The Maid of the Whispering Hills | Page 2

strength.
Against the mellow background of the weather-beaten stockade that
surrounded the post there stood two figures, a man and a woman, and
between the two there crouched with snarling lips and flaming eyes a
huge grey dog.
Tall he was, that man, tall and broad of shoulder, but the head of the
woman, shining like blue-black satin in the morning sun, was level
with his brows.

She leaned a trifle forward and her eyes held fast to his passion-
flooded face. It was evident that she had but just reached the spot from
the fact that the club, arrested in its upward swing, still was poised in
the air.
They faced each other and the factor stopped in his tracks.
"Quick, M'sieu!" begged Francette at his side, but he put out a
commanding hand and ceased to breathe.
"Hold!" said the tall young woman at last, and her voice cut cold and
clear in the sun-filled morning. "No more! You have whipped the dog
enough."
The red face of the trapper flamed into purple and his lips opened for
an oath. Quick as the heat lightning that flutters on the waters of
Winipigoos in the hot summers the cruel club came down. McElroy
heard its dull impact, and the husky crumpled like a broken reed.
With stern face the factor started forward, while the little maid covered
her pretty eyes and whimpered.
But quicker than his stride retribution leaped to meet DesCaut.
He saw the woman's arm shoot out and her strong hand, smooth and
tawny as finest tanned buckskin, double itself hard and leap in where
the jaw turns downward into the curve of the throat.
The stroke of a man it was, clean and sharp and well delivered, and
DesCaut, catching his heel on a buried stone's sharp jut, went backward
with his head in the young grass of the sloping shore.
For a moment she stood as it had left her, leaning forward, and there
was a shine of satisfaction in her eyes.
Then as the man essayed to rise there was a mighty laughter from the
two youths on the river bank and the spell was broken.
McElroy went forward.
"DesCaut," he said sharply, and his words cut like the lash of the long
dog-whips, "you deserves death but you have been beaten by a woman.
Go, and boast of your strength. It is sufficient."
DesCaut stood a moment swaying drunkenly with the force of passion
within him, his lips snarling back from his teeth and his eyes measuring
the factor unsteadily then he snatched off the little cap he wore and
hurled it at him.
Turning on his heel he swung down toward the gate and the two
voyageurs now standing and still laughing merrily.

One look at his bloodshot eyes sobered their mirth, and Pierre Garcon
reached involuntarily for the knife in his sash.
But Bois DesCaut, savage to silence, swung past them into the fort.
McElroy watched him until he disappeared, fearing he knew not what.
Then he faced the little scene again.
Down on her knees little Francette had lifted the heavy head with its
dull eyes and pitiful hanging tongue, lifted it to her breast, weeping and
smoothing the short ears deaf to her soft words, and sat rocking to and
fro in an ecstasy of grief. Beyond SHE stood, that tall woman, stood
silent and frowning, looking down upon the two, and the factor saw
with a strange thrill that the hand, yet doubled, was flecked with blood.
"Ma'amselle," he said, "is of the new people who arrived last night
from Portage la Prairie?"
Then they were lifted for the first time to his face, those dark eyes
smouldering like banked fires, and he saw their marvellous beauty.
"Of a surety," she said slowly, and there was a subtle tone in her
deep-throated voice that made the blood stir vaguely within the factor's
veins, "does M'sieu have so many strangers passing through his gates
that he is at loss to place each one?"
And with that word she turned deliberately away, walked down toward
the gate, and entered the stockade.
McElroy watched her go, until the last glint of her sober dress, plain
and clinging easily to the magnificent shoulders that swung slightly
with her free walk, had passed from view. And not alone he, for the two
voyageurs alike gazed after her, this new-comer from the farther ways
of civilisation who dared the brute DesCaut and struck like a man.
Then the factor bent above the little Francette.
"Sh!" he said gently, "little one, let go. The dog is dead, poor beast.
Come away."
But the maid would not give up the battered body, and with the
audacity of her beauty and life-long spoiling, besought the young factor
for help.