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Wolf Breed

by Jackson Gregory · English · Gutenberg #18964 · 376,269 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Wolf Breed

Author: Jackson Gregory

Illustrator: Frank Tenney Johnson


        
Release date: August 2, 2006 [eBook #18964]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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WOLF BREED

by

JACKSON GREGORY

Author of
The Short Cut, Etc.

With Frontispiece in Color by Frank Tenney Johnson







[Frontispiece: SHE STOOD UPON A MONSTER BEAR SKIN.  UPON THE RUG,
STREWN ABOUT HER CARELESSLY, THEIR BRIGHT DISCS ADANCE WITH REFLECTED
LIGHT, A THOUSAND MINTED GOLD PIECES CAUGHT THE GLINT OF THE LOW SUN.]



New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1916,
By Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.




TO

JACKSON GREGORY, Jr.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

     I OPEN HOUSE AT PÈRE MARQUETTE'S
    II THE COMING OF NO-LUCK DRENNEN
   III THE MAN UNDER THE CLOAK
    IV THE LUCK OF NO-LUCK DRENNEN
     V THE WAY OF THE NORTH
    VI THE PROMISE OF A RAINBOW
   VII "A PRINCESS, SENT TO PACK WITH WOLVES!"
  VIII DUST OF IDOLS
    IX "TO THE GIRL I AM GOING TO KISS TONIGHT!"
     X SEEKERS AFTER GOLD
    XI THE WITCHERY OF YGERNE
   XII MERE BRUTE . . . OR JUST PLAIN MAN?
  XIII YGERNE'S ANSWER
   XIV DRENNEN MAKES A DISCOVERY
    XV THE TALE OF _le Beau Diable_
   XVI THE LOST GOLDEN GIRL PAYS AN OLD DEBT
  XVII THE PASSION OF ERNESTINE DUMONT
 XVIII THE LAW AND A MAN'S DESIRE
   XIX THE LONG TRAIL
    XX THE FIRES WHICH PURIFY
   XXI CHANCE HEARD IN THE NIGHT
  XXII THE PATH DOWN THE CLIFF
 XXIII CHÂTEAU BELLAIRE
  XXIV THE SPEAKING OF GUNS
   XXV THE BELATED DAWN




WOLF BREED


CHAPTER I

OPEN HOUSE AT PÈRE MARQUETTE'S

Mid June, and the eager spring had burst triumphant into the North
Woods.  The mountain tops, still white hostages of the retreating
winter, fettered in frozen manacles, were alone in their reminiscence
of the implacable season.  And even they made their joyous offerings to
the newborn springtime, pouring a thousand flashing cascades to leap
down the rocky sides and seek out the hidden nooks and valleys where
seeds were bursting and the thawed earth lay fruitful under warm, lush
grass.  The birds were back from their southern voyaging, once more the
squirrels chattered in the open, noisily forgetful of the rigours of
winter in the joy of green things growing, and in the clear blue arch
of the sky the sun wheeled gloriously through a long day.  The air,
always wine, was now a sparkling, bubbling, rare vintage champagne,
dancing in the blood, making laughter in the heart and sweet tumult in
the brain.  It was the season of long, golden days, of clear, silver
nights, of budding life everywhere.

Because of three unmistakable signs did even the most sceptical of the
handful of hardy spirits at MacLeod's Settlement know that in truth the
spring had come.  They read the welcome tidings in the slipping of the
snows from the flinty fronts of Ironhead and Indian Peak a thousand
feet above the greening valley; in the riotous din of squirrels and
birds interwoven with the booming of frogs from the still ponds; and
finally in the announcement tacked upon the post-office door.  The two
line scrawl in lead pencil did not state in so many words the same
tidings which the blue birds were proclaiming from the thicket on the
far bank of the Little MacLeod; it merely announced that to-night Père
Marquette and his beloved wife, Mère Jeanne, were keeping open house.
Every one in the Settlement knew what that meant, just as well as he
understood the significance of the noises of the ice splitting upon the
ponds.

Once every year until now this was the fiftieth had such an
announcement appeared.  Not always upon the door of the post-office,
for when the announcements began there was no post-office in MacLeod's
Settlement.  But annually at the chosen time set apart by the season
and himself Père Marquette would appear upon the little narrow street,
earlier than the earliest, cock his bright eye up at old Ironhead
towering high above him, rub his chin complacently, turn his head
sidewise so that he might hearken to the thin voices of the wild
creatures, and then, his message tacked up, return to the private room
behind his store to kiss Mère Jeanne awake and inform her with grave
joy that their "_jour de l'an_" had come to them.  Then, and with much
frolicking and wine and music, would their new year begin.

"It is our anniversary, _m'sieu'_," he would say with an air of vast
confidence to the first man he met upon the street.  "To-night we keep
open house here."  He would wave his hand toward the long, low log
building, clay chinked.  "We will be proud of your presence and that of
your frien's."

It had been remarked that the anniversary had come one year upon the
twenty-sixth of May, another year as late as the last of June.  Père
Marquette had laughed softly and had shaken his head.  "What matter?"
he had demanded.  "I, I marry myself with my beloved Mam'selle Jeanne
the first fine day of spring.  _Voilà_."

The central door of the Marquette house, broadest and heaviest and most
conspicuous both from its position in the middle of its valiant line of
brothers, had been closed and barred since last night.  It gave
entrance to the store; here behind his long counter, peering over boxes
neatly piled or between great heaps of bacon and tobacco and men's
clothing, Père Marquette looked out upon the world some three hundred
and sixty-four days of the ordinary year.  But upon the first day of
spring it was closed and locked until noon.  If a man needed plug cut
for his pipe, why then let him borrow from his friend or steal from his
enemy; it was no concern of Père Marquette.  If a woman required flour
for her baking let her do without; it would serve her right for having
failed to remember the great day. . . .  Then at high noon, not
measured by any ticking clock in the Settlement, the matter being
decided by Père Marquette and the sun alone, the middle door was flung
open.  The old man, dressed in his best black suit, his newest skull
cap set like a crown upon his head, stood at one side of the entrance,
gravely courteous, his black eyes twinkling, twin withered roses in his
old cheeks.  Mère Jeanne, silver buckles on her shoes, her ample form
surrounded almost but not quite by a great white, stiff-starched apron,
a bouquet of flowers in one hand, took her place at the other side.
And then the guests began to arrive.

You could list the men, women, children and four footed live stock of
MacLeod's Settlement upon a printed page and still have room left for a
brief biography of each.  They all came, all dressed in their best
holiday raiment, all happy and eager for the celebration.  From far
down the Little MacLeod river men trod the slushy trails, rough fellows
for the most part and silent, but with a tongue in each head to propose
a toast to host and hostess.  From over the ridge, from French Valley,
from as far east as St. Croix and as far west as Dunvegan's Post, the
guests trooped in.  Miners, trappers, little stock men; scions of old
French families with grand names, descendants of younger English sons
with riotous blood, Americans who had crossed the border with much
haste and scant baggage; many men whom the world had outlawed and whom
the North Woods had accepted as empire builders; men of pure blood
knocking elbows with swarthy "breeds," oddly alike in the matters of
keenly alert eyes and magnificent bodies.

As they filed through the Frenchman's door they entered not the store
at all but what was Père Marquette's idea of a drawing room.  The long
counters and shelves were there, but the barrels of pickled meat, the
piles of soap and tinned meats, the bags of flour, the stacks of men's
clothing, all this had been whisked away and out of sight as though by
magic.  A strip of new red oilcloth upon one counter, a strip of blue
upon another, transformed both into auxiliary seats.  Benches, recently
brought in from the rear storeroom by Père Marquette's man, Jules, and
freshly dusted by him, lined the walls.  Even Mère Jeanne's bedroom had
been robbed of chairs; boxes dressed gaily in gingham or perchance even
flaunting remnants of chintz, were amply good enough for the boys and
girls.

"My frien', you do me the honour," said Père Marquette over and over as
some stranger upon whom his quick black eyes had never rested until now
accepted his hand and entered to be again welcomed by Mère Jeanne.
"You make mamma and me ver' happy."

Let the frontier push out as far and as fast as it pleases, the violin
always goes with it.  Men march the more intrepidly to the scraping of
the skilful bow.  There were two fiddles already going in the next
room; Père Marquette had seen to that.  And in the same room stood a
great, sturdy homemade table, crippled in one leg, yet standing
valiantly, like an old soldier home from the wars.  Mère Jeanne's own
plump hands had placed the best tablecloth upon it, and there, in its
nest of field flowers, was the great bowl which had been the most
serviceable of the handful of wedding gifts fifty years ago.  Since the
crisp sting had not yet gone out of the air the high red tide in the
bowl was steaming an invitation which was irresistible.

Long before one o'clock all of the Settlement had arrived, each one had
had his bit of the heady punch, small glasses for the women, great
pewter mugs many times refilled for the men.  The big bowl was
proverbially like the purse of Fortunatus in its scorn of emptiness.
Mère Jeanne ceremoniously replenished it time and again, carried
brimming cups to the fiddlers, and the merry music, having ceased just
long enough for the musicians to gulp down "Your health," went on more
inspiringly than before.  Heavy booted feet, moving rythmically, made
the dance a thing to hear as well as see, deep throated laughter boomed
out incessantly, the lighter, fewer voices of women weaving in and out
of the clamour.

All afternoon men came in, now and then a woman with them.  They drank
and ate, they smoked Père Marquette's tobacco from the jars set about
everywhere, they traded old news for new and new for old, they
speculated upon the coming thaws and trapping to be found down on the
Little MacLeod and up towards the Silver Lake country, they told of the
latest gold strike in the Black Bear hills and predicted fresh strikes
to be made before the thaw was ten days old.  Many types of men and
women, some no doubt good, some bad no doubt, all mingling freely.

At five o'clock Père Marquette cleared his voice, scrambled with rare
agility upon one of his own counters and made the expected announcement:

"Ah, my frien's, you make us ver' happy, me an' Mamma Jeanne.  We wish
our leetle house she was more big to-day, big like our heart, that she
can hold the whole worl'."  He hugged his thin old arms to his breast
and smiled upon them.  "Tonight, all night long, _mes amis_, you are
welcome.  The doors of Père Marquette have forgot how to close up
to-night!  But listen, one instant!  Jus' across the road my warehouse
she is open.  The violins have gone there.  There you may dance, dance
as Mam'selle Jeanne an' I dance it is fifty year to-night.  Dance all
night long.  And while the yo'ng folk whose hearts are in their heels
walse yonder, here we older ones . . .  Ah!" as sudden voices,
cheering, cut into his running words.  "You have not forgot, eh?"

It was the signal for division.  The few women who had children took
them home with them; the other women, young and old, following like a
holiday flotilla in the wake of Mère Jeanne, tacked through the muck of
the road to the warehouse; many of the younger and some few of the
older men followed them; and in the house of Père Marquette, in the
yellow light of a half dozen kerosene lamps and many tall candles, the
real affair of the evening began.

