 Where ? An accident decided it. I came across 
 an old journal of my great-grandfather, John 
 York my name's Dick Adderley and just as 
 if a chain had been put round my leg and I'd 
 been jerked over by the tipping of the world, I 
 had to come to Hudson's Bay. John York's 
 journal was a thing to sit up nights to read. It 
 came back to England after he'd had his fill of 
 Hudson's Bay and the earth beneath, and had 
 gone, as he himself said on the last page of the 
 journal, to follow the king's buglers in 'the land 
 that is far off.' God and the devil were strong
 
 5O An Adventurer of the North 
 
 in old John York. I did n't lose much time 
 after I'd read the journal. I went to Hudson's 
 Bay House in London, got a place in the Com- 
 pany, by the help of the governor himself, and 
 came out. I 've learned the rest of the history 
 of old John York the part that never got to 
 England; for here at King's House there's a 
 holy tradition that the real John York belongs 
 to it and to it alone." 
 
 Adderley laughed a little. " King's House 
 guards John York's memory, and it 's as fresh 
 and real here now as though he 'd died yester- 
 day, though it's forgotten in England, and by 
 most who bear his name, and the present Prince 
 of Wales maybe never heard of the man who was 
 a close friend of the prince regent, the first gen- 
 tleman of Europe." 
 
 "That sounds sweet gossip," said Lawless 
 with a smile; "we're waiting." 
 
 Adderley continued : "John York was an hon- 
 est man, of wholesome sport, jovial, and never 
 shirking with the wine, commendable in his 
 appetite, of rollicking soul and proud temper, 
 and a gay dog altogether gay, but to be 
 trusted, too, for he had a royal heart. In the 
 coltish days of the prince regent he was a boon 
 comrade, but never did he stoop to flattery, nor 
 would he hedge when truth should be spoken, as
 
 At Point o' Bugles 51 
 
 ofttimes it was needed with the royal blade, for 
 at times he would forget that a prince was yet a 
 man, topped with the accident of a crown. 
 Never prince had truer friend, and so in his best 
 hours he thought, himself, and if he ever was 
 just and showed his better part it was to the bold 
 country gentleman who never minced praise or 
 blame, but said his say and devil take the end of 
 it. In truth, the prince was wilful, and once he 
 did a thing which might have given a twist to the 
 fate of England. Hot for the love of women, 
 and with some dash of real romance in him, too 
 else even as a prince he might have had shal- 
 lower love and service he called John York 
 one day and said : 
 
 "'To-night at seven, Squire John, you'll stand 
 with me while I put the seal on the Gates of 
 Eden ! ' and, when the other did not guess his 
 import, added: 'Sir Mark Selby is your neigh- 
 bour his daughter's for my arms to-night. 
 You know her, handsome Sally Selby she's 
 for your prince, for good or ill.' 
 
 "John York did not understand at first, for he 
 could not think the prince had anything in mind 
 but some hot escapade of love. When Mistress 
 Selby's name was mentioned his heart stood still, 
 for she had been his choice, the dear apple of 
 his eye, since she had bloomed towards woman-
 
 52 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 hood. He had set all his hopes upon her, tar- 
 rying till she should have seen some little life 
 before he asked her for his wife. He had her 
 father's God-speed to his wooing, for he was a 
 man whom all men knew honest and generous as 
 the sun, and only choleric with the mean thing. 
 She, also, had given him good cause to think 
 that he should one day take her to his home, a 
 loved and honoured wife. His impulse, when 
 her name passed the prince's lips, was to draw 
 his sword, for he would have called an emperor 
 to account ; but presently he saw the real mean- 
 ing of the speech ; that the prince would marry 
 her that night." 
 
 Here the story-teller paused again, and Pierre 
 said softly, inquiringly : 
 
 " You began to speak in your own way, and 
 you 've come to another way like going from 
 an almanac to the Mass." 
 
 The other smiled. " That's so. I 've heard 
 it told by old Shearton at King's House, who 
 speaks as if he'd stepped out of Shakespeare, 
 and somehow I seem to hear him talking, and 
 I tell it as he told it last year to the governor of 
 the Company. Besides, I 've listened these seven 
 years to his style." 
 
 "It's a strange beginning unwritten history 
 of England," said Sir Duke musingly.
 
 At Point o* Bugles 53 
 
 "You shall hear stranger things yet," an- 
 swered Adderley. "John York could hardly 
 believe it at first, for the thought of such a thing 
 never had place in his mind. Besides, the prince 
 knew how he had looked upon the lady, and he 
 could not have thought his comrade would come 
 in between him and his happiness. Perhaps it 
 was the difficulty, adding spice to the affair, that 
 sent the prince to the appeal of private marriage 
 to win the lady, and John York always held that 
 he loved her truly then, the first and only real 
 affection of his life. The lady who can tell 
 what won her over from the honest gentleman to 
 the faithless prince ? That soul of vanity which 
 wraps about the real soul of every woman fell 
 down at last before the highest office in the land, 
 and the gifted bearer of the office. But the 
 noble spirit in her brought him to offer marriage, 
 when he might otherwise have offered, say, a 
 barony. There is a record of that and more in 
 John York's memoirs which I will tell you, for 
 they have settled in my mind like an old song, 
 and I learned them long ago. I give you John 
 York's words, written by his own hand : 
 
 " ' I did not think when I beheld thee last, 
 dearest flower of the world's garden, that I should 
 see thee bloom in that wide field, rank with the 
 sorrows of royal favor. How did my foolish
 
 54 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 eyes fill with tears when I watched thee, all rose 
 and gold in thy cheeks and hair, the light tailing 
 on thee through the chapel window, putting thy 
 pure palm into my prince's, swearing thy life 
 away, selling the very blossoms of earth's or- 
 chards for the briar beauty of a hidden vine- 
 yard ! I saw the flying glories of thy cheeks, 
 the halcyon weather of thy smile, the delicate 
 lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy 
 step, and, at that moment, I mourned for thy 
 sake that thou wert not the dullest wench in the 
 land, for then thou hadst been spared thy miser- 
 ies ; thou hadst been saved the torture-boot of 
 a lost love and a disacknowledged wifedom. 
 Yet I could not hide from me that thou wert 
 happy at that great moment when he swore to 
 love and cherish thee till death ye parted. Ah, 
 George, my prince, my king, how wickedly thou 
 didst break thy vows with both of us who loved 
 thee well, through good and ill report for they 
 spake evil of thee, George ; aye, the meanest of 
 thy subjects spake lightly of their king when 
 with that sweet soul secretly hid away in the far- 
 thest corner of thy kingdom, thou soughtst di- 
 vorce from thy later Caroline, whom thou, 
 unfaithful, didst charge with infidelity. When, 
 at last, thou didst turn again to the partner of 
 thy youth, thy true wife in the eyes of God, it
 
 At Point o' Bugles 55 
 
 was too late. Thou didst promise me that thou 
 wouldst never take another wife, never put our 
 dear heart away, though she could not after 
 our miserable laws bear thee princes. Thou 
 didst break thy promise, yet she forgave thee, 
 and I forgave thee, for well we knew that thou 
 wouldst pay a heavy reckoning, and that in the 
 hour when thou shouldst cry to us we might not 
 come to thee ; that in the days when age and 
 sorrow and vast troubles should oppress thee, 
 thou wouldst long for the true hearts who loved 
 thee for thyself and not for aught thou couldst 
 give, or aught that thou wert, save as a man. 
 
 " ' When thou didst proclaim thy purpose tc 
 take Caroline to wife, I pleaded with thee, I was 
 wroth with thee. Thy one plea was succession. 
 Succession ! Succession ! What were a hundred 
 dynasties beside that precious life, eaten by 
 shame and sorrow ? It were easy for others, 
 not thy children, to come after thee, to rule as 
 well as thee, as must even now be the case, for 
 thou hast no lawful child save that one in the 
 loneliest corner of thy English vineyard alack! 
 alack ! I warned thee, George ; I pleaded, and 
 thou didst drive me out with words ill-suited to 
 thy friend who loved thee. 
 
 " ' I did not fear thee ; I would have forced 
 thee to thy knees or made thee fight me, had
 
 56 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 not some good spirit cried to my heart that thou 
 wert her husband, and that we both had loved 
 thee. I dared not listen to the brutal thing 
 thou hintedst at that now I might fatten where 
 I had hungered. Thou hadst to answer for the 
 baseness of that thought to the King of kings, 
 when thou wentest forth alone ; no subject, 
 courtier, friend, wife or child to do thee service, 
 journeying not en prince, George; no, not 
 en prince .' but as a naked soul to God. 
 
 "'Thou saidst to me: "Get thee gone, 
 John York, where I shall no more see thee." 
 And when I returned, " Wouldst thou have me 
 leave thy country, sir?" thou answeredst, "Blow 
 thy quarrelsome soul to the stars where my far- 
 thest bugle cries!" Then I said : "I go, sir, till 
 thou callest me again and after : but not till 
 thou hast honored the child of thy honest wed- 
 lock ; till thou hast secured thy wife to the end 
 of her life against all manner of trouble save 
 the shame of thy disloyalty." There was no 
 more for me to do, for my deep love itself for- 
 bade my staying longer within reach of the noble, 
 deserted soul. And so I saw the chastened 
 glory of her face no more, nor nevermore beheld 
 her perfectness.' " 
 
 Adderley paused once more, and, after refill- 
 ing his pipe in silence, continued :
 
 At Point o' Bugles 57 
 
 " That was the heart of the thing. His soul 
 sickened of the rank world, as he called it, and 
 he came out to the Hudson's Bay country, leav- 
 ing his estates in care of his nephew, but taking 
 many stores and great chests of clothes and a 
 shipload of furniture, instruments of music, 
 more than a thousand books, some good pic- 
 tures, and great stores of wine. Here he came 
 and stayed, an officer of the Company, building 
 King's House, and filling it with all the fine 
 things he had brought with him, making in this 
 far north a little palace in the wilderness. Here 
 he lived, his great heart growing greater in this 
 wide, sinewy world, King's House a place of pil- 
 grimage for all the Company's men in the north ; 
 a noble gentleman in a sweet exile, loving what 
 he could no more, what he did no more, see. 
 
 " Twice a year he went to that point yonder 
 and blew this bugle, no man knew why or where- 
 fore, year in and year out, till 1817. Then there 
 came a letter to him with great seals, which be- 
 gan : 'John York, John York, where art thou 
 gone, John York ? ' Then followed a score of 
 sorrowful sentences, full of petulance, too, for it 
 was as John York foretold, his prince longed for 
 the true souls whom he had cast off. But he 
 called too late, for the neglected wife died from 
 the shock of her prince's longing message to
 
 58 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 her, and when, by the same mail, John York 
 knew that, he would not go back to England to 
 the king. But twice every year he went to yon- 
 der point and spoke out the king's word to him : 
 'John York, John York, where art thou gone, 
 John York ? ' and gave the words of his own 
 letter in reply : ' King of my heart, king of 
 my heart, I am out on the trail of thy bugles.' 
 To this he added three calls of the bugle, as you 
 have heard." 
 
 Adderley handed the bugle to Lawless, who 
 looked at it with deep interest and passed it on 
 to Pierre. 
 
 "When he died," Adderley continued, "he 
 left the house, the fittings and the stores to the 
 officers of the Company who should be sta- 
 tioned there, with a sum of money yearly, pro- 
 vided that twice in twelve months the bugle 
 should be blown as you have heard it, and those 
 words called out." 
 
 "Why did he do that ?" asked Lawless, nod- 
 ding towards the point. 
 
 "Why do they swing the censers at the 
 Mass ? " interjected Pierre. " Man has signs for 
 memories, and one man seeing another's sign 
 will remember his own." 
 
 "You stay because you like it at King's 
 House ? " asked Lawless of Adderley.
 
 At Point o' Bugles 59 
 
 The other stretched himself lazily to the fire 
 and, " I am at home," he said. " I have no 
 cares. I had all there was of that other world ; 
 I 've not had enough of this. You '11 come 
 with me to King's House to-morrow ? " he 
 added. 
 
 To their quick assent he rejoined : " You '11 
 never want to leave. You '11 stay on." 
 
 To this Lawless replied, shaking his head : 
 " I have a wife and child in England." 
 
 But Pierre did not reply. He lifted the 
 bugle, mutely asking a question of Adderley, 
 who as mutely replied, and then, with it in his 
 hand, left the other two beside the fire. 
 
 A few minutes later they heard, with three 
 calls of the bugle from the Point afterwards, 
 Pierre's voice : 
 
 "John York, John York, where art thou gone, 
 John York?" 
 
 Then came the reply : 
 
 " King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out 
 on the trail of thy bugles"
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 
 
 Just at the point where the Peace River first 
 hugs the vast outpost hills of the Rockies, be- 
 fore it hurries timorously on, through an unex- 
 plored region, to Fort St. John, there stood a 
 hut. It faced the west, and was built half-way 
 up Clear Mountain. In winter it had snows 
 above it and below it; in summer it had snow 
 above it and a very fair stretch of trees and 
 grass, while the river flowed on the same winter 
 and summer. It was a lonely country. Travel- 
 ing north, you would have come to the Turna- 
 gain River; west to the Frying Pan Mountains ; 
 south, to a goodly land. But from the hut you 
 had no outlook towards the south ; your eye 
 came plump against a hard, lofty hill, like a wall 
 between heaven and earth. It is strange, too, 
 that, when you are in the far north, you do not 
 look towards the south until the north turns an 
 iron hand upon you and refuses the hospitality 
 of food and fire ; your eyes are drawn towards 
 the Pole by that charm deadly and beautiful 
 60
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 6l 
 
 for which men have given up three points of the 
 compass, with their pleasures and ease, to seek a 
 grave solitude, broken only by the beat of a 
 musk-ox's hoofs, the long breath of the caribou, 
 or the wild cry of the puma. 
 
 Sir Duke Lawless had felt this charm, and 
 had sworn that one day he would again leave 
 his home in Devon and his house in Pont 
 Street and, finding Pierre, Shon M'Gann and 
 others of his old comrades, together they would 
 travel into those austere yet pleasant wilds. He 
 kept his word, found Shon M'Gann, and on an 
 autumn day of a year not so long ago lounged 
 in this hut on Clear Mountain. They had had 
 three months of travel and sport, and were filled, 
 but not sated, with the joy of the hunter. They 
 were very comfortable, for their host, Pourcette, 
 the French Canadian, had fire and meat in 
 plenty, and, if silent, was attentive to their com- 
 fort a little, black-bearded, grey-headed man, 
 with heavy brows over small, vigilant eyes, deft 
 with his fingers and an excellent sportsman, as 
 could be told from the skins heaped in all the 
 corners of the large hut. 
 
 The skins were not those of mere foxes or 
 martens or deer, but of mountain lions and 
 grizzlies. There were besides many soft, tiger- 
 like skins, which Sir Duke did not recognize.
 
 62 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 He kept looking at them, and at last went over 
 and examined one. 
 
 " What's this, Monsieur Pourcette ? " he said, 
 feeling it as it lay on the top of the pile. 
 
 The little man pushed the log on the fire- 
 place with his moccasined foot before he re- 
 plied: "Of a puma, m'sieu'." 
 
 Sir Duke smoothed it with his hand. "I 
 didn't know there were pumas here." 
 
 "Faith, Sir Duke" 
 
 Sir Duke Lawless turned on Shon quickly. 
 "You're forgetting again, Shon. There's no 
 'Sir Dukes' between us. What you were to me 
 years ago on the wallyby-track and the buffalo- 
 trail you are now, and I 'm the same also; 
 M'Gann and Lawless and no other." 
 
 "Well, then, Lawless, it's true enough as he 
 says it, for I 've seen more than wan skin brought 
 in, though I niver clapped eye on the beast 
 alive. There 's few men go huntin' them av 
 their own free will, not more than they do griz- 
 zlies; but, bedad, this Frinch gintleman has 
 either the luck o' the world, or the gift o' that 
 man ye tould me of that slew the wild boars in 
 anciency. Look at that, now: there's thirty or 
 forty puma-skins, and I 'd take my oath there 
 isn't another man in the country that 's shot half 
 that in his lifetime."
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 63 
 
 Pourcette's eyes were on the skins, not on 
 the men, and he did not appear to listen. He 
 sat leaning forward, with a strange look on his 
 face. Presently he got up, came over, and 
 stroked the skins softly. A queer chuckling 
 noise came from his throat. 
 
 "It was good sport?" asked Lawless, feeling 
 a new interest in him. 
 
 "The grandest sport but it is not so easy," 
 answered the old man. "The grizzly comes on 
 you bold and strong; you know your danger 
 right away, and have it out. So ! But the puma 
 comes God, how the puma comes!" He broke 
 off, his eyes burning bright under his bushy 
 brows and his body arranging itself into an atti- 
 tude of expectation and alertness. 
 
 "You have travelled far. The sun goes down. 
 You build a fire and cook your meat, and then 
 good tea and the tabac. It is ver' fine. You 
 hear the loon crying on the water, or the last 
 whistle of the heron up the pass. The lights in 
 the sky come out and shine through a thin mist 
 there is nothing like that mist, it is so fine 
 and soft. Allans! You are sleepy. You bless 
 the good God. You stretch pine branches, wrap 
 in your blanket, and lie down to sleep. If it is 
 winter and you have a friend, you lie close. It 
 is all quiet. As you sleep, something comes. It
 
 64 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 slides along the ground on its belly, like a 
 snake. It is a pity if you have not ears that feel 
 the whole body as ears. For there is a swift 
 lunge, a snarl ah, you should hear it! the 
 thing has you by the throat, and there is an 
 end!" 
 
 The old man had acted all the scenes : a side- 
 long glance, a little gesture, a movement of the 
 body, a quick, harsh breath without emphatic 
 excitement, yet with a reality and force that 
 fascinated his two listeners. When he paused, 
 Shon let go a long breath, and Lawless looked 
 with keen inquiry at their entertainer. This al- 
 most unnatural, yet quiet intensity had behind 
 it something besides the mere spirit of the 
 sportsman. Such exhibitions of feeling generally 
 have an unusual personal interest to give them 
 point and meaning. 
 
 "Yes, that 's wonderful, Pourcette," he said; 
 "but that's when the puma has things its own 
 way. How is it when these come off?" He 
 stroked the soft furs under his hand. 
 
 The man laughed, yet without a sound the 
 inward, stealthy laugh, as from a knowledge 
 wicked in its very suggestiveness. His eyes ran 
 from Lawless to Shon, and back again. He put 
 his hand on his mouth, as though for silence, 
 stole noiselessly over to the wall, took down his
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 6$ 
 
 gun quietly, and turned around. Then he spoke 
 softly : 
 
 "To kill the puma, you must watch always 
 watch. You will see his yellow eyes sometimes 
 in a tree; you must be ready before he springs. 
 You will hear his breath at night as you pretend 
 to sleep, and you wait till you see his foot steal 
 out of the shadow then you have him. From 
 a mountain wall you watch in the morning, and, 
 when you see him, you follow, and follow, and 
 do not rest till you have found him. You must 
 never miss fire, for he has great strength and a 
 mad tooth. But when you have got him, he is 
 worth all. You cannot eat the grizzly he is 
 too thick and coarse ; but the puma well, you 
 had him for the pot to-night. Was he not good ? " 
 
 Lawless's brows ran up in surprise. Shon 
 spoke quickly : 
 
 "Heaven above!" he burst out. "Was it 
 puma we had betune the teeth ? And what 's 
 puma but an almighty cat ? Sure, though, it 
 wint as tender as pullets, for all that, but I wish 
 you had n't tould us." 
 
 The old man stood leaning on his gun, 
 his chin on his hands as they covered the 
 muzzle, his eyes fixed on something in his 
 memory, the vision of incidents he had lived or 
 seen.
 
 66 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 Lawless went over to the fire and relit his 
 pipe. Shon followed him. They both watched 
 Pourcette. 
 
 "D'ye think he's mad?" asked Shon in a 
 whisper. 
 
 Lawless shook his head. " Mad ? No ! But 
 there 's more in his puma-hunting than appears. 
 How long has he lived here, did he say ? " 
 
 " Four years, and durin' that time yours and 
 mine are the only white faces he has seen, except 
 one." 
 
 " Except one. Well, whose was the one ? 
 Maybe there's a story in that." 
 
 " Faith, Lawless, there's a story worth the 
 hearin', I 'm thinkin', to every white man in 
 this country. For the three years I was in the 
 mounted police I could count a story for all the 
 days o' the calendar, and not all o' them would 
 make you happy to hear." 
 
 Pourcette turned round to them. He seemed 
 to be listening to Shon's words. Going to the 
 wall he hung up the rifle, then he came to the 
 fire and stood holding out his hands to the blaze. 
 He did not look in the least mad, but like a man 
 who was dominated by some one thought, more 
 or less weird. Short and slight, and a little 
 bent, but more from habit the habit of listen- 
 ing and watching than from age, his face had
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 67 
 
 a stern kind of earnestness and loneliness, and 
 nothing at all of insanity. 
 
 Presently Lawless went to a corner, and from 
 his kit drew forth a flask. The old man saw, and 
 immediately brought out a wooden cup. There 
 were two on the shelf, and Shon pointed to the 
 other. Pourcette took no notice. Shon went 
 over to get it, but Pourcette laid a hand on his 
 arm: "Not that!" he said. 
 
 " For ornainint ! " said Shon, laughing, and 
 then his eyes were arrested by a suit of buckskin 
 and a cap of beaver, hanging on the wall. He 
 turned them over, and then suddenly drew back 
 his hand, for he saw in the back of the jacket a 
 knife-slit. There was blood also on the buck- 
 skin. 
 
 " Holy Mary ! " he said, and retreated. 
 Lawless had not noticed ; he was pouring out 
 the liquor. He had handed the cup first to 
 Pourcette, who raised it towards a gun hung 
 above the fireplace, and said something under 
 his breath. 
 
 "A dramatic little fellow! " thought Lawless ; 
 " The spirit of his forefathers a good deal of 
 heart, a little of the poseur ." 
 
 Then hearing Shon's exclamation, he turned. 
 
 " It's an ugly sight," said Shon, pointing to 
 the jacket. They both looked at Pourcette, ex-
 
 68 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 pecting him to speak. The old man reached to 
 the coat, and, turning it so that the cut and the 
 blood were hid, ran his hand down it caressingly. 
 
 "Ah, poor Jo! poor Jo Gordineer ! " he 
 said ; then he came over once more to the fire, 
 sat down, and held out his hands to the fire, 
 shaking his head. 
 
 " For God's sake, Lawless, give me a drink ! " 
 said Shon. Their eyes met, and there was the 
 same look in the faces of both. When Shon had 
 drunk, he said : " So, that's what 's come to our 
 old friend, Jo dead killed or murdered " 
 
 " Do n't speak so loud! " said Lawless. " Let 
 us get the story from him first." 
 
 Years before, when Shon M'Gann and Pierre 
 and Lawless had sojourned in the Pipi Valley, 
 Jo Gordineer had been with them, as stupid 
 and true a man as ever drew in his buckle in a 
 hungry land, or let it out to much corn and oil. 
 When Lawless returned to find Shon and others 
 of his companions, he had asked for Gordineer. 
 But not Shon nor any one else could tell aught 
 of him ; he had wandered north to outlying 
 goldfields, and then had disappeared completely. 
 But there, as it would seem, his coat and cap 
 hung, and his rifle, dust covered, kept guard 
 over the fire. 
 
