Marianson | Page 5

camp
away from so much plunder. Sioux cannot be unlike our Chippewas.
Do you think," demanded Marianson, "that you will be quite, quite safe
in the cave?"
Her companion laughed.
"If I find the cave unsafe I can leave it; but you in the dark alone--you
must let me go with you."
"No; the risk is too great. It is better for me to go alone. I know every
rock, every bend of the shore. The pull back around the island will be
hardest, if there is not enough wind."
"I go with you," decided the boy.
"But you gave me your promise to do exactly as I bade you. I am older
than you," said Marianson.
"I know what is best, and that is that you remain here until I come.
Swear to me that you will."
He was silent, beseeching her with his eyes to relent. Then, owning her
right to dominate, he pledged her by the name of his saint to do as she
required.

Their forced companionship, begun at daylight, was ending as darkness
crept through the cavern's mouth. They waited, and those last moments
of silence, while they leaned to look closely at each other with the night
growing between them, were a benediction on the day.
Marianson stooped to creep through the cavern's mouth, but once more
she turned and looked at him, and it was she herself who stretched
appealing arms. The boy's shyness and the woman's aversion to men
vanished as in fire. They stood together in the hollow of the cave in one
long embrace. He sought her mouth and kissed her, and, suffocating
with joy, she escaped through the low door.
Indifferent to the Indian who might be dogging her, she drew her strip
of home-spun around her face and ran, moccasined and deft-footed,
over the stones, warm, palpitating, and laughing, full of physical
hardihood. In the woods, on her left, she knew there were rocks
splashed with stain black as ink and crusted with old lichens. On her
right white-caps were running before the west wind and diving like
ducks on the strait. She crossed the threads of a brook ravelling
themselves from density. For the forest was a mask. But Marianson
knew well the tricks of that brook--its pellucid shining on pebbles, its
cascades, its hidings underground of all but a voice and a crystal pool.
Wet to her knees, she had more than once followed it to its source amid
such greenery of moss and logs as seemed a conflagration of verdure.
The many points and bays of the island sped behind her, and cliffs
crowded her to the water's edge or left her a dim moving object on a
lonesome beach. Sometimes she heard sounds in the woods and
listened; on the other hand, she had the companionship of stars and
moving water. On that glorified journey Marianson's natural
fearlessness carried her past the Devil's Kitchen and quite near the post
before she began to consider how it was best to approach a place which
might be in the hands of an enemy. Her boat was tied at the dock. She
had the half-ruined distillery yet to pass. It had stood under the cliff her
lifetime. As she drew nearer, cracks of light and a hum like the droning
of a beehive magically turned the old distillery into a caravansary of
spirits.

Nothing in her long tramp had startled her like this. It was a relief to
hear the click of metal and a strange-spoken word, and to find herself
face to face with an English soldier. He made no parley, but marched
her before him; and the grateful noise of squalling babies and maternal
protests and Maman Pelott's night lullaby also met her as they
proceeded towards the distillery.
The long dark shed had a chimney-stack and its many-coiled still in one
end. Beside that great bottle-shaped thing, at the base of the chimney,
was an open fireplace piled with flaming sticks, and this had made the
luminous crevices. All Mackinac village was gathered within the walls,
and Marian-son beheld a camp supping, putting children to bed on
blankets in corners, sitting and shaking fingers at one another in
wrathful council, or running about in search of lost articles. The curé
was there, keeping a restraint on his people. Clothes hung on spikes
like rows of suicides in the weird light. Even fiddlers and jollity were
not lacking. A heavier race would have come to blows in that strait
enclosure, but these French and half-breeds, in danger of scalping if the
Indians proved turbulent, dried their eyes after losses, and shook their
legs ready for a dance at the scraping of a violin.
Little Ignace Pelott was directly pulling at Mari-anson's petticoat to get
attention.
"De Ingins