Great logs oozing molten pitch were burning noisily in the two rock
fireplaces, the red flames swept up into the blackened chimneys to
spread cheer within and to scatter sparks like little stars in the
clear night without, the punch bowl had at last been allowed to stand
empty not because men were through drinking but because stronger drink,
men's drink, had appeared in many bottles upon the shelves, a game of
poker was running in one corner of a room, a game of solo in another;
yonder, seen through an open door, six men were shaking dice and
wagering little and bigger sums recklessly; a little fellow with a
wooden leg and a terribly scarred face was drawing shrieking rag time
from an old and asthmatic accordion while four men, their big boots
clumping noisily upon the bare floor, danced like awkward trained bears
when the outer door, closed against the chill of the evening, was flung
open and a stranger to MacLeod's settlement stood a moment framed
against the outside night.  A score of eyes, going to him swiftly,
studied him with unhidden curiosity.




CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF NO-LUCK DRENNEN

All sorts and conditions of men come to the North Woods; some because
they want to, some because they have to.  Some because they are drawn
by the fine lure of adventure and the urge of the restless spirit, some
because they are driven by that bloodhound which is the law.  All
types, all classes.  And yet now, standing jauntily upon Père
Marquette's threshold, was a type of which as yet the Settlement had
had no knowledge.

He was young and wore his black mustaches with all of the fierceness of
youth.  His boots were at once the finest and the smallest which
MacLeod's had ever seen upon a man's feet.  He wore gloves, and when in
due time the hands came out of the gloves, they were little like a
woman's and white and soft.  He was a handsome young devil-of-a-fellow
with all of the soft, graceful beauty of the far southland.  His mouth,
smiling now, was red lipped, his teeth a glistening white.  Eyes very
big, very black, very soft, very tender, smiling too.  From the crown
of his wide black hat to the tall heels of his dainty boots he was such
a dandy as demanded more than a casual glance.

"_Amigos_," he cried, the door closed now, his back to it, his wide hat
describing a slow, graceful arc as he raised it gallantly from his
black hair, "I have the thirst of a lost soul.  Who will drink with me?"

He whipped the glove from his right hand, caught his hat under his arm
and brought from his pocket a shining gold piece which he tossed to one
of Père Marquette's counters.  A few of the men laughed, seeing his
mistake, while others murmured, "Dago," a little disgustedly and
returned their attention to their drink, gaming or talk.  Père
Marquette came forward briskly.

"M'sieu," he said graciously, offering his hand, "your presence honours
Mamma Jeanne an' me.  We are to-night fifty year marry . . . you shall
put your money in your pocket, m'sieu.  One does not pay to drink at
the place of Père Marquette to-night."

The young fellow looked at him in surprise, then turned wondering eyes
about him, even peering through the open door into the further rooms as
though asking himself what manner of place was this where men drank and
did not pay.  Then he laughed softly.

"Your pardon, señor," he said politely, taking the old man's proffered
hand and bending over it gracefully.  "Outside I was athirst like a man
in hell . . ."

A queer change came over his smiling face as his eyes, journeying
beyond the thin, black coated figure of Père Marquette, rested upon a
secluded corner of the room where in the nook by the fireplace a quiet
game of cards was in progress.

"Señorita!  Señorita!" he cried softly, pushing by Père Marquette and
coming forward swiftly.  "_Dispensame_!  Forgive me, señorita!"

It was Ernestine, the one woman remaining in the room, Ernestine
Dumont, who had come from over the ridge with big Kootanie George, her
latest lover.  She was sitting close to Kootanie's side now, whispering
occasionally in his ear as a hand was dealt him, for the most part
contentedly sipping at her little glass of sweet wine as she sat back
and watched.  She, with the others, had turned toward the entrant, her
eyes remaining upon him until now.  She smiled, no doubt pleased at his
notice, while Kootanie George, wide-shouldered, mighty limbed, the
biggest man within a hundred miles of the Settlement, glared at him in
frowning wonder.

"Forgive you?" laughed Ernestine, after a quick glance at George upon
whose shoulder she laid her hand lightly.  "What for?"

"I did not know that a lady was here," explained the young fellow
eagerly.  He was almost standing over her, his eyes for her alone as he
turned up his mustaches more fiercely yet and his eyes grew the more
tender.  "I speak roughly and not guarding my tongue which should
suffer and not taste wine for a week, señorita.  I am ashamed."

Ernestine blushed; again several men had laughed.  He had said "hell"
and had apologised to her . . .

"We'll let it go this time," she laughed a trifle awkwardly.  "And as
for not drinking anything. . . .  Look out or you'll spill what Papa
Marquette is bringing you now."

"We are all frien's, m'sieu," said Papa Marquette courteously, offering
a brimming glass.  "You, too.  And it is wrong that one should thirst
to-night."

The other took the glass with another of his graceful bows.

"May you have other fifty years of happiness with your señora," he said
warmly.  "Your health and her health, señor."  The glass, at his lips,
halted and came away for a moment while he thought to introduce
himself.  "I am Ramon Garcia."

He said it as one might have said, "I am the King of Spain." Simply
enough but with a proud simplicity.  Then he put back his head and
drank.

After that Ramon Garcia needed no coaxing to remain.  He fitted into
the throng as he seemed to do all things, gracefully.  Since he could
not spend his money to-night for wine and since spend it he must he
ventured it pleasantly at the table where the dice rolled.  Between
throws he made many slender cigarettes of fine tobacco and thin white
papers; winning, he forgot to note how much in turning his eyes with
tender admiration upon Ernestine Dumont, whose glance more than once
met his; losing, he hummed languid snatches of Mexican love songs in a
remarkably pure tenor voice.

Before he had been with them an hour it was evident to many, not last
of all to big Kootanie George, that the "Mex" was flirting openly with
the yellow haired Ernestine.  It was equally evident that his notice
did not embarrass her as his apology had done.  She curved her red lips
at him when George was not looking, she glanced down as demure as a
bashful school girl when her big lover was watching her.  George began
to lose at his cards and when he swore at his luck did not apologise.

At last Ramon Garcia wearied of the dice.  He pocketed his winnings and
pushed back his chair.  A guitar in its case in a corner of the room
had caught his roving eye.  Standing with his back to the wall, leaning
indolently, he sent his white fingers wandering across the strings and
his eyes drifting bade to find those of Ernestine Dumont.  Then through
the discordance of other voices, of clicking chips, rustling cards,
dice snapped down upon the hard table tops, chink of glass and bottle
neck, the voice of Ramon Garcia, liberated softly, filled the room with
its richness as a room is filled with the perfume of flowers.  Such
music as he made did not often come into the North Woods, and men . . .
and one woman . . . listened.

He sang it in the Spanish, a tongue which no other man here understood.
Yet they must all guess the meaning of the words.  They were love
words, tenderly lilted.  And they were being sung to Ernestine Dumont.
There was a little smile upon young Ramon's lips, a hint of gay
laughter in his voice and in his soft eyes a deal of love making.
Kootanie George scowled, Ernestine twirled her glass in her fingers,
one or two men laughed.

When he had done Ramon Garcia swept his fingers across the strings in a
sort of mournful regret.  Then, when there was a sudden clapping of
hands, he bowed, smiled and sang again, this time putting the words of
his little song, the same song, into English:

  "The perfume of roses, of little red roses;
    (Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, _corazón_!)
  The laugh of the water who falls in the fountain;
    (Thou art the fountain of love, _corazón_!)
  The brightness of stars, of little stars golden;
    (_Estrella de mi vida_!  My little life star!)
  The shine of the moon through the magnolia tree;
    I am so sad till thou come, _mi amor_!
  _Dios_! It is sweet to be young and to love!
    More sweet than wine . . . to be young and to love!"


In the clapping of hands which broke out when he had done Ernestine's
was to be heard above Kootanie George's grunt of disgust.

"No man talk, that," he snorted, careless of who heard.  "Dam' slush."

"Your deal, Koot," laughed Blunt Rand, the American trapper from the
headwaters of the Little MacLeod.  "Don't let the Mexican gent spoil
your play that-away.  Deal 'em up, why don't you?"

Kootanie George glared at Rand and gathered in the cards.  He
understood as did Ernestine and the others at the table the gibe which
lay under Rand's words.  The American's fancies, too, had run toward
Ernestine Dumont not so long ago, and she had not deigned to take
notice of him after the coming of Kootanie.

"Mexican gent, huh?" said George slowly.  "If you mean Greaser why
don't you say Greaser?"

Ramon Garcia had again approached the table.  He stopped suddenly as
George's snarl came to him, and his white teeth showed for a quick
flash under his lifted lip.  Then, his eyes smiling darkly, he came on
again, bending intimately over Ernestine's chair.

"They are dancing over there," he said softly.  "Will you dance with
me, señorita?"

George merely looked at them sidewise.  Ernestine glanced up sharply
and for a moment indecision stood easily readable in her eyes.  Then
she shook her head.

"Not now," she said quietly.  "Maybe after a while.  I don't know.
Anyway not now."

"_Gracias_, señorita."  He thanked her quite as though she had taken
his proffered arm.  And turning away he went back to the game of dice
and his wine glass.  Kootanie laughed.

"Better look out for him, Koot," grinned Blunt Rand.  "Them kind carry
cold steel sharp on both edges.  They get it between your shoulder
blades and then twist it.  It's awful uncomfortable."

Rand had drunk his share of toasts to the eternal joy of the Marquettes
and the drinking had given to his tongue a wee bit of recklessness, to
his heart a little venom.  Out of a clear sky, his words falling
crisply through the little silence, he demanded of no one in particular
and in all seeming innocence:

"What's happened to No-luck Drennen?  I ain't seen him here of late."

Kootanie George turned his head slowly and stared at him.  Rand was
fingering his cards, his eyes hastily busied with their corners.
George turned from him to Ernestine.  She bit her lips and a spurt of
red leaped up into her cheeks.  Her eyes met his a moment, steely and
hard.  Then they went to Blunt Rand, as bright and hateful as twin
daggers.

The man upon Rand's right started to laugh.  He altered his mind as
Kootanie George's eyes turned slowly upon him and changed the laugh to
a cough behind his hand.  Nobody offered to answer the question; it was
accepted as one of those utterances put into the form of an
interrogation merely for rhetorical reasons and requiring no reply.
For it was common talk through the camps that No-luck Drennen had done
the impossible and gotten blood from a turnip; in other words that he
had drawn love out of the heart of Ernestine Dumont.  And it was known
that the miracle had been a twin wonder in that Drennen had refused to
see and when he had at last seen had refused to accept.  Ernestine's
love had been like Ernestine herself, reckless.  And, yes, Drennen had
laughed at her.  He had told her brutally that he had no more use for a
woman in his life than he had for a cat.  Certainly not for a woman
like her.  His words had been given after Drennen's fashion; like a
slap in the face.  All this had been less than a year ago.

Elated at the success with which his words had met, Blunt Rand laughed.
Again Kootanie George looked at him steadily.

"What are you lookin' for Drennen for?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, nothin'," rejoined the other lightly.  "Only when I come through
Little Smoky the other day an ol' flame of his asked about him.  The
Fire Bird they call her.  Know her?"