 Shon went over to the coat, did as Pourcette
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 69 
 
 had done, and said : " Is it gone y* are, Jo, wid 
 your slow tongue and your big heart ? Wan by 
 wan the lads are off." 
 
 Pourcette, without any warning, began speak- 
 ing, but in a very quiet tone at first, as if 
 unconscious of the others : 
 
 " Poor Jo Gordineer ! Yes, he is gone. He 
 was my friend so tall, and such a hunter. We 
 were at the Ding-Dong goldfields together. 
 When luck went bad, I said to him : 'Come, we 
 will go where there is plenty of wild meat, and a 
 summer more beautiful than in the south.' I 
 did not want to part from him, for once, when 
 some miner stole my claim, and I fought, he 
 stood by me. But in some things he was a little 
 child. That was from his big heart. Well, he 
 would go, he said ; and we come away." 
 
 He suddenly became silent ; and shook his 
 head, and spoke under his breath. 
 
 "Yes," said Lawless quietly, "you went 
 away. What then ? " 
 
 He looked up quickly, as though just aware 
 of their presence, and continued : 
 
 "Well, the other followed, as I said, and " 
 
 "No, Pourcette," interposed Lawless, "you 
 didn't say. Who was the other that followed ?" 
 
 The old man looked at him gravely, and a 
 little severely, and continued :
 
 jo An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "As I said, Gawdor followed he and an 
 Indian. Gawdor thought we were going for 
 gold, because I had said I knew a place in the 
 north where there was gold in a river I know 
 the place, but that is no matter. We did not go 
 for gold just then. Gawdor hated Jo Gordi- 
 neer. There was a half-breed girl. She was 
 fine to look at. She would have gone to Gor- 
 dineer if he had beckoned, any time; but he 
 waited he was very slow, except with his finger 
 on a gun; he waited too long. Gawdor was 
 mad for the girl. He knew why her feet came 
 slow to the door when he knocked. He would 
 have quarrelled with Jo, if he had dared ; Gordi- 
 neer was too quick a shot. He would have 
 killed him from behind ; but it was known in 
 the camp that he was no friend of Gordineer, 
 and it was not safe." 
 
 Again Pourcette was silent. Lawless put on 
 his knee a new pipe filled with tobacco. The 
 little man took it, lighted it, and smoked on in 
 silence for a time undisturbed. Shon broke the 
 silence, by a whisper to Lawless : 
 
 "Jo was a quiet man, as patient as a priest ; 
 but when his blood came up, there was trouble in 
 the land. Do you remimber whin " 
 
 Lawless interrupted him and motioned towards 
 Pourcette. The old man, after a few puffs, held
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 7 1 
 
 the pipe on his knee, disregarding it. Lawless 
 silently offered him some more whisky, but he 
 shook his head. Presently he again took up the 
 thread : 
 
 " Bien, we travelled slow up through the 
 Smoky River country, and beyond into a wild 
 land. We had bully sport as we went. Some- 
 times I heard shots far away behind us ; but 
 Gordineer said it was my guess, for we saw 
 nobody. But I had a feeling. Never mind. 
 At last we come to the Peace River. It was in 
 the early autumn like this, when the land is full 
 of comfort. What is there like it ? Nothing. 
 The mountains have colours like a girl's eyes ; 
 the smell of the trees is sweet like a child's 
 breath, and the grass feels for the foot and lifts 
 it with a little soft spring. We said we could 
 live here forever. We built this house high up, 
 as you see, first, because it is good to live high 
 it puts life in the blood; and, as Gordineer 
 said, it is noble to look far over the world, every 
 time your house door is open, or the parchment 
 is down from the window. We killed wapiti and 
 caribou without number, and cached them for 
 our food. We caught fish in the river, and made 
 tea out of the brown berry it is very good. We 
 had flour, a little, which we had brought with us, 
 and I went to Fort St. John and got more. Since
 
 72 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 then, down in the valley, I have wheat every 
 summer ; for the Chinook winds blow across the 
 mountains and soften the bitter cold. 
 
 "Well, for that journey to Fort St. John. 
 When I got back I found Gawdor with Gordin- 
 eer. He said he had come north to hunt. His 
 Indian had left, and he have lost his way. 
 Gordineer believed him. He never lied him- 
 self. I said nothing, but watched. After a time 
 he asked where the goldfield was. I told him, 
 and he started away it was about fifty miles to 
 the north. He went, and on his way back he 
 come here. He say he could not find the 
 place, and was going south. I knew he lied. 
 At this time I saw that Gordineer was changed. 
 He was slow in the head, and so, when he begun 
 thinking up here, it made him lonely. It is 
 always in a fine land like this, where game is 
 plenty, and the heart dances for joy in your 
 throat, and you sit by the fire that you think 
 of some woman who would be glad to draw in 
 and tie the strings of the tent curtain, or fasten 
 the latch of the door upon you two alone." 
 
 Perhaps some memory stirred within the old 
 man other than that of his dead comrade, for 
 he sighed, muffled his mouth in his beard, and 
 then smiled in a distant way at the fire. The 
 pure truth of what he said came home to Shon
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 73 
 
 M'Gann and Sir Duke Lawless; for both, in 
 days gone by, had sat at campfires in silent 
 plains and thought upon women from whom 
 they believed they were parted forever, yet who 
 were only kept from them for a time, to give 
 them happier days. They were thinking of 
 these two women now. They scarcely knew 
 how long they sat there thinking. Time passes 
 swiftly when thoughts are cheerful, or are tinged 
 with the soft melancholy of a brief separation. 
 
 At last the old man continued : " I saw the 
 thing grew on him. He was not sulky, but he 
 stare much in the fire at night. In the daytime 
 he was differen'. A hunter thinks only of his 
 sport. Gawdor watched him. Gordineer's 
 hand was steady; his nerve was all right. I 
 I have seen him stand still till a grizzly come 
 within twice the length of his gun. Then he 
 would twist his mouth, and fire into the mortal 
 spot. Once we were out in the Wide Wing 
 pass. We had never had such a day. Gordineer 
 make grand shots, better than my own; and 
 men have said I can shoot like the devil ha! 
 ha!" He chuckled to himself noiselessly, and 
 said in a whisper : "Twenty grizzlies, and fifty 
 pumas ! " 
 
 Then he rubbed his hands softly on his 
 knees, and spoke aloud again : "/', I was proud
 
 74 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 of him. We were standing together on a ledge 
 of rock. Gawdor was not far away. Gawdor 
 was a poor hunter, and I knew he was wild at 
 Gordineer's great luck. ... A splendid bull- 
 wapiti come out on a rock across the gully. It 
 was a long shot. I did not think Gordineer 
 could make it; I was not sure that I could 
 the wind was blowing and the range was long. 
 But he draw up his gun like lightning, and 
 fire all at once. The bull dropped clean over 
 the cliff, and tumbled dead upon the rocks 
 below. It was fine. But, then, Gordineer slung 
 his gun under his arm and say: 'That is 
 enough. I am going to the hut.' 
 
 " He went away. That night he did not talk. 
 The next morning, when I say, ' We will be off 
 again to the pass,' he shake his head. He would 
 not go. He would shoot no more, he said. I 
 understood: it was the girl. He was wide awake 
 at last. Gawdor understanded also. He know 
 that Gordineer would go to the south to her. 
 I was sorry; but it was no use. Gawdor went 
 with me to the pass. When we come back, Jo 
 was gone. On a bit of birch-bark he had put 
 where he was going, and the way he would take. 
 He said he would come back to me ah, the 
 brave comrade! Gawdor say nothing, but his 
 looks were black. I had a feeling. I sat up all
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 75 
 
 night smoking. I was not afraid, but I know 
 Gawdor had found the valley of gold, and he 
 might put a knife in me, because to know of such 
 a thing alone is fine. Just at dawn he got up and 
 go out. He did not come back. I waited, and 
 at last went to the pass. In the afternoon, just 
 as I was rounding the corner of a cliff, there was 
 a shot then another. The first went by my 
 head; the second caught me along the ribs, but 
 not to great hurt. Still, I fell from the shock, 
 and lost some blood. It was Gawdor; he 
 thought he had killed me. 
 
 "When I come to myself I bound up the lit- 
 tle furrow in the flesh and start away. I know 
 that Gawdor would follow Gordineer. I follow 
 him, knowing the way he must take. I have 
 never forget the next night. I had to travel 
 hard, and I track him by his fires and other 
 things. When sunset come, I do not stop. I 
 was in a valley and I push on. There was a 
 little moon. At last I saw a light ahead a 
 campfire, I know. I was weak, and could have 
 dropped; but a dread was on me. I come to the 
 fire. I saw a man lying near it. Just as I saw 
 him he was trying to rise. But, as he did so, 
 something sprang out of the shadow upon him, 
 at his throat. I saw him raise his hand and 
 strike it with a knife. The thing let go, and
 
 76 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 then I fire but only scratched, I think. It was 
 a puma. It sprang away again, into the dark- 
 ness. I ran to the man and raised him. It was 
 my friend. He looked up at me and shake his 
 head. He was torn at the throat. But there was 
 something else a wound in the back. He was 
 stooping over the fire when he was stabbed, and 
 he fell. He saw that it was Gawdor. He had 
 been left for dead, as I was. Dear Lord, just 
 when I come and could have save him, the puma 
 come also. It is the best men who have such 
 luck. I have seen it often. I used to wonder 
 they did not curse God." 
 
 He crossed himself and mumbled some- 
 thing. Lawless rose, and walked up and down 
 the room once or twice, pulling at his beard 
 and frowning. His eyes were wet. Shon kept 
 blowing into his closed hands and blinking at 
 the fire. Pourcette got up and took down the 
 gun frgm the chimney. He brushed off the 
 dust with his coat-sleeve, and fondled it, shaking 
 his head at it a little. As he began to speak 
 again, Lawless sat down. 
 
 "Now I know why they do not curse. 
 Something curses for them. Jo gave me a word 
 for her, and say: 'Well, it is all right; but I 
 wish I had killed the puma.' There was noth-
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 77 
 
 ing more. ... I followed Gawdor for 
 days. I know that he would go and get some 
 one, and go back to the gold. I thought at 
 last I had missed him ; but no. I had made 
 up my mind what to do when I found him. 
 One night, just as the moon was showing over 
 the hills, I come upon him. I was quiet as a 
 puma. I have a stout cord in my pocket, and 
 another about my body. Just as he was stoop- 
 ing over the fire, as Gordineer did, I sprang 
 upon him, clasping him about the neck, and 
 bringing him to the ground. He could not 
 get me off. I am small, but I have a grip. 
 Then, too, I had one hand at his throat. It 
 was no use to struggle. The cord and a knife 
 were in my teeth. It was a great trick, but 
 his breath was well gone, and I fastened his 
 hands. It was no use to struggle. I tied his 
 feet and legs. Then I carried him to a tree 
 and bound him tight. I unfastened his hands 
 again and tied them round the tree. Then I 
 built a great fire not far away. He begged at 
 first and cried. But I was hard. He got wild, 
 and at last when I leave him he cursed ! It 
 was like nothing I ever heard. He was a 
 devil. ... I come back after I have carry 
 the message to the poor girl it is a sad thing
 
 78 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 to see the first great grief of the young ! Gaw- 
 dor was not there. The pumas and others had 
 been with him. 
 
 " There was more to do. I wanted to kill 
 that puma which set its teeth in the throat of 
 my friend. I hunted the woods where it had 
 happened, beating everywhere, thinking that, 
 perhaps, it was dead. There was not much 
 blood on the leaves, so I guessed that it had 
 not died. I hunted from that spot, and killed 
 many many. I saw that they began to move 
 north. At last I got back here. From here 
 I have hunted and killed them slow; but 
 never that one with a wound in the shoulder 
 from Jo's knife. Still, I can wait. There is 
 nothing like patience for the hunter and for 
 the man who would have blood for blood." 
 
 He paused, and Lawless spoke : " And when 
 you have killed that puma, Pourcette, if you ever 
 do, what then ? " 
 
 Pourcette fondled the gun, then rose and 
 hung it up again before he replied. 
 
 "Then I will go to Fort St. John, to the girl 
 she is there with her father and sell all the 
 skins to the factor and give her the money." He 
 waved his hand round the room. " There are 
 many skins here, but I have more cached not 
 far away. Once a year I go to the Fort for flour
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 79 
 
 and bullets. A dog team and a bois-brull bring 
 them, and then I am alone as before. When all 
 that is done I will come back." 
 
 " And then, Pourcette ? " said Shon. 
 
 "Then I will hang that one skin over the 
 chimney where his gun is, and go out and kill 
 more pumas. What else can I do ? When I 
 stop killing I shall be killed. A million pumas 
 and their skins are not worth the life of my 
 friend." 
 
 Lawless looked round the room, at the 
 wooden cup, the gun, the bloodstained clothes 
 on the wall and the skins. He got up, came 
 over and touched Pourcette on the shoulder. 
 
 " Little man," he said, " give it up and come 
 with me. Come to Fort St. John, sell the skins, 
 give the money to the girl, and then let us 
 travel to the Barren Grounds together, and from 
 there to the south country again. You will go 
 mad up here. You have killed enough Gawdor 
 and many pumas. If Jo could speak, he would 
 say, Give it up! I knew Jo. He was my good 
 friend before he was yours mine and McGann's 
 here and we searched for him to travel with us. 
 He would have done so, I think, for we had 
 sport and trouble of one kind and another to- 
 gether. And he would have asked you to come 
 also. Well, do so, little man. We have n't told
 
 8o An Adventurer of the North 
 
 you our names. I am Sir Duke Lawless, and this 
 is Shon M'Gann." 
 
 Pourcette nodded. " I do not know how it 
 come to me, but I was sure from the first you are 
 friends. He speak often of you and of two 
 others where are they ? " 
 
 Lawless replied, and, at the name of Pretty 
 Pierre, Shon hid his forehead in his hand in a 
 troubled way. 
 
 " And you will come with us," said Lawless, 
 "away from this loneliness ?" 
 
 " It is not lonely," was the reply. " To hear 
 the thrum of the pigeon, the whistle of the hawk, 
 the chatter of the black squirrel, and the long 
 cry of the eagles is not lonely. Then there is 
 the river and the pines all music ; and for 
 what the eye sees, God has been good ; and to 
 kill pumas is my joy. . . . So, I cannot go. 
 These hills are mine. Few strangers come, and 
 none stop but me. Still, tomorrow or any day, 
 I will show you the way to the valley where the 
 gold is. Perhaps riches is there, perhaps not, 
 you shall find." 
 
 Lawless saw that it was no use to press the 
 matter. The old man had but one idea, and 
 nothing could ever change it. Solitude fixes 
 our hearts immovably on things call it mad- 
 ness, what you will. In busy life we have no
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 8 1 
 
 real or lasting dreams, no ideals. We have to 
 go to the primeval hills and the wild plains for 
 them. When we leave the hills and the plains 
 we lose them again. Shon was, however, for the 
 valley of gold. He was a poor man, and it 
 would be a joyful thing for him if one day he 
 could empty ample gold into his wife's lap. 
 Lawless was not greedy, but he and good money 
 were not at variance. 
 
 "See," said Shon, "the valley's the thing. 
 We can hunt as we go, and if there 's gold for 
 the scrapin', why there y' are fill up and come 
 again. If not, divil the harm done. So here 's 
 thumbs up to go, say I. But I wish, Lawless, I 
 wish that I 'd niver known how Jo wint off, an' I 
 wish we were all t'gither agin, as down in the 
 Pipi Valley." 
 
 "There 's nothing stands in this world, Shon, 
 but the faith of comrades and the truth of good 
 women. The rest hangs by a hair. I '11 go to 
 the valley with you. It's many a day since I 
 washed my luck in a gold-pan." 
 
 " I will take you there," said Pourcette, sud- 
 denly rising and, with shy abrupt motions, 
 grasping their hands and immediately letting 
 them go again. "I will take you tomorrow." 
 Then he spread skins upon the floor, put wood 
 upon the fire, and the three were soon asleep.
 
 82 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 The next morning, just as the sun came 
 laboriously over the white peak of a mountain 
 and looked down into the great gulch beneath 
 the hut, the three started. For many hours they 
 crept along the side of the mountain, then came 
 slowly down upon pine-crested hills, and over to 
 where a small plain stretched out. It was Pour- 
 cette's little farm. Its position was such that it 
 caught the sun always, and was protected from 
 the north and east winds. Tall shafts of Indian 
 corn with the yellow tassels were still standing, 
 and the stubble of the field where the sickle had 
 been showed in the distance like a carpet of 
 gold. It seemed strange to Lawless that this 
 old man beside him should be thus peaceful in 
 his habits, the most primitive and arcadian of 
 farmers, and yet one whose trade was blood 
 whose one purpose in life was destruction and 
 vengeance. 
 
 They pushed on. Towards the end of the day 
 they came upon a little herd of caribou, and had 
 excellent sport. Lawless noticed that Pourcette 
 seemed scarcely to take any aim at all, so swift 
 and decisive was his handling of the gun. They 
 skinned the deer and cached them, and took up 
 the journey again. For four days they travelled 
 and hunted alternately. Pourcette had shot 
 two mountain lions, but they had seen no pumas.
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 83 
 
 On the morning of the fifth day they came 
 upon the valley where the gold was. There 
 was no doubt about it. A beautiful little stream 
 ran through it, and its bed was sprinkled with 
 gold a goodly sight to a poor man like Shon, 
 interesting enough to Lawless. For days, while 
 Lawless and Pourcette hunted, Shon labored 
 like a galley-slave, making the little specks into 
 piles, and now and again crowning a pile with a 
 nugget. The fever of the hunter had passed 
 from him and another fever was on him. The 
 others urged him to come away. The winter 
 would soon be hard on them ; he must go, and 
 he and Lawless would return in the spring. 
 
 Prevailing on him at last, they started back to 
 Clear Mountain. The first day Shon was ab- 
 stracted. He carried the gold he had gathered 
 in a bag wound about his body. It was heavy, 
 and he could not travel fast. One morning, 
 Pourcette, who had been off in the hills, came 
 to say that he had sighted a little herd of 
 wapiti. Shon had fallen and sprained his arm 
 the evening before (gold is heavy to carry), and 
 he did not go with the others. He stayed and 
 dreamed of his good fortune, and of his home. 
 In the late afternoon he lay down in the sun 
 beside the campfire, and fell asleep from much 
 thinking. Lawless and Pourcette had little sue-
 
 84 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 cess. The herd had gone before they arrived. 
 They beat the hills, and turned back to camp at 
 last, without fret, like good sportsmen. At a 
 point they separated, to come down upon the 
 camp at different angles, in the hope of still 
 getting a shot. The camp lay exposed upon a 
 platform of the mountain. 
 
 Lawless came out upon a ledge of rock op- 
 posite the camp, a gulch lying between. He 
 looked across. He was in the shadow, the other 
 wall of the gulch was in the sun. The air was 
 incomparably clear and fresh, with an autumnal 
 freshness. Everything stood out distinct and 
 sharply outlined, nothing flat or blurred. He 
 saw the camp, and the fire, with the smoke 
 quivering up in a diffusing blue column, Shon 
 lying beside it. He leaned upon his rifle mus- 
 ingly. The shadows of the pines were blue and 
 cold, but the tops of them were burnished with 
 the cordial sun, and a glacier-field, somehow, 
 took on a rose and violet light reflected, maybe, 
 from the soft-complexioned sky. He drew in a 
 long breath of delight, and widened his line 
 of vision. 
 
 Suddenly, something he saw made him lurch 
 backward. At an angle in almost equal distance 
 from him and Shon, upon a small peninsula of 
 rock, a strange thing was happening. Old
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 85 
 
 Pourcette was kneeling, engaged with his mocca- 
 sin. Behind him was the sun, against which he 
 was abruptly defined, and looked larger than usual. 
 Clear space and air soft with color were about 
 him. Across this space, on a little sloping pla- 
 teau near him, there crept an animal. It 
 seemed to Lawless that he could see the lithe 
 stealthiness of its muscles and the ripple of its 
 skin. But that was imagination, because he was 
 too far away. He cried out and swung his gun 
 shoulderwards in desperation. But, at the mo- 
 ment, Pourcette turned sharply round, saw his 
 danger, caught his gun, and fired as the puma 
 sprang. There had been no chance for aim, 
 and the beast was only wounded. It dropped 
 upon the man. He let the gun fall ; it rolled 
 and fell over the cliff. Then came a scene, 
 wicked in its peril to Pourcette, for whom no 
 aid could come, though two men stood watching 
 the great fight Shon M'Gann, awake now, and 
 Lawless with their guns silent in their hands. 
 They dare not fire for fear of injuring the man, 
 and they could not reach him in time to be of 
 help. 
 
 There against the weird, solitary sky the man 
 and the puma fought. When the animal dropped 
 on him, Pourcette caught it by the throat with 
 both hands and held back its fangs; but its
 
 86 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 claws were furrowing the flesh of his breast and 
 legs. His long arms were of immense strength, 
 and though the pain of his torn flesh was great, 
 he struggled grandly with the beast, and bore it 
 away from his body. As he did so he slightly 
 changed the position of one hand. It came 
 upon a welt a scar. When he felt that, new 
 courage and strength seemed given him. He 
 gave a low growl like an animal, and then, let- 
 ting go one hand, caught at the knife in his belt. 
 As he did so the puma sprang away from him, 
 and crouched upon the rock, making ready for 
 another leap. Lawless and Shon could see its 
 tail curving and beating. But now, to their as- 
 tonishment, the man was the aggressor. He was 
 filled with a fury which knows nothing of fear. 
 The welt his fingers had felt burned them. 
 
 He came slowly upon the puma. Lawless 
 could see the hard glitter of his knife. The 
 puma's teeth sawed together, its claws picked at 
 the rocks, its body curved for a spring. The 
 man sprang first, and ran the knife in ; but not 
 into a mortal corner. Once more they locked. 
 The man's fingers were again at the puma's 
 throat, and they swayed together, the claws of 
 the beast making surface havoc. But now as 
 they stood up, to the eyes of the fearful watchers 
 inextricably mixed, the man lunged again with
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 87 
 
 his knife, and this time straight into the heart of 
 the murderer. The puma loosened, quivered, 
 fell back dead. The man rose to his feet with a 
 cry, and his hands stretched above his head, as it 
 were in a kind of ecstasy. Shon forgot his gold 
 and ran ; Lawless hurried also. 
 
 When the two men got to the spot they found 
 Pourcette binding up his wounds. He came to 
 his feet, heedless of his hurts, and grasped their 
 hands. " Come, come, my friends, and see!" he 
 cried. 
 
 He pulled forward the loose skin on the 
 puma's breast and showed them the scar of a 
 knife-wound above the one his own knife had 
 made. 
 
 "I've got the other murderer," he said; 
 "Gordineer's knife went in here. God, but it is 
 good!" 
 
 Pourcette's flesh needed little medicine ; he 
 did not feel his pain and stiffness. When they 
 reached Clear Mountain, bringing with them the 
 skin which was to hang above the fireplace, 
 Pourcette prepared to go to Fort St. John, as he 
 had said he would, to sell all the skins and give 
 the proceeds to the girl. 
 
