A Mating in the Wilds | Page 5

that served him for seat and waited, as it seemed interminably.
His fire died down, the smoke ceased to hide the view, and through the adjacent willows came the sudden sough of moving air. A robin broke into song, and once more the wail of the loon sounded from the wide river. Away to the north the sky flushed with crimson glory, then the sun shot up red and golden. A new day had broken; and Stane had watched through the brief night of the Northland summer for a man who had not appeared and he was now assured, would not come.
He laughed bitterly, and rising kicked the fire together, threw on fresh fuel, and after one look towards the still sleeping Post, returned to the tent, wrapped himself in a blanket, and shortly after fell asleep.
Three hours later he was awakened by a clatter of voices and the clamour of barking dogs, passing from sleep to full wakeness like a healthy child. Kicking the blanket from him he slipped on his moccasins and stepped outside where the source of the clamour at once manifested itself. A party of Indians had just beached their canoes, and were exchanging greetings with another party, evidently that whose tepees stood on the meadow outside the fort, for among the women he saw the Indian girl who had fled through the willows after encountering him. He watched the scene with indifferent eyes for a moment or two, then securing a canvas bucket went down to the river for water, and made his toilet. That done, he cooked his breakfast, ate it, tided up his camp, and lighting a pipe strolled into the enclosure of the Post. Several Indians were standing outside the store, and inside the factor and his clerk were already busy with others; bartering for the peltries brought from the frozen north to serve the whims of fashion in warmer lands. In the Square itself stood the plump gentleman who had landed the day before, talking to a cringing half-breed, whilst a couple of ladies with him watched the aborigines outside the store with curious eyes. Stane glanced further afield. Two men were busy outside the warehouse, a second half-breed sprawled on the bench by the store, but the man for whom he had waited through the night was not in sight.
With a grimace of disappointment he moved towards the store. As he did so a little burst of mellow laughter sounded, and turning swiftly he saw the man whom he was looking for round the corner of the warehouse accompanied by a girl, who laughed heartily at some remark of her companion. Stane halted in his tracks and looked at the pair who were perhaps a dozen yards or so away. The monocled Ainley could not but be aware of his presence, yet except that he kept his gaze resolutely averted, he gave no sign of being so. But the girl looked at him frankly, and as she did so, Hubert Stane looked back, and caught his breath, as he had reason to.
She was fair as an English rose, moulded in spacious lines like a daughter of the gods, with an aureole of glorious chestnut hair, shot with warm tints of gold and massed in simplicity about a queenly head. Her mouth was full, her chin was softly strong, her neck round and firm as that of a Grecian statue, and her eyes were bluey-grey as the mist of the northern woods. Fair she was, and strong--a true type of those women who, bred by the English meadows, have adventured with their men and made their homes in the waste places of the earth.
Her grey eyes met Stane's quite frankly, without falling, then turned nonchalantly to her companion, and Stane, watching, saw her speak, and as Ainley flashed a swift glance in his direction, and then replied with a shrug of his shoulders, he easily divined that the girl had asked a question about himself. They passed him at half a dozen yards distance, Ainley with his face set like a flint, the girl with a scrutinizing sidelong glance that set the blood rioting in Stane's heart. He stood and watched them until they reached the wharf, saw them step into a canoe, and then, both of them paddling, they thrust out to the broad bosom of the river.
Not till then did he avert his gaze, and turn again to the store. The great man of the company was still talking to the half-breed, and the other half-breed had risen from his seat and was staring into the store. He looked round as Stane approached him.
"By gar," he said enthusiastically, "dat one very fine squaw-girl dere."
Stane looked forward through the open doorway, and standing near the long counter, watching a tall Indian