Ernestine Dumont's face grew a shade redder in its mortification even
while she knew that the man was lying to tease her.  Then she sat back
with a little gasp and even slow moving Kootanie George turned quickly
as a heavy voice called from the door:

"You're a liar, Blunt Rand."

It was No-luck Drennen just come in and standing now, his hat far back
upon his head, his hands upon his hips, staring across the room at
Blunt Rand.




CHAPTER III

THE MAN UNDER THE CLOAK

Dave Drennen was a big man, no man here so big save Kootanie George
alone, who was two inches the taller and fully thirty pounds the
heavier.  The Canadian stood four inches better than six feet in his
squat, low-heeled boots and must turn sideways to get his massive
shoulders through most doors hereabouts.  Unlike most very tall men
George carried himself straight, his enormous chest thrust forward.

Drennen was younger by half a dozen years, slenderer, of cleaner build.
Any man at Père Marquette's would have emptied his pockets that night
to witness a fight between the two.  Men as a rule liked Kootanie
George, slow moving, slow spoken, heavily good humoured.  And as an
even more unbroken rule they disliked Dave Drennen.  Throughout the far
places of the great northwest into which of recent years he had fitted
restlessly he was known as a man at once too silent and too
quarrelsome.  He trod his own trail alone.  Other men had "pardners";
Drennen was no man's friend.  He was hard and he was bitter.  Not yet
at the end of his first score and ten, his mouth had grown set in
stern, harsh lines, his heavy brows had acquired the habit of bunching
ominously over eyes in which was the glint of steel.  He was a man
whose smile was unpleasant, whose laugh could be as ugly as many a
man's curse.

It looked like a quarrel between No-luck Drennen and Blunt Rand.  And
yet the men who ceased their playing at the snap of his voice forgot
Rand and hungered for trouble between Drennen and Kootanie George.
Rand had been measured long ago and didn't count.  He blabbed big words
when he was drunk and whined when a man struck him.  He would swallow
his words now and swallow with them No-luck Drennen's vicious "You're a
liar, Blunt Rand."  Even if Drennen slapped his face he would merely
crawl away like a little bug, spitting venom.

Drennen was standing ten feet from him and made no move to draw closer.

"Did you hear me, Rand?" he demanded sharply.

"I heard you," grumbled the trapper.  "What's eatin' you, Dave, anyway?"

"Tell them you lied."

Rand flushed, and inspired by his liquor a sudden, unusual stubbornness
sprang up in his eyes.  He heard Ernestine laugh softly.

"You go to hell," he cried hotly.  "I got a right . . ."

"No man has a right to lie about me," announced Drennen crisply.  The
big hands at his sides had clenched swiftly with knotting muscles.  At
last he took a quick step forward, his quarrelsome mood riding him.
"If you don't want me to choke the tongue out of your head tell them
you lied."

"_Messieurs, messieurs_," cried poor old Marquette imploringly.  "For
the love of God!  Tonight all mus' be gay, all mus' be frien's.  It is
the night Mamma Jeanne an' me we are marry fifty year . . ."

Drennen snarled at him, shaking the thin old hand away angrily.  Rand
was upon his feet, some of the stubbornness already fled from his eyes,
the sound of Ernestine Dumont's taunting laugh lost to him in the harsh
voice of Drennen.

"I don't want no trouble to-night, Dave," he said swiftly.  "It's old
Papa Marquette's weddin' night.  I . . . I was jus' joshin', Dave."
And then as Ernestine laughed again, he spat out, "Jus' joshin' to
tease Ernestine here."

"_Sangre de dios_!" murmured Ramon Garcia gently, his black eyes liquid
fire.  "He is a little coward, that Rand."

Hardly more than a whisper and Garcia quite across the room from Rand.
And yet the stillness was so perfect that Rand heard and jerked his
head up, swinging toward the Mexican.

"You little Greaser!" he cried shrilly.  "You dirty breed, you!"  He
pushed through the crowd to Garcia's table.  "Coward, am I?  I'll show
you."

Ramon Garcia's laughter greeting the hot words was a clear burst of
unaffected, boyish merriment.  He tilted his chair back against the
wall and turned a delighted face up to Rand's flushed one.

"Señor," he chided softly, shaking a slender white finger very close to
Rand's nose, "have you forgot it is the gala night of our good host,
the Papa Français?  That you don't care for trouble to-night?  _Mama
mia_!  You are a comic--no?"

Then bringing his hand away and hooking both thumbs impudently into the
armholes of his gay vest the Mexican smiled as he hummed softly,
glancing away briefly to where Ernestine Dumont was watching them:

  "The perfume of roses, of little red roses;
    (Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, _corazón_!)"


With men laughing at him Blunt Rand struck.  The young Mexican was
still in his chair.  Like a cat he slipped from it now, avoiding the
heavy, swinging blow, moving to one side with swift gracefulness,
standing with the table between him and Rand.  As he moved his right
hand slid into his pocket.

"You dago!" Rand shouted at him, lunging forward while men scrambled
out of the way.  "Call me coward an' then go for your knife!  Fight
with your hands, damn you."

Again Garcia avoided him easily, calm and quick eyed, offering
pantherine swiftness against the blind fury of Rand.

"Si, señor," he answered lightly.  "With the hands.  But the hands I
mus' keep without dirt, señor!"

His hand came away from his pocket and he made a sudden gesture, still
laughing, toward Rand's face.  The trapper jerked back quickly.  Then a
great booming swell of laughter went up, even the slow rumble of
Kootanie George's voice and the tinkling tremulo of Ernestine Dumont's
joining it Ramon Garcia had brought out his gloves and had drawn them
on before Rand had understood.

In size and physique Rand was the average there.  The young Mexican was
the shortest, slightest man in the house.  But none knows better than
the dwellers in the North Woods that it is unwise to judge men by mere
size of body.  It is well to look to the eyes of one's antagonist.

Garcia sprang forward and slapped Rand's face so that the face burned
and the sound of the blow was like a pistol shot in the quiet room.
And as Rand's return threshing blow sought him he sprang away, laughing.

"For calling me Greaser," he cried lightly.  "When I have said out loud
that I am Ramon Garcia."

Bellowing curses Rand charged at him again.  Garcia avoided and seemed
to have no difficulty whatever in so doing.

"Will you open the door, señor?" he called to a man standing near the
entrance.

"He wants to have an open trail to run," jeered Rand.  And again
striking heavily his blow found the empty air and a second resounding
slap reddened his other cheek.

"For calling me a breed," taunted Garcia, so that all might hear the
words with the slap of the open hand.  "Me who have the blood of kings,
blue like the skies."

The man standing at the door . . . it chanced to be young Frank
Marquette . . . obeyed Garcia's command silently and promptly.  Rand,
his rage flaring ever higher as men drawing chairs and tables out of
the way laughed at him and as the Mexican's sallies taunted him, hurled
himself forward purposing to get his enemy in a corner of the room.
But at the best the trapper was awkward and Ramon Garcia's little feet
in his little boots carried him much as the fabled winged sandals bore
the hero Perseus in his encounter with the dragon.  Not once had Rand
landed a square blow; not once had Garcia been where the big red fists
looked for him.  And while Rand breathed heavily, Ramon Garcia, whose
soul was as deeply steeped in the dramatic as Père Marquette's in
colour, sang maddening little snatches of love songs and stole swift
glances now and then at Ernestine Dumont.

From the beginning it was clear that Garcia was playing with the other.
But the end, coming swiftly, was not what men had looked for.  A great
gasp went up at it, followed by a shout of applause and a roar of
laughter.  Garcia had tantalised his antagonist, but beyond slapping
his face twice had not touched him.  He skipped about him like a French
dancing master and so allowed Rand to make a fool of himself for the
moment.  Presently, so had the Mexican engineered it, they were not
five steps from the open door and the way was clear.  One instant he
had seemed about to draw back again, to avoid Rand as he had avoided
him so many times.

"You little monkey-man!" Rand was shouting at him.  "Stand still
and . . ."

That was all that he said.  Garcia had leaped forward; his two gloved
hands had sped like lightning to Rand's wrists, he had seized the
bigger man and had pushed him backward, had suddenly whirled him about,
with a bunching of strength which men had not guessed was in him he had
thrown Rand out through the open door, and as the trapper plunged
forward into the muddy road the Mexican lifted his foot and kicked.

"For calling me dago!" smiled Garcia.  "Me, whose blood is of Castile."
He stripped off his gloves and tossed them into the road.  "They are
spoil!  Bah.  Pig!"

Rand was back at the threshold, his face blood red, his hands dripping
the mud from the slushy road.  But young Frank Marquette had stepped
out to meet him and had closed the door.

For a little all eyes in the room rested intent upon Ramon Garcia.  The
first estimate, founded upon dandified clothes and manner, had changed
swiftly.  He was a man even though he wore gloves and was overfond of
posing.  Even though everything he did was overdone, whether it be the
bowing over an old Frenchman's hand, the wide sweep of his hat in a
flourish of slow gracefulness, the tender love making to a woman for
whom he did not care the snap of his little white fingers, upon
occasion his soft eyes knew how to grow keen and hard and he carried
himself with the assurance of fearlessness.  It was as though he had
worn a lace cloak over a capable, muscled body; as though the cloak had
been blown aside by a sudden gust and men had seen the true man
underneath.

In Kootanie George's eyes where there had come to be a widening of slow
astonishment during the brief struggle now was a dawning admiration.
He put out his great hand as he shambled forward.

"I called you Greaser, too," he said heavily.  "I take it back, Garcia.
You're a white man.  Shake."

Garcia took his hand readily, laughing.

"And you, señor, whom I thought a clown are a gentleman," he answered,
a trifle of impudence in the gaze which swept the big man from head to
heel.  Kootanie grinned a bit, passed over the innuendo in silence and
went back to his chair.  Garcia, giving an added twist of fierceness to
his mustaches, returned to his dice game.

For a little Dave Drennen had been forgotten.  Now he was remembered.
His appearance here to-night provoked interest for two reasons.  For
one thing he had packed off on a lonely prospecting trip two weeks
before, impatient at the delayed thaw, unwilling to wait until the
trails were open enough for a man to travel off the beaten route.  For
another thing one never sought Dave Drennen where other men drew
together as they had congregated now.  If under that hard exterior he
felt any of the emotions which other men feel, if he had his joys and
his griefs, he chose to experience them alone.  Consequently the mere
fact of his appearance here now brought a flicker of curious interest
with it.  Unless he had a quarrel with some man in the Frenchman's
house, what had brought him?

"M'sieu," Père Marquette was saying the worn phrase, "you do me an'
Mamma Jeanne the honour!  You are welcome, m'sieu!"

With the usual phrase came the customary offering.  Drennen caught the
glass from Marquette's hand and drank swiftly.  The glass he set on the
counter, putting down a coin with it.

"There's your money, old man," he said shortly.  "Give me my change."

"But, m'sieu," smiled Père Marquette, pushing the money back toward his
latest guest, "one does not pay to-night!  It is fifty year . . ."

"I pay my way wherever I go," cut in Drennen curtly.  "Will you give me
my change?"

