The Maid of the Whispering Hills | Page 8

conquest and adventure
that took the current by his door.
Never had Maren chided him,--never for one moment held against him
the desertion of his children. For that, they were well provided for since
he had left with Jacques Baptiste the savings of his life, not much, but
enough to bring both of them to the marriage age.
And well and tenderly had old Jacques and his wife fulfilled the

trust,--Maren's dark eyes were often misty as she recalled the parting at
Grand Portage.
So tenderly had the two maids grown in the love of the family that
Marie had, but at the start of the great journey, married young Henri
Baptiste.
Marie was all for a home and some black-eyed babies, but she clung to
Maren as she had ever done,--and now, in her twenty-sixth year, Maren
had risen to the call as her father had done before her, and lifted her
face, rapt as some pagan Priestess', toward 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