 "When that's done," said Lawless, "you will 
 have no reason for staying here. If you will 
 come with us after, we will go to the Fort with
 
 88 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 you. We three will then come back in the 
 spring to the valley of gold for sport and 
 riches." 
 
 He spoke lightly, yet seriously too. The old 
 man shook his head. "I have thought," he said. 
 "I cannot go to the south. I am a hunter now, 
 nothing more. I have been long alone; I do 
 not wish for change. I shall stay at Clear 
 Mountain when these skins have go to Fort 
 St. John, and if you come to me in the spring or 
 at any time, my door will open to you, and I 
 will share all with you. Gordineer was a good 
 man. You are good men. I'll remember you, 
 but I can't go with you. No! Some day you 
 would leave me to go to the women who wait for 
 you, and then I should be alone again. I will 
 not change vraiment!" 
 
 On the morning they left he took Jo Gor- 
 dineer's cup from the shelf, and from a hidden 
 place brought out a flask half-filled with liquor. 
 He poured out a little in the cup gravely, and 
 handed it to Lawless, but Lawless gave it back 
 to him. 
 
 "You must drink from it," he said, "not me." 
 
 He held out the cup of his own flask. When 
 each of the three had a share, the old man 
 raised his long arm solemnly, and said in a tone 
 so gentle that the others hardly recognized his
 
 The Spoil of the Puma 89 
 
 voice: "To a lost comrade!" They drank in 
 silence. 
 
 "A little gentleman!" said Lawless, under 
 his breath. 
 
 When they were ready to start, Lawless said 
 to him at the last: "What will you do here, 
 comrade, as the days go on?" 
 
 "There are pumas in the mountains!" he 
 replied. 
 
 They parted from him upon the ledge where 
 the great fight had occurred, and travelled into 
 the east. Turning many times, they saw him 
 still standing there. At a point where they must 
 lose sight of him, they looked for the last time. 
 He was alone with his solitary hills, leaning on 
 his rifle. They fired two shots into the air. 
 They saw him raise his rifle, and two faint re- 
 ports came in reply. He became again immov- 
 able, as much a part of those hills as the shining 
 glacier; never to leave them. 
 
 In silence the two rounded the cliff, and saw 
 him no more.
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs 
 
 "Well, you see," said Jacques Parfaite, as he 
 gave Whiskey Wine, the leading dog, a cut with 
 the whip and twisted his patois to the uses of 
 narrative, "he has been alone there at the old 
 Fort for a long time. I remember when I first 
 saw him. It was in the summer. The world 
 smell sweet if you looked this way or that. If 
 you drew in your breath quick from the top of a 
 hill you felt a great man. Ridley, the chief 
 trader, and myself had come to the Fort on our 
 way to the Mackenzie River. In the yard of the 
 Fort the grass had grow tall, and sprung in 
 the cracks under the doors and windows; the 
 Fort had not been use for a long time. Once 
 there was plenty of buffalo near, and the caribou 
 sometimes; but they were all gone only a few. 
 The Indians never went that way, only when the 
 seasons were the best. The Company had closed 
 the Post; it did not pay. Still, it was pleasant 
 after a long tramp to come to a fort, even empty. 
 We know dam' well there is food buried in the 
 yard or under the floor, and it would be droll 
 90
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs 91 
 
 to open the place for a day Lost Man's 
 Tavern, we call it. Well " 
 
 "Well, what?" said Sir Duke Lawless, who 
 had travelled up to the Barren Grounds for the 
 sake of adventure and game ; and, with his old 
 friend, Shon M'Gann, had trusted himself to the 
 excellent care of Jacques Parfaite, the half-breed. 
 
 Jacques cocked his head on one side and 
 shook it wisely and mysteriously. " Tres bien, 
 we trailed through the long grass, pried open 
 the shutters and door, and went in. It is cool 
 in the north of an evening, as you know. We 
 build a fire, and soon there is very fine times. 
 Ridley pried up the floor, and we found good 
 things. Holy ! but it was a feast. We had a 
 little rum also. As we talk and a great laugh 
 swim round, there come a noise behind us like 
 shuffling feet. We got to our legs quick. Mon 
 jDieu, a strange sight ! A man stand looking at 
 us with something in his face that make my 
 fingers cold all at once a look well, you 
 would think it was carved in stone it never 
 changed. Once I was at Fort Garry ; the Church 
 of Ste. Mary is there. They have a picture in it 
 of the great scoundrel Judas as he went to hang 
 himself. Judas was a fool what was thirty dol- 
 lars ! you give me hunder' to take you to the 
 Barren Grounds. Pah 1 '
 
 92 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 The half-breed chuckled, shook his head 
 sagely, swore half-way through his vocabulary at 
 Whiskey Wine, gratefully received a pipe of to- 
 bacco from Shon M'Gann, and continued : " He 
 come in on us slow and still, and push out his 
 long thin hands, the fingers bent like claws, 
 towards the pot. He was starving. Yes, it was 
 so ; but I nearly laughed. It was spring a 
 man is a fool to starve in the spring. But he 
 was differen'. There was a cause. The factor 
 give him soup from the pot and a little rum. 
 He was mad for meat, but that would have killed 
 him. He did not look at you like a man. When 
 you are starving you are an animal. But there 
 was something more with this. He made the 
 flesh creep, he was so thin, and strange, and 
 sulky eh, is that a word when the face looks 
 dark and never smiles? So! He would not talk. 
 When we ask him where he come from he points 
 to the north ; when we ask him where he is go- 
 ing, he shake his head as he not know. A man 
 is mad not to know where he travel to up here ; 
 something comes quick to him unless, and it is 
 not good to die too soon. The trader said, 
 'Come with us.' He shake his head, No. ' P'r'aps 
 you want to stay here,' say Ridley loud, show- 
 ing his teeth all in a minute. He nod. Then 
 the trader laugh thick in his throat and give him
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs 93 
 
 more soup. After, he try to make the man talk, 
 but he was stubborn like that dirty Whiskey 
 Wine ah, sacre bleu!" 
 
 Whiskey Wine had his usual portion of whip 
 and anathema before Jacques again took up the 
 thread. "It was no use. He would not talk. 
 When the trader got angry once more, he turned 
 to me, and the look in his face make me sorry. 
 I swore Ridley did not mind that, I was thick 
 friends with him. I say, 'Keep still. It is no 
 good. He has had bad times. He has been lost, 
 and seen mad things. He will never be again 
 like when God make him.' Very well, I spoke 
 true. He was like a sun dog." 
 
 "What 'sthat ye say, Parfaite ? " said Shon 
 " a sun dog?" 
 
 Sir Duke Lawless, puzzled, listened eagerly 
 for the reply. 
 
 The half-breed in delight ran before them, 
 cracking his whip and jingling the bells at his 
 knees. " Ah, that's it. It is a name we have for 
 some. You do not know ? It is easy. In the 
 high-up country" pointing north "you see 
 sometimes many suns. But it is not many after 
 all ; it is only one ; and the rest are the same as 
 your face in looking-glasses one, two, three, 
 plenty. You see ?"
 
 94 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 " Yes," said Sir Duke, " reflections of the 
 real sun." 
 
 Parfaite tapped him on the arm. " So : you 
 {iave the thing. Well, this man is not himself 
 he have left himself where he seen his bad times. 
 It makes your flesh creep sometimes when you 
 see the sun dogs in the sky this man did the 
 same. You shall see him tonight ! " 
 
 Sir Duke looked at the little half-breed, and 
 wondered that the product of so crude a civiliza- 
 tion should be so little crude in his imagination. 
 " What happened ? " he asked. 
 
 " Nothing happened. But the man could not 
 sleep. He sit before the fire, his eyes moving 
 here and there, and sometimes he shiver. Well, 
 I watch him. In the morning we leave him 
 there, and he has been there ever since the 
 only man at the Fort. The Indians do not go; 
 they fear him ; but there is no harm in him. He 
 is old now. In an hour we '11 be there." 
 
 The sun was hanging with one shoulder up 
 like a great, red, peering dwarf, on the far side of 
 a long hillock of stunted pines, when the three 
 arrived at the Fort. The yard was still as Par- 
 faite had described it full of rank grass, 
 through which one path trailed to the open door. 
 On the stockade walls grass grew, as though 
 where men will not live like men Nature labors
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs pc 
 
 to smother. The shutters of the window were 
 not open ; light only entered through narrow 
 openings in them, made for the needs of possible 
 attacks by Indians in the far past. One would 
 have sworn that any one dwelling there was more 
 like the dead than living. Yet it had, too, some- 
 thing of the peace of the lonely graveyard. There 
 was no one in the Fort ; but there were signs of life 
 skins piled here and there, a few utensils, a 
 bench; a hammock for food swung from the 
 rafters, a low fire burning in the chimney, and a 
 rude spear stretched on the wall. 
 
 " Sure, the place gives you shivers ! " said 
 Shon. " Open go these windows. Put wood 
 on the fire, Parfaite ; cook the meat that we Ve 
 brought, and no other, me boy ; and whin we 're 
 filled wid a meal and the love o' God, bring in 
 your Lost Man, or Sun Dog, or whativer 's he by 
 name or nature." 
 
 While Parfaite and Shon busied themselves, 
 Lawless wandered out with his gun, and, drawn 
 on by the clear joyous air of the evening, walked 
 along a path made by the same feet that had 
 travelled the yard of the Fort. He followed it 
 almost unconsciously at first, thinking of the 
 strange histories that the far north hoards in its 
 fastnesses, wondering what singular fate had 
 driven the host of this secluded tavern farthest
 
 96 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 from the pleasant south country, nearest to the 
 Pole to stand, as it were, a sentinel at the raw 
 outposts of the world. He looked down at the 
 trail where he was walking with a kind of awe, 
 which even his cheerful common sense could not 
 dismiss. 
 
 He came to the top of a ridge on which were 
 a handful of meagre trees. Leaning on his gun, 
 he looked straight away into the farthest dis- 
 tance. On the left was a blurred edge of pines, 
 with tops like ungainly tendrils feeling for the 
 sky. On the right was a long, bare stretch of hills 
 veiled in the thin smoke of the evening, and be- 
 tween, straight before him, was a wide lane of 
 country, billowing away to where it froze into 
 the vast archipelago that closes with the summit 
 of the world. He experienced now that weird 
 charm which has drawn so many into Arctic 
 wilds and gathered the eyes of millions long- 
 ingly. Wife, child, London, civilization, were 
 forgotten for the moment. He was under a spell 
 which, once felt, lingers in your veins always. 
 
 At length his look drew away from the glim- 
 mering distance, and he suddenly became con- 
 scious of human presence. Here at his feet 
 almost was a man, also looking out along that 
 slumbering waste. He was dressed in skins, his 
 arms were folded across his breast, his chin bent
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs 97 
 
 low, and he gazed up and out from deep eyes shad- 
 owed by strong brows. Lawless saw the shoul- 
 ders of the watcher heave and shake once or 
 twice, and then a voice with a deep aching 
 trouble in it spoke ; but at first he could catch 
 no words. Presently, however, he heard dis- 
 tinctly, for the man raised his hands high above his 
 head, and the words fell painfully : " Am I my 
 brother's keeper ? " 
 
 Then a low harsh laugh came from him, and 
 he was silent again. Lawless did not move. At 
 last the man turned round, and, seeing him 
 standing motionless, his gun in his hands, he 
 gave a hoarse cry. Then he stood still. "If 
 you have come to kill, do not wait," he said. 
 " I am ready." 
 
 At the sound of Lawless's reassuring voice 
 he recovered, and began, in stumbling words, 
 to excuse himself. His face was as Jacques 
 Parfaite had described it ; trouble of some ter- 
 rible kind was furrowed in it, and, though his 
 body was stalwart, he looked as if he had 
 lived a century. His eyes dwelt on Sir Duke 
 Lawless for a moment, and then, coming nearer, 
 he said, "You are an Englishman?" 
 
 Lawless held out his hand in greeting, yet 
 he was not sorry when the other replied : "The 
 hand of no man in greeting. Are you alone?"
 
 98 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 When he had been told, he turned toward 
 the Fort, and silently they made their way to 
 it. At the door he turned and said to Lawless, 
 "My name to you is Detmold." 
 
 The greeting between Jacques and his som- 
 bre host was notable for its extreme brevity; 
 with Shon M'Gann for its hesitation Shon's 
 impressionable Irish nature was awed by the 
 look of the man, though he had seen some 
 strange things in the north. Darkness was on 
 them by this time ; and the host lighted bowls 
 of fat with wicks of deer's tendons, and by the 
 light of these and the fire they ate their supper. 
 Parfaite beguiled the evening with tales of the 
 north, always interesting to Lawless, to which 
 Shon added many a shrewd word of humor 
 for he had recovered quickly from his first tim- 
 idity in the presence of the stranger. 
 
 As time went on Jacques saw that their host's 
 eyes were frequently fixed on Sir Duke in a half- 
 eager, musing way, and he got Shon away to 
 bed and left the two together. 
 
 " You are a singular man. Why do you live 
 here?" said Lawless. Then he went straight to 
 the heart of the thing. " What trouble have 
 you had, or of what crime are you guilty?" 
 
 The man rose to his feet, shaking, and
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs 99 
 
 walked to and fro in the room for a time, more 
 than once trying to speak, but failing. He 
 beckoned to Lawless, and opened the door. 
 Lawless took his hat and followed him along 
 the trail they had travelled before supper until 
 they had come to the ridge where they had met. 
 The man faced the north, the moon glistening 
 coldly on his gray hair. He spoke with incred- 
 ible weight and slowness : 
 
 ' I tell you, for you are one who understands 
 men, and you come from a life that I once 
 knew well. I know of your people. I was of 
 good family " 
 
 " I know the name," said Sir Duke, quietly, 
 at the same time fumbling in his memory for 
 flying bits of gossip and history which he could 
 not instantly find. 
 
 " There were two brothers of us. I was the 
 younger. A ship was going to the Arctic Sea." 
 He pointed into the north. " We were both 
 young and ambitious. He was in the army, 
 I the navy. We went with the expedition. At 
 first it was all beautiful and grand, and it 
 seemed noble to search for those others who 
 had gone into that land and never come back. 
 But our ship got locked in the ice, and then 
 came great trouble. A year went by and we did 
 not get free ; then another year began. . . .
 
 loo An Adventurer of the North 
 
 Four of us set out for the south. Two died. 
 My brother and I were left 
 
 Lawless exclaimed. He now remembered 
 how general sympathy went out to a well-known 
 county family when it was announced that two 
 of its members were lost in the Arctic regions. 
 
 Detmold continued : " I was the stronger. 
 He grew weaker and weaker. It was awful to 
 live those days ; the endless snow and cold, the 
 long nights when you could only hear the whir- 
 ring of meteors, the bright sun which did not 
 warm you, not even when many suns, the reflec- 
 tions of itself, followed it the mocking sun 
 dogs, no more the sun than I am what my 
 mother brought into the world. . . . We 
 walked like dumb men, for the dreadful cold 
 fills the heart with bitterness. I think I grew to 
 hate him because he could not travel faster, that 
 days were lost, and death crept on so pitilessly. 
 Sometimes I had a mad wish to kill him. May 
 you never know suffering that begets such 
 things ! I laughed as I sat beside him, and saw 
 him sink to sleep and die. ... I think I 
 could have saved him. When he was gone I 
 what do men do sometimes when starvation is 
 on them, and they have a hunger of hell to live? 
 I did that shameless thing and he was my 
 brother! ... I lived and was saved."
 
 The Trail of the Sun Dogs 101 
 
 Lawless shrank away from the man, but words 
 of horror got no farther than his throat. And 
 he was glad afterwards that it was so ; for when 
 he looked again at this woeful relic of humanity 
 before him he felt a strange pity. 
 
 ' God's hand is on me to punish," said the 
 man. " It will never be lifted. Death were easy; I 
 bear the infamy of living." 
 
 Lawless reached out and caught him gently 
 by the shoulder. "Poor fellow! poor Detmold!" 
 he said. 
 
 For an instant the sorrowful face lighted, the 
 square chin trembled, and the hands thrust out 
 towards Lawless, but suddenly dropped. 
 
 " Go," he said, humbly, " and leave me here. 
 We must not meet again. . . I have had one 
 moment of respite. . . Go!" 
 
 Without a word, Lawless turned and made 
 his way to the Fort. In the morning the three 
 comrades started on their journey again ; but 
 no one sped them on their way, or watched them 
 as they went.
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 
 
 He lived in a hut on a jutting crag of the 
 Cliff of the King. You could get to it by a hard 
 climb up a precipitous pathway, or by a ladder 
 of ropes which swung from his cottage door 
 down the cliff-side to the sands. The bay that 
 washed the sands was called Belle Amour. The 
 cliff was huge, sombre; it had a terrible granite 
 moroseness. If you travelled back from its edge 
 until you stood within the very heart of Labrador, 
 you would add step upon step of barrenness and 
 austerity. 
 
 Only at seasons did the bay share the gloom 
 of the cliff. When out of its shadow it was, in 
 summer, very bright and playful, sometimes 
 boisterous, often idle, coquetting with the sands. 
 There was a great difference between the cliff and 
 the bay ; the cliff was only as it appeared, but 
 the bay was a shameless hypocrite. For under 
 one shoulder it hid a range of reefs, and, at a 
 spot where the shadows of the cliff never reached 
 it, and the sun played with a grim kind of joy, 
 a long needle of rock ran up at an angle under 
 102
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 103 
 
 the water, waiting to pierce irresistibly the ad- 
 venturous ship that, in some mad moment, 
 should creep to its shores. 
 
 The man was more like the cliff than the bay; 
 stern, powerful, brooding. His only companions 
 were the Indians, who in summertime came and 
 went, getting stores of him, which he in turn got 
 from a post of the Hudson's Bay Company, sev- 
 enty miles up the coast. At one time the Com- 
 pany, impressed by the number of skins brought 
 to them by the pilot, and the stores he bought 
 of them, had thought of establishing a post at 
 Belle Amour; but they saw that his dealings 
 with them were fair and that he had small gain, 
 and they decided to use him as an unofficial 
 agent, and reap what profit was to be had as thing? 
 stood. Kenyon, the Company's agent, who had 
 the Post, was keen to know why Gaspard the 
 pilot lived at Belle Amour. No white man so- 
 journed near him, and he saw no one save now 
 and then a priest who travelled silently among 
 the Indians, or some fisherman, hunter, or 
 woodsman, who, for pleasure or from pure adven- 
 ture, ran into the bay and tasted the hospitality 
 tucked away on the ledge of the Cliff of the 
 King. 
 
 To Kenyon Gaspard was unresponsive, how- 
 ever adroit the catechism. Father Dorval also,
 
 IO4 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 who sometimes stepped across the dark threshold 
 of Gaspard's hut, would have, for the man's soul's 
 sake, dug out the heart of his secret; but Gas- 
 pard, open with food, fire, blanket, and tireless 
 attendance, closed like the doors of a dungeon 
 when the priest would have read him. At the 
 name of good Ste. Anne he would make the 
 sacred gesture, and would take a blessing when 
 the priest passed from his hut to go again into 
 the wilds; but when pressed to disclose his mind 
 and history, he would always say : " M'sieu', I 
 have nothing to confess." After a number of 
 years the priest ceased to ask him, and he re- 
 mained with the secret of his life, inscrutable and 
 silent. 
 
 Being vigilant, one would have seen how- 
 ever that he lived in some land of memory or 
 anticipation, beyond his life of daily toil and 
 usual dealing. The hut seemed to have been 
 built at a point where east and west and south 
 the great gulf could be seen and watched. It 
 seemed almost ludicrous that a man should call 
 himself a pilot on a coast and at a bay where a 
 pilot was scarce needed once a year. But he was 
 known as Gaspard the pilot, and on those rare 
 occasions when a vessel did anchor in the bay, 
 he performed his duties with such a certainty as 
 to leave unguessed how many death-traps
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 105 
 
 crouched near that shore. At such times, how- 
 ever, Gaspard seemed to look twenty years 
 younger a light would come into his face, a 
 stalwart kind of pride sit on him, though 
 there lurked a strange, sardonic look in his 
 deep eyes such a grim furtiveness as though 
 he should say, " If I but twist my finger we are 
 all for the fishes." But he kept his secret and 
 waited. He never seemed to tire of looking 
 down the gulf, as though expecting some ship. 
 If one appeared and passed on, he merely 
 nodded his head, hung up his glass, returned to 
 his work, or, sitting by the door, talked to him- 
 self in low, strange tones. If one came near, 
 making as if it would enter the bay, a hungry 
 joy possessed him. If a storm was on the joy 
 was the greater. No pilot ever ventured to a ship 
 on such rough seas as Gaspard ventured for 
 small profit or glory. 
 
 Behind it all lay his secret. There came one 
 day a man who discovered it. 
 
 It was Pierre, the half-breed adventurer. 
 There was no point in all the wild northland 
 which Pierre had not touched. He loved it as 
 he loved the game of life. He never said so of 
 it, but he never said so of the game of life, and 
 he played it with a deep subterranean joy. He 
 had had his way with the musk-ox in the Arctic
 
 106 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 circle; with the white bear at the foot of 
 Alaskan hills; with the seal in Baffin's Bay; 
 with the puma on the slope of the Pacific; and 
 now at last he had come upon the trail of Lab- 
 rador. Its sternness, its moodiness pleased him. 
 He smiled at it the comprehending smile of the 
 man who has fingered the nerves and the heart 
 of men and things. As a traveller, wandering 
 through a prison, looks upon its grim cells and 
 dungeons with the eye of unembarrassed free- 
 dom, finding no direful significance in the clank 
 of its iron, so Pierre travelled down with a hand- 
 ful of Indians through the hard fastnesses of that 
 country, and, at last, alone, came upon the Bay 
 of Belle Amour. 
 
 There was in him some antique touch of re- 
 finement and temperament which, in all his evil 
 days and deeds and moments of shy nobility, 
 could find its way into the souls of men with 
 whom the world had had an awkward hour. He 
 was a man of little speech, but he had that rare 
 persuasive penetration which unlocked the doors 
 of trouble, despair and tragedy. Men who could 
 never have confessed to a priest confessed to 
 him. In his every fibre was the granite of the 
 Indian nature which looked upon punishment 
 with stoic satisfaction. 
 
 In the heart of Labrador he had heard of
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 107 
 
 Gaspard, and had travelled to that point in the 
 compass where he could find him. One day 
 when the sun was fighting hard to make a path- 
 way of light in front of Gaspard's hut, Pierre 
 rounded a corner of the cliff and fronted Gas- 
 pard as he sat there, his eyes gloomily idling with 
 the sea. They said little to each other in new 
 lands hospitality has not need of speech. When 
 Gaspard and Pierre looked each other in the 
 eyes they knew that one word between them was 
 as a hundred with other men. The heart knows 
 its confessor, and the confessor knows the 
 shadowed eye that broods upon some ghostly 
 secret ; and when these are face to face there 
 comes a merciless concision of understanding. 
 
 "From where away?" said Gaspard, as he 
 handed some tobacco to Pierre. 
 
 " From Hudson's Bay, down the Red Wolf 
 Plains, along the hills, across the coast country, 
 here." 
 