Marquette lifted his two hands helplessly.  Never had a man paid for
drink upon such an occasion, and this was the fiftieth!  And yet never
before had Drennen come, and there must be no trouble to-night.  With a
little sigh the old man took up the money, fumbled in his pockets and
laid down the change.  Drennen took it up without a word and without
counting and strode through the room to the table where Ramon Garcia
sat, the one table where men were throwing dice.  He drew up a chair
and sat down, his hat brought forward over his eyes.

When the last man to throw had rattled and rolled the dice across the
table top the cup sat at Drennen's right hand.  He took it up, asking
no question, saw what the bet was which they were making, put his own
money in front of him and threw.  He was in the game.  And no man
living in MacLeod's Settlement had ever known Dave Drennen to sit into
any sort of game until now.

"_Tiens_!" whispered a dried up little fellow who had come down the
river from Moosejaw during the afternoon.  "There shall be fon, _mes
enfants_!  One day I see heem play _la roulette_ in the place of
Antoine Duart'.  There shall be fon, _mes enfants_!  _Sacré nom de
dieu_," and he rubbed his hands in the keenness of his anticipation,
"he play like me when I am yo'ng."




CHAPTER IV

THE LUCK OF NO-LUCK DRENNEN

Drennen's entrance into the game, informal as it had been, elicited no
comment from the other players.  He had made his little stack of silver
in front of him, coins of the States.  There was other American money
staked, jingling fraternally against pieces struck in the Canadian
mint.  Even a few _pesos_ had found their way from Garcia's pockets and
were accepted without challenge.

For fifteen minutes the game was quiet and slow enough.  Then at a
smiling suggestion from the Mexican the original bet was doubled.  It
was poker dice now, having begun as razzle dazzle.  There were no
horses since horses delayed matters.  Beside Drennen and Garcia there
were five other men playing.  The Mexican when he suggested doubled
stakes was losing.  Then his fortunes began to mend.  The man across
the table from him, cleaned out of his few dollars, got up and went to
watch the game of solo.  Quite steadily for a little Garcia won.  He
sang his fragments of love songs and between throws made eyes at
Ernestine Dumont.  Drennen frowned at him, both for his singing and for
his love making.  Garcia continued to win and to sing.

Drennen lost as steadily as Garcia won.  "No-luck" his nickname
was--"No-luck" the goddess at his elbow to-night.  Without speaking,
when the dice cup came around to him, he doubled the already doubled
stakes.  One other man, shaking his head, silently drew out of the
game.  The others accepted the challenge as it had been given, in
silence.  Garcia, with every air of confidence, turned out the high
throw and fingered his winnings smilingly.  Drennen's hand sought his
pocket.

"Double again?" he asked bluntly, his hard grey eyes upon the Mexican.

Ramon Garcia laughed.

"As you will, señor," he said lightly.  And under his breath,
musically, his eyes going to the nook by the fireplace, "_Dios_!  It is
sweet to be young and to love!"

Drennen's hand brought from his pocket a canvas bag heavy with gold.
There was a goodly pile of money in front of the Mexican.  The stakes
were doubling fast, the two evidently meant business, and when the dice
rolled again they were playing alone and a little knot of men was
watching.

"You shall see," chuckled the dried-up little man from Moosejaw.

Ernestine Dumont was whispering in Kootanie George's ear.  From the
mesh bag at her wrist she took something, offering it to him eagerly.
George stared at her and then shook his head.

"Keep it," he muttered.  "I don't need it."

He didn't look at the hand which was being dealt him but left his table
and went across the room to where Drennen and Ramon Garcia were
sitting, carrying with him the money he had had before him.  As he went
he thrust his big hand down into his pocket and as he slumped heavily
into a chair opposite Drennen he brought out another canvas bag.  It
too struck heavily against the table top.  Drennen did not look at him.
Garcia smiled and nodded brightly, and in turn, dropped to the table
his purse, heavy like the others and giving forth the musical metallic
chink.

"Ah!  But this is pretty!" murmured Père Marquette, glad at once to see
peace and a game which would interest his guests.  "Jules, bring more
wine, plenty.  Make the fires up, big."

"How big are you bettin' 'em?" Kootanie George demanded as he emptied
his canvas bag and piled several hundred dollars in neat yellow stacks.

Garcia lifted his shoulders, showed his fine white teeth pleasantly and
looked to Drennen.

"As big as you like," retorted Drennen crisply.  And then, lifting his
voice a little, "Marquette!"

"Oui, m'sieu."  Marquette came quickly to the table.

"I want some money . . . for this."

Then Drennen spilled the contents of his bag upon the table and for a
moment every man who saw sat or stood riveted to his place, absolutely
without motion.  Then a gasp went up, a gasp of wonder, while here and
there a quick spurt of blood in the face or a brilliant gleam of the
eye told of quickened heart beats and the grip of that excitement which
man never lived who could fight down altogether.  Drennen had turned
out upon the table top a veritable cascade of nuggets.

"Gold!"

The word sped about the room, whispered, booming loudly, creating a
sudden tense eagerness.  Men shoved at one another, craning necks, to
peer at the thing which Drennen so coolly had disclosed.  Gold!
Nuggets that were, in the parlance of the camp, "rotten" with gold.
Drennen two weeks ago had left the Settlement with his last cent gone
in a meagre grub stake; now he was back and he had made a strike.  A
strike such as no man here had ever dropped his pick into in all of the
ragged years of adventuresome search; a strike which could not be a
week's walk from MacLeod's, a strike which might mean millions to the
first few who would stake out claims.

Père Marquette stared and muttered strange, awestruck French oaths and
made no move to unclasp his hands, lifted before him in an attitude
incongruously like that of prayer.  Kootanie George, whom men called
rich and who owned a claim for which two companies were contending,
stared and a little pallor crept into his cheeks.  Ramon Garcia broke
off in the midst of his little song softly whispering, "_Jesus Maria_."
No-luck Drennen had found gold!

"Well?" demanded Drennen savagely, swinging about upon Marquette, who
was bending tremulously over him.  "Didn't you hear me?"

"_Mais oui, m'sieu_," Marquette said hastily, his tongue running back
and forth between his lips.  "But, m'sieu, I have not so much money in
the house."

The men who had surged about the table dropped back silently and began
speaking in half whispers, each man after a moment seeking for his
"pardner."  One of them upon such a quest carried the word across the
street to the warehouse and the dance came to an end in noisy
confusion. . . .  To-night the Settlement was filled to overflowing;
to-morrow it would be deserted.

"Give me what you've got," Drennen commanded, his hand lying very still
by the heap of dull-gleaming rock.  "Bring the scales here."

The scales were brought, and after a mixture of guessing and weighing,
Drennen pushed two of the nuggets across the table to Marquette and
accepted minted gold amounting to six hundred dollars.

"The rest, m'sieu?" offered Marquette.  "Shall I put it in the safe for
you?"

"No, thanks," said Drennen drily, as he put the remainder into his
pocket.  "I prefer to bank for myself."  The brief words, the insult of
the glance which went with them, whipped a flush into the old man's
cheeks.  He offered no remark, however, and went back with his scales
to the counter where he was surrounded by men who wanted the "feel" of
the nuggets in their palms.

No longer was Ernestine the only woman in the rooms.  Flush-cheeked and
sparkling eyed, old women and young, alike impressed with the story
which in its many forms was already going its rounds, came trooping
back from the dance.  Many hands at once reached out for the two
nuggets, tongues clacked incessantly, while old prospectors and young
girls alike ventured their surmises concerning the location of the
strike.  It was to be noted that no one had asked the only man who knew.

No-luck Drennen's luck had come to him.  That was the word which again
ran through the babel of conjectures.  And when a man has had the luck
which had been Drennen's for the years which the North had known him,
and that luck changed, the change would be sweeping.  Men might follow
in his wake to a path of gold.

Meanwhile Dave Drennen played his game of dice in sombre silence.  Over
and over, losing almost steadily, he named a larger wager and Garcia
and Kootanie George met his offer.  He bet fifty dollars and lost, a
hundred and lost, two hundred on a single cast and lost.  In three
throws over half of his money was gone.  Three hundred and fifty
dollars; he had two hundred and fifty left to him.  Twice had the
Mexican won; once George, taking in the two-hundred dollar bet.
George's face was flushed; he had won four hundred dollars at one throw
since the Mexican's two hundred had come to him with Drennen's.  George
had never played dice like this and the madness of it got into his slow
blood and stood glaring out of his eyes.

"Two hundred fifty," offered Drennen briefly.  He shoved the last of
his pile out on the table.  George covered it quickly, his big, square
fingers shaking.

Garcia smiled at them both, then transferred his smile to his own
money.  In two throws he had won three hundred dollars, in one he had
lost two hundred.  He seemed to hesitate a moment; then he saw
Ernestine Dumont standing upon a deserted card table, her cheeks rosy
with excitement, and the sight of her decided him.  He sighed, raked
his money from the table to his pocket and got to his feet, moving
gracefully through the crowd with many, "_Dispensame, señor_," and went
to Ernestine's side.  Kootanie George did not mark his going.  For it
was Kootanie George's throw and two hundred and fifty dollars were to
be won . . . or lost.

George turned out the cubes and a ripping oath followed them.  He had
thrown a pair of deuces.  His big fist came down upon the table with a
crash.  Drennen stared at him a brief moment while the cup was raised
in his hand, contempt unveiled in his eyes.  Then he rolled out the
dice.  Something akin to a sob burst from Kootanie George's lips.
Drennen had turned out a "stiff," no pair at all.

"It's mine!" cried George, his great body half thrown across the table
as he tossed out both arms to sweep in his winnings.  "Mine, by God!"

Ernestine was clapping her hands, her eyes dancing with joy even while
they were shot through with malice.  Drennen's glance went to her, came
back to Kootanie George to rest upon him sneeringly.  Then he laughed,
that ugly laugh which few men had heard and those few had remembered.

"Gold!" jeered Drennen.  "It's a little pinch of gold, and you go crazy
over it!  You are a fool."

"It's mine!" cried George again.  He had won only a little over six
hundred dollars and he could have afforded to have lost as much.  But
he was in the grip of the passion of the game.

"You've got about a thousand dollars there," said Drennen eyeing the
jumble of coins in front of the big Canadian.  He jerked the old canvas
bag out of his pocket and let it fall heavily to the table.  "One throw
for the whole thing, mine against yours."

Kootanie George knew gold when he saw it and now he knew that there was
nearer two thousand than one in that bag.  He gripped the dice box,
glared at Drennen angrily, hesitated, then with a sudden gesture turned
out the dice.

He had cursed before when he had made his throw; now he just slumped
forward a little in his chair, his jaw dropping, the color dribbling
out of his cheeks, finding all words inadequate.  He had thrown two
deuces again.  Again Drennen looked at him contemptuously.  Again
George heard his ugly laugh.  Drennen threw his dice carelessly.  And
upon the table, between the canvas bag and the glitter of minted gold,
there stared up into George's face five fives.

"Damn you," cried the Canadian hoarsely, his fingers hooked and
standing apart like claws as he half rose from his chair.  "Damn you!"

