The Maid of the Whispering Hills | Page 5

lay sullenly in the
shade; of the cabin where McElroy had put him down, covered at night
from the cool air by Francette's' own blanket of the gorgeous stripes,
fed by her small loving hands bit by bit, submitting for the first time in
his hard and eventful life to the touch of woman, thrilling in his savage
heart to the word of tenderness.
Gently the little maid stroked the rough grey fur and scowled toward

the factory.
So intent was she with her thought that she did not hear the step beside
her, springing quickly up when a voice spoke, cool and amused, behind.
"Well said, little maid," it praised; "that was a neat turn."
The tall stranger, Maren Le Moyne, stood smiling down upon her.
Francette, sharpest of tongue in all the settlement, was at sudden loss
before this woman. She looked up into her face and stood silent,
searching it with the gaze of a child.
It was a wondrous face, dark as her own, its cheeks as dusky red, but in
it was a baffling something that held her quick tongue mute, a look as
of great depth, of wondrous strength, and yet of fitful tenderness, --the
one playing through the other as flame about black marble, and with
the rest a smile.
More than little Francette had beheld that baffling expression and
squirmed beneath its strangeness. Francette looked, and the scowl drew
deeper.
She saw again this woman leaning slightly forward, her eyes a-glitter
on the prostrate DesCaut, her strong hand doubled and flecked with
blood, with Loup at her feet,--and quick on the heels of it she saw the
look in the factor's eyes as he had commanded her to silence with a
motion.
"So?" she flamed at last, recovering her natural audacity, for the maid
was spoiled to recklessness by reason of her beauty; "I meant it to be
neat."
At the look which leaped into the eyes of the stranger her own began to
waver, to shift from one to the other, and lastly dropped in confusion.
"But spoiled at the end by foolishness," said Maren Le Moyne, and all
the pleasure had slipped from her deep voice, leaving it cold as steel.
Abruptly she turned away, her high head shining in the sun, her strong
shoulders swinging slightly as she walked.
Francette looked after her, with small hands clinched and breast
heaving with, anger, and there had the stranger made her second enemy
in Fort de Seviere within the first fortnight.
Along the northern wall there was much bustle and scurry, the noise of
voices and of preparation, for the men were busy with the raising of the
first new cabin. As some whimsical fate would have it, there were the
hewn logs that Bard McLellan had prepared a year back for his own

new house when he should have married the pretty Lila of old
McKenzie, who sickened suddenly in the early autumn when the leaves
were dropping in the forest and fled from his eager arms. No heart had
been left in the breast of the trapper after that and the logs lay where he
had felled them.
Now McElroy, tactful of tongue and gentle, touched the sore spot, and
Bard gave sad consent to their use.
"Take them, M'sieu," he said wearily; "my pain may save another's
need."
So the first new cabin went up apace.
Anders McElroy looked over his settlement day by day and there was
great satisfaction in his eyes. Fort de Seviere was none so strong that it
could afford to look carelessly on the acquisition of five good men and
hardy trappers, and, beside, somehow there was a pleasanter feeling to
the warm spring air since they had arrived-a new sense of bustle and
accomplishment.
Often he stood in the door of the factory and looked to where the
women sang at their work or carried the shining pails full of water from
the one deep well of the settlement, situated near the gate in the eastern
wall, and the smiles were ever ready in his blue eyes.
A handsome man was this factor of Fort de Seviere, tall and well
formed, with that grace of carriage which speaks of perfect manhood;
his head, covered with a thick growth of sun-coloured hair curling
lightly at the ends, tossed ever back, ready to laugh. Scottish blood,
mingled with a strong Irish strain, ran riot in him, giving him at once
both love of life and honour.
They had known what they were doing, those lords of the H. B.
Company, when they had sent this young adventurer from Fenchurch
Street to the new continent, and, after five years among the hardships of
the trade, he found himself factor of Fort de Seviere,--lord of his little
world,