 "Why?" Gaspard eyed Pierre's small kit 
 with curiosity, then flung up a piercing, furtive 
 look. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Adventure, adventure," he answered. "The 
 land" he pointed north, west and east "is 
 all mine. I am the citizen of every village and 
 every camp of the great north." 
 
 The old man turned his head towards a spot
 
 IO8 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 up the shore of Belle Amour, before he turned 
 to Pierre again, with a strange look, and said, 
 " Where do you go ? " 
 
 Pierre followed his gaze to that point in the 
 shore, felt the undercurrent of vague meaning in 
 his voice, guessed what was his cue, and said : 
 "Somewhere, sometime; but now only Belle 
 Amour. I have had a long travel. I have found 
 an open door. I will stay, if you please, eh ? If 
 you please ?" 
 
 Gaspard brooded. " It is lonely," he said. 
 "This day it is all bright; the sun shines and 
 the little gay waves crinkle to the shore. But 
 man Dieu / sometimes it is all black and ugly 
 with storm. The waves come grinding, boom- 
 ing in along the gridiron rocks" he smiled a 
 grim smile "break through the teeth of the 
 reefs, and split with a roar of hell upon the 
 cliff. And all the time, and all the time," his 
 voice got low with a kind of devilish joy 
 "there is a finger Jesu! you should see that finger 
 of the devil stretch up from the bowels of the 
 earth, waiting, waiting for something to come 
 out of the storm. And then and then you 
 can hear a wild laugh come out of the land, 
 come up from the sea, come down from the sky 
 all waiting, waiting for something! No, no, 
 you would not stay here."
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 109 
 
 Pierre looked again to that point in the 
 shore towards which Gaspard's eyes had been 
 cast. The sun was shining hard just then, and 
 the stern, sharp rocks, tumbling awkwardly 
 back into the waste behind, had an insolent 
 harshness. Day perched garishly there. Yet 
 now and then the staring light was broken by 
 sudden and deep shadows great fissures in 
 the rocks and lanes between. These gave Pierre 
 a suggestion, though why, he could not say. 
 He knew that when men live lives of patient, 
 gloomy vigilance, they generally have some- 
 thing to watch and guard. Why should 
 Gaspard remain here year after year? His 
 occupation was nominally a pilot in a bay 
 rarely touched by vessels, and then only for 
 shelter. A pilot need not take his daily life 
 with such brooding seriousness. In body he 
 was like flexible metal, all cord and muscle. He 
 gave the impression of bigness, though he was 
 small in stature. Yet, as Pierre studied him, he 
 saw something that made him guess the man 
 had had about him one day a woman, perhaps a 
 child; no man could carry that look unless. If 
 a woman has looked at you from day to day, 
 something of her, some reflection of her face, 
 passes to yours and stays there; and if a child 
 has held your hand long, or hung about your
 
 IIO An Adventurer of the North 
 
 knees, it gives you a kind of gentle wariness as 
 you step about your home. 
 
 Pierre knew that a man will cherish with a 
 deep, eternal purpose a memory of a woman or q 
 child, when, no matter how compelling his cue 
 to remember where a man is concerned, he will 
 yield it up in the end to time. Certain specu- 
 lations arranged themselves definitely in 
 Pierre's mind : there was a woman, maybe a 
 child once; there was some sorrowful mystery 
 about them ; there was a point in the shore that 
 had held the old man's eyes strangely; there 
 was the bay with that fantastic " finger of the 
 devil " stretching up from the bowels of the 
 world. Behind the symbol lay the Thing 
 what was it ? 
 
 Long time he looked out upon the gulf, then 
 his eyes drew into the bay and stayed there, 
 seeing mechanically, as a hundred fancies went 
 through his mind. There were reefs of which 
 the old man had spoken. He could guess from the 
 color and movement of the water where they 
 were. The finger of the devil was it not real ? 
 A finger of rock, waiting as the old man said 
 for what ? 
 
 Gaspard touched his shoulder. He rose and 
 went with him into the gloomy cabin. They ate 
 and drank in silence. When the meal was finished
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 1 1 1 
 
 they sat smoking till night fell. Then the pilot 
 lit a fire, and drew his rough chair to the door. 
 Though it was only late summer, it was cold in 
 the shade of the cliff. Long time they sat. Now 
 and again Pierre intercepted the quick, elusive 
 glance of his silent host. Once the pilot took 
 his pipe from his mouth, and leaned his hands 
 on his knees as if about to speak. But he did 
 not. 
 
 Pierre saw that the time was ripe for speech. 
 So he said, as though he knew something : " It 
 is a long time since it happened ? " 
 
 Gaspard, brooding, answered : " Yes, a long 
 time too long." Then, as if suddenly awak- 
 ened to the strangeness of the question, he 
 added, in a startled way : " What do you know ? 
 tell me quick what you know." 
 
 " I know nothing except what comes to me 
 here, pilot" he touched his forehead "but 
 there is a thing I am not sure what. There 
 was a woman perhaps a child ; there is some- 
 thing on the shore ; there is a hidden point of 
 rock in the bay ; and you are waiting for a ship 
 for the ship, and it does not come is n't 
 that so ? " 
 
 Gaspard got to his feet, and peered into 
 Pierre's immobile face. Their eyes met. 
 
 " Mon Dieu /" said the pilot, his hand catch-
 
 112 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 ing the smoke away from between them, "you 
 are a droll man ; you have a wonderful mind. 
 You are cold like ice, and still there is in you a 
 look of fire." 
 
 " Sit down," answered Pierre, quietly, " and 
 tell me all. Perhaps I could think it out little 
 by little; but it might take too long and what 
 is the good ? " 
 
 Slowly Gaspard obeyed. Both hands rested 
 on his knees, and he stared abstractedly into the 
 fire. Pierre thrust forward the tobacco-bag. His 
 hand lifted, took the tobacco, and then his eyes 
 came keenly to Pierre's. He was about to speak. 
 
 " Fill your pipe first," said the half-breed 
 coolly. 
 
 The old man did so abstractedly. When the 
 pipe was lighted Pierre said : " Now ! " 
 
 " I have never told the story, never not even 
 to Pere Corraine. But I know, I have it here" 
 he put his hand to his forehead, as did Pierre 
 "that you will be silent 
 
 " She was fine to see. Her eyes were black 
 as beads; and when she laugh it was all music. 
 I was so happy ! We lived on the island of the 
 Aux Coudres, far up there at Quebec. It was a 
 wild place. There were smugglers and others 
 there maybe pirates. But she was like a saint 
 of God among all. I was a lucky man. I was
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 113 
 
 pilot, and took ships out to sea, and brought 
 them in safe up the gulf. It is not all easy, for 
 there are mad places. Once or twice when a 
 wild storm was on I could not land at Cape Mar- 
 tin, and was carried out to sea and over to 
 France. . . . Well, that was not so bad ; there 
 was plenty to eat and drink, nothing to do. But 
 when I marry it was differen'. I was afraid of 
 being carried away and leave my wife the 
 belle Mamette alone long time. You see, I 
 was young, and she was ver' beautiful." 
 
 He paused and caught his hand over his 
 mouth as though to stop a sound ; the lines of 
 his face deepened. Presently he puffed his pipe 
 so hard that the smoke and the sparks hid him 
 in a cloud through which he spoke: "When 
 the child was born Holy Mother ! have you 
 ever felt the hand of your own child in yours, 
 and looked at the mother, as she lies there all 
 pale and shining between the quilts? " 
 
 He paused. Pierre's eyes dropped to the 
 floor. 
 
 Gaspard continued: "Well, it is a great 
 thing, and the babe was born quick one day 
 when we were all alone. A thing like that gives 
 you wonder. Then I could not bear to go away 
 with the ships, and at last I said 'One month 
 and then the ice fills the gulf, and there will be
 
 114 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 no more ships for the winter. That will be the 
 last for me. I will be pilot no more no.' She 
 was ver' happy, and a laugh ran over her little 
 white teeth. Mori Dieu, I stop that laugh pretty 
 quick in fine way ! " 
 
 He seemed for an instant to forget his great 
 trouble, and his face went to warm sunshine like 
 a boy's; but it was as sun playing on a scarred 
 fortress. Presently the light faded out of his 
 face and left it like iron smoldering from the 
 bellows. 
 
 "Well," he said, "you see there was a ship 
 to go almost the last of the season, and I said 
 to my wife, ' Mamette, it is the last time I shall 
 be pilot. You must come with me and bring 
 the child, and they will put us off at Father 
 Point, and then we will come back slow to the 
 village on the good Ste. Anne and live there 
 ver' quiet.' When I say that to her she laugh 
 back at me and say, 'Beau! beau!' and she 
 laugh in the child's eyes, and speak oh, holy ! 
 she speak so gentle and so light and say to the 
 child, ' Would you like to go with your father a 
 pretty journey down the gulf ?' And the little 
 child laugh back at her, and shake its soft brown 
 hair over its head. They were both so glad to 
 go. I went to the captain of the ship. I say 
 to him, ' I will take my wife and my little child,
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 115 
 
 and when we come to Father Point we will go 
 ashore.' JBien, the captain laugh big, and it 
 was all right. That was a long time ago long 
 time." 
 
 He paused again, threw his head back with a 
 despairing toss, his chin dropped on his breast, 
 his hands clasped between his knees, and his 
 pipe, laid beside him on the bench, was for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Pierre quietly put some wood upon the fire, 
 opened his kit, drew out from it a little flask of 
 rum, and laid it upon the bench beside the pipe. 
 A long time passed. At last Gaspard roused 
 himself with a long sigh, turned and picked up 
 the pipe, but, seeing the flask of rum, lifted it, 
 and took one long swallow before he began to 
 fill and light his pipe. There came into his 
 voice an iron hardness as he continued his 
 story. 
 
 " Well, we went into the boat. As we trav- 
 elled down the gulf a great storm came out of 
 the north. We thought it would pass, but it 
 stayed on. When we got to the last place where 
 the pilot could land, the waves were running like 
 hills to the shore, and no boat could live be- 
 tween the ship and the Point. For myself, it 
 was nothing I am a strong man and a great 
 swimmer. But when a man has a wife and a
 
 Ii6 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 child, it is differen 1 So the ship went on out 
 into the ocean with us. Well, we laugh a little, 
 and think what a great brain I had when I say 
 to my wife, 'Come and bring the child for the 
 last voyage of Gaspard the pilot.' You see, 
 there we were on board the ship, everything ver' 
 good, plenty to eat, much to drink, to smoke, 
 all the time. The sailors, they were very funny, 
 and to see them take my child, my little Ba- 
 bette, and play with her as she roll on the deck 
 merci, it was grand ! So I say to my wife, 'This 
 wil> be bon voyage for all.' But a woman, she 
 has not the mind like a man. When a man 
 laugh in the sun and think nothing of evil, a 
 woman laugh, too, but there come a little quick 
 sob to her lips. You ask her why and she can- 
 not tell. She knows that something will hap- 
 pen. A man has great idee, a woman great 
 sight. So my wife, she turn her face away all 
 sad from me then she was right she was right! 
 "One day in the ocean we pass a ship only 
 two days out. The ship signal us. I say to my 
 wife, 'Ha, ha! now we can go back, maybe, to 
 the good Ste. Anne.' Well, the ships come close 
 together, and the captain of the other ship he have 
 something importan' with ours. He ask if there 
 will be chance of pilot into the gulf, because it 
 is the first time that he visit Quebec. The cap-
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 117 
 
 tain swing round and call to me. I go up. I 
 bring my wife and my little Babette ; and that 
 was how we sail back to the great gulf ! 
 
 " When my wife step on board that ship I see 
 her face get pale, and something strange in her 
 eyes. I ask her why ; she do not know, but she 
 hug Babette close to her breast with a kind of 
 fear. A long, low, black ship, it could run 
 through every sea. Soon the captain come to 
 me and say, 'You know the coast, the north 
 coast of the gulf, from Labrador to Quebec ? ' 1 
 tell him yes. 'Well,' he say, 'do you know of 
 a bay where few ships enter safe ?' I think a 
 moment and I tell him of Belle Amour. Then he 
 say, ver' quick, ' That is the place ; we will go 
 to the bay of Belle Amour.' He was ver' kind 
 to my face ; he give my wife and child good 
 berth, plenty to eat and drink, and once more I 
 laugh; but my wife there was in her face 
 something I not understan'. It is not easy to 
 understan' a woman. We got to the bay. I 
 had pride : I was young. I was the best pilot 
 in the St. Lawrence, and I took in the ship be- 
 tween the reefs of the bay, where they run like 
 a gridiron, and I laugh when I swing the ship 
 all ver' quick to the right, after we pass the 
 reefs, and make a curve round something. 
 The captain pull me up and ask why. But I
 
 Ii8 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 never tell him that. I not know why I never 
 tell him. But the good God put the thought 
 into my head, and I keep it to this hour, and it 
 never leave me, never never!" 
 
 He slowly rubbed his hands up and down his 
 knees, took another sip of rum and went on : 
 
 " I brought the ship close up to the shore, 
 and we went to anchor. All that night I see the 
 light of a fire on the shore. So I slide down 
 and swim to the shore. Under a little arch of 
 rocks something was going on. I could not tell, 
 but I know from the sound that they are burying 
 something. Then, all at once, it come to me 
 this is a pirate ship ! I come closer and closer 
 to the light, and then I see a dreadful thing. 
 There was the captain and the mate, and another. 
 They turn quick upon two other men two sail- 
 ors and kill them. Then they take the bodies 
 and wind them round some casks in a great 
 hole, and cover it all up. I understand. It is 
 the old legend that a dead body will keep gold 
 all to itself, so that no one shall find it. Mon 
 Dieu/" his voice dropped low and shook in 
 hfs throat " I give one little cry at the sight, 
 and then they saw me. There was three. They 
 were armed; they spring upon me and tied me. 
 Then they flung me beside the fire, and they 
 cover up the hole with the gold and the bodies.
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 119 
 
 " When that was done they take me back to 
 the ship, then with pistols at my head they make 
 me pilot the ship out into the bay again. As we 
 went they make a chart of the place. We travel 
 along the coast for one day ; and then a great 
 storm of snow come, and the captain say to me, 
 'Steer us into harbour.' When we are at anchor, 
 they take me and my wife and little child, and 
 put us ashore alone, with a storm and the bare 
 rocks and the dreadful night, and leave us there, 
 that we shall never tell the secret of the gold. 
 That night my wife and my child die in the 
 snow." 
 
 Here his voice became strained and slow. 
 "After a long time I work my way to an Injun 
 camp. For months I was a child in strength, all 
 my flesh gone. When the spring come I went 
 and dug a deeper grave for my wife and p'tite 
 Babette, and leave them there, where they had 
 die. But I come to the Bay of Belle Amour, 
 because I knew some day the man with the 
 devil's heart will come back for his gold, and 
 then would arrive my time the hour of God." 
 
 He paused. " The hour of God," he repeated 
 slowly. " I have waited twenty years, but he has 
 not come ; yet I know that he will come. I feel 
 it here" he touched his forehead ; " I know it 
 here" he tapped his heart. "Once where my
 
 I2O An Adventurer of the North 
 
 heart was, there is only one thing, and it is hate, 
 and I know I know that he will come. 
 
 And when he comes " He raised his arm 
 
 high above his head, laughed wildly, paused, let 
 the hand drop, and then fell to staring in the 
 fire. 
 
 Pierre again placed the glass of rum between 
 his fingers. But Gaspard put it down, caught 
 his arms together across his breast, and never 
 turned his face from the fire. Midnight came, 
 and still they sat there silent. No man had a 
 greater gift in waiting than Pierre. Many a 
 time his life had been a swivel, upon which the 
 comedies and tragedies of others had turned. 
 He neither loved nor feared men ; sometimes he 
 pitied them. He pitied Gaspard. He knew 
 what it is to have the heartstrings stretched out, 
 one by one, by the hand of a Gorgon, while the 
 feet are chained to the rocking world. 
 
 Not till the darkest hour of the morning did 
 the two leave their silent watch and go to bed. 
 The sun had crept stealthily to the door of the 
 hut before they rose again. Pierre laid his hand 
 upon Gaspard's shoulder as they travelled out 
 into the morning, and said : " My friend, I 
 understand. Your secret is safe with me ; you 
 shall take me to the place where the gold is 
 buried, but it shall wait there until the time is
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 121 
 
 ripe. What is gold to me ? Nothing. To find 
 gold, that is the trick of any fool. To win it or 
 to earn it is the only game. Let the bodies rot 
 about the gold. You and I will wait. I have 
 many friends in the northland, but there is no 
 face in any tent-door looking for me. You are 
 alone ; well, I will stay with you. Who can tell ? 
 perhaps it is near at hand the hour of God!" 
 
 The huge hard hand of Gaspard swallowed 
 the small hand of Pierre, and, in a voice scarcely 
 above a whisper, he answered: "You shall be 
 my comrade. I have told you all, as I have 
 never told it to my God. I do not fear you 
 about the gold ; it is all cursed. You are not 
 like other men ; I will trust you. Some time 
 you also have had the throat of a man in your 
 fingers, and watch the life spring out of his 
 eyes, and leave them all empty. When men feel 
 like that, what is gold ? what is anything ? 
 There is food in the bay and on the hills. We 
 will live together, you and I. Come and I will 
 show you the place of hell." 
 
 Together they journeyed down the crag and 
 along the beach to the place where the gold, the 
 grim god of this world, was fortressed and bas- 
 tioned by its victims. 
 
 The days went on ; the weeks and months 
 ambled by. Still the two lived together. Little
 
 122 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 speech passed between them, save that speech of 
 comrades, who use more the sign than the 
 tongue. It seemed to Pierre after a time that 
 Gaspard's wrongs were almost his own. Yet 
 with this difference : he must stand by and let 
 the avenger be the executioner ; he must be the 
 spectator merely. 
 
 Sometimes he went inland and brought back 
 moose, caribou, and the skins of other animals, 
 thus assisting Gaspard in his dealings with the 
 great Company. But again there were days 
 when he did nothing but lie on the skins at the 
 hut's door, or saunter in the shadows and the 
 sunlight. Not since he had come to Gaspard 
 had a ship passed the bay or sought to anchor 
 in it. 
 
 But there came a day. It was the early sum- 
 mer. The snow had shrunk from the ardent 
 sun, and had swilled away to the gulf, leaving 
 the tender grass showing, The moss on the 
 rocks had changed from brown to green, and 
 the vagrant birds had fluttered back from the 
 south. The winter's furs had been carried away in 
 the early spring to the Company's post, by a de- 
 tachment of coureurs de bois. There was little 
 left to do. This morning they sat in the sun, 
 looking out upon the gulf. Presently, Gaspard 
 rose and went into the hut. Pierre's eyes still lazily
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 123 
 
 scanned the water. As he looked he saw a ves- 
 sel rounding a point in the distance. Suppose 
 this was the ship of the pirate and murderer ? 
 The fancy diverted him. His eyes drew away 
 from the indistinct craft first to the reefs, and 
 then to that spot where the colossal needle 
 stretched up under the water. 
 
 It was as Pierre speculated. Brigond, the 
 French pirate, who had hidden his gold at such 
 shameless cost, was, after twenty years in the 
 galleys at Toulon, come back to find his treas- 
 ure. He had doubted little that he would find 
 it. The lonely spot, the superstition concerning 
 dead bodies, the supposed doom of Gaspard, all 
 ran in his favor. His little craft came on, 
 manned by as vile a mob as ever mutinied or 
 built a wrecker's fire. 
 
 When the ship got within a short distance of 
 the bay Pierre rose and called. Gaspard came 
 to the door. 
 
 " There 's work to do, pilot," he said. Gas- 
 pard felt the thrill of his voice, and flashed a 
 look out to the gulf. He raised his hands with 
 a gasp. "I feel it," he said : " it is the hour of 
 God ! " 
 
 He started to the rope ladder of the cliff, 
 then wheeled suddenly and came back to Pierre. 
 "You must not come," he said. "Stay here
 
 124 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 and watch ; you shall see great things." His 
 voice had a round, deep tone. He caught both 
 Pierre's hands in his and added : " It is for my 
 wife and child ; I have no fear 1 Adieu, my 
 friend ! When you see the good Pere Corraine 
 say to him but no, it is no matter there is 
 One greater ! " 
 
 Once again he caught Pierre hard by the 
 shoulder, then ran to the cliff and swung down 
 the ladder. All at once there shot through 
 Pierre's body an impulse, and his eyes lighted 
 with excitement. He sprang toward the cliff. 
 " Gaspard, come back!" he called; then 
 paused, and, with an enigmatical smile, shrug- 
 ged his shoulders, drew back, and waited. 
 
 The vessel was hove to outside the bay, as if 
 hesitating. Brigond was considering whether it 
 were better, with his scant chart, to attempt the 
 bay, or to take small boats and make for the 
 shore. He remembered the reefs, but he did 
 not know of the needle of rock. 
 
 Presently he saw Gaspard's boat coming. 
 " Some one who knows the bay," he said ; " I 
 see a hut on the cliff." 
 
 "Hello! who are you?" Brigond called 
 down as Gaspard drew alongside. 
 
 "A Hudson's Bay Company's man," an- 
 swered Gaspard.
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 125 
 
 " How many are there of you ?" 
 
 " Myself alone." 
 
 "Can you pilot us in ?" 
 
 " I know the way." 
 
 "Come up." 
 
 Gaspard remembered Brigond, and he veiled 
 his eyes lest the hate he felt should reveal him. 
 No one could have recognized him as the young 
 pilot of twenty years before. Then his face 
 was cheerful and bright, and in his eye was the 
 fire of youth. Now a thick beard and furrowing 
 lines hid all the look of the past. His voice 
 too was desolate and distant. 
 
 Brigond clapped him on the shoulder. 
 "How long have you lived off there?" he 
 asked, as he jerked his finger toward the shore. 
 
 " A good many years." 
 
 "Did anything strange ever happen there?" 
 
 Gaspard felt his heart contract again, as it 
 did when Brigond's hand touched his shoulder. 
 
 " Nothing strange is known." 
 
 A vicious joy came into Brigond's face. His 
 fingers opened and shut. " Safe, by the holy 
 heaven ! " he grunted. 
 
 " ' By the holy heaven ! ' " repeated Gaspard, 
 under his breath. 
 
 They walked forward. Almost as they did so 
 there came a big puff of wind across the bay ;
 
 126 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 one of those sudden currents that run in from 
 the ocean and the gulf stream. Gaspard saw, 
 and smiled. In a moment the vessel's nose was 
 towards the bay, and she sailed in, dipping a 
 shoulder to the sudden foam. On she came 
 past reef and bar, a pretty tumbril to the 
 slaughter. The spray feathered up to her sails, 
 the sun caught her on deck and beam ; she was 
 running dead for the needle of rock. 
 
 Brigond stood at Gaspard's side. All at once 
 Gaspard made the sacred gesture and said, in a 
 low tone, as if only to himself: "Pardon, mon 
 Capitaine, mon Jesu!" Then he turned triumph- 
 antly, fiercely upon Brigond. The pirate was 
 startled. "What 's the matter?" he said. 
 
 Not Gaspard, but the needle rock replied. 
 There was a sudden shock; the vessel stood still 
 and shivered; lurched, swung shoulder down- 
 wards, reeled and struggled. Instantly she be- 
 gan to sink. 
 