His nerves were strung high and tense and the words came from him
involuntarily.  They were the clean words of rage at which no man in
the world could take offence unless he sought a quarrel.  And yet
Drennen, as he moved forward a little to draw his winnings toward him,
thrust his face close up to Kootanie George's and said crisply:

"Say that again and I'll slap your face!"

"Damn you!" shouted George.

And with the words came the blow, Drennen's open palm hard against
George's cheek.

"And now George will kill him!" cried Ernestine through her set teeth.




CHAPTER V

THE WAY OF THE NORTH

"Oh, mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!" half sobbed old Marquette.  "They will kill
one the other!  Another time it matters not.  But to-night, here! . . .
Stop; I forbid it!"

One blow had been struck and already the compact circle about the two
men had squared as those who watched drew back along the walls leaving
the centre of the room clear.  They had jerked tables and chairs away
with them.  One table, the one at which Drennen and George had sat a
moment ago, with its load of virgin gold and minted coins, was now
against the further counter, young Frank Marquette guarding it, that
the gold upon it might go to Drennen when the fight was over. . . .

"If he is alive then," he muttered, his eyes narrowing as they took
note of the black rage distorting the big Canadian's face.  "If George
does not kill him it is a miracle of Satan."

"You are come to-night for trouble."  Slowly Kootanie George slipped
his heavy coat from his shoulders.  His deep, hairy chest, swelling to
the breath which fairly whistled through his distended nostrils, popped
a button back through a frayed button hole and stood out like an
inflated bellows.  "I just say, 'Damn you.'  That is nothin' for a man
to fight.  You look for trouble, an' by God, I am ready!"

He flung the coat from him and lifted his big hands.  Drennen was
standing waiting for him, his own hands at his sides, his steely eyes
filled with an evil light.  He made no answer beyond the silent one of
a slight lifting of his lip, like a soundless wolfish snarl.

"I forbid!" screamed Père Marquette again.  "Another time it is
nothing.  To-night it is to insult Mamma Jeanne.  Stop it, _chiens_!"

But Mamma Jeanne had her own word to say.  Her plump arms were about
her indignant spouse, dragging him back.

"Let them be," she commanded.  "Is not George a guest and has he not
the right to put his heel upon an evil serpent?  It is just," she
cried, her eyes all fire.  "It will be but a little minute and, _pouf_!
it is all over.  Let them be!"

She had great faith in the prowess of her man, had Mère Marquette.  Had
there been a thunder storm outside, had Père Marquette wished it to
stop while Mère Marquette wanted it to continue, she would have put her
arms about him and pleaded, "Let it be."

"There shall be fon, _mes enfants_," whispered the old prophet from
Moosejaw.

Slowly, but light footed enough, lifting his great hands still a little
higher, Kootanie George came forward.  Drennen waited, his lip raised
in the bitter snarl which seemed frozen upon his dark face, his grey
eyes malevolent.  He had fought with many men, he was not afraid to
fight; all men there knew that.  But they wondered, looking at him and
then at the other, if he understood the thing standing unhidden in
Kootanie George's eyes.

Yes, he understood.  For, just the wee fraction of a second before the
Canadian struck, Drennen jerked up his own hands, ready for him.  And
the two struck at the same instant.  There was to be no finesse of
boxing; these men had no knowledge of fistic trickery.  All that they
knew was to fight, to strike hard and straight from the shoulder,
opposing strength with strength, swiftness with swiftness, merciless
hatred with a hatred as merciless.  And so it happened that both blows
landed, two little coughing grunts following close upon the impact
telling how mightily, and both men reeled back.  There was blood upon
Drennen's lower lip.  The upper was still lifted snarlingly from the
red-stained teeth.

Ramon Garcia, watching with an interested smile, nodded his head as
though in approval and glanced at Ernestine Dumont upon the table above
him.  Much of the colour had gone out of her cheeks, leaving them drawn
and pallid.  Her parted lips too showed the whiteness of her hard set
teeth.

"I," meditated Ramon Garcia as his eyes returned to the two men, "I
should be less frightened of George than of her.  Her eyes are like a
devil."

A bare fisted, relentless, give and take fight such as this promised to
be is common enough wherever hard men foregather, dirt-common in a
country where the fag end of a long winter of enforced idleness leaves
restless nerves raw.  The uncommon thing about the brief battle or in
any way connected with it lay in the attitude of the onlookers.  Rarely
is a crowd so unanimous both in expectation and desire.  George would
kill Drennen or would nearly kill him, and it would be a good thing.  A
man of no friends, Drennen had no sympathiser.  No man who watched with
narrowed eyes, no woman on table or chair or hiding her face in her
hands, but asked and looked for the same ending.

Though from the first it was apparent that George was the bigger man,
the heavier, the stronger, it was silently conceded that these
qualities though they mean much do not count for everything.  It became
clear almost as they met for the first blows that the slenderer was
quicker and that if Kootanie George was confident Drennen was no less
so.  And, when they both reeled backward, a many-voiced murmur of
surprise was like a reluctant admission: Drennen had done two things
which no other man had ever done before him; he had kept his feet
against the smashing drive of that big fist in his face and he had made
George stagger.  For the moment it looked as though the two would fall.

Once more George came forward slowly while Drennen waited for him,
again they met, Drennen leaping forward just as the Canadian's sledge
of a clenched hand was lifted.  Each man threw up a guarding left arm
only to have his brawny guard beaten through as again the two
resounding blows landed almost like one; this time there was a trickle
of red from the Canadian's mouth, a panting, wheezing cough from the
American as he received the other's blow full in the chest.  For a
dizzy moment they stood separated by the very fury of their onslaught,
each balancing.

"They are men!" murmured Garcia in delight.  And Ernestine, leaning far
out from her table, cried breathlessly:

"George!  If you love me . . ."

George glanced at her, a slow smile upon his battered lips.  He ran the
back of his hand across his mouth and again moved forward, slowly.  And
again Drennen snarling, awaited him.

This time George crouched a little as he made his attack, and as he
drew closer he moved more swiftly, bunching his big muscles, fairly
hurling his great body as he leaped and struck, reckless of what blows
might find him, determined by his superior weight alone to carry the
other back and down.  And as though Drennen had read the purpose in the
smouldering eyes he too leaped forward so that the two big bodies met
in mid air.  Like one blow came the sounds of the two blows given and
taken as the impact of the two bodies gave out its soft thud.  And as
one man the two went down together, fighting, beating brutally at each
other, all rules of the game forgotten save that one alone which says,
"He wins who wins!"

For a little they clenched and rolled upon the floor like two great,
grim cats.  Through the sound of scuffling came the noise of
short-armed jabs, the deep throated curses of Kootanie George and once
. . . his first vocal utterance . . . one of Dave Drennen's laughs.  It
was when he had again driven his fist against George's mouth, drawing
blood from both lips and hand cut by breaking teeth.

Kootanie George's left arm was flung about the neck of the man at whose
body his white knuckled fist was driving like a piston; the American
had craned his neck and in order to protect his face held it pressed
close to George's breast.  Drennen's right arm was about George's body,
caught against the floor as they fell, Drennen's left hand with thumb
sunken deep was already at the Canadian's throat.  The snarl upon
Drennen's face was the more marked now, more filled with menace and
hate as his body experienced the torture of the other's regular blows.

For a little they were strangely silent, Kootanie having given over his
ripping oaths, strangely quiet as they lay with no movement apparent
beyond the ceaseless rhythmic striking of George's arm.  Even those
blows ceased in a moment as George's hand went hurriedly to the wrist
at his breast.  The thumb at his throat had sunk until the place where
it crooked at the joint was lost; George's face from red had gone to
white, then to a hectic purple.  Now they strove for the mastery of the
hand at the throat, George dragging at it mightily, Drennen's fingers
crooked like talons with the tendons standing out so that they seemed
white cords in the lamplight.  George's breath came in short, shorter
gasps, he tugged with swelling muscles, his own hand a terrible
wrenching vice at Drennen's wrist.  And when the purple face grew more
hideously purple, when the short gasps were little dry sounds, speaking
piteously of agony and suffocation, when still the relentless grip at
his throat was unshaken, men began for the first time to guage the
strength which lay in the great, gaunt frame of Dave Drennen.

And George too had begun to understand.  Suddenly his hand came away
from the iron wrist and sought Drennen's throat for which his wide
bulging eyes quested frantically.  His hand found what it sought at
last, but Drennen had twisted his head still a little further to the
side, brought his face still lower and closer against the Canadian's
chest, and George could not get the grip where he wanted it, full upon
the front of the throat.  He tore at the rigid muscles below the jaw a
moment and the bloody, broken skin of Drennen's neck told with what
fury George had striven.

But George must hasten now and he knew it.  Again his right hand sought
Drennen's left, fought at the deadly grip at his own throat.  In his
reach a quick cunning came to him and his groping fingers passed along
Drennen's wrist and did not tarry there.  Up and up they went, the
great questing fingers of the Canadian, until at last they found the
fingers of the other man.  Here they settled.  And then those who
watched saw the middle finger of Drennen's hand drawn back from the
flesh of George's neck, saw it bent back and back, still further back
until it was a pure wonder that Drennen held on, back and back. . . .
And then there was a little snap of a bone broken and Drennen's hand
fell away and Kootanie George, drawing a long, sobbing breath, rolled
clear of him and slowly rose to his feet.

Drennen too rose but not so slowly.  His left hand was at his side, the
one broken finger standing oddly apart from its fellows, as he ran the
three steps to meet Kootanie George.  George threw up his arm, but the
savagery of the blow beating upon him struck the guard aside and
Kootanie George, caught fairly upon the chin flung out his arms and
went down.  He brushed against the wall behind him in falling and so
came only to his knees on the floor, his hands out before him.  Drennen
stood over him, breathing deeply, gathering his strength for a last
effort.  George staggered perceptibly as he got to his feet, a queer
look in his eyes.  Drennen struck swiftly, his fist grinding into the
pit of Kootanie's stomach and, as the big man crumpled, finding his
chin again.  And as George staggered a second time Drennen was upon
him, Drennen's laugh like the snarl of a wolf, Drennen's hand, the
right this time, at George's throat. . . .

A thin scream from Ernestine Dumont quivering with a strange blend of
emotions, a spit of flame, a puff of smoke hanging idly in the still
air of the room, the sharp bark of a small calibre revolver, and
Drennen's hand dropped from Kootanie's throat.  He swayed unsteadily a
moment, stepped toward her, his eyes flecked with red and brimming with
rage, his hand going to the wound in his side.

"Cat," said Drennen deliberately.

As he fell back, a sudden weakness upon him, settling unsteadily into a
chair, Ramon Garcia struck up the barrel of the smoking gun in
Ernestine's hand and the second bullet ripped into the papered ceiling.
Then Kootanie George turned slowly, his eyes full upon Ernestine's, and
said as Drennen had said it,

"Cat!"

"You are one big brute!" cried Mère Jeanne angrily.  "You, to call her
that when she shoot because she love you!  I should do like that for
Marquette here."

"She has put me to shame, made me a man for men to laugh at," said
George heavily.  "What, am I no man but a little baby that a woman must
fight my fight?  I am done with her."

