CHAPTER XIV--INTEREST ON A DEBT
They filed past the store, a weary looking squad, Montell's fat jowldrawn into sullen lines, the men not wholly free of a certain furtivebearing. Observing them I could very well enter into their feelings. Mybrief experience between Benton and MacLeod had taught me something ofthe fear that stalks at the elbow of a hunted man. The girl looked up atBarreau and me, and for the first time there was no curl to her lip, noscornful gleam in her eyes. Only a momentary flash of interest. Then thelistless, impersonal expression came back to her face. She walked at herfather's elbow like one utterly worn out. The men branched off to thebunkhouse. Montell and his daughter went straight to their cabin.
"I think he is beginning to have a profound respect for the Company,"Barreau told me that night as we sat over our fire. "They have set himthinking. It seems that none of his men could get so much as a glimpseof a moccasin track. Still, their saddle horses and pack-mules weresystematically shot down, until they were afoot again. After that theywere not molested. He knows that his whole party could as easily havebeen put out of the way. That seems to have put the fear of God into thelot of them. They can't understand the object. I don't, myself,altogether. But I could hazard a close guess, I think."
All that night and the next day the big snowflakes came gyrating down.The temperature remained the same, just short of freezing, and a deadcalm lay over the land. Then it faired gradually. With the clearing skythe feathery snowfall melted and disappeared. Upon its passing the nightfrosts took on a keener edge. Little vagrant gusts of wind wentfrolicking through the open spaces in the woods, fluttering the dry,fallen leaves into tiny heaps and scattering them again. Sometimes of anight these same whisperings of the North rattled the bare limbs of thecottonwoods and birch till the miles of forest seemed to voice aprotesting murmur. Steadily the cold grew, and the sun rode lower on itsdiurnal passage. Save the pine and spruce and scattered cedars the greatwoods shivered in their nakedness, lacking the white robe which theNorth dons at such season. And presently that came also, with thedeep-throated whoop of a north-east gale to herald its coming. In onenight the Sicannie froze from bank to bank; at daybreak the wind drovecurling streamers of loose snow across its glassy surface, to pile infrosty windows at the foot of the south slope.
During this period we of the post settled into a routine of minor tasks.There were fires to keep against the cold. From dawn to dusk, somewherewithin the stockade or on the timbered hill above, the clink of anaxeblade on frosty wood rang like a bell. That, and water for cooking,and caring for the stock now housed in the long stable, kept time fromhanging heavy on the hands of the men. Barreau and I gravitated betweenour cabin and the store.
Montell sulked for a week after that last failure to reach the south.Then he emerged from his shell of silence, and became ponderouslygenial, talkative--a metamorphosis which Barreau regarded with frankcontempt. He spoke to Montell no oftener than was necessary, and when hedid speak his tongue was barbed. Openly and unequivocally he despisedand distrusted his flesh-burdened partner, and he made no effort to hidethe fact. For the most part Montell took his sneering unmoved, orgrinned pacifically, but there were times when his red face went purpleand his puffy eyelids would droop till the pupils glinted through mereslits, like a cat about to pounce. Then it would be Barreau's turn tosmile, in his slow ironic way.
Of the girl, who kept close to the cabin she and her father shared, noword ever passed between the two. Nor did she meet Barreau or myselfface to face for a matter of three weeks. Our sight of each was from adistance, and from that distance, with a blanket coat to her heels and afur cap pulled over her ears, it was hard to distinguish her from one ofthe few half-breed women who had followed their men into the North. Inwhat way Montell accounted for our presence, I did not know, nor how heexplained Barreau's assured position about the post. It may be that shedid not notice this incongruity on the part of a supposed fugitive; itmay be that Montell was a plausible liar. At any rate, upon the fewoccasions when we three came near enough to recognize each other, sheappeared calmly indifferent. Barreau and I ate in the big cookhouse withthe rest of the men. Montell and his daughter had their meals served inthe cabin. So we--at least I will speak for myself, for Barreaumaintained a stony front and absolute silence on the subject--were savedthe embarrassment of meeting three times daily.