 "The boats! lower the boats!" cried Brigond. 
 "This cursed fool has run us on a rock!" 
 
 The waves, running high, now swept over the 
 deck. Brigond started aft, but Gaspard sprang 
 before him. " Stand back," he called. " Where 
 you are you die!" 
 
 Brigond, wild with terror and rage, ran at 
 him. Gaspard caught him as he came. With
 
 The Pilot of Belle Amour 127 
 
 vast strength he lifted him and dashed him to 
 the deck. "Die there, murderer!" he cried. 
 
 Brigond crouched upon the deck, looking at 
 him with fearful eyes. "Who are you?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " I am Gaspard the pilot. I have waited for 
 you twenty years. Up there, in the snow, my 
 wife and child died. Here, in this bay, you 
 die!" 
 
 Noise and racketing were behind them, but 
 they two heard nothing. The one was alone 
 with his terror, the other with his soul. Once, 
 twice, thrice, the vessel heaved, then suddenly 
 stilled. 
 
 Gaspard understood. One look at his victim, 
 then he made the sacred gesture again, and 
 folded his arms. 
 
 Pierre, from the height of the cliff, looking 
 down, saw the vessel dip at the bow : and then 
 the waters divided and swallowed it up. 
 
 " Gaspard should have lived," he said. " But 
 who can tell ? Perhaps Mamette was waiting 
 for him."
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 
 I. THE SEARCH 
 
 She was only a big gulf yawl, which a man 
 and a boy could manage at a pinch, with old- 
 fashioned high bulwarks, but lying clean in the 
 water. She had a tolerable record for speed, 
 and for other things so important that they were 
 now and again considered by the Government 
 at Quebec. She was called the Ninety-Nine. 
 With a sense of humour the cure" had called her 
 so, after an interview with her owner and cap- 
 tain, Tarboe the smuggler. When he said to 
 Tarboe at Angel Point that he had come to seek 
 the one sheep that was lost, leaving behind him 
 the other ninety-and-nine within the fold at Isle 
 of Days, Tarboe had replied that it was a mis- 
 take he was the ninety-nine, for he needed no 
 repentance, and immediately offered the cure" 
 some old brown brandy of fine flavour. They 
 both had a whimsical turn, and the cur did 
 not ask Tarboe how he came by such perfect 
 liquor. Many high in authority, it was said, had 
 been soothed even to the winking of an eye 
 128
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 129 
 
 when they ought to have sent a Nordenfelt 
 against the Ninety-Nine. 
 
 The day after the cure" left Angel Point he 
 spoke of Tarboe and his craft as the Ninety-and- 
 Nine; and Tarboe hearing of this for some- 
 how he heard everything immediately painted 
 out the old name, and called her the Ninety- 
 Nine, saying that she had been so blessed by the 
 cure". Afterwards the Ninety-Nine had an in- 
 creasing reputation for exploit and daring. In 
 brief, Tarboe and his craft were smugglers, and 
 to have trusted gossip would have been to say 
 that the boat was as guilty as the man. 
 
 Their names were much more notorious than 
 sweet; and yet in Quebec men laughed as they 
 shrugged their shoulders at them; for as many 
 jovial things as evil were told of Tarboe. When 
 it became known that a dignitary of the Church 
 had been given a case of splendid wine, which 
 had come in a roundabout way to him, men 
 waked in the night and laughed, to the annoy- 
 ance of their wives; for the same dignitary had 
 preached a powerful sermon against smugglers 
 and the receivers of stolen goods. It was a sad 
 thing for the good man to be called a Ninety- 
 Niner, as were all good friends of Tarboe, high 
 and low. But when he came to know, after the 
 wine had been leisurely drank and becomingly
 
 130 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 praised, he brought his influence to bear in civic 
 places, so that there was nothing left to do but 
 to corner Tarboe at last. 
 
 It was in the height of summer, when there 
 was little to think of in the old fortressed city, 
 and a dart after a brigand appealed to the ro- 
 mantic natures of the idle French folk, common 
 and gentle. 
 
 Through clouds of rank tobacco smoke, and 
 in the wash of their bean soup, the habitants dis- 
 cussed the fate of "Black Tarboe," and officers 
 of the garrison and idle ladies gossiped at the 
 Citadel and at Murray Bay of the freebooting 
 gentleman whose Ninety-Nine had furnished 
 forth many a table in the great walled city. 
 But Black Tarboe himself was down at Anticosti 
 waiting for a certain merchantman. Passing 
 vessels saw the Ninety-Nine anchored in an open 
 bay, flying its flag flippantly before the world 
 a rag of black sheepskin, with the wool on, in 
 profane keeping with its name. 
 
 There was no attempt at hiding, no skulking 
 behind a point, or scurrying from observation, 
 but an indolent and insolent waiting for some- 
 thing. "Black Tarboe 's getting reckless!" said 
 one captain coming in, and another going out 
 grinned as he remembered the talk at Quebec, and 
 thought of the sport provided for the Ninety-Nine
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 131 
 
 when she should come up stream, as she must 
 in due time, for Tarboe's home was on the Isle 
 of Days, and was not he fond and proud of his 
 daughter Joan to a point of folly ? He was not 
 alone in his admiration of Joan, for the cure at 
 Isle of Days said high things of her. 
 
 Perhaps this was because she was unlike most 
 other girls, and women too, in that she had a 
 sense of humour, got from having mixed with 
 choice spirits who visited her father and carried 
 out at Angel Point a kind of freemasonry, which 
 had few rites and many charges and counter- 
 charges. She had that almost impossible gift 
 in a woman the power of telling a tale whimsi- 
 cally. It was said that once, when Orvay Lafarge, 
 a new Inspector of Customs, came to spy out the 
 land, she kept him so amused by her quaint wit 
 that he sat in the doorway gossiping with her 
 while Tarboe and two others unloaded and safely 
 hid away a cargo of liquors from the Ninety- 
 Nine. And one of the men, as cheerful as Joan 
 herself, undertook to carry a little keg of brandy 
 into the house, under the very nose of the young 
 inspector, who had sought to mark his appoint- 
 ment by the detection and arrest of Tarboe 
 single-handed. He had never met Tarboe or 
 Tarboe's daughter when he made his boast. If 
 his superiors had known that Loce Bissonnette,
 
 132 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 Tarboe's jovial lieutenant, had carried the keg 
 of brandy into the house in a water-pail, not fif- 
 teen feet from where Lafarge sat with Joan, they 
 might have asked for his resignation. True, the 
 thing was cleverly done, for Bissonnette made 
 the water spill quite naturally against his leg, 
 and when he turned to Joan and said in a crusty 
 way that he did n't care if he spilled all the 
 water in the pail, he looked so like an unwilling 
 water-carrier that Joan for one little moment did 
 not guess. When she understood she laughed 
 till the tears came to her eyes, and presently, 
 because Lafarge seemed hurt, gave him to under- 
 stand that he was upon his honour if she told 
 him what it was. He consenting, she, still laugh- 
 ing, asked him into the house, and then drew 
 the keg from the pail, before his eyes, and, tap- 
 ping it, gave him some liquor, which he accepted 
 without churlishness. He found nothing in this 
 to lessen her in his eyes, for he knew that women 
 have no civic virtues. 
 
 He drank to their better acquaintance with 
 few compunctions, a matter not scandalous, for 
 there is nothing like a witty woman to turn a 
 man's head, and there was not so much at stake 
 after all. Tarboe had gone on for many a year 
 till his trade seemed like the romance of law 
 rather than its breach. It is safe to say that
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 133 
 
 Lafarge was a less sincere if not a less blameless 
 customs officer from this time forth. For 
 humour on a woman's lips is a potent thing, as 
 any man knows that has kissed it off in 
 laughter. 
 
 As we said, Tarboe lay rocking in a bight at 
 Anticosti with an empty hold and a scanty 
 larder. Still, he was in no ill-humor, for he 
 smoked much and talked more than common. 
 Perhaps that was because Joan was with him 
 an unusual thing. She was as good a sailor as 
 her father, but she did not care, nor did he, to 
 have her mixed up with him in his smuggling. 
 So far as she knew, she had never been on 
 board the Ninety-Nine when it carried a 
 smuggled cargo. She had not broken the letter 
 of the law. Her father, on asking her to come 
 on this cruise, had said that it was a pleasure 
 trip, to meet a vessel in the gulf. 
 
 The pleasure had not been remarkable, 
 though there had been no bad weather. The 
 coast of Anticosti is cheerless, and it is possible 
 even to tire of sun and water. True, Bisson- 
 nette played the concertina with passing sweet- 
 ness, and sang as little like a wicked smuggler 
 as one might think. But there were boundaries 
 even to that, as there were to his lovemaking, 
 which was, however, so interwoven with laughter
 
 134 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 that it was impossible to think the matter 
 serious. Sometimes of an evening Joan danced 
 on deck to the music of the concertina 
 dances which had their origin largely with her- 
 self : fantastic, touched off with some unex- 
 pected sleight of foot almost uncanny at 
 times to Bissonnette, whose temperament could 
 hardly go her distance when her mood was as this. 
 
 Tarboe looked on with a keener eye and 
 understanding, for was she not bone of his bone 
 and flesh of his flesh ? Who was he that he 
 should fail to know her ? He saw the moon- 
 light play on her face and hair, and he waved 
 his head with the swaying of her body, and 
 smacked his lips in thought of the fortune, 
 which, smuggling days over, would carry them 
 up to St. Louis Street, Quebec, there to dwell 
 as in a garden of good things. 
 
 After many days had passed, Joan tired of 
 the concertina, of her own dancing, of her 
 father's tales, and became inquisitive. So at 
 last she said: " Father, what 's all this for ?" 
 
 Tarboe did not answer her at once, but, turn- 
 ing to Bissonnette, asked him to play "The 
 Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose." It was a 
 gay little demoiselle, according to Bissonnette, 
 and through the creaking, windy gaiety Tarboe 
 and his daughter could talk without being
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 135 
 
 heard by the musician. Tarboe lit another 
 cigar that badge of greatness in the eyes of 
 his fellow-habitants, and said: 
 
 " What 's all this for, Joan ? Why, we 're 
 here for our health." His teeth bit on the 
 cigar with enjoyable emphasis. 
 
 " If you do n't tell me what 's in the wind, 
 you '11 be sorry. Come, where 's the good ! 
 I 've got as much head as you have, father, 
 and" 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! Much more. That 's not the 
 question. It was to be a surprise to you." 
 
 " Pshaw ! You can only have one minute of 
 surprise, and you can have months of fun look- 
 ing out for a thing. I do n't want surprises ; I 
 want what you 've got the thing that 's kept 
 you good-tempered while we lie here like snails 
 on the rocks." 
 
 " Well, my cricket, if that 's the way you 
 feel, here you are. It is a long story, but I will 
 make it short. Once there was a pirate called 
 Brigond, and he brought into a bay on the 
 coast of Labrador a fortune in some kegs 
 gold, gold ! He hid it in a cave, wrapping 
 around it the dead bodies of two men. It is 
 thought that no one can ever find it so. He 
 hid it, and sailed away. He was captured, and 
 sent to prison in France for twenty years.
 
 136 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 Then he came back with a crew and another 
 ship, and sailed into the bay, but his ship went 
 down within sight of the place. And so the 
 end of him and all. But wait. There was one 
 man, the mate on the first voyage. He had 
 been put in prison also. He did not get away 
 as soon as Brigond. When he was free he come 
 to the captain of a ship that I know, the Free- 
 and-Easy t that sails to Havre, and told him the 
 story, asking for a passage to Quebec. The 
 captain Gobal did not believe it, but said he 
 would bring him over on the next voyage. 
 Gobal come to me and told me all there was to 
 tell. I said that it was a true story, for Pretty 
 Pierre told me once he saw Brigond's ship go 
 down in the bay ; but he would not say how, 
 or why or where. Pierre would not lie in a 
 thing like that, and " 
 
 " Why did n't he get the gold himself?" 
 " What is money to him ? He is a gypsy. 
 To him the money is cursed. He said so. Eh 
 bien! some wise men are fools, one way or 
 another. Well, I told Gobal I would give the 
 man the Ninety-Nine for the cruise and search, 
 and that we should divide the gold between us, 
 if it was found, first taking out enough to make 
 a dot for you and a fine handful for Bissonnette. 
 But no, shake not your head like that. It shall
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 137 
 
 be so. Away went Gobal four months ago, and 
 I get a letter from him weeks past, just after 
 Whitsunday, to say he would be here some time 
 in the first of July, with the man. Well, it is a 
 great game. The man is a pirate, but it does 
 not matter, he has paid for that. I thought you 
 would be glad of a fine adventure like that, so I 
 said to you, 'Come.' " 
 
 But, father " 
 
 " If you do not like you can go on with 
 Gobal in the free- and- Easy, and you shall be 
 landed at the Isle of Days. That 's all. We 're 
 waiting here for Gobal. He promised to stop 
 just outside this bay and land our man on us. 
 Then, blood of my heart, away we go after the 
 treasure!" 
 
 Joan's eyes flashed. Adventure was in her as 
 deep as life itself. She had been cradled in it, 
 reared in it, lived with it, and here was no law- 
 breaking. Whose money was it ? No one's, for 
 who should say what ship it was, or what people 
 were robbed by Brigond and those others ? 
 Gold, that was a better game than wine and 
 brandy, and for once her father would be on a 
 cruise which would not be, as it were, sailing in 
 forbidden waters. 
 
 "When do you expect Gobal?" she asked 
 eagerly.
 
 138 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 " He ought to have been here a week ago. 
 Maybe he has had a bad voyage or something." 
 
 " He 's sure to come ?" 
 
 " Of course. I found out about that. She 's 
 got a big consignment to people in Quebec. 
 Something has gone wrong, but she '11 be here 
 yes." 
 
 "What will you do if you get the money ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 Tarboe laughed heartily. " My faith ! come, 
 play up them scarlet hose, Bissonette ! My 
 faith ! I '11 go into Parliament at Quebec. 
 Thunder ! I will have sport with them. I '11 re- 
 form the customs. There shan't be any more 
 smuggling. The people of Quebec '11 drink 
 no more good wine, no one except Black 
 Tarboe, the member for Isle of Days." 
 
 Again he laughed, and his eyes spilt fire like 
 revolving wheels. For a moment Joan was 
 quiet, her face was shining like the sun on a 
 river. She saw more than her father, for she saw 
 release. A woman may stand by a man who 
 breaks the law, but in her heart she always has 
 bitterness, for that the world shall speak well of 
 herself and what she loves is the secret desire of 
 every woman. In her heart she never can defy 
 the world as does a man. 
 
 She had carried off the situation as became
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 139 
 
 the daughter of a daring adventurer, who in 
 more stirring times might have been a Du Lhut 
 or a Rob Roy, but she was sometimes tired of 
 the fighting, sometimes wishful that she could 
 hold her position easier. Suppose the present 
 good cur should die and another less consider- 
 ate arrive, how hard might her position become. 
 Then, she had a spirit above her station, as have 
 most people who know the world and have seen 
 something of its forbidden side ; for it is notable 
 that wisdom comes not alone from loving good 
 things, but from having seen evil as well as good. 
 Besides, Joan was not a woman to go singly to 
 her life's end. 
 
 There was scarcely a man on Isle of Days and 
 in the parish of Ste. Eunice, on the mainland, 
 but would gladly have taken to wife the daughter 
 of Tarboe the smuggler, and it is likely that the 
 cure of either parish would not have advised 
 against it. 
 
 Joan had had the taste of the lawless, and 
 now she knew, as she sat and listened to Bis- 
 sonnette's music, that she also could dance for 
 joy, in the hope of a taste of the lawful. With 
 this money, if it were got, there could be another 
 life in Quebec. She could not forbear laugh- 
 ing now, as she remembered that first day she had 
 seen Orvay Lafarge, and she said to Bissonnette :
 
 140 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 " Loce, do you mind the keg in the water- 
 pail ? " Bissonnette paused on an out-pull and 
 threw back his head with a soundless laugh, then 
 played the concertina into contortions. 
 
 " That Lafarge ! H'm ! He is very polite ; 
 but, pshaw, it is no use that, in whiskey-running. 
 To beat a great man, a man must be great. 
 Tarboe Noir can lead M'sieu' Lafarge all like 
 that!" 
 
 It seemed as if he were pulling the nose of 
 the concertina. Tarboe began tracing a kind of 
 maze with his fingers on the deck, his eyes 
 rolling outward like an endless puzzle. But 
 presently he turned sharp on Joan. 
 
 " How many times have you met him ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 "Oh, six or seven eight or nine, perhaps." 
 
 Her father stared. " Eight or nine ? By 
 the holy ! Is it like that ? Where have you 
 seen him ?" 
 
 " Twice at our home, as you know ; two or 
 three times at dances at the Belle Chatelaine, 
 and the rest when we were at Quebec, in May. 
 He is amusing, M'sieu' Lafarge." 
 
 " Yes, two of a kind," remarked Tarboe drily, 
 and then told his schemes to Joan, letting Bis- 
 sonnette hang up "The Demoiselle with the 
 Scarlet Hose," and begin " The Coming of the
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 141 
 
 Gay Cavalier." She entered into his plans with 
 spirit, and together they speculated what bay it 
 might be, of the many on the coast of Labra- 
 dor. 
 
 They spent two days longer waiting, arxd 
 then at dawn a merchantman came sauntering 
 up to anchor. She signalled to the Ninety-Nine. 
 In five minutes Tarboe was climbing up the side 
 of the Free-and-Easy, and presently was in 
 Gobal's cabin, with a glass of wine in his hand. 
 
 " What kept you, Gobal ? " he said. "You 're 
 ten days late, at least." 
 
 " Storm and sickness broken mainmast and 
 smallpox." Gobal was not cheerful. 
 
 Tarboe caught at something. " You 've got 
 our man?" 
 
 Gobal drank off his wine slowly. "Yes," he 
 said. 
 
 "Well? Why do n't you fetch him?" 
 
 'You can see him below." 
 
 "The man has legs, let him walk here. 
 Hello! my Gobal, what 's the matter? If he 's 
 here, bring him up. We 've no time to lose." 
 
 "Tarboe, the fool got smallpox and died 
 three hours ago the tenth man since we started. 
 We 're going to give him to the fishes. They 're 
 putting him in his linen now." 
 
 Tarboe's face hardened. Disaster did not dis-
 
 142 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 may him, it either made him ugly or humorous, 
 and one phase was as dangerous as the other. 
 
 "D 'ye mean to say," he groaned, "that the 
 game is up? is it all finished? Sweat o* my 
 soul, my soul crawls like hot tin ! Is it the 
 end, eh? The beast, to die!" 
 
 Gobal's eyes glistened. He had sent up the 
 mercury, he would now bring it down. 
 
 " Not such a beast as you think. A live 
 pirate, a convict as comrade in adventure, is not 
 sugar in the teeth. This one was no better than 
 the worst. Well, he died. That was awkward. 
 But he give me the chart of the bay before he 
 died and that was damn square." 
 
 Tarboe held out his hand eagerly, the big 
 fingers bending claw-like. 
 
 " Give it me, Gobal !" he said. 
 
 " Wait. There 's no hurry. Come along, 
 there 's the bell; they 're going to drop him." 
 
 He coolly motioned, and passed out from the 
 cabin to the ship's side. Tarboe kept his tongue 
 from blasphemy and his hand from the captain's 
 shoulder, for he knew only too well that Gobal 
 held the game in his hands. They leaned over 
 and saw two sailors with something on a plank. 
 
 " We therefore commit his body to the deep, 
 in the knowledge of the Judgment Day let her 
 go!" grunted Gobal; and a long straight canvas
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 143 
 
 bundle shot with a swishing sound beneath the 
 water. "It was rough on him, too," he contin- 
 ued; "he waited twenty years to have his chance 
 again. Damn me, if I did n't feel as if I 'd hit 
 him in the eye somehow when he begged me to 
 keep him alive long enough to have a look at the 
 rhino. But it was n't no use. He had to go, 
 and I told him so. Then he did the nice thing; 
 he give me the chart. But he made me swear 
 on a book of the Mass that if we got the gold 
 we 'd send one-half his share to a woman in 
 Paris, and the rest to his brother, a priest at 
 Nancy. I '11 keep my word but yes ! Eh, 
 Tarboe?" 
 
 " You can keep your word for me ! What, 
 you think, Gobal, there is no honor in Black 
 Tarboe, and you 've known me ten years ! 
 Haven 't I always kept my word like a clock ?" 
 
 Gobal stretched out his hand. " Like the 
 sun sure. That 's enough. We '11 stand by 
 my oath. You shall see the chart." 
 
 Going again inside the cabin, Gobal took out 
 a map grimed with ceaseless fingering, and 
 showed it to Tarboe, putting his finger on the 
 spot where the treasure lay. 
 
 " The Bay of Belle Amour ! " cried Tarboe, 
 his eyes flashing. "Ah, I know it. That 's 
 where Gaspard the pilot lived. It 's only forty
 
 144 A n Adventurer of the North 
 
 leagues or so from here." His fingers ran here 
 and there on the map. " Yes, yes," he con- 
 tinued, " it 's so, but he has n't placed the reef 
 right. Ah, here is how Brigond's ship went 
 down. There 's a needle of rock in the bay. It 
 is n't here. 
 
 Gobal handed the chart over. " I can 't go 
 with you, but I take your word ; I can say no 
 more. If you cheat me, I '11 kill you ; that 's 
 all." 
 
 " Let me give a bond," said Tarboe quickly. 
 " If I saw much gold perhaps I could n't trust 
 myself, but there's some one to be trusted, who '11 
 swear for me. If my daughter Joan give her 
 word" 
 
 "Is she with you ?" 
 
 " Yes, in the Ninety-Nine, now. I '11 send 
 Bissonnette for her. Yes, yes, I '11 send, for gold 
 is worse than bad whisky when it gets into a 
 man's head. Joan will speak for me." 
 
 Ten minutes later Joan was in Gobal's cabin, 
 guaranteeing for her father the fulfillment of his 
 bond. An hour afterwards the Free-and-Easy 
 was moving up stream with her splintered masts 
 and ragged sails, and the Ninety-Nine was look- 
 ing up and over towards the Bay of Belle 
 Amour. She reached it in the late afternoon of 
 the next day. Bissonnette did not know the
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 145 
 
 object of the expedition, but he had caught the 
 spirit of the affair, and his eyes were like spots 
 of fire as he held the sheet or took his turn at 
 the tiller. Joan's eyes were now on the sky, now 
 on the sail, and now on the land, weighing as 
 wisely as her father the advantage of the wind, 
 yet dwelling on that cave where skeletons kept 
 ward over the spoils of a pirate ship. 
 
 They arrived, and Tarboe took the Ninety- 
 Nine warily in on a little wind off the land. He 
 came near sharing the fate of Brigond, for the 
 yawl grazed the needle of the rock that, hiding 
 away in the water, with a nose out for destruc- 
 tion, awaits its victims. They reached safe an- 
 chorage, but by the time they landed it was 
 night, with, however, a good moon showing. 
 
