Children of the Frost | Page 8

in peace. And if fight there be,
kill, kill, kill, to the last man; but let my word go forth that no harm befall our man,--the
man whom my daughter hath wedded. It is well."
Chugungatte rose and tottered out; Thom followed; but as Keen stooped to the entrance
the voice of Tantlatch stopped him.
"Keen, it were well to hearken to my word. The man remains. Let no harm befall him."
Because of Fairfax's instructions in the art of war, the tribesmen did not hurl themselves
forward boldly and with clamor. Instead, there was great restraint and self-control, and
they were content to advance silently, creeping and crawling from shelter to shelter. By
the river bank, and partly protected by a narrow open space, crouched the Crees and
voyageurs. Their eyes could see nothing, and only in vague ways did their ears hear, but
they felt the thrill of life which ran through the forest, the indistinct, indefinable
movement of an advancing host.
"Damn them," Fairfax muttered. "They've never faced powder, but I taught them the
trick."
Avery Van Brunt laughed, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it carefully away
with the pouch, and loosened the hunting-knife in its sheath at his hip.
"Wait," he said. "We'll wither the face of the charge and break their hearts."
"They'll rush scattered if they remember my teaching."
"Let them. Magazine rifles were made to pump. We'll--good! First blood! Extra tobacco,
Loon!"
Loon, a Cree, had spotted an exposed shoulder and with a stinging bullet apprised its
owner of his discovery.
"If we can tease them into breaking forward," Fairfax muttered,--"if we can only tease
them into breaking forward."
Van Brunt saw a head peer from behind a distant tree, and with a quick shot sent the man

sprawling to the ground in a death struggle. Michael potted a third, and Fairfax and the
rest took a hand, firing at every exposure and into each clump of agitated brush. In
crossing one little swale out of cover, five of the tribesmen remained on their faces, and
to the left, where the covering was sparse, a dozen men were struck. But they took the
punishment with sullen steadiness, coming on cautiously, deliberately, without haste and
without lagging.
Ten minutes later, when they were quite close, all movement was suspended, the advance
ceased abruptly, and the quietness that followed was portentous, threatening. Only could
be seen the green and gold of the woods, and undergrowth, shivering and trembling to the
first faint puffs of the day-wind. The wan white morning sun mottled the earth with long
shadows and streaks of light. A wounded man lifted his head and crawled painfully out of
the swale, Michael following him with his rifle but forbearing to shoot. A whistle ran
along the invisible line from left to right, and a flight of arrows arched through the air.
"Get ready," Van Brunt commanded, a new metallic note in his voice. "Now!"
They broke cover simultaneously. The forest heaved into sudden life. A great yell went
up, and the rifles barked back sharp defiance. Tribesmen knew their deaths in mid-leap,
and as they fell, their brothers surged over them in a roaring, irresistible wave. In the
forefront of the rush, hair flying and arms swinging free, flashing past the tree-trunks, and
leaping the obstructing logs, came Thom. Fairfax sighted on her and almost pulled trigger
ere he knew her.
"The woman! Don't shoot!" he cried. "See! She is unarmed!"
The Crees never heard, nor Michael and his brother voyageur, nor Van Brunt, who was
keeping one shell continuously in the air. But Thom bore straight on, unharmed, at the
heels of a skin-clad hunter who had veered in before her from the side. Fairfax emptied
his magazine into the men to right and left of her, and swung his rifle to meet the big
hunter. But the man, seeming to recognize him, swerved suddenly aside and plunged his
spear into the body of Michael. On the moment Thom had one arm passed around her
husband's neck, and twisting half about, with voice and gesture was splitting the mass of
charging warriors. A score of men hurled past on either side, and Fairfax, for a brief
instant's space, stood looking upon her and her bronze beauty, thrilling, exulting, stirred
to unknown deeps, visioning strange things, dreaming, immortally dreaming. Snatches
and scraps of old-world philosophies and new-world ethics floated through his mind, and
things wonderfully concrete and woefully incongruous--hunting scenes, stretches of
sombre forest, vastnesses of silent snow, the glittering of ballroom lights, great galleries
and lecture halls, a fleeting shimmer of glistening test-tubes, long rows of book-lined
shelves, the throb of machinery and the roar of traffic, a fragment of forgotten song, faces
of dear women and old