The Maid of the Whispering Hills | Page 8

that mystic West,--bound for the Land of the Whispering Hills, whence had come that old, vague rumour, lured alike by love of the unknown and shy, unspoken longing for the father whose heart must be the pattern of her own.
And in her train, swept together by that fire within her, touched into flame by her ever-mounting hope, her courage, and her magnetism, went that small band of men and women, all young, all of adventurous blood, all daring the odds that let reluctantly a woman into the wilderness.
Yet it has been ever women who have conquered the wilderness, for until they trod the trace the men had cut it still remained a wilderness.
So she leaned in the door of Marie's new home, this taut-strung Maren Le Moyne, and gazed away above the rim of the budding forest, and her spirit was as a chaffing steed held into quiet by a hand it knows its master.
For a year she must endure the strain,--then, as the good God willed, the leap forward, the wild breath in her nostrils, the forging into the unknown.
"Ah, yes!" she said again, "it is the spring."
"Bon jour," she nodded, unsmiling, as a slim youth swung jauntily up the hard-beaten way between the cabins.
"Eh!" said Marie, alert, "and who is that lord-high-mighty, with his red cheeks and his airs, Maren? You know, as it is always, every man in the post already. It is not so with the women, I'll wager. For instance, who lives in the tiny house there by the south bastion?"
"I know not," answered Maren, as though she humoured a child, and taking the last question first; "as for the youth, 'tis young Marc Dupre, and one of a sturdy nature. I like his spirit, though all I know of it is what sparkles from his roguish eyes. A fighter,--one to dare for love of chance."
Marie looked quickly up, ever ready to pounce on the first gleam of aught that might ripen into a love interest, but she saw Maren's eyes, cool and shining, watching the swaggering figure with a look that measured its slim strength, its suggestion of reserve, its gay joy of life, and naught else.
"A pretty fellow," she said, with a touch of disappointment.
Each and every man went by Maren just so,--eliciting only that interest which had to do apart from the personal.
But the black eyes of Marc Dupre had softened a bit under their daring as he approached the factory.
"Holy Mother!" he whispered to himself; "what a woman! No maid, but a WOMAN--for whose word one would fillip the face of Satan. She is fire--and, if I am sure, all men are tow."

CHAPTER IV
THE STRANGER FROM CIVILISATION
"How goes it, little one, with Loup?"
The factor stopped a moment in the sunshine before the cabin of old France Moline.
Clad in a red skirt, brilliant in its adornment of stained quills of the porcupine got from the Indians, Francette paced daintily here and there in the clean-swept yard, now snapping her small fingers, now coaxing with soft noises in her round throat, her sparkling eyes fixed on the gaunt grey skeleton that stood on its four feet braced wide apart, wavering dizzily.
For a time she did not answer, as if he who spoke was no more than any youth of the settlement, so exaggeratedly absorbed was she.
Then, pushing back the curls from her face, a pretty motion that always wakened a look of admiration in masculine eyes beholding,--
"If he would only try, M'sieu," she said, frowning, "but he does nothing save stand and look at me like that. The strength is gone from his legs."
It seemed even as the little maid protested. Massive, silent, contemptuous, his small eyes under the wolfish skull cold and alight with a look that sent shuddering from him the timid,--thus he had been in his hard-fought and hard-won supremacy, a great, mysterious beast brought full-grown from the snowbound wilderness of the forest one famine-time by old Aquamis and sold to Bois DesCaut for a tie of tobacco.
Now he stood, a pitiable shadow, and begged mutely of the only tender hand he had known for understanding of this strange weakness that took his limbs and sent the heavens whirling.
McElroy looked long upon him.
"'Tis a shame," he said, his straight brows drawing together, "the dog is a better brute than Bois."
"Aye," flashed Francette, talking as though it were no uncommon thing for the factor to stop at the cabin of the Molines, "and no more shall the one brute serve the other. You have said, M'sieu."
"Yes," laughed the factor, "I have said and it shall be so. I will buy the dog from Bois if he speaks of the matter. Take good care of him, little one," and McElroy turned down toward the gate. As he moved away, free of step