Montell himself became very friendly toward me. Bit by bit he drew fromme the story of my wanderings, and shook his head over it, assuring methat Missouri river sternwheel men were a hard lot. Once he becamereminiscent and spoke of his dead wife and her people with a poorlyconcealed pride in the alliance. His palpable satisfaction amused me. Itseemed odd that a man of his rugged type, a hard-headed businessbuccaneer, should have that fatuous overestimation of wealth andso-called "blood." But he had it to the n'th degree. I dare say it washis one weak spot. She was a Charbonne, of the old New OrleansCharbonnes, originally a Hugenot family, but for the last generation ortwo of St. Louis, he told me; and in the telling he shed his naturalcarelessness of speech, and spoke in the stilted, exactly-phrasedEnglish in which he might have addressed the aristocratic parent of hisbride. I knew more or less of the St. Louis Charbonnes myself, and Iwondered that I had never heard of Montell or his daughter. Barreausmiled when I spoke of this later.
"That's Montell all over," he drawled. "Marrying a Charbonne stands outas one of the big things he has accomplished. He can't help boasting ofit now and then. I imagine that if he were dying in a snowbank thatthought would cheer him in his last hour. He regards it as a distinctachievement. He was a big, perfectly-formed, good-looking brute when hemet her, and from all I know it was a case of two strong naturesbrushing aside all obstacles. I've heard that the Charbonnes werefurious over what they considered the rankest sort of mesalliance--butthey were married, and so far as I know she never discovered his veryobvious clay feet. She died in child-birth--the second child. The familyhas kept up a desultory intercourse with him for the girl's sake. Theyrecognize her as their own blood, and tolerate him on that account."
A day or two after this Barreau rigged up a dog-team and left the post,bound for a point down the river, where they had established twoFrenchmen with some trading goods, on the chance of getting into touchwith some few lodges that hunted in that territory. He took one man, andI tramped a few miles with them, for the sake of the snowshoe practiceof which I was sadly in need. It looked easy to go stalking over thedrifts on those webbed ovals, but it was trying work for a novice Idiscovered at my first attempt. There was a certain free, swingingstride, which I had yet to master. So it happened that I did not returnto the post until that chill hour between sundown and dark.
I was aware that the fire in our cabin was long dead, and the roomcorresponding in temperature to an ice-box, but I was in no mood for theultra-friendly conversation Montell had been favoring me with of late.For which reason I eschewed the blaze that I knew was crackling on thestore hearth and made straight for my own quarters.
The day's work was at an end. Besides myself not a soul moved within thefrosty area of the stockade. The doors of every building were shut tightagainst the sharp-toothed cold. This I noted almost mechanically. I wasbeginning to develop the woodsman's faculty of observing detail, withoutconscious purpose. With my mind busy about the prospect of getting afire started in the shortest possible space of time my gaze for a momentrested on the Montell cabin, as I stopped at my own door. At thatinstant Jessie Montell stepped outside, a shawl thrown over her head,carrying in one hand some object covered with a white cloth.
The dogs must have been lying at the end of the cabin. The slam of thedoor had barely sounded when she was confronted by one wolf-like brute.He faced her boldly, his nose pointed inquisitively toward the thing shecarried. She made a threatening gesture and spoke sharply to him,whereat the husky retreated a foot or two--and was instantly reinforcedby half a dozen of his fellows. The girl lifted her hand a little higherand berated them, her clear voice reproaching them for their lack ofman
ners. And then of a sudden one cock-eared brute sprang at the thingshe carried. He missed, and one of the others had a try. She gaveground, holding above her head what I now saw was a plate; andimmediately the snarling pack was snapping at her skirts and she was cutoff from the door. I could hear the click of their white fangs as I ran.She backed against the wall, scolding them in a voice that betrayed somealarm.
I reached her on the double-quick, when I saw that the dogs meantmischief. The short-tempered devils turned on me in a body with thefirst blow I struck. One after the other I knocked galley-west andcrooked with the barrel of my rifle, and shortly emerged victorious fromthe melee, but with my leggings ripped in divers places and the leftsleeve of my _parka_ slit as if with a knife. From this last the bloodstreamed forth merrily, flowing down over my mitten and dripping redlyon the trampled snow. Prior to that my experience of vicious dogs hadbeen with those which grabbed and held on. The slashing wolfish snap ofthe husky was new to me. I stood looking at my gashed arm in someastonishment.
"Why, they've bitten you," the girl exclaimed, with a sharp intake ofher breath. "Let me see?"
