Conjurors House | Page 4

never seen them.
She could imagine the isolation of such a place, and the intense
loneliness of the solitary man condemned to live through the dark
Northern winters, seeing no one but the rare Indians who might come
in to trade with him for their pelts. She could appreciate the wild joy of
a return for a brief season to the company of fellow-men.
When her glance fell upon the last of the canoes, it rested with a flash
of surprise. The craft was still floating idly, its bow barely caught
against the bank. The crew had deserted, but amidships, among the
packages of pelts and duffel, sat a stranger. The canoe was that of the
post at Kettle Portage.
She saw the stranger to be a young man with a clean-cut face, a trim
athletic figure dressed in the complete costume of the voyageurs, and
thin brown and muscular hands. When the canoe touched the bank he
had taken no part in the scramble to shore, and so had sat forgotten and
unnoticed save by the girl, his figure erect with something of the
Indian's stoical indifference. Then when, for a moment, he imagined
himself free from observation, his expression abruptly changed. His
hands clenched tense between his buckskin knees, his eyes glanced
here and there restlessly, and an indefinable shadow of something
which Virginia felt herself obtuse in labelling desperation, and yet to
which she discovered it impossible to fit a name, descended on his
features, darkening them. Twice he glanced away to the south. Twice
he ran his eye over the vociferating crowd on the narrow beach.
Absorbed in the silent drama of a man's unguarded expression, Virginia
leaned forward eagerly. In some vague manner it was borne in on her
that once before she had experienced the same emotion, had come into
contact with someone, something, that had affected her emotionally
just as this man did now. But she could not place it. Over and over

again she forced her mind to the very point of recollection, but always
it slipped back again from the verge of attainment. Then a little
movement, some thrust forward of the head, some nervous, rapid
shifting of the hands or feet, some unconscious poise of the shoulders,
brought the scene flashing before her--the white snow, the still forest,
the little square pen-trap, the wolverine, desperate but cool, thrusting its
blunt nose quickly here and there in baffled hope of an orifice of escape.
Somehow the man reminded her of the animal, the fierce little woods
marauder, trapped and hopeless, but scorning to cower as would the
gentler creatures of the forest.
Abruptly his expression changed again. His figure stiffened, the
muscles of his face turned iron. Virginia saw that someone on the beach
had pointed toward him. His mask was on.
The first burst of greeting was over. Here and there one or another of
the brigade members jerked their heads in the stranger's direction,
explaining low-voiced to their companions. Soon all eyes turned
curiously toward the canoe. A hum of low-voiced comment took the
place of louder delight.
The stranger, finding himself generally observed, rose slowly to his feet,
picked his way with a certain exaggerated deliberation of movement
over the duffel lying in the bottom of the canoe, until he reached the
bow, where he paused, one foot lifted to the gunwale just above the
emblem of the painted star. Immediately a dead silence fell. Groups
shifted, drew apart, and together again, like the slow agglomeration of
sawdust on the surface of water, until at last they formed in a semicircle
of staring, whose centre was the bow of the canoe and the stranger from
Kettle Portage. The men scowled, the women regarded him with a
half-fearful curiosity.
Virginia Albret shivered in the shock of this sudden electric polarity.
The man seemed alone against a sullen, unexplained hostility. The
desperation she had thought to read but a moment before had vanished
utterly, leaving in its place a scornful indifference and perhaps more
than a trace of recklessness. He was ripe for an outbreak. She did not in
the least understand, but she knew it from the depths of her woman's

instinct, and unconsciously her sympathies flowed out to this man,
alone without a greeting where all others came to their own.
For perhaps a full sixty seconds the new-comer stood uncertain what he
should do, or perhaps waiting for some word or act to tip the balance of
his decision. One after another those on shore felt the insolence of his
stare, and shifted uneasily. Then his deliberate scrutiny rose to the
group by the cannon. Virginia caught her breath sharply. In spite of
herself she could not turn away. The stranger's eye crossed her own.
She saw the hard