 All night they searched, three silent, eager 
 figures, drawing step by step nearer the place 
 where the ancient enemy of man was barracked 
 about by men's bodies. It was Joan, who, at 
 last, as dawn drew up, discovered the hollow be- 
 tween two great rocks where the treasure lay. A 
 few minutes' fierce digging, and the kegs of gold 
 were disclosed, showing through the ribs of two 
 skeletons. Joan shrank back, but the two men 
 tossed aside the rattling bones, and presently the 
 kegs were standing between them on the open 
 shore. Bissonnette's eyes were hungry he knew
 
 146 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 now the wherefore of the quest. He laughed 
 outright, a silly, loud, hysterical laugh. Tarboe's 
 eyes shifted from the sky to the river, from the 
 river to the kegs, from the kegs to Bissonette. 
 On him they stayed a moment. Bissonette 
 shrank back. Tarboe was feeling for the first 
 time in his life the deadly suspicion which comes 
 with ill-gotten wealth. This passed as his eyes 
 and Joan's met, for she had caught the melo- 
 drama, the overstrain. Bissonnette's laugh had 
 pointed the situation, and her sense of humour 
 had prevailed. " La, la," she said, with a whim- 
 sical quirk of the head, and no apparent relev- 
 ancy : 
 
 " Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, 
 Your house is on fire, and your children all gone." 
 
 The remedy was good. Tarboe's eyes came 
 again to their natural liveliness, and Bissonnette 
 said: 
 
 " My throat 's like a piece of sandpaper." 
 Tarboe handed over a brandy flask, after tak- 
 ing a pull himself, and then sitting down on one 
 of the kegs, he said : " It is as you see, and now 
 Angel Point very quick. To get it there safe, 
 that 's the point ! " Then, scanning the sky 
 closely : " It 's for a handsome day, and the 
 wind goes to bear us up fine. Good! Well,
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 147 
 
 for you, Bissonnette, there shall be a thousand 
 dollars; you shall have the Belle Chatelaine Inn 
 and the little lady at Point Pierrot. For the 
 rest, you shall keep a quiet tongue, eh ? If not, 
 my Bissonnette, we shall be the best of strangers, 
 and you shall not be happy. Eh ?" 
 
 Bissonnette'seyes flashed. " The Belle Chate- 
 laine ? Good ! that is enough. My tongue is 
 tied ; I cannot speak ; it is fastened with a thous- 
 and pegs." 
 
 " Very good, a thousand gold pegs, and you 
 shall never pull them. The little lady will have 
 you with them, not without ; and unless you 
 stand by me, no one will have you at any price 
 by God ! " 
 
 He stood up, but Joan put out her hand. 
 "You have been speaking, now it is my turn. 
 Do n't cry cook until you have your ven'son 
 home. What is more, I gave my word to Gobal, 
 and I will keep it. I will be captain. No talk- 
 ing ! When you 've got the kegs in the cellar at 
 Angel Point, good ! But now come, my com- 
 rades, I am your captain." 
 
 She was making the thing a cheerful adven- 
 ture, and the men now swung the kegs on their 
 shoulders and carried them to the boat. In 
 another half-hour they were under way in the 
 gaudy light of an orange sunrise, a simmering
 
 148 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 wind from the sea lifting them up the river, and 
 the grey-red coast of Labrador shrinking sul- 
 lenly back. 
 
 About this time, also, a Government cutter 
 was putting out from under the mountain-wall 
 at Quebec, its officer in command having got 
 renewed orders from the Minister to bring in 
 Tarboe the smuggler. And when Mr. Martin, 
 the inspector in command of the expedition, 
 was ordered to take with him Mr. Orvay Lafarge 
 and five men, " effectively armed," it was sup- 
 posed by the romantic Minister that the matter 
 was as good as done. 
 
 What Mr. Orvay Lafarge did when he got the 
 
 word was to go straight to his hat-peg, then leave 
 
 the office, walk to the little club where he spent 
 
 leisure hours called office hours by people who 
 
 wished to be precise as well as suggestive sit 
 
 down, and raise a glass to his lips. After which 
 
 he threw himself back in his chair and said : 
 
 " Well, I'm particularly damned ! " 
 
 A few hours later they were away on their 
 
 doubtful exploit.
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 149 
 
 II. THE DEFENCE. 
 
 On the afternoon of the second day after she 
 left Labrador, the Ninety-Nine came rippling 
 near Isle of Fires, not sixty miles from her des- 
 tination, catching a fair wind on her quarter off 
 the land. Tarboe was in fine spirits, Joan was 
 as full of song as a canary, and Bissonnette was 
 as busy watching her as in keeping the nose of 
 the Ninety-Nine pointing for Cap de Gloire. 
 Tarboe was giving the sail full to the wind, and 
 thinking how he would just be able to reach 
 Angel Point and get his treasure housed before 
 mass in the morning. 
 
 Mass ! How many times had he laughed as 
 he sat in church and heard the cure" have his 
 gentle fling at smuggling ! To think that the 
 hidingplace for his liquor was the unused, al- 
 most unknown, cellar of that very church, built 
 a hundred years before as a refuge from the 
 Indians, which he had reached by digging a 
 tunnel from the shore to its secret passage ! 
 That was why the customs officers never found 
 anything at Angel Point, and that was why 
 Tarboe much loved going to mass. He some- 
 times thought he could catch the flavor of the 
 brands as he leaned his forehead on the seat 
 before him. But this time he would go to mass
 
 150 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 with a fine handful of those gold pieces in his 
 pocket, just to keep him in a commendable 
 mood. He laughed out loud at the thought of 
 doing so within a stone's throw of a fortune 
 and nose-shot of fifty kegs of brandy. 
 
 As he did so, Bissonnette gave a little cry. 
 They were coming on to Cap de Gloire at the 
 moment, and Tarboe and Joan, looking, saw a 
 boat standing off towards the mainland, as if 
 waiting for them. Tarboe gave a roar, and 
 called to Joan to take the tiller. He snatched a 
 glass and levelled it. 
 
 "A Government tug!" he said, "and, by the 
 Holy Mother, there 's your tall Lafarge among 
 'em, Joan! I 'd know him by his height miles off." 
 
 Joan lost colour a trifle and then got courage. 
 " Pshaw ! " she said, "what does he want?" 
 
 " Want ! Want ! He wants the Ninety-Nine 
 and her cargo ; but by the sun of my soul, he '11 
 get her across the devil's gridiron ! See here, 
 my girl, this ain't any sport with you aboard. 
 Bissonnette and I could make a stand for it 
 alone, but what's to become of you ? I do n't 
 want you mixed up in the mess." 
 
 The girl was eyeing the Government boat. 
 " But I 'm in it, and I can't be out of it, and I 
 do n't want to be out now that I am in. Let 
 me see the glass." She took it in one hand.
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 151 
 
 " Yes, it must be M'sieu' Lafarge," she said, 
 frowning. " He might have stayed out of this." 
 
 " When he 's got orders, he has to go," an- 
 swered her father ; " but he must look out, for a 
 gun is a gun, and I do n't pick and choose. Be- 
 sides, I 've no contraband this cruise, and I '11 
 let no one stick me up." 
 
 "There are six or seven of them," said Joan 
 debatingly. 
 
 "Bring her up to the wind," shouted Tarboe 
 to Bissonnette. The mainsail closed up several 
 points, the Ninety-Nine slackened her pace and 
 edged in closer to the land. " Now, my girl," 
 said Tarboe, " this is how it stands : If we fight, 
 there 's some one sure to be hurt, and if I 'm hurt 
 where '11 you be? " 
 
 Bissonnette interposed: "We've got noth- 
 ing contraband. The gold is ours." 
 
 " Trust that crew but no ! " cried Tarboe, 
 with an oath. " The Government would hold 
 the rhino for possible owners, and then give it 
 to a convent or something. They shan't put 
 foot here. They 've said war, and they '11 get it! 
 They're signalling us to stop, and they're bear- 
 ing down. There goes a shot ! " 
 
 The girl had been watching the Government 
 boat coolly. Now that it began to bear on she 
 answered her father's question.
 
 152 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "Captain," she said, like a trusted mate, 
 "we'll bluff them." Her eyes flashed with the 
 intelligence of war. " Here, quick, I '11 take the 
 tiller. They haven't seen Bissonnette yet, he 
 sits low. Call all hands on deck shout! Then, 
 see: Loce will go down to the middle hatch, get 
 a gun, come up with it on his shoulder, and 
 move to the fo'castle. Then he '11 drop down 
 the fo'castle hatch, get along to the middle 
 hatch, and come up again with the gun, now 
 with his cap, now without it, now with his coat, 
 now without it. He '11 do that till we 've got 
 twenty or thirty men on deck. They '11 think 
 we 've been laying for them, and they '11 not 
 come on you see?" 
 
 Tarboe ripped out an oath. "It's a great 
 game," he said, and a moment afterwards, in re- 
 sponse to his roars, Bissonnette came up the 
 hatch with his gun showing bravely; then again 
 and again, now with his cap, now without, now 
 with his coat, now with none, anon with a tar- 
 paulin over his shoulders grotesquely. Mean- 
 while Tarboe trained his one solitary little 
 cannon on the enemy, roaring his men into 
 place. 
 
 From the tug it seemed that a large and well- 
 armed crew were ranging behind the bulwarks 
 of the Ninety-Nine. Mr. Martin, the inspector,
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 153 
 
 saw with alarm Bissonnette's constantly appear- 
 ing rifle. 
 
 "They've arranged a plant for us, Mr. La- 
 farge. What do you think we 'd better do?" he 
 said. 
 
 " Fight ! " answered Lafarge laconically. He 
 wished to put himself on record, for he was 
 the only one on board who saw through the 
 ruse. 
 
 " But I 've counted at least twenty men, all 
 armed, and we 've only five." 
 
 "As you please, sir," said Lafarge bluntly, 
 angry at being tricked, but inwardly glad to be 
 free of the business, for he pictured to himself 
 that girl at the tiller he had seen her as she 
 went aft in a police court at Quebec. Yet his 
 instinct for war and his sense of duty impelled 
 him to say, " Still, sir, fight." 
 
 "No, no, Mr. Lafarge," excitedly said his 
 chief. "I cannot risk it. We must go back for 
 more men and bring along a Catling. Slow 
 down! " he called. 
 
 Lafarge turned on his heel with an oath, and 
 stood watching the Ninety-Nine. 
 
 "She'll laugh at me till I die! " he said to 
 himself presently, as the tug turned up the 
 stream and pointed for Quebec. " Well, I 'm 
 jiggered!" he added, as a cannon shot came
 
 154 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 ringing over the water after them. He was cer- 
 tain also that he heard loud laughter. No doubt 
 he was right; for as the tug hurried on, Tarboe 
 ran to Joan, hugged her like a bear, and roared 
 till he ached. Then she paid out the sheet, they 
 clapped on all sail, and travelled in the track of 
 the enemy. 
 
 Tarboe's spirit was roused. He was not dis- 
 posed to let his enemy off on even such terms, 
 so he now turned to Joan and said: " What say 
 you to a chase of the gentleman?" 
 
 Joan was in a mood for such a dare-devil ad- 
 venture. For three people, one of whom was a 
 girl, to give chase to a well-manned, well-armed 
 Government boat was too good a relish to be 
 missed. Then, too, it had just occurred to her 
 that a parley would be amusing, particularly if 
 she and Lafarge were the truce-bearers. So she 
 said: " That is very good." 
 
 " Suppose they should turn and fight ? " sug- 
 gested Bissonnette. 
 
 " That 's true here 's Joan," agreed Tarboe. 
 
 "But see," said Joan. "If we chase them 
 and call upon them to surrender and after all, 
 we can prove that we had nothing contraband 
 what a splendid game it '11 be ! " Mischief 
 flickered in her eyes. 
 
 "Good!" said Tarboe. "Tomorrow I
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 155 
 
 shall be a rich man, and then they '11 not dare to 
 come again." 
 
 So saying, he gave his sail to the wind, and 
 away the Ninety-Nine went after the one ewe 
 lamb of the Government. 
 
 Mr. Martin saw her coming, and gave word 
 for all steam. It would be a pretty game, for 
 the wind was in Tarboe's favour, and the gen- 
 eral advantage was not greatly with the tug. 
 Mr. Martin was now anxious indeed to get out 
 of the way of the smuggler. Lafarge made 
 one restraining effort, then settled into an iron- 
 ical mood. Yet a half-dozen times he was in- 
 clined to blurt out to Martin what he believed 
 was the truth. A man, a boy, and a girl to 
 bluff them that way ! In his bones he felt that 
 it was the girl who was behind this thing. Of 
 one matter he was sure they had no contra- 
 band stuff on board, or Tarboe would not have 
 brought his daughter along. He could not 
 understand their attitude, for Tarboe would 
 scarcely have risked the thing out of mere 
 bravado. Why not call a truce ? Perhaps he 
 could solve the problem. They were keeping a 
 tolerably safe distance apart, and there was no 
 great danger of the Ninety-Nine overhauling 
 them, even if it so willed, but Mr. Martin did 
 not know that.
 
 156 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 What he said to his chief had its effect, and 
 soon there was a white flag flying on the 
 tug. It was at once answered with a white 
 handkerchief of Joan's. Then the tug slowed 
 up, the Ninety-Nine came on gaily, and at a 
 good distance came up to the wind and stood 
 off. 
 
 " What do you want ? " asked Tarboe through 
 his speaking-tube. 
 
 " A parley," called Mr. Martin. 
 
 " Good ; send an officer," answered Tarboe. 
 
 A moment after, Lafarge was in a boat row- 
 ing over to meet another boat rowed by Joan 
 alone, who, dressed in a suit of Bissonnette's, 
 had prevailed on her father to let her go. 
 
 The two boats nearing each other, Joan 
 stood up, saluting, and Lafarge did the same. 
 
 " Good-day, m 'sieu'," said Joan, with as- 
 sumed brusqueness, mischief lurking about her 
 mouth. " What do you want ?" 
 
 "Good-day, monsieur; I did not expect to 
 confer with you." 
 
 "M'sieu'," said Joan, with well-acted dignity, 
 " if you prefer to confer with the captain or Mr. 
 Bissonette, whom I believe you know in the 
 matter of a pail, and " 
 
 " No, no ; pardon me, monsieur," said Lafarge 
 more eagerly than was good for the play, " I am
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 157 
 
 glad to confer with you, you will understand 
 you will understand " He paused. 
 
 "What will I understand?" 
 
 "You will understand that I understand!" 
 Lafarge waved meaningly towards the Ninety- 
 Nine, but it had no effect at all. Joan would not 
 give the game over into his hands. 
 
 "That sounds like a charade or a puzzle 
 game. We are gentlemen on a serious errand, 
 are n't we?" 
 
 "Yes," answered Lafarge, "perfect gentle- 
 men on a perfectly serious errand! " 
 
 "Very well, m'sieu'. Have you come to sur- 
 render?" 
 
 The splendid impudence of the thing stunned 
 Lafarge, but he said: "I suppose one or the 
 other ought to surrender, and naturally," he 
 added, with point, "it should be the weaker." 
 
 "Very well. Our captain is willing to con- 
 sider conditions. You came down on us to take 
 us a quiet craft sailing in free waters. You 
 attack us without cause. We summon all hands, 
 and you run. We follow, you ask for truce. It 
 is granted, We are not hard, no! We only 
 want our rights. Admit them; we '11 make sur- 
 render easy, and the matter is over." 
 
 Lafarge gasped. She was forcing his hand. 
 She would not understand his oblique sugges-
 
 158 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 tions. He saw only one way now, and that was 
 to meet her, boast for boast. 
 
 "I haven't come to surrender," he said, 
 "but to demand." 
 
 " M'sieu'," Joan said grandly, " there's noth- 
 ing more to say. Carry word to your captain 
 that we '11 overhaul him by sundown, and sink 
 him before supper." 
 
 Lafarge burst out laughing. 
 
 " Well, by the Lord, but you 're a swash- 
 buckler, Joan 
 
 "M'sieu'!" 
 
 " O, nonsense! I tell you, nonsense! Let's 
 have over with this, my girl. You 're the clev- 
 erest woman on the continent, but there 's a 
 limit to everything. Here, tell me now, and if 
 you answer me straight I '11 say no more." 
 
 " M'sieu', I am here to consider conditions, 
 not to " 
 
 "Oh, for God's sake, Joan! Tell me now, 
 have you got anything contraband on board? 
 There '11 be a nasty mess about the thing, for me 
 and all of us, and why can 't we compromise ? I 
 tell you honestly we'd have come on if I had n't 
 seen you aboard." 
 
 Joan turned her head back with a laugh. 
 " My poor m'sieu' ! You have such bad luck. 
 Contraband ? Let me see ? Liquors and wines
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine I $9 
 
 and tobacco are contraband. Is it not so?" 
 Lafarge nodded. 
 
 "Is money gold contraband?" 
 
 " Money ? No ; of course not, and you know 
 it. Why won't you be sensible ? You 're get- 
 ting me into a bad hole, and " 
 
 " I want to see how you 'II come out. If you 
 
 come out well " She paused quaintly. 
 
 "Yes, if I come out well ?" 
 
 " If you come out very well, and we do not 
 sink you before supper, I may ask you to come 
 and see me." 
 
 " H'm ! Is that all ? After spoiling my 
 reputation, I 'm to be let come and see you." 
 
 " Is n't that enough to start with ? What has 
 spoiled your reputation ?" 
 
 "A man, a boy and a slip of a girl." He 
 looked meaningly enough at her now. She 
 laughed. " See," he added, "give me a chance. 
 Let me search the Ninety-Nine for contraband, 
 that 's all I have got to do with, and then I can 
 keep quiet about the rest. If there 's no contra- 
 band, whatever else there is, I '11 hold my tongue." 
 
 " I 've told you what there is." 
 
 He did not understand. " Will you let me 
 search ? " 
 
 Joan's eyes flashed. " Once and for all, no, 
 Orvay Lafarge ! I am the ; daughter of a man
 
 160 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 whom you and your men would have killed or 
 put in the dock. He 's been a smuggler, and I 
 know it. Who has he robbed ? Not the poor, 
 not the needy, but a rich Government that robs 
 also. Well, in the hour when he ceases to be a 
 smuggler for ever, armed men come to take him. 
 Why did n't they do so before ? Why so pious 
 all at once ? No, I am first the daughter of my 
 father, and afterwards " 
 
 "And afterwards?" 
 
 " What tomorrow may bring forth." 
 
 Lafarge became very serious. "I must go 
 back. Mr. Martin is signalling, and your father 
 is calling. I do not understand, but you 're the 
 one woman in the world for my money, and I 'm 
 ready to stand by that and leave the customs to- 
 morrow if need be." 
 
 Joan's eyes blazed, her cheek was afire. 
 "Leave it today. Leave it now. Yes; that's 
 my one condition. If you want me, and you say 
 you do, come aboard the Ninety-Nine, and for 
 today be one of us tomorrow what you will." 
 
 "What I will ? What I will, Joan ? Do you 
 mean it?" 
 
 "Yes. Pshaw ! Your duty? Don't I know 
 how the Ministers and the officers have done 
 their duty at Quebec ? It 's all nonsense. You 
 must make your choice once for all now."
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 161 
 
 Lafarge stood a moment thinking. "Joan, 
 I '11 do it. I 'd go hunting in hell at your bid- 
 ding. But see. Everything 's changed. I 
 could n't fight against you, but I can fight for 
 you. All must be open now. You 've said 
 there 's no contraband. Well, I '11 tell Mr. Mar- 
 tin so, but I '11 tell him also that you 've only a 
 crew of two " 
 
 "Of three, now!" 
 
 " Of three ! I will do my duty in that, then 
 resign and come over to you, if I can." 
 
 " If you can ? You mean that they may fire 
 on you ? " 
 
 " I can 't tell what they may do. But I must 
 deal fair." 
 
 Joan's face was grave. "Very well, I will 
 wait for you here." 
 
 " They might hit you." 
 
 " But no. They can 't hit a wall. Go on, my 
 dear." 
 
 They saluted, and, as Lafarge turned away, 
 Joan said, with a little mocking laugh, "Tell 
 him that he must surrender, or we '11 sink him 
 before supper." 
 
 Lafarge nodded, and drew away quickly to- 
 wards the tug. His interview with Mr. Martin 
 was brief, and he had tendered his resignation, 
 though it was disgracefully informal, and was
 
 102 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 over the side of the boat again and rowing 
 quickly away before his chief recovered his 
 breath. Then Mr. Martin got a large courage. 
 He called to his men to fire when Lafarge was 
 about two hundred and fifty feet from the tug. 
 The shots rattled about him. He turned round 
 coolly and called out, " Coward we '11 sink you 
 before supper I " 
 
 A minute afterwards there came another shot, 
 and an oar dropped from his hand. But now 
 Joan was rowing rapidly towards him, and pres- 
 ently was alongside. 
 
 " Quick, jump in here," she said. He did so, 
 and she rowed on quickly. Tarboe did not un- 
 derstand, but now his blood was up, and as 
 another volley sent bullets dropping around the 
 two he gave the Ninety-Nine to the wind, and 
 she came bearing down smartly to them. In a 
 few moments they were safely on board, and 
 Joan explained. Tarboe grasped Lafarge's un- 
 maimed hand the other Joan was caring for 
 and swore that fighting was the only thing left 
 now. 
 
 Mr. Martin had said the same, but when he 
 saw the Ninety-Nine determined, menacing, and 
 coming on, he became again uncertain, and 
 presently gave orders to make for the lighthouse 
 on the opposite side of the river. He could get
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 163 
 
 over first, for the Ninety-Nine would not have 
 the wind so much in her favor, and there en- 
 trench himself, for even yet Bissonnette amply 
 multiplied was in his mind, Lafarge had not 
 explained that away. He was in the neighbor- 
 hood of some sunken rocks of which he and his 
 man at the wheel did not know accurately, and 
 in making what he thought was a clear channel 
 he took a rock with great force, for they were 
 going full steam ahead. Then came confusion, 
 and in getting out the one boat it was swamped 
 and a man nearly drowned. Meanwhile the tug 
 was fast sinking. 
 
 While they were throwing off their clothes, 
 the Ninety-nine came down, and stood off. On 
 one hand was the enemy, on the other the water, 
 with the shore half a mile distant. 
 
 " Do you surrender? " called out Tarboe. 
 
 " Can't we come aboard without that?" feebly 
 urged Mr. Martin. 
 
 " I '11 see you damned first, Mr. Martin. 
 Come quick, or I '11 give you what for." 
 
 " We surrender," answered the officer gently. 
 
 A few minutes later he and his men were on 
 board, with their rifles stacked in a corner at 
 Bissonnette's hand. 
 
 Then Tarboe brought the Ninety-Nine close 
 to the wreck, and with his little cannon put a
 
 164 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 ball into her. This was the finish. She shook 
 her nose, shivered, shot down like a duck, and 
 was gone. 
 
 Mr. Martin was sad even to tears. 
 
 "Now, my beauties," said Tarboe, "now that 
 I 've got you safe, I '11 show you the kind of 
 cargo I 've got." 
 
 A moment afterwards he hoisted a keg on 
 deck. " Think that 's whisky ? " he asked. 
 "Lift it, Mr. Martin." Mr. Martin obeyed. 
 "Shake it," he added. Mr. Martin did so. 
 " Open it, Mr. Martin." He held out a hatchet- 
 hammer. The next moment a mass of gold 
 pieces yellowed to their eyes. Mr. Martin fell 
 back, breathing hard. 
 