Drennen's face had gone white; the fingers gripping his torn side were
sticky and wet and red.  He rose half way from his chair only to drop
back, the rigid muscles along his jaw showing how the teeth were hard
set.  He had seemed to forget Ernestine, George, all of them, his gaze
seeking and finding the table where his gold lay, then lifting to Frank
Marquette's face suspiciously.  Then it was that he noted and that
others marked for the first time how again the outer door had opened
that night to admit tardy guests.  A little flicker of surprise came
into his eyes, and small wonder.

Three persons had entered before Ernestine had cried out and fired the
first shot, two men and a girl.  The men would come in for their share
of attention later; the girl demanded hers now, like a right and a
tribute.  She stood a little in front of her companions.  Her eyes
widened, growing a little hard as they watched the end of the fight,
passed from Drennen and Kootanie George to Ernestine Dumont, came
slowly back to George, rested finally upon Drennen as though their
chief interest lay with him.  She did not show fear as a woman of her
appearance might be looked upon to show it; there were interest and
curiosity in her look and, finally, when after a long time she looked
again from Drennen to Ernestine, a high contempt.

In spite of the heavy white sweater whose collar was drawn high about
her throat, in spite of the white hood concealing all but one stray
wisp of brown hair, her loveliness was unhidden, looking out in all of
the splendid glory of youthful health and vigour.  Her eyes were as
grey as Drennen's own, but with little golden flecks seeming to float
upon sea-grey, unsounded depths.  She might have been seventeen, she
could not have been more than twenty, and yet her air was one of
confidence and in it was an indefinable something which was neither
arrogance nor yet hauteur, and which in its subtle way hinted that the
blood pulsing through her perfect body was the blood of those who had
known how to command since babyhood and who had never learned to obey.
When later men learned that that blood was drawn in riotous, converging
currents from unconquerable fighting Scotch highlanders and from a long
line of French nobility there came no surprise in the discovery.  Men
and women together, Kootanie George and Ernestine, Garcia and Drennen,
Père Marquette and Mère Marquette, felt the difference between her and
themselves.

"We seem to interrupt," she said coolly, her voice deeply musical, as
she turned to Père Marquette.  He, looking a little dazed and stupid
from all that had taken place, but never forgetful of his duties as
host, had come toward her hesitantly, his lips seeking to form a new
phrase of greeting.  "We are tired and need food.  Everything seemed
closed but your place.  So we came in."

"You are welcome, mam'selle," he said hurriedly.  "Mos' welcome.  It is
unfortunate . . ."

"Captain Sefton," went on the girl quite calmly, "will you see what you
can do for that man?  He is losing a great deal of blood."

Captain Sefton, a thin, hawk-eyed man with a coppery Vandyke beard,
shrugged his shoulders distastefully but passed her, drawing near Dave
Drennen.  The girl turned toward the second of her companions, a
younger man by half a dozen years, who brought the stamp of the cities
in his fashionable clothes, the relentless marks of a city's
dissipation about his small mouth and light eyes and, in air and
features, a suggestion of the French.

"Marc," she said, drawing at her gauntlets, her back upon Sefton and
Drennen, "if you can arrange for a room for me I shall go to it
immediately."

Marc obeyed her as Captain Sefton had done, turning to Marquette with
an inquiry.  Drennen's eyes were only for a fleeting moment upon Sefton
whose quick fingers were busy at the wound.  Then they returned to the
table at which he had diced.  Frank Marquette, seeing the look, poured
the gold all into the canvas bag and brought it to him.

The eyes of one man alone did not waver once while the girl was in the
room, black eyes as tender as a woman's, eloquent now with admiration,
their glance like a caress.  Ramon Garcia spoke softly, under his
breath.  Ernestine Dumont looked down at him curiously.  She had nor
understood the words for they were Spanish.  They had meant,

"Now am I resigned to my exile!"




CHAPTER VI

THE PROMISE OF A RAINBOW

For a week Dave Drennen lay upon the bunk in the one room dugout which
had been home for him during the winter.  Stubborn and sullen and
silent at first, snarling his anger as sufficient strength came back
into him, he refused the aid which the Settlement, now keenly
solicitous, offered.  He knew why the men who had not spoken to him two
weeks ago sought to befriend him now.  He knew that the swift change of
attitude was due to nothing in the world but to a fear that he might
die without disclosing his golden secret.

"And I am of half a mind to die," he told the last man to trouble him;
"just to shame Kootanie George, to hang Ernestine Dumont and to drive a
hundred gold seekers mad."

During the week a boy from Joe's Lunch Counter brought him his meals
and gave him the scant attention he demanded.  The boy went away with
money in his pockets and with tales to tell of a man like a wounded
bull moose.  Always there were eager hands to detain him, eager tongues
to ask if Drennen had let anything drop.  Always the same answer, a
shake of the head; he had learned nothing.

The day after the affair at Père Marquette's had seen MacLeod's
Settlement empty of men.  Each one following his own hope and fancy
they had gone into the mountains, heading toward the north as Drennen
had headed two weeks before, some following the main trail for a matter
of many miles, others breaking off to right or to left at tempting
cross-trails, hastening feverishly, dreaming dreams and finding rude
awakenings.  The snows were melting everywhere upon the slopes, the
dirty waters running down the trails making an ooze at midday which
sucked up and destroyed the tracks of the men who travelled over it in
the crisp early mornings.

There was no sign to tell whether Drennen had gone straight on during
the seven days he might have been pushing away from the camp and had
made his strike at the end of them, or whether he had turned off
somewhere hardly out of sight of the handful of shacks marking
MacLeod's Settlement.  No sign to tell that the golden vein or pocket
lay within shouting distance from the Settlement or fifty, seventy-five
miles removed.  And Drennen, lying on his back upon his hard bunk,
stared up at the blackened beams across his ceiling and smiled his
hard, bitter smile as he pictured the frantic, fruitless quest.

Sefton, the man with the coppery Vandyke beard, thin-jawed and with
restless eyes, had given him certain rude help at Marquette's and had
been among the first the following day to offer aid.  Drennen dismissed
him briefly, offering to pay for what he had already done but saying he
had no further need of clumsy fingers fooling with his hurt.  Sefton
favoured him with a keen scrutiny from the door, hesitated, shrugged
his thin shoulders and went away.  Drennen wondered if the girl, who
seemed in the habit of ordering people around, had sent him.

At the end of the week Drennen was about again.  He had kept his wound
clean with the antiseptic solutions to be obtained from the store and
under its bandages it was healing.  He found that he was weaker than he
had supposed but with a grunt drove his lax muscles to stiffen and obey
his will.  From the door he came back, found a broken bit of mirror and
looked curiously at the face reflected in it.  No beautiful sight, he
told himself grimly.  It was haggard, drawn and wan.  A beard three
weeks old, the black of it shot through here and there with white
hairs, made the stern face uncouth.

"I look a savage," he told himself disgustedly, tossing the glass to
the cluttered table.  Then, with a grim tightening of the lips, "And
why not?"

He made his way slowly, his side paining him no little, to Joe's Lunch
Counter.  It was late afternoon and the street was deserted.  A gleam
of satisfaction showed fleetingly in his eyes; he knew why the street
was deserted and the knowledge pleased him.

None of the Settlement was in Joe's restaurant, but the presence of the
two strangers who had come with the girl saved it from utter desertion.
They were finishing a light meal as Drennen entered and looked up at
him curiously.  Drennen saw a quick glance interchanged.  He knew the
meaning of this, too, knew that the story of his strike had gone its
way to them, that because of those nuggets which even now weighted his
pocket he was a marked man, a man to be reckoned with, to be watched,
to be followed, to be fawned upon if possible.  He frowned at Sefton's
nod and took his place at the lunch counter.

Presently the younger of the two, Captain Sefton's companion, got up
and came to Drennen's side, offering his hand.

"I am glad to see you around again," he said, pleasantly.

Drennen did not look toward him.

"Some more coffee, Joe," he said shortly.

The young fellow stared at him a moment, a quick retort upon his lips.
It was checked however by Sefton saying quickly:

"Come on, Lemarc.  It's none of your funeral if a man wants to be left
alone.  Let's go find Ygerne."

Ygerne.  So that was her name, Drennen thought as he stirred two
heaping spoons of sugar into his coffee and out of the corner of his
eye watched the two men go out.  Well, what was the difference?  One
name would do as well as another and she was an adventuress like the
rest of them in this land of hard trails.  Else why should she be here
at all, and with men like Lemarc and Sefton?  Had he not distrusted all
men by sweeping rule these two at least he would have distrusted for
the craft in their eyes.

He drank his second cup of coffee, stuffed his old pipe full of coarse
tobacco and went outside.  Sefton and Lemarc had passed out of sight.
Drennen hesitated just a second, pausing at the door.  He was pitifully
weak.  He supposed that the thing for him to do was to crawl back to
his bunk for the remainder of the day and the long night to follow.  He
clamped his pipe stem hard between his teeth.  He'd do nothing of the
kind.  Did strength, any more than anything else in the world, come to
a man who lay on his back and waited for it?  He needed exercise.

So he strolled down through the quiet Settlement, turned into the trail
which leads upward along old Ironhead's flank, driving his body
mercilessly to the labour of the climb.  There was a spot he knew where
he could sit and look down across the valley and from which far out
somewhere to north or south he might see fools seeking for the gold he
had found.  It was a little cup set in the side of the mountain, a tiny
valley at once beautiful and aloof, and he had not been here since last
fall.  In it he could rest unmolested, unwatched.

During the day there had been showers; now the sun was out warmly while
here and there the sky was hidden by clouds and in places he could see
the little mists shaken downward through the bright air.  Warm rains
would mean a quickened thaw, open trails and swifter travel.  In a way
a propitious season was making it up to him for the time he was losing
in idleness with a hole in his side.

An odd incident occurred that afternoon.  Drennen, hard man as he was,
Inured to the heavy shocks of a life full of them, felt this little
thing strangely.  He was resting, sitting upon a great boulder under a
pine tree.  The cup-like valley, or depressed plateau, lay at his left,
himself upon an extreme rim of it.  As he brooded he noted idly how the
sunshine was busied with the vapour filled air, building of it a
triumphant arch, gloriously coloured.  His mood was not for brightness
and yet, albeit with but half consciousness, he watched.  Did a man who
has followed the beck of hope of gold ever see a rainbow without
wondering what treasure lay at the far end of the radiant promise?  So,
idly, Dave Drennen now.

At first just broken bits of colour.  Then slowly the bits merged into
one and the arc completed, the far end seeming to rest upon the further
rim of the level open space.  It seemed a tangible thing, not a
visioned nothing born of nothingness and to perish utterly in a
twinkling.

"A promise that is a lie," he said to himself bitterly.  "Like the
promises of men."

And then . . . to his startled fancies she had come into being like the
rainbow, from nothingness . . .  where the foot of the arch had
appeared to rest stood the girl, Ygerne.  A quarter of a mile between
Drennen sitting here and her standing there, a stretch of boulder
strewn mountain side separating them, God's covenant joining them.
Drennen stiffened, started to his feet as though he had looked upon
magic.  At the foot of the rainbow not just gold . . . gold he had in
plenty now . . . but a woman . . .

