The Maid of the Whispering Hills | Page 6

who wore no brilliant garment, yet whose shining head drew the eyes of the men like a magnet.
Slowly speech grew among them, very slowly, as if something held back the usual comment of the trappers, concerning this Maren Le Moyne.
"Look you, Pierre," ventured Marc Dupre to Pierre Garcon, as they beached their canoe one dusk after a short trip up the river; "yonder is the young woman of the strong arm. A high head, and eyes like a thunderous night,--Eh? Is there love, think you, asleep anywhere within her?"
Whereat Pierre glanced aside under his cap to where Maren hauled up the bucket from the well, hand over hand, with the muscles slipping under her tawny skin like whipcords.
"Nom de Dieu!" ejaculated Pierre under his breath; "if there is, I would not be the one to awaken it and not be found its master! It would be a thing of flame and fury."
"Ah!" laughed the other, "but I would. It would be, past all chance, a thing to remember, howe'er it went! But it is not like that you or I will be the one to wake it. Milady, though clad in seeming poverty, fixes those disdainful eyes upon the clouds."

CHAPTER III
NEW HOMES
The work of raising the new cabins went forward merrily. Every one lent a hand, and by the end of May the new families were installed and living happily. In that last house near the northeast corner of the post dwelt Henri and Marie Baptiste and Maren Le Moyne.
A goodly place it was, divided into two rooms and already the hands of the two sisters had fashioned of such scant things as they possessed and dared buy from the factory on the year's debt, a semblance of comfort.
In the other cabins the rest of the party managed to double, each family taking one of the two rooms in each, and the women at least drew a sigh of content that the long trail had at last found an end, however unstable of tenure.
"Ah, Maren," said Marie Baptiste, sitting on the shining new log step of her domicile, "what it is to have a home! Does it not clutch at your heart sometimes, ma cherie, the desire for a home, and that which goes with it, the love of a man?"
She raised her eyes to the face of Maren leaning above her against the lintel, and they were full of a puzzled question.
Maren answered the look with a swift smile, toying lightly with a fold of the faded sleeve rolled above her elbow.
"Home for me, Marie, is the wide blue sky above, the wind in the tossing trees, the ripple of soft waters on the bow of a canoe. For me,--I grieve that we have stopped. Not this year do we reach the Land of the Whispering Hills."
A swift change had fallen into the depth of her golden voice, a subtle wistfulness that sang with weird pathos, and the eyes raised toward the western rim of the forest were suddenly far and sombre.
"Forgive!" said her sister gently; "I had forgot. I know the dream, but is it not better that we rest and gain new strength for another season? Here might well be home, here on this pretty river. We have come a mighty length already. What could be fairer, cherie,--even though we leave another to win to the untracked West."
A small spasm drew across the features of Maren, a twitching of the full lips.
"Faint heart of you," she said sadly. "Oh, Marie, 'tis your voice has ever held us back. They would prod faster but for you. Is there no glory within you, no daring, no dreams of conquest? Bien! But I could go alone. This dallying stiffles the breath in me!"
She put up a hand and tore open the garment at her throat, taking a deep breath of the sunlit air.
"But it is poverty that must be reckoned with. By spring again we may be better equipped than ever."
So rode up the hope that was ever in her.
"Yes," sighed Marie, "as the good God wills."
But she glanced wistfully around the new cabin, to be her own for the length of the four seasons. And who should say what might not happen in four seasons?
She wondered fretfully what fate had fashioned the glorious creature beside her in the form of Love itself to put within the soul of the restless conqueror. Never had she known Maren, though they two had come from the same lap.
Presently Maren looked down at her, and the shimmering smile, like light across dark waters, had again returned.
"Nay," she said gently, "fret not. It is spring-and you have at last a home."
True, it was spring.
Did not each breath of the south wind tell it, each flute-like call from the budding forest without the post, each