 "Is that contraband, Mr. Martin?" 
 
 " Treasure-trove," humbly answered the 
 stricken officer. 
 
 " That 's it, and in a month, Mr. Martin, I '11 
 be asking the chief of your department to din- 
 ner." 
 
 Meanwhile Lafarge saw how near he had been 
 to losing a wife and a fortune. Arrived off Isle 
 of Days, Tarboe told Mr. Martin and his men 
 that if they said " treasure-trove " till they left 
 the island their lives would not be worth "a 
 tinker's damn." When they had sworn, he took 
 them to Angel Point, fed them royally, gave
 
 The Cruise of the Ninety-Nine 165 
 
 them excellent liquor to drink, and sent them in 
 a fishing-smack with Bissonnette to Quebec, 
 where arriving, they told strange tales. 
 
 Bissonnette bore a letter to a certain banker 
 in Quebec, who already had done business with 
 Tarboe, and next midnight Tarboe himself, with 
 Gobal, Lafarge, Bissonnette, and another, came 
 knocking at the banker's door, each carrying a 
 keg on his shoulder, and armed to the teeth. 
 And, what was singular, two stalwart police-offi- 
 cers walked behind with comfortable and ap- 
 proving looks. 
 
 A month afterwards Lafarge and Joan were 
 married at the parish church at Isle of Days, and 
 it was said that Mr. Martin, who, for some 
 strange reason, was allowed to retain his position 
 in the customs, sent a present. The wedding 
 ended with a sensation, for just as the benedic- 
 tion was pronounced a loud report was heard 
 beneath the floor of the church. There was a 
 great commotion, but Tarboe whispered in the 
 curb's ear, and he, blushing, announced that it 
 was the bursting of a barrel. A few minutes 
 afterwards the people of the parish knew the old 
 hidingplace of Tarboe's contraband, and, though 
 the cure" rebuked them, they roared with laugh- 
 ter at the knowledge. 
 
 " So droll, so droll, our Tarboe there ! " they
 
 1 66 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 shouted, for already they began to look upon 
 him as their seigneur. 
 
 In time the cur forgave him also. 
 
 Tarboe seldom left Isle of Days, save when 
 he went to visit his daughter in St. Louis street, 
 Quebec, not far from the Parliament House, 
 where Orvay Lafarge is a member of the Minis- 
 try. The ex-smuggler was a member of the 
 Assembly for three months, but after defeating 
 his own party on a question of tariff, he gave a 
 portrait of himself to the Chamber and threw 
 his seat into the hands of his son-in-law. At the 
 Belle Chatelaine, where he often goes, he some- 
 times asks Bissonnette to play " The Demoiselle 
 with the Scarlet Hose."
 
 A Romany of the Snows 
 
 I 
 
 When old Throng the trader, trembling with 
 sickness and misery, got on his knees to Cap- 
 tain Halby and groaned, "She didn't want to 
 go ; they dragged her off ; you '11 fetch her 
 back, won't ye ? she always had a fancy for 
 you, cap'n," Pierre shrugged a shoulder and 
 said: 
 
 " But you stole her when she was in her 
 rock-a-by, my Throng, you and your Man- 
 ette." 
 
 "Like a match she was no bigger," con- 
 tinued the old man. " Lord, how that step- 
 mother bully-ragged her, and her father did n't 
 care a darn. He 'd half a dozen others Man- 
 ette and me had n't none. We took her and 
 used her like as if she was an angel, and we 
 brought her off up here. Have n't we set 
 store by her ? Was n't it 'cause we was lonely 
 an' loved her we took her ? Has n't everybody 
 stood up and said there was n't anyone like her 
 in the north ? Ain't I done fair by her always 
 167
 
 1 68 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 ain't I ? An' now, when this cough 's eatin' 
 my life out, and Manette 's gone, and there ain't 
 a soul but Due the trapper to put a blister on 
 to me, them brutes ride up from over the bor- 
 der, call theirselves her brothers, an' drag her 
 off!" 
 
 He was still on his knees. Pierre reached 
 over and lightly kicked a moccasined foot. 
 
 "Get up, Jim Throng," he said. " Holy ! do 
 you think the law moves because an old man 
 cries ? Is it in the statutes ? that 's what the 
 law says. Does it come within the act ? Is it 
 a trespass ? an assault and battery ? a breach 
 of the peace ? a misdemeanor ? Victoria 
 So and So: that's how the law talks. Get on 
 your knees to Father Corraine, not to Captain 
 Halby, Jimmy Throng ! " 
 
 Pierre spoke in a half-sinister, ironical way, 
 for between him and Captain Halby's Riders of 
 the Plains there was no good feeling. More 
 than once he had come into conflict with them 
 more than once had they laid their hands on 
 him and taken them off again in due time. 
 He had foiled them as to men they wanted ; he 
 had defied them but he had helped them, too, 
 when it seemed right to him ; he had sided 
 with them once or twice when to do so was 
 perilous to himself. He had sneered at them,
 
 A Romany of the Snows 169 
 
 he did not like them, nor they him. The sum 
 of it was, he thought them brave and stupid ; 
 and he knew that the law erred as often as it 
 set things right. 
 
 The trader got up and stood between the 
 two men, coughing much, his face straining, 
 his eyes bloodshot, as he looked anxiously from 
 Pierre to Halby. He was the sad wreck of a 
 strong man. Nothing looked strong about him 
 now save his head, which, with its long grey 
 hair, seemed badly balanced by the thin neck, 
 through which the terrible cough was hacking. 
 
 "Only half a lung left," he stammered, as 
 soon as he could speak, "an' Due can't fix the 
 boneset, camomile, and whiskey as she could. 
 An' he waters the whiskey curse his soul !" 
 The last three words were spoken through 
 another spasm of coughing. "An' the blister 
 how he mucks the blister!" 
 
 Pierre sat back on the table, laughing noise- 
 lessly, his white teeth shining. Halby, with 
 one foot on a bench, was picking at the fur on 
 his sleeve thoughtfully. His face was a little 
 drawn, his lips were tight-pressed, and his eyes 
 had a light of excitement. Presently he 
 straightened himself, and after a half-malicious 
 look at Pierre, he said to Throng : 
 
 "Where are they, do you say?"
 
 170 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "They're at" the old man coughed hard 
 "at Fort O'Battle." 
 
 "What are they doing there?" 
 
 "Waitin' till spring, when they '11 fetch their 
 cattle up an' settle there." 
 
 "They want Lydia to keep house for 
 them?" 
 
 The old man writhed. 
 
 "Yes, God's sake, that's it! An' they want 
 Liddy to marry a devil called Borotte, with a 
 thousand cattle or so Pi to the courier told me 
 yesterday. Pito saw her, an' he said she was 
 white like a sheet, an' called out to him as he 
 went by. Only half a lung I got, an' her 
 boneset and camomile 'd save it for a bit, 
 mebbe mebbe ! " 
 
 "It's clear," said Halby, "that they tres- 
 passed, and they have n't proved their right to 
 her." 
 
 "Tonnerre! what a thinker!" said Pierre, 
 mocking. 
 
 Halby did not notice. His was a solid sense 
 of responsibility. 
 
 "She is of age?" he half asked, half mused. 
 
 "She's twenty-one," answered the old man, 
 with difficulty. 
 
 "Old enough to set the world right," sug- 
 gested Pierre, still mocking.
 
 A Romany of the Snows 171 
 
 "She was forced away, she regarded you as 
 her natural protector, she believed you her 
 father : they broke the law," said the soldier. 
 
 "There was Moses, and Solomon, and Caesar, 
 and Socrates, and now . . . !" murmured 
 Pierre in assumed abstraction. 
 
 A red spot burned on Halby's high cheek- 
 bone for a minute, but he persistently kept his 
 temper. 
 
 "I'm expected elsewhere," he said at last. 
 "I 'm only one man, I wish I could go today 
 even alone. But " 
 
 " But you have a heart," said Pierre. " How 
 wonderful a heart! And there 's the half a 
 lung, and the boneset and camomile tea, and the 
 blister, and the girl with an eye like a spot of 
 rainbow, and the sacred law in a Remington 
 rifle! Well, well ! And to do it in the early 
 morning to wait in the shelter of the trees till 
 some go to look after the horses, then enter the 
 house, arrest those inside, and lay low for the 
 rest." 
 
 Halby looked over at Pierre astonished. 
 Here was raillery and good advice all in a piece. 
 
 "It isn't wise to go alone, for if there's 
 trouble and I should go down, who 's to tell the 
 truth? Two could do it; but one no, it isn't 
 wise, though it would look smart enough."
 
 172 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "Who said to go alone?" asked Pierre, 
 scrawling on the table with a burnt match. 
 
 " I have no men." 
 
 Pierre looked up at the wall. 
 
 "Throng has a good Snider there," he said. 
 
 " Bosh! Throng can't go." 
 
 The old man coughed and strained. 
 
 "If it was n't only half a lung, and I could 
 carry the boneset 'long with us. " 
 
 Pierre slid off the table, came to the old man, 
 and taking him by the arms, pushed him gently 
 into a chair. 
 
 " Sit down; do n't be a fool, Jimmy Throng," 
 he "aid. Then he turned to Halby: "You're 
 a magistrate make me a special constable; I '11 
 go, m'sieu' le capitaine of no company." 
 
 Halby stared. He knew Pierre's bravery, his 
 ingenuity and daring. But this was the last 
 thing he expected: that the malicious, railing 
 little half-breed would work with him and the 
 law. Pierre seemed to understand his thoughts, 
 for he said: " It is not for you. I am sick for 
 adventure, and then there is mademoiselle such 
 a finger she has for a ven'son pudding." 
 
 Without a word Halby wrote on a leaf in his 
 notebook, and presently handed the slip to 
 Pierre. " That 's your commission as a special
 
 A Romany of the Snows 173 
 
 constable," he said, "and here 's the seal on it." 
 He handed over a pistol. 
 
 Pierre raised his eyebrows at it, but Halby 
 continued: " It has the Government mark. But 
 you 'd better bring Throng's rifle, too." 
 
 Throng sat staring at the two men, his hands 
 nervously shifting on his knees. "TellLiddy," 
 he said, " that the last batch of bread was sour 
 Due ain't no good an' that I ain't had no relish 
 sence she left. Tell her the cough gits lower 
 down all the time. 'Member when she tended 
 that felon o' yourn, Pierre?" 
 
 Pierre looked at a scar on his finger and nod- 
 ded: "She cut it too young ; but she had the 
 nerve! When do you start, Captain? It's an 
 eighty-mile ride." 
 
 "At once," was the reply. "We can sleep 
 to-night in the Jim-a-long-Jo " (a hut which the 
 Company had built between two distant posts), 
 " and get there at dawn day after tomorrow. 
 The snow is light and we can travel quick. I 
 have a good horse, and you " 
 
 " I have my black Tophet. He '11 travel with 
 your roan as on one snaffle-bar. That roan 
 you know where he come from ? " 
 
 " From the Dolright stud, over the border." 
 
 " That 's wrong. He come from Greystop's
 
 174 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 paddock, where my Tophet was foaled; they 
 are brothers. Yours was stole and sold to the 
 Gover'ment; mine was bought by good hard 
 money. The law the keeper of stolen goods, 
 eh ? But these two will go cinch to cinch all 
 the way, like two brothers like you and me." 
 
 He could not help the touch of irony in his 
 last words; he saw the amusing side of things, 
 and all humour in him had a strain of the sar- 
 donic. 
 
 " Brothers-in-law for a day or two," answered 
 Halby drily. 
 
 Within two hours they were ready to start. 
 Pierre had charged Due the incompetent upon 
 matters for the old man's comfort, and had him- 
 self, with a curious sort of kindness, steeped the 
 boneset and camomile in whisky, and set a cup 
 of it near his chair. Then he had gone up to 
 Throng's bedroom and straightened out and 
 shook and " made " the corn-husk bed, which 
 had gathered into lumps and rolls. 
 
 Before he came down he opened a door near 
 by and entered another room, shutting the door, 
 and sitting down on a chair. A stove-pipe 
 ran through the room, and it was warm, 
 though the window was frosted and the world 
 seemed shut out. He looked round slowly, 
 keenly, interested. There was a dressing-table
 
 A Romany of the Snows 1 75 
 
 made of an old box ; it was covered with pink 
 calico, and muslin over this. A cheap looking- 
 glass on it was draped with muslin and tied at 
 the top with a bit of pink ribbon. A common 
 bone comb lay near the glass, and, beside it, a 
 beautiful brush with an ivory back and handle. 
 This was the only expensive thing in the room. 
 He wondered, but did not go near it yet. 
 
 There was a little eight-day clock on a 
 bracket which had been made by hand paste- 
 board darkened with umber and varnished ; a 
 tiny little set of shelves made of the wood of 
 cigar-boxes; and alas! the shifts of poverty 
 to be gay ! an easy-chair made of the staves of 
 a barrel and covered with poor chintz. Then 
 there was a photograph or two in little frames 
 made from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with 
 decorations of putty, varnished, and a long 
 panel screen of birch-bark of Indian workman- 
 ship. Some dresses hung behind the door. 
 The bedstead was small, the frame was of hick- 
 ory, with no footboard, ropes making the sup- 
 port for the husk tick. Across the foot lay a 
 bedgown and a pair of stockings. 
 
 Pierre looked long, at first curiously ; but 
 after a little his forehead gathered and his lips 
 drew in a little, as if he had a twinge of pain. 
 He got up, went over near the bed, and picked
 
 176 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 up a hairpin. Then he came back to the chair 
 and sat down, turning it about in his fingers, 
 still looking abstractedly at the floor. 
 
 "Poor Lucy ! " he said presently ; " the poor 
 child ! Ah ! what a devil I was then so long 
 ago ! " 
 
 This solitary room Lydia's had brought 
 back the time he went to the room of his own 
 wife, dead by her own hand, after an attempt to 
 readjust the broken pieces of life, and sat and 
 looked at the place which had been hers, remem- 
 bering how he had left her with her wet face 
 turned to the wall, and never saw her again till 
 she was set free forever. Since that time he had 
 never sat in a room sacred to a woman alone. 
 
 "What a fool, what a fool, to think !" he said 
 at last, standing up; "but this girl must be 
 saved. She must have her home here again." 
 
 Unconsciously he put the hairpin in his 
 pocket, walked over to the dressing-table and 
 picked up the hair brush. On its back was the 
 legend, " L. T, from C. H. " He gave a whistle. 
 
 "So so?" he said, " C. H.' M'sieu' le 
 capitaine, is it like that ? " 
 
 A year before, Lydia had given Captain 
 Halby a dollar to buy her a hair-brush at Winni- 
 peg, and he had brought her one worth ten 
 dollars. She had beautiful hair, and what pride
 
 A Romany of the Snows 
 
 she had in using this brush ! Every Sunday 
 morning she spent a long time in washing, curl- 
 ing, and brushing her hair, and every night she 
 tended it lovingly, so that it was a splendid rich 
 brown like her eye, coiling nobly above her 
 plain, strong face, with its good color. 
 
 Pierre, glancing in the glass, saw Captain 
 Halby's face looking over his shoulder. It 
 startled him, and he turned round. There was 
 the face looking out from a photograph that 
 hung on the wall in the recess where the bed was. 
 He noted now that the likeness hung where the 
 girl could see it the last thing at night and the 
 first thing in the morning. 
 
 " So far as that, eh ! " he said. " And m'sieu' 
 is a gentleman, too. We shall see what he will 
 do. He has his chance now once for all." 
 
 He turned, came to the door, softly opened 
 it, passed out and shut it, then descended the 
 stairs, and in half an hour was at the door with 
 Captain Halby, ready to start. It was an exqui- 
 site winter day, even in its bitter coldness. The 
 sun was shining clear and strong, all the plains 
 glistened and looked like quicksilver, and the 
 vast blue cup of sky seemed deeper than it had 
 ever been. But the frost ate the skin like an 
 acid, and when Throng came to the door Pierre 
 drove him back instantly from the air.
 
 178 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 " I only wanted to say to Liddy," hacked 
 the old man, "that I'm thinkin' a little 
 m'lasses'd kinder help the boneset an' camo- 
 mile. Tell her that the cattle '11 all be hers 
 an* the house, an' I ain't got no one but " 
 
 But Pierre pushed him back and shut the 
 door, saying : " I '11 tell her what a fool you are 
 Jimmy Throng." 
 
 The old man, as he sat down awkwardly in 
 his chair, with Due stolidly lighting his pipe and 
 watching him, said to himself : " Yes, I be a 
 durn fool; I be, I be!" over and over again. 
 And when the dog got up from near the stove 
 and came near to him, he added : "I be, Touser; 
 I be a durn fool, for I ought to ha' stole two or 
 three, an' then I 'd not be alone, an' nothin' but 
 sour bread an' pork to eat. I ought to ha' stole 
 three." 
 
 " Ah, Manette ought to have give you some 
 of your own, it 's true, that ! " said Due stolidly. 
 "You never was a real father, Jim." 
 
 " Liddy got to look like me ; she got to look 
 like Manette and me, I tell ye ! " said the old 
 man hoarsely. 
 
 Due laughed in his stupid way. " Look like 
 you ! Look like you, Jim, with a face to turn 
 milk sour! Ho, ho!" 
 
 Throng rose, his face purple with anger, and
 
 A Romany of the Snows 179 
 
 made as if to catch Due by the throat, but a fit 
 of coughing seized him, and presently blood 
 showed on his lips. Due with a rough gentle- 
 ness wiped off the blood and put the whisky and 
 herbs to the sick man's lips, saying in a fatherly 
 way: 
 
 " For why you do like that ? You 're a fool, 
 Jimmy !" 
 
 " I be, I be," said the old man in a whisper, 
 and let his hand rest on Due's shoulder. 
 
 " I '11 fix the bread sweet next time, Jimmy." 
 " No, no," said the husky voice peevishly. 
 " She '11 do it Liddy '11 do it. Liddy's corn- 
 in'." 
 
 " All right, Jimmy ! All right ! " 
 After a moment Throng shook his head feebly 
 and said, scarcely above a whisper : 
 
 " But I be a durn fool when she 's not here." 
 Due nodded and gave him more whisky and 
 herbs. 
 
 " My feet 's cold," said the old man, and Due 
 wrapped a bearskin round his legs. 
 
 II 
 
 For miles Pierre and Halby rode without a 
 word. Then they got down and walked for a 
 couple of miles, to bring the blood into their 
 legs again.
 
 l8o An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "The old man goes to By-by bientot" said 
 Pierre at last. 
 
 "You do n't think he'll last long? " 
 
 " Maybe ten days; maybe one. If we do n't 
 get the girl, out goes his torchlight straight." 
 
 " She 's been very good to him." 
 
 " He's been on his knees to her all her life." 
 
 " There'll be trouble out of this." 
 
 "Pshaw! The girl is her own master." 
 
 "I mean some one will probably get hurt over 
 there." He nodded in the direction of Fort 
 O'Battle. 
 
 " That 's in the game. The girl is worth 
 fighting for, eh?" 
 
 " Of course, and the law must protect her. 
 It 's a free country." 
 
 "So true, my captain," murmured Pierre drily. 
 " It is wonderful what a man will do for the law." 
 
 The tone struck Halby. Pierre was scanning 
 the horizon abstractedly. 
 
 " You are always hitting at the law," he said. 
 " Why do you stand by it now? " 
 
 " For the same reason as yourself." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " She has your picture in her room, she has 
 my lucky dollar in her pocket." 
 
 Halby's face flushed, and then he turned and 
 looked steadily into Pierre's eyes.
 
 A Romany of the Snows 181 
 
 " We'd better settle this thing at once. If 
 you 're going to Fort O'Battle because you 've 
 set your fancy there, you'd better go back now. 
 That's straight. You and I can't sail in the 
 same boat. I'll go alone: so give me the pistol." 
 
 Pierre laughed softly, and waved the hand 
 back. 
 
 "T'sh! What a high-cock-a-lorum! You 
 want to do it all yourself to fill the eye of the 
 girl alone, and be tucked away to By-by for your 
 pains mats, quelle folie! See: you go for law 
 and love; I go for fun and Jimmy Throng. The 
 girl! Pshaw! she would come out right in the 
 end, without you or me. But the old man with 
 half a lung that's different. He must have 
 sweet bread in his belly when he dies, and the 
 girl must make it for him. She shall brush her 
 hair with the ivory brush by Sunday morning." 
 
 Halby turned sharply. 
 
 "You've been spying!" he said. "You've 
 been in her room you " 
 
 Pierre put out his hand and stopped the word 
 on Halby's lips. 
 
 " Slow, slow," he said; " we are both police 
 today. Voila.' we must not fight. There is 
 Throng and the girl to think of." Suddenly, 
 with a soft fierceness, he added: " If I looked in 
 her room, what of that? In all the north is
 
 1 82 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 there a woman to say I wrong her? No! Well, 
 what if I carry her room in my eye; does that 
 hurt her or you?" 
 
 Perhaps something of the loneliness of the 
 outlaw crept into Pierre's voice for an instant, 
 for Halby suddenly put a hand on his shoulder 
 and said : " Let 's drop the thing, Pierre." 
 
 Pierre looked at him musingly. 
 
 " When Throng is put to By-by what will you 
 do ? " he said. 
 
 " I will marry her, if she '11 have me." 
 
 " But she is prairie-born, and you ! " 
 
 " I 'm a prairie-rider." 
 
 After a moment Pierre said, as if to himself : 
 " So quiet and clean, and the print calico and 
 muslin, and the ivory brush ! " 
 
 It is hard to say whether he was merely 
 working on Halby that he be true to the girl, or 
 was himself soft-hearted for the moment. He 
 had a curious store of legend and chanson, and 
 he had the Frenchman's power of applying 
 them, though he did it seldom. But now he 
 said in a half monotone: 
 
 "Have you seen the way I have built my nest ? 
 (O brave and tall is the Grand Seigneur/) 
 I have trailed the East, I have searched the West, 
 
 (O clear of eye is the Grand Seigneur!) 
 From South and North I have brought the best:
 
 A Romany of the Snows 183 
 
 The feathers fine from an eagle's crest, 
 The silken threads from a prince's vest, 
 The warm rose-leaf from a maiden's breast 
 (0 long he bideth, the Grand Seigneur)" 
 
 They had gone scarce a mile farther when 
 Pierre, chancing to turn round, saw a horseman 
 riding hard after them. They drew up, and soon 
 the man a Rider of the Plains was beside 
 them. He had stopped at Throng's to find 
 Halby, and had followed them. Murder had 
 been committed near the border, and Halby was 
 needed at once. Halby stood still, numb with 
 distress, for there was Lydia. He turned to 
 Pierre in dismay. Pierre's face lighted up with 
 the spirit of fresh adventure. Desperate enter- 
 prises roused him ; the impossible had a charm 
 for him. 
 
 " I will go to Fort O'Battle," he said. "Give 
 me another pistol." 
 
 "You cannot do it alone," said Halby, hope, 
 however, in his voice. 
 
 " I will do it, or it will do me, voila! " Pierre 
 replied. 
 
 Halby passed over a pistol. 
 
 " I '11 never forget it, on my honour! if you 
 do it," he said. 
 
 Pierre mounted his horse and said, as if a 
 thought had struck him : "If I stand for the
 
 184 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 law in this, will you stand against it some time 
 forme?" 
 
