towards him, galloping his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his salutation. He did not speak. The priest's face was very grave, if not a little resentful. His salutation was reserved.
"The tyranny of gold," he murmured, "and without the mind or energy that created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a jerry-builder; but he builds."
He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy.
"Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and plans big things. But Felix Marchand there--"
He stopped short.
"Such men must be, perhaps," he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he murmured as one murmurs a prayer:
"Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place."
BOOK I
I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE" VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE
CHAPTER I
"THE DRUSES ARE UP!"
"Great Scott, look at her! She's goin' to try and take 'em !" exclaimed Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon.
"She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Low water, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, my gracious, she is goin' to ride 'em!"
Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy in a daring thing.
"See, old Injun Tekewani's after her! He's calling at her from the bank. He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribe an' he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe--"
"Just as the Druse girl there is doin'--"
"An' he's done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since."
"But she ain't a chief--what's the use of her doin' it? She's goin' straight for them. She can't turn back now. She couldn't make the bank if she wanted to. She's got to run 'em. Holy smoke, see her wavin' the paddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she's the limit, that petticoat--so quiet and shy and don't-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds."
"Oh, get out, Jowett; she's all right! She'll make this country sit up some day-by gorry, she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she runs the Carillon Rapids safe!"
"She's runnin' 'em all right, son. She's--by jee, well done, Miss Druse! Well done, I say--well done!" exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and waving his arms towards the adventurous girl.
The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent and tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial had come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bow of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she had made once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perils not met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock slantwise, shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps.
It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of his race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger to danger.
Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river- driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the lure. Why should she do it?
"Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin'," gasped Osterhaut as he ran. "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've got the pip. Look at her--my hair's bleachin'."
"She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; "but she's foreign, and they've all got the pip, foreign men and women both-- but the women go crazy."
"She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, I'd--"
Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what old man Druse does--you'd let her be, Osterhaut. What's the good of havin' your own way with one that's the
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