He laughed his old ugly laugh and settled back upon his rock, his eyes
jerked away from her, sent back down the slope of the mountain to the
green fringe of the Little MacLeod.  He knew that his senses had
tricked him as one's senses are so prone to do; that she had merely
stepped into sight from behind a shoulder of blackened cliff; that the
most brilliantly coloured rainbow is just so much sunlight and water.
And he knew, too, that she would have to pass close to him on her way
back to the Settlement unless she went to considerable effort to avoid
him.

He saw her shadow upon a patch of snow in the trail where the rock
protected it.  He did not turn his head.  He heard her step, knew when
it had stopped and her shadow had grown motionless.  She was not ten
paces from him.

Stubbornly he ignored the silent challenge of her pausing.  With slope
shoulders he sat motionless upon his rock, his face turned toward the
Little MacLeod, his freshly relighted pipe going calmly.  Yet he was
aware, both from the faint sound of her tread upon the soft ground and
from her shadow, cast athwart the path, that she had come on another
couple of steps, that she had stopped again, that her gaze was now no
doubt concerned with his profile.  He did not seek to make it the less
harsh, to soften the expression of bitterness and uncouth hardness
which his bit of a mirror had shown him in the dugout.  He found that
without turning to see he could remember just what her eyes looked
like.  And he had seen them only once and that when his chief concern
was a bullet hole in his side.

While Drennen drew five or six slow puffs at his pipe neither he nor
the girl moved.  Then again she drew a pace nearer, again stopped.  He
sent his eyes stubbornly up and down the willow fringed banks of the
Little MacLeod.  His thought, used to obeying that thing apart, his
will, concerned itself with the question of just where the gold seekers
were driving their fools' search for his gold.

Stubbornness in the man had met a stubbornness no less in the girl.
Though his attitude might not be misread she refused to heed it.  He
had half expected her to go on, and was idly looking for a shrug of the
shadow's shoulders and then a straightening of them as she went past;
he half expected her to address him with some commonplace remark.  He
had not thought to have her stand there and laugh at him.




CHAPTER VII

"A PRINCESS SENT TO PACK WITH WOLVES!"

But laugh she did, softly, unaffectedly and with plainly unsimulated
amusement.  She laughed as she might have done had he been a little
child indulging in a fit of pouting, she the child's mother.  Her
laughter irritated him but did not affect a muscle of his rigid
aloofness.  Then she moved again, drawing no nearer but making a little
half circle so that she stood just in front of him breaking his view of
the river.  The hard grey of his eyes met the soft greyness of hers.

"Why are the interesting men always rude?" she asked him out of a short
silence.

He stared at her coolly a moment, of half a mind to reply to the
foolishness of her question with the answer which it deserved, mere
silence.

"I don't know," he retorted bluntly.

"Yes, they are," she told him with deep gravity of tone, just as though
he had done the logical thing, been communicative and said, "Are they?"
The gravity in her voice, however, was notably in contrast with the
crinkling merriment about the corners of her eyes.  "Perhaps," she went
on, "that is one of the very reasons why they _are_ interesting."

He made no answer.  His regard, sweeping her critically, went its way
back down the mountain side.  Not, however, until the glorious lines of
her young figure had registered themselves in his mind.

"Perhaps," she ran on, her head a little to one side as she studied him
frankly, "you didn't realise just how interesting a type you are?  In
feminine eyes, of course."

"I know about things feminine just as much as I care to know," he said
with all of the rudeness with which she had credited him.  "Namely,
nothing whatever."

Without looking to see how she had taken his words he felt that he
knew.  She was still laughing at him, silently now, but none the less
genuinely.

"You are not afraid of me, are you?" she queried quite innocently.

"I think not," he told her shortly.  "Since your sex does not come into
the sphere of my existence, Miss Ygerne, there is no reason why I
should be afraid of it."

"Oh!" was her rejoinder.  "So you know my name, Mr. Drennen?"

"I learned it quite accidentally, young lady.  Please don't think that
the knowledge came from a premeditated prying into your affairs."

She ignored the sneer as utterly negligible and said,

"And you used to be a gentleman, once upon a time, like the prince in
the fairy tale before the witches got him.  _Cherchez la femme_.  Was
it a woman who literally drove you wild, Mr. Drennen?"

"No," he told her in his harshly emphatic way.

"You are very sure?"

He didn't answer.

"You are thinking that I am rather forward than maidenly?"

"I am thinking that a good warm rain will help to clear the trails."

"You wish that I would go away?"

"Since you ask it . . . yes."

"That is one reason why I am staying here," she laughed at him.  "By
the way, Mr. Newly-made Croesus, does this mountain belong to you, too?
Together with the rest of the universe?"

He knocked out the ashes of his pipe, refilled the bowl, stuffing the
black Settlement tobacco down with a calloused, soil-grimed forefinger.
And that was her answer.  She saw a little glint of anger in his eyes
even while she could not fully understand its cause.  A maid of moods,
her mood to-day had been merely to pique him, to tease a little and the
hint of anger told her that she had succeeded.  But she was not
entirely satisfied.  With truly feminine wisdom she guessed that
something of which she was not aware lay under the emotion which had
for a second lifted its head to the surface.  She could not know that
she awoke memories of another world which he had turned his back upon
and did not care to be reminded of; she did not know that the very way
she had caught her hair up, the way her clothes fitted her, brought
back like an unpleasant fragrance in his nostrils memories of that
other world when he had been a "gentleman."

"Your wound is healing nicely?" she offered.  And, knowing
instinctively that again his answer would be silence, she went on, "It
was very picturesque, your little fight the other night.  The woman who
did the shooting, I wondered whether she really loved Kootanie George
most . . . or you?"

"Look here, Miss Ygerne . . ."

"Ygerne Bellaire," she said with an affected demureness which dimpled
at him.  "So you may say: 'Miss Bellaire.'"

"I say what I damned please!" he snapped hotly, and through the crisp
words she heard the click of his teeth against his pipe stem.  "If the
flattery is not too much for a modest maiden to stand you may let me
assure you that the one thing about you which I like is your name,
Ygerne.  Speaking of fairy tales, it sounds like the name of the
Princess before the witches changed her into an adventuress, and sent
her to pack with wolves.  When it becomes necessary for me to call you
anything whatever I'll call you Ygerne."

It was enough to drive her in head-erect, defiant, orderly retreat down
the mountainside.  But she seemed not to have heard anything after the
first curt sentence.

"So you do 'what you damned please'?  That sounds interesting.  But is
it the truth?"

Her perseverance began, in spite of him, to puzzle him.  What in all
the world of worlds did she want of him?  Also, and again in spite of
him, he began to wonder what sort of female being this was.

"And so my name is really the only thing commendable about me?" she
went on.  "My nose isn't really pug, Mr. Drennen."

She crinkled it up for his inspection, turning sideways so that he
might study her profile, then challenging his eyes gaily with her own.

"It is said to be my worst feature," she continued gravely.  "And after
all, don't you think one's nose is like one's gown in that it's true
effect lies in the way one wears it?"

"How old are you?" he said curiously, the ice of him giving the first
evidence of thaw.

"Less than three score and ten in actual years," she told him.  "Vastly
more than that in wisdom.  Who's getting impertinent now?"

He hadn't said half a dozen sentences to a woman in half a dozen years.
But then he hadn't seen a woman of her class and type in nearly twice
that length of time.  Besides, a week of enforced idleness in his
dugout, of blank inactivity, had brought a new sort of loneliness.  A
bit surprised at what he was doing, a bit amused, not without a feeling
of contempt for himself, he let the bars down.  He leaned back a little
upon his rock, caught up a knee in his clasped hands, thus easing the
ache in his side, and set his eyes to meet hers searchingly.

"This is an odd place for a girl like you, Ygerne," he said
meditatively.

"Is it?  And why?"

"Because," he answered slowly, "so far as I know, only two kinds of
people ever come this way.  Some are human hogs come to get their feet
into a trough of gold; some are here because there is such a thing as
the law outside and it has driven them here."

"But surely some come just through a sense of curiosity?"

"Curiosity is too colourless a motive to beckon or drive folks out
here."

"Why are you asking me a question like this?  You have succeeded in
making it rather plain that you feel no interest whatever in me."

"I am allowing myself, for the novelty of the thing, to talk nonsense,"
he told her drily.  "You seemed insistent upon it."

"So that's it?  Well, I at least can answer a question.  Two motives
are to thank or to blame for my being here.  One," she said coolly, her
eyes steady upon his, "has beckoned, as you put it; the other has
driven.  One is the desire to get my feet into the golden trough, the
other to get my body out of the way of the law.  Your hypothesis seems,
in my case as in the others, to be correct, Mr. Drennen."

In spite of him he stared at her a little wonderingly.  For himself he
gauged her years at nineteen.  He was rather inclined to the suspicion
that she was lying to him in both particulars.  But something of the
coolness of her regard, its vague insolence, something in the way she
carried her head and shoulders, her whole sureness of poise, the
intangible thing called personality in her tempered like fine steel,
made his suspicion waver.  She was young and good to look upon; there
was the gloriously fresh bloom of youth upon her; and yet, were it not
for the mere matter of sex, he might have looked upon her as a gay and
utterly unscrupulous young adventurer of the old type, the kind to bow
gallantly to a lady while wiping the stain of wet blood from a knife
blade.

"You are after gold . . . and the law wants you back there in the
States?" he demanded with quiet curiosity.

"I am after gold and the law has sought me back there in the States,"
she repeated after him coolly.

"The law has long arms, Ygerne."

"It has no arms at all, Mr. Drennen.  It has a long tail with a
poisonous sting in it."

"What does it want you for?"  He was making light of her now, his
question accompanied by a hard, cynical look which told her that she
could say as much or as little as she chose and he'd suit himself in
the extent of his credulity.  "Were you the lovely cashier in an ice
cream store?  And did you abscond with a dollar and ninety cents?"

"Don't you know of Paul Bellaire?" she flung at him angrily.

"I have never met the gentleman," he laughed at her, pleased with the
flush which was in her cheeks.

"He died long before you were born," she said sharply.  "If you talked
with men you would know.  He was my grandfather.  We of the blood of
Paul Bellaire are not shop girls, Mr. Drennen."

"Oho," sneered Drennen.   "We are in the presence of gentry, then?"

"You are in the presence of your superior by birth if not in all other
matters," she told him hotly.

"We, out here, don't believe much in the efficacy of blue blood," he
said contemptuously.

"The toad has little conception of wings!" she gave him back, in the
coin of his own contempt.  "Queer, isn't it?"

He laughed at her, more amused than he had been heretofore and more
interested.

"You haven't told me definitely about your terrible crime."

"You have been equally noncommittal."

Drennen shrugged.  "I am not greatly given to overtalkativeness," he
said shortly.  "I have no desire to usurp woman's prerogative."

"But are quite willing to let me babble on?"

"I'm going to put in time for a couple of hours.  You are less
maddening than the walls of my dugout."