 Halby hesitated, then said, holding out his 
 hand, " Yes, if it 's nothing dirty." 
 
 Pierre smiled. " Clean tit for clean tat," he 
 said, touching Halby's fingers, and then, with a 
 gesture and an au revoir, put his horse to the 
 canter, and soon a surf of snow was rising at two 
 points on the prairie, as the Law trailed south 
 and east. 
 
 That night Pierre camped in the Jim-a-long- 
 Jo, finding there firewood in plenty, and Tophet 
 was made comfortable in the lean-to. Within 
 another thirty hours he was hid in the woods 
 behind Fort O'Battle, having traveled nearly all 
 night. He saw the dawn break and the begin- 
 ning of sunrise as he watched the Fort, growing 
 every moment colder, while his horse trembled 
 and whinnied softly, suffering also. At last he 
 gave a little grunt of satisfaction, for he saw 
 two men come out of the Fort and go to the 
 corral. He hesitated a minute longer, then 
 said : " I '11 not wait," patted his horse's neck, 
 pulled the blanket closer round the beast, and 
 started for the Fort. He entered the yard it 
 was empty. He went to the door of the Fort, 
 opened it, entered, shut it, locked it softly, and 
 put the key in his pocket. Then he passed
 
 A Romany of the Snows ,185 
 
 through into a room at the end of the small 
 hallway. Three men rose from seats by the fire 
 as he did so, and one said: "Hullo! who 're 
 you?" Another added: "It's Pretty Pierre." 
 
 Pierre looked at the table laid for breakfast, 
 and said: "Where is Lydia Throng ?" 
 
 The elder of the three brothers replied : 
 "There's no Lydia Throng here. There's 
 Lydia Bontoff, though, and in another week 
 she '11 be Lydia something else." 
 
 " What does she say about it herself?" 
 
 " You 've no call to know." 
 
 " You stole her, forced her from Throng's 
 her father's house." 
 
 " She was n't Throng's ; she was a Bontoff 
 sister of us." 
 
 " Well, she says Throng, and Throng it 's got 
 to be." 
 
 " What have you got to say about it ? " 
 
 At that moment Lydia appeared at the door 
 leading from the kitchen. 
 
 " Whatever she has to say," answered Pierre. 
 
 " Who 're you talking for ? " 
 
 " For her, for Throng, for the law." 
 
 " The law by gosh, that 's good ! You, 
 you darned gambler ; you scum ! " said Caleb, 
 the brother who knew him. 
 
 Pierre showed all the intelligent, resolute
 
 1 86 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 coolness of a trained officer of the law. He 
 heard a little cry behind him, and stepping 
 sideways and yet not turning his back on the 
 men, he saw Lydia. 
 
 "Pierre! Pierre!" she said in a half-fright- 
 ened way, yet with a sort of pleasure lighting 
 up her face; and she stepped forward to him. 
 One of the brothers was about to pull her away, 
 but Pierre whipped out his commission. 
 "Wait! "he said. "That's enough. I'm for 
 the law; I belong to the mounted police. I 
 have come for the girl you stole." 
 
 The elder brother snatched the paper and 
 read. Then he laughed loud and long. " So 
 you've come to fetch her away," he said, "and 
 this is how you do it !" he shook the paper. 
 "Well, by " suddenly he stopped. "Come," 
 he said, "have a drink, and don't be a dam* 
 fool. She's our sister old Throng stole her 
 and she's goin' to marry our partner. Here, 
 Caleb, fish out the brandy-wine," he added to 
 his younger brother, who went to a cupboard 
 and brought the bottle. 
 
 Pierre, waving the liquor away, said quietly 
 to the girl : " You wish to go back to your 
 father, to Jimmy Throng?" He then gave her 
 Throng's message, and added : " He sits there 
 rocking in the big chair, and coughing
 
 A Romany of the Snows 187 
 
 coughing! and then there's the picture on 
 the wall upstairs and the little ivory brush " 
 
 She put out her hands towards him. " I hate 
 them all here," she said. " I never knew them. 
 They forced me away. I have no father but 
 Jimmy Throng. I will not stay," she flashed 
 out in sudden anger to the others ; " I '11 kill 
 myself and all of you before I marry that 
 Borotte." 
 
 Pierre could hear a man tramping about up- 
 stairs. Caleb knocked on the stove-pipe, and 
 called to him to come down. Pierre guessed it 
 was Borotte. This would add one more factor 
 to the game. He must move at once. He sud- 
 denly slipped a pistol into the girl's hand, and, 
 with a quick word to her, stepped towards the 
 door. The elder brother sprang between 
 which was what he looked for. By this time 
 every man had a weapon showing, snatched from 
 wall and shelf. 
 
 Pierre was cool. He said : " Remember, I 
 am for the law. I am not one man. You are 
 thieves now ; if you fight and kill, you will get 
 the rope, every one. Move from the door, or 
 I'll fire. The girl comes with me." He had 
 heard a door open behind him, now there was 
 an oath and a report, and a bullet grazed his 
 cheek and lodged in the wall beyond. He dared
 
 1 88 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 not turn round, for the other men were facing 
 him. He did not move, but the girl did. 
 " Coward ! " she said, and raised her pistol at 
 Borotte, standing with her back against Pierre's. 
 
 There was a pause, in which no one stirred, 
 and then the girl, slowly walking up to Borotte, 
 her pistol levelled, said : "You low coward to 
 shoot a man from behind ; and you want to be 
 a decent girl's husband ! These men that say 
 they're my brothers, are brutes, but you're a 
 sneak. If you stir a step, I'll fire." 
 
 The cowardice of Borotte was almost ridi- 
 culous. He dared not harm the girl, and her 
 brothers could not prevent her harming him. 
 Here there came a knocking at the front door. 
 The other brothers had come and found it 
 locked. Pierre saw the crisis, and acted instantly. 
 "The girl and I we will fight you to the 
 end," he said, " and then what's left of you the 
 law will fight to the end. Come," he added, 
 "the old man can't live a week. When he's 
 gone then you can try again. She will have 
 what he owns. Quick, or I arrest you all, and 
 then " 
 
 " Let her go," said Borotte; " it ain't no 
 use." 
 
 Presently the elder brother broke out laugh- 
 ing. " Damned if I thought the girl had the
 
 A Romany of the Snows 189 
 
 pluck, an' damned if I thought Borotte was a 
 crawler. Put an eye out of him, Liddy, an' 
 come to your brother's arms. Here," he added 
 to the others, " up with your popguns; this 
 shindy's off; and the girl goes back till the old 
 man tucks up. Have a drink!" he added to 
 Pierre, as he stood his rifle in a corner and came 
 to the table. 
 
 In half an hour Pierre and the girl were on 
 their way, leaving Borotte quarrelling with the 
 brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two 
 arrived at Throng's late the next afternoon. 
 There had been a slight thaw during the day, 
 and the air was almost soft, water dripping from 
 the eaves down the long icicles. 
 
 When Lydia entered, the old man was dozing 
 in his chair. The sound of an axe out behind 
 the house told where Due was. The whisky- 
 and-herbs was beside the sick man's chair, and 
 his feet were wrapped about with bearskins. The 
 girl made a little gesture of pain, and then 
 stepped softly over and, kneeling, looked into 
 Throng's face. The lips were moving. 
 
 "Dad," she said, "are you asleep?" 
 
 "I be a durn fool, I be," he said in a 
 whisper, and then he began to cough. She took 
 his hands. They were cold, and she rubbed 
 them softly. " I feel so a'mighty holler," he
 
 190 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 said, gasping, "an' that bread's sour agin." He 
 shook his head pitifully. 
 
 His eyes at last settled on her, and he recog- 
 nized her. He broke into a giggling laugh; the 
 surprise was almost too much for his feeble mind 
 and body. His hands reached and clutched 
 hers. "Liddy! Liddy! " he whispered, then 
 added peevishly, " The bread 's sour an' the 
 boneset and camomile 's no good. . . . Ain't 
 to-morrow bakin'-day? " he added. 
 
 " Yes, dad," she said, smoothing his hands. 
 
 "What danged liars they be Liddy! 
 You 're my gel, ain't ye?" 
 
 "Yes, dad. I'll make some boneset liquor 
 now." 
 
 " Yes, yes," he said, with childish eagerness 
 and a weak, wild smile. " That 's it that 's it." 
 
 She was about to rise, but he caught her 
 shoulder. " I bin a good dad to ye, hain't I, 
 Liddy? " he whispered. 
 
 " Always." 
 
 "Never had no ma but Manette, did ye?" 
 
 " Never, dad." 
 
 "What danged liars they be!" he said, 
 chuckling. 
 
 She kissed him, and moved away to the fire 
 to pour hot water and whisky on the herbs. 
 
 His eyes followed her proudly, shining like
 
 A Romany of the Snows 191 
 
 wet glass in the sun. He laughed such a 
 wheezing, soundless laugh ! 
 
 " He ! he ! he ! I ain't no durn fool 
 bless the Lord ! " he said. 
 
 Then the shining look in his eyes became a 
 grey film, and the girl turned round suddenly, 
 for the long, wheezy breathing had stopped. She 
 ran to him, and, lifting up his head, saw the 
 look that makes even the fool seem wise in his 
 cold stillness. Then she sat down on the floor, 
 laid her head against the arm of his chair, and 
 wept. 
 
 It was very quiet inside. From without there 
 came the twang of an axe, and a man's voice 
 talking to his horse. When the man came in 
 he lifted the girl up, and, to comfort her, bade 
 her go look at a picture hanging in her little 
 room. After she was gone he lifted the body, 
 put it on a couch and cared for it.
 
 The Plunderer 
 
 It was no use : men might come and go be- 
 fore her, but Kitty Cline had l eyes for only one 
 man. Pierre made no show of liking her, and 
 thought, at first, that hers was a passing fancy. 
 He soon saw differently. There was that look 
 in her eyes which burms conviction as deep 
 as the furnace from which it comes : the hot, 
 shy, hungering look of desire ; most childlike, 
 painfully infinite. He would rather have faced 
 the cold mouth of a pistol ; for he felt how 
 it would end. He might be beyond wish to 
 play the lover, but he knew that every man can 
 endure being loved. He also knew that some 
 are possessed a dream, a spell, what you will 
 for their life long. Kitty Cline was one of 
 these. 
 
 He thought he must go away, but he did not. 
 From the hour he decided to stay misfortune be- 
 gan. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Com- 
 pany's Post, had learned a trick or two at cards 
 in the east, and imagined that he could, as he 
 said himself " roast the cock o' the roost " 
 
 192
 
 The Plunderer 193 
 
 meaning Pierre. He did so for one or two 
 evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden increase 
 of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no 
 chance of redeeming the I. O. U., representing 
 two years' salary, went down to the house where 
 Kitty Cline lived, and shot himself on the door- 
 step. 
 
 He had had the misfortune to prefer Kitty to 
 the other girls at Guidon Hill though Nellie 
 Sanger would have been as much to him, if 
 Kitty had been easier to win* The two things 
 together told hard against Pierre. Before, he 
 might have gone ; in the face of difficulty he 
 certainly would not go. Willie Haslam's funeral 
 was a public function : he was young, innocent- 
 looking, handsome, and the people did not 
 know what Pierre would not tell now that he 
 had cheated grossly at cards. Pierre was sure, 
 before Liddall, the surveyor, told him, that a 
 movement was apace to give him trouble pos- 
 sibly fatal. 
 
 " You had better go! " said Liddall ; " there 's 
 no use tempting Providence." 
 
 " They are tempting the devil," was the cool 
 reply ; " and that is not all joy, as you shall 
 see." 
 
 He stayed. For a time there was no demon- 
 stration on either side. He came and went
 
 194 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 through the streets, and was found at his usual 
 haunts, to observers as cool and nonchalant as 
 ever. He was a changed man, however. He 
 never got away from the look in Kitty Cline's 
 eyes. He felt the thing wearing on him, and he 
 hesitated to speculate on the result ; but he 
 knew vaguely that it would end in disaster. 
 There is a kind of corrosion which eats the 
 granite out of the blood, and leaves fever. 
 
 "What is the worst thing that can happen a 
 man, eh?" he said to Liddall one day, after 
 having spent a few minutes with Kitty Cline. 
 
 Liddall was an honest man. He knew the 
 world tolerably well. In writing once to his 
 partner in Montreal he had spoken of Pierre as 
 "an admirable, interesting scoundrel." Once 
 when Pierre called him "mon ami," and asked 
 him to come and spend an evening in his 
 cottage, he said : 
 
 "Yes, I will go. But pardon me not as 
 your friend. Let us be plain with each other. 
 I never met a man of your stamp before " 
 
 "A professional gambler yes? ien?" 
 
 " You interest me ; I like you ; you have 
 great cleverness " 
 
 " A priest once told me I had a great brain 
 there is a difference. Well ?" 
 
 "You are like no man I ever met before.
 
 The Plunderer 195 
 
 Yours is a life like none I ever knew. I would 
 rather talk with you than with any other man in 
 the country, and yet " 
 
 "And yet you would not take me to your 
 home ? That is all right. I expect nothing. 
 I accept the terms. I know what I am and 
 what you are. I like men who are square. You 
 would go out of your way to do me a good 
 turn." 
 
 It was on his tongue to speak of Kitty Cline, 
 but he hesitated : it was not fair to the girl, he 
 thought, though what he had intended was for 
 her good. He felt he had no right to assume 
 that Liddall knew how things were. The 
 occasion slipped by. 
 
 But the same matter had been in his mind 
 when, later, he asked, " What is the worst thing 
 that can happen a man ? " 
 
 Liddall looked at him long, and then said : 
 "To stand between two fires." 
 
 Pierre smiled: it was an answer after his own 
 heart. Liddall remembered it very well in the 
 future. 
 
 " What is the thing to do in such a case ? " 
 Pierre asked. 
 
 "It is not good to stand still." 
 
 " But what if you are stunned, or do not 
 care ? "
 
 196 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 "You should care. It is not wise to strain a 
 situation." 
 
 Pierre rose, walked up and down the room 
 once or twice, then stood still, his arms folded, 
 and spoke in a low tone. " Once in the Rockies 
 I was lost. I crept into a cave at night. I 
 knew it was the nest of some wild animal ; but 
 I was nearly dead with hunger and fatigue. I 
 fell asleep. When I woke it was towards 
 morning I saw two yellow stars glaring where 
 the mouth of the cave had been. They were all 
 hate : like nothing you could imagine : passion 
 as it is first made yes. There was also a 
 rumbling sound. It was terrible, and yet I was 
 not scared. Hate need not disturb you I am 
 a quick shot. I killed that mountain lion, and 
 I ate the haunch of deer I dragged from under 
 her ... " 
 
 He turned now, and, facing the doorway, 
 looked out upon the village, to the roof of a house 
 which they both knew. " Hate," he said, " is 
 not the most wonderful thing. I saw a woman 
 look once as though she could lose the whole 
 world and her own soul. She was a good wo- 
 man. The man was bad most: he never could 
 be anything else. A look like that breaks the 
 nerve. It is not amusing. In time the man
 
 The Plunderer 197 
 
 goes to pieces. But before that comes he is apt 
 to do strange things. Eh, so ! " 
 
 He sat down, and with his finger, wrote mus- 
 ingly in the dust upon the table. 
 
 Liddall looked keenly at him, and replied 
 more brusquely than he felt: " Do you think it 
 fair to stay fair to her ? " 
 
 "What if I should take her with me?" 
 Pierre flashed a keen, searching look after the 
 words. 
 
 " It would be useless devilry." 
 
 " Let us drink," said Pierre, as he came to his 
 feet quickly ; " then for the House of Lords " 
 (the new and fashionable tavern). 
 
 They separated in the street, and Pierre went 
 to the House of Lords alone. He found a num- 
 ber of men gathered before a paper pasted on a 
 pillar of the verandah. Hearing his own name, 
 he came nearer. A ranchman was reading aloud 
 an article from a newspaper printed two hundred 
 miles away. The article was headed "A Villain- 
 ous Plunderer." It had been written by some 
 one at Guidon Hill. All that was discreditable 
 in Pierre's life it set forth with rude clearness; 
 he was credited with nothing pardonable. In 
 the crowd there were mutterings unmistakable 
 to Pierre. He suddenly came among them,
 
 198 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 caught a revolver from his pocket, and shot over 
 the reader's shoulder six times into the pasted 
 strip of newspaper. 
 
 The men dropped back. They were not pre- 
 pared for warlike measures at the moment. 
 Pierre leaned his back against the pillar and 
 waited. His silence and coolness, together with 
 an iron fierceness in his face, held them from 
 instant demonstration against him; but he knew 
 that he must face active peril soon. He pocketed 
 his revolver and went up the hill to the house of 
 Kitty Cline's mother. It was the first time he 
 had ever been there. At the door he hesitated, 
 but knocked presently, and was admitted by 
 Kitty, who, at sight of him, turned faint with 
 sudden joy, and grasped the lintel to steady 
 herself. 
 
 Pierre quietly caught her about the waist, and 
 shut the door. She recovered, and gently dis- 
 engaged herself. He made no further advance, 
 and they stood looking at each other for a min- 
 ute; he, as one who had come to look at some- 
 thing good he was never to see again; she as at 
 something she hoped to see forever. They had 
 never before been where no eyes could observe 
 them. He ruled his voice to calmness. 
 
 " I am going away," he said ; " and I have 
 come to say good-bye."
 
 The Plunderer 199 
 
 Her eyes never wavered from his. Her voice 
 was scarce above a whisper. 
 
 " Why do you go ? Where are you going ?" 
 
 " I have been here too long. I am what they 
 call a villain and a plunderer. I am going to 
 man Dieu, I do not know! " He shrugged his 
 shoulders, and smiled with a sort of helpless dis- 
 dain. 
 
 She leaned her hands on the table before her. 
 Her voice was still that low, clear murmur. 
 
 " What people say does n't matter." She 
 staked her all upon her words. She must speak 
 them, though she might hate herself afterwards. 
 " Are you going alone ? " 
 
 "Where I may have to go I must travel 
 alone." 
 
 He could not meet her eyes now : he turned 
 his head away. He almost hoped she would not 
 understand. 
 
 " Sit down," he added ; " I want to tell you 
 of my life." 
 
 He believed that telling it as he should, she 
 would be horror-stricken, and that the deep 
 flame would die out of her eyes. Neither he nor 
 she knew how long they sat there, he telling with 
 grim precision of the evil life he had led. Her 
 hands were clasped before her, and she shud'
 
 2OO An Adventurer of the North 
 
 dered once or twice, so that he paused ; but she 
 asked him firmly to go on. 
 
 When all was told he stood up. He could 
 not see her face, but he heard her say : 
 
 "You have forgotten many things that were 
 not bad. Let me say them." She named things 
 that would have done honor to a better man. 
 He was standing in the moonlight that came 
 through the window. She stepped forward, her 
 hands quivering out to him. " Oh, Pierre," she 
 said, " I know why you tell me this ; but it makes 
 no difference none. I will go with you where- 
 ever you go." 
 
 He caught her hands in his. She was stronger 
 than he was now. Her eyes mastered him. A 
 low cry broke from him, and he drew her almost 
 fiercely into his arms. 
 
 " Pierre ! Pierre ! " was all she could say. 
 
 He kissed her again and again upon the mouth. 
 As he did so, he heard footsteps and muffled 
 voices without. Putting her quickly from him, 
 he sprang towards the door, threw it open, 
 closed it behind him, and drew his revolver. A 
 half-dozen men faced him. Two bullets whis- 
 tled by his head, and lodged in the door. Then 
 he fired swiftly, shot after shot, and three men 
 fell. His revolvers were empty. There were 
 three men left. The case seemed all against
 
 The Plunderer 2O1 
 
 him now, but just here a shot, and then another, 
 came from the window, and a fourth man fell. 
 Pierre sprang upon one, and the other turned 
 and ran. There was a short, sharp struggle : then 
 Pierre rose up alone. 
 
 The girl stood in the doorway. " Come, my 
 dear," he said, "you must go with me now." 
 
 " Yes, Pierre," she cried, a mad light in her 
 face. " I have killed men too for you." 
 
 Together they ran down the hillside, and 
 made for the stables of the Fort. People were 
 hurrying through the long street of the town, 
 and torches were burning, but they came by a 
 roundabout to the stables safely. Pierre was 
 about to enter, when a man came out. It was 
 Liddall. He kept his horses there, and he had 
 saddled one, thinking that Pierre might need it. 
 
 There were quick words of explanation, and 
 then " Must the girl go too ? " he asked. " It 
 will increase the danger besides " 
 
 " I am going wherever he goes," she inter- 
 rupted hoarsely ; " I have killed men ; he and I 
 are the same now." 
 
 Without a word Liddall turned back, threw a 
 saddle on another horse, and led it out quickly. 
 " Which way ? " he asked ; " and where shall I 
 find the horses ? " 
 
 " West to the mountains. The horses you
 
 2O2 An Adventurer of the North 
 
 will find at Tte Blanche Hill, if we get there. 
 If not, there is money under the white pine at my 
 cottage. Good bye ! " 
 
 They galloped away. But there were mounted 
 men in the main street, and one, well ahead of 
 the others, was making towards the bridge over 
 which they must pass. He reached it before 
 they did, and set his horse crosswise in its nar- 
 row entrance. Pierre urged his mare in front of 
 the girl's and drove straight at the head and 
 shoulders of the obstructing horse. His was the 
 heavier animal, and it bore the other down. The 
 rider fired as he fell, but missed, and, in an 
 instant, Pierre and the girl were over. The 
 fallen man fired the second time, but again missed. 
 They had a fair start, but the open prairie was 
 ahead of them, and there was no chance to hide. 
 Riding must do all, for their pursuers were in 
 full cry. For an hour they rode hard. They 
 could see their hunters not very far in the rear. 
 Suddenly Pierre started and sniffed the air. 
 
 "The prairie's on fire !" he said exultingly, 
 defiantly. 
 
 Almost as he spoke, clouds ran down the 
 horizon, and then the sky lighted up. The fire 
 travelled with incredible swiftness ; they were 
 hastening to meet it. It came on wave-like, 
 hurrying down at the right and the left as if to
 
 The Plunderer 203 
 
 close in on them. The girl spoke no word ; 
 she had no fear : what Pierre did she would do. 
 He turned round to see his pursuers : they had 
 wheeled and were galloping back the way they 
 came. His horse and hers were travelling neck 
 and neck. He looked at her with an intense, 
 eager gaze. 
 
 "Will you ride on?" he asked eagerly. 
 "We are between two fires." He smiled, re- 
 membering his words to Liddall. 
 
 " Ride on! " she urged in a strong, clear voice, 
 a kind of wild triumph in it. " You shall not 
 go alone." 
 
 There ran into his eyes now the same infi- 
 nite look that had been in hers that had con- 
 quered him. The flame rolling towards them 
 was not brighter or hotter. 
 
 " For heaven or hell, my girl !" he cried, and 
 they drove their horses on on. 
 
 Far behind upon a divide the flying hunters 
 from Guidon Hill paused for a moment. They 
 saw with hushed wonder and awe a man and 
 woman, dark and weird against the red light, 
 ride madly into the flicking surf of fire.
 
 J^ S?.N AL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 778 962