She spread apart the opening in my buckskin sleeve and frowned at sightof the torn flesh, meanwhile balancing on her other hand the plate ofmeat that had caused the onslaught. Most women, I found time to reflect,would have dropped it at the first intention, but she had clung to it asa miser clings to his gold.
"Come in and let me tie that up," she commanded peremptorily, and flungopen the door, giving me little chance to debate whether I would or no.And I followed her in, as much through a sudden desire to see a littlemore of this very capable and impulsive young lady, as to have the sharpsting of the wound allayed.
She brought water in a basin, a sponge, and a piece of clean linen whichshe speedily reduced to strips; and after helping me remove the _parka_proceeded to dress the gash in my forearm with deft tenderness. Duringthis ministering to my need we were both silent. When it was done shetilted her head on one side and surveyed her handiwork, for all theworld like a small bird perched on a limb and looking down. Thisfanciful notion struck me as rather absurd, and the more I thought of itthe more absurd it seemed, till I found myself smiling broadly. LikeningJessie Montell to a saucy bird was, in a way, a very far-fetchedcomparison. She was distinctly unbirdlike--apart from that trick oftipping her head sidewise and gazing speculatively at whatsoeverinterested her.
"I'm really and truly sorry I got you into such a scrape," sheapologized sweetly. "I suppose I should have thrown the meat to thoseferocious things. But dear me, I'd toiled so over it, getting it thawedand fixed for papa's supper, that I hated to see it literally go to thedogs. You mustn't let the cold get into that cut. You'll have a nastysore if you do."
"Oh, I'll see that the cold doesn't have a chance at it," I assured her."And you don't need to feel guilty on my account. I'd rather it was myarm than yours. I'm only too glad to pay a little interest on my debt."
She looked puzzled for a second.
"Oh," she said then, "you mean that time on the _Moon_. There's no debtto me. Those ruffians would have paid little heed to me. Mr.Barreau----"
She colored and broke off abruptly, with an impatient gesture.
"Papa has been telling me about you," she changed the subject. "AnotherSt. Louis unfortunate"--smilingly--"aren't you. As the Scotch say, Ifeel 'verra weel acquentit.' Your mother and my aunt Lois were more orless intimate. So that I know you by proxy, in a way."
I don't recollect just what reply I made. If she were trying to put meat my ease she made a woeful mess of it the very next minute, for shedemanded to know, with embarrassing directness:
"Why in the world didn't you stand your ground at Benton? Whateverpossessed you to cross the line?"
"Well, you see--I--it was----" and there I halted lamely. I couldn'tdiscuss the ethics of my flight with this self-sufficient young woman.My grounds for self-justification in that particular instance, wererather untenable. I couldn't explain the psychology of the thing to her,when I couldn't quite grasp it myself. I couldn't honestly admit that Ihad refused to stay and face the consequences of Tupper's sudden end atmy hands because I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn't believe thatmyself. Even if I had believed it, I would have been ashamed to admitfrankly to that gray-eyed girl that I had run away because I was afraid.It had been a peculiar situation for me, one that I could hardly attemptto make clear to her. With Barreau it had been different. He seemed tounderstand, to divine how and why I did such and such a thing at such atime and place, with but a meager explanation from me. Certain effectsinvariably led him intuitively to first causes.
Moreover, with her I seemed to be put upon the defensive. I found myselfreflecting on what she would do in such a case, and instantly decidingthat Miss Jessie Montell would defy the devil and all his works if shethought herself in the right. In addition thereto I felt that she wasunconsciously appraising me and classing me as a weakling; and that,added to my own half-formed conviction that in time of trial I waslikely to prove so, made me a most uncomfortable individual for a fewmoments. Montell's entrance saved me from a rather unwelcome situation.There is no knowing how deep a tangle I should have got myself into--shewas so uncompromisingly direct. Montell, however, opened the door at thecrucial period, and she turned to him with a recital of the huskies'outbreak, lighting a cluster of candles as she talked.
"If you don't shut up those ferocious brutes, or feed them a littleoftener," she concluded, "they'll devour somebody one of these days, andthere won't be so much as a moccasin left to tell the tale." At whichextravagant forecast we all three laughed, and I felt myself equal tothe occasion once more.
The upshot of this dog episode was that I stayed to supper with them,and went to my own cabin rather late in the evening.