She looked at him keenly, silent and thoughtful for a little.  Then she
said abruptly:

"Have you told any one yet of your discovery?"

So that was it.  His eyes grew hard again with the sneer in them.

"No," he informed her with a bluntness full of finality.

"You spoke of the hogs with their feet in the trough.  You are going to
let no one in with you?"

"I am not in the habit of giving away what I want for myself."

"But you can't keep it secret always.  You'll have to file your claim,
and you can't file on all of Canada. . . .  I want to ask you something
about it."

"No doubt," with his old bitter smile.  "For a fortune you'd repay me
with a smile, would you?  You'd find easier game in the gilded youth on
Broadway."

Her lips grew a little cruel as she answered him.

"You may tell me as much or as little as you like.  You may lie to me
and tell me that your gold is twenty miles westward of here while it
may be twice or half that distance eastward.  Or you may leave that
part out altogether.  But it would be another matter to answer the one
question I will ask."  Her eyes were upon him, very alert, watchful for
a sign as she asked her question: "Were the nuggets free and piled up
somewhere where some man before you had placed them?"

If she sought to read his mind against his will she had come to the
wrong man.  It was as though Drennen had not heard her.

"Are you married to either of the hang dogs with whom you are
travelling?" he asked.

"No," she answered indifferently.

"They're both in love with you, no doubt?"

"I fancy that neither is," she retorted equably.  "Both want to marry
me, that's all."

Drennen gazed thoughtfully down into the valley, pursing his lips about
his pipe stem.

"I'll make a bargain with you," he said finally from the silence in
which the girl had stood watching him.  "You have dinner with me; we'll
have the best the Settlement knows how to serve us, and I'll let you
try to pump me."

She looked at him curiously.

"You have the name of a trouble seeker, Mr. Drennen.  Do you fancy that
you can anger Marc and Captain Sefton this way?"

"That, too, we can talk about at dinner, if you like."

For a moment she looked at him, gravely thoughtful, her brows puckered
into a thoughtful frown.  Then she put back her head with a gesture
indefinably suggestive of recklessness, and laughed as she had laughed
when she had first come upon him.

"The novel invitation is accepted," she said lightly.  "I must hurry
down to dress for the grand occasion, Mr. Drennen."

Before she could flash about and turn from him David Drennen did a
thing he had done for no woman in many years.  He rose to his feet,
making her a sweeping bow as he lifted his hat with the old grace which
the years had not taken from him.  And as she went down the mountain
side he dropped back to his rock, his teeth again hard, clamped upon
his pipe stem, his eyes steely and bitter and filled with cynical irony.




CHAPTER VIII

DUST OF IDOLS

David Drennen's statement concerning the two powerful motives
responsible for the presence in the North Woods of the greater portion
of her hardy denizens had been essentially truthful.  The shadow of
prison bars or perhaps the gaunt silhouette of the gallows, vivid in an
overstimulated fancy, has sent many a man roving; the whisper down the
world of yellow gold to be taken from the earth, transforming the
blackened claw gripping it into the potent fingers of a money king, has
entered the ear of many a wanderer and drawn him to such a land as
this.  An evil nature, a flare of temper, a wrong done and redressed in
hot wrath and red blood, a mistake or a weakness or a wild spirit born
a hundred years too late, any of these things might send a man into the
North Woods.  But Drennen, who made the statement to Ygerne Bellaire,
was in himself an exception to it.

For half a score of years this land of hard trails, this far out place
where man met man without veneer, where nature's breasts lay stripped
of covering and naked, where life was the old life of things elemental,
where primal laws were good laws, where there was room enough for the
strong and scant room for the weak, David Drennen had found a spacious
walled home.  Half of the year his house had the lofty, snow-capped
mountains for its only walls, the sweeping blue arch for its roof, sun,
moon and stars for its lamps.  There were months when he knew of no
other footfall than his own throughout the vastness of his house.
There had been times when, seeing the thin wisp of smoke against the
dawn telling of a camp fire five miles away, he had grumbled and
trampled out his own embers and moved on, seeking solitude.

He had brought into the mountains a heart at once sore and bitter.  The
soreness had been drawn out of it in time; the bitterness had but grown
the more intense.  Hard, mordacious, no man's friend . . . that was the
David Drennen who at Père Marquette's fête sought any quarrel to which
he might lay his hands.  The world had battled and buffeted him; it had
showered blows and been chary of caresses; he had struck back,
hard-fisted, hard-hearted, a man whom a brutal life had made brutal in
its own image.

There had been a scar made in his world of men and women to mark his
leaving it, such a scar as a thorn leaves in the flesh when rudely
drawn out.  A tiny cicatrix soon almost entirely lost as the niche
which had been his was filled and the healing over was perfected.  It
doesn't take long for the grass to grow over the graves of the dead;
the dew forming upon the mounded turf is less like tears than like
glistening jewels to deck the earth in the joyous time of her bridehood
in the spring; the flight of birds over it and their little bursts of
melody are eloquent of an ecstasy which does not remember.  How little
time then must pass to wipe out the memory of the passing of a David
Drennen from the busy thoroughfares into the secluded trails?

He had been a young man, the lightest hearted of his care-free set,
when the crash came.  The chief component characteristics of the young
David Drennen of twenty were, perhaps, a careless generosity, a natural
spontaneous gaiety which accepted each day as it came, a strong though
unanalysed faith in his fellow being.  Life made music in tuneful
chords upon the strings of his heart.  The twin wells of love and faith
were always brimming for his friends; overflowing for the one man whose
act was to turn their waters brackish and bitter.  That man was his
father, John Harper Drennen, a man prominent enough in the financial
world to make much copy for the newspapers up and down the country and
to occupy no little place in transoceanic cable messages when the story
broke.

A boy must have his hero worship.  Rarely enough does he find his
Alexander the Great, his Washington or his Daniel Boone, his Spartacus
or his Horatius in his own household.  But the motherless David had
proved the exception and had long ago begun to shape his own life in
the picture of his father's, investing him with attributes essentially
divine.  John Harper Drennen was a great man; the boy made of him an
infallible hero who should have been a demigod in face of the crisis.
And when that crisis came his demigod fled before it, routed by the
vengeance seeking him.

Young Drennen had struck a man in the face for breaking the news to him
and had felt a virtuous glow as he called the man "Liar!"  He
experienced a double joy upon him, the lesser one of his militant
manhood, the greater of realising that it had been granted him, even in
a small way, to fight a bit of his father's battle.  He had gone out
upon the street and a newsboy's paper, thrust to him, offered him the
glaring lie in great black letters for a penny.  He had torn the thing
across, flinging it away angrily.  There would be a libel suit
to-morrow and such an apology as this editorial cur had never dreamed
he had it in him to write.  He heard men talk of it in the subway and
laugh, and saw them turn wondering eyes to meet his glare.  He made
short his trip home, anxious to enlist under his father's standard,
thrilled with the thought of gripping his father's hand.

When he found that his father, who should have returned two days ago
from a trip to Chicago had not come back, he despatched a telegram to
the lake city.  The telegram was returned to him in due course of time;
his father was not in Chicago and had not been there recently.  He
wired Boston, Washington, Philadelphia.  His father was at none of his
hotels in any of these cities.  The boy prepared himself in calm, cold
anger to wait for his father's return.  But John Harper Drennen had
never returned.

During the week which dragged horribly, he refused to read the papers.
They were filled with such lies as he had no stomach for.  Only the
knowledge that the older Drennen was eminently capable to cope with his
own destiny and must have his own private reasons for allowing this
hideous scandal to continue unrefuted, held him back from bursting into
more than one editorial room to wreak physical, violent vengeance
there.  His respect for his father was so little short of reverent awe,
that he could take no step yet without John Harper's command.  Quizzed
by the police, questioned by the Chief, knowing himself dogged wherever
he went, feeling certain that even his mail was no longer safe from
prying eyes, he said always the same thing:

"Some of you are fools, some liars!  When Dad comes back . . ."

He had choked up under the keen eyes of the Chief.  And what angered
him most was the look in the Chief's eyes.  It was not incredulity; it
was merely pity.

At first the papers had it that John Harper Drennen had absconded with
fifty thousand dollars of the Eastern Mines Company's money.  With
rapid investigation came ready amplification of the first meagre
details.  Drennen's affairs were looked into and it was found that
through unwise speculations the man had been skirting on thin ice the
pool of financial ruin for a year.  The deficit of fifty thousand grew
under the microscope of investigation to sixty thousand, eventually to
seventy-five thousand.

When at last David Drennen got the back numbers of the papers and
locked himself up in his father's library to work his way laboriously
through the columns of fact and surmise he was not the same David
Drennen who had struck a man in the face for suggesting to him that his
father was a thief.  Here was the first sign of a weakening of faith;
here the first fear which strove wildly to prove itself a shadow.  But
from shadow emerged certainty.  He looked his spectre in the face and
it did not dissolve into thin air.  When he had done he put his face
upon his arms and sobbed.  The tardy but crushing sense of his hero's
guilt had stricken him; the thought that his father had in no way
confided in him, had left him without a word, perhaps without a
thought, broke his heart.  He was never to be quite the same David
Drennen again.

He remained at his father's home through the weary months during which
the miserably sordid horror dragged on.  One morning he packed into a
suitcase the few little articles which he felt were his own.  He went
out of the house before the others came in; he had no desire to see the
home go, as everything else had gone, to pour its handful of golden
sand into the great hole which John Harper's ruin had left behind him.
It had been almost a year since the first news; and upon the day on
which David Drennen set his back to all he knew and his face toward
what might come to him, a paper brought the last word.  He read it
calmly upon the train, wondering at himself that there was such a thing
as calm left to him.  A man, looking over his shoulder, commented on
the news lightly.  Drennen didn't answer.  He was visualising the final
episode dully; the great, masterful body of his own father in the Paris
morgue, the ignominious grave, even the cowardly death, self-dealt.

"And he never wrote me," he muttered to himself.

There he was wrong, though he could not know it until months later when
the brief letter, forwarded to him by the Chief, reached him.  His face
had been hard, because his heart was hard, when he read the note which
at last John Harper Drennen had written and which, sodden and blurred,
was found upon the dead body drawn from the Seine.


"Dear Davy," it had said.  "Some day maybe you'll come to forgive me.
God dealt me a hard hand to play, boy.  Be a man, Davy; for your
mother's sake if not for your dad's."


Drennen a year ago would have dropped his face into his hands and would
have wept over this letter; now he laughed at it.  And the laugh, this
first one, was the laugh men came to know as Dave Drennen's laugh.  It
was like a sneer and a curse and a slap in the face.

The hardest blow the fates could deal him had been delivered
mercilessly.  But other relentless blows were to come after, and under
their implacable, relentless smiting the soul of the man was hardened
and altered and made over as is the bit of iron under the blacksmith's
hammer.  Those characteristics which had been the essentials of the
spiritual man of last year were worked over; the fine steel springs of
buoyancy were beaten into thin knives of malignancy.  That the work
might be done thoroughly there was left in him one spark which glowed
later on and grew into friendship for a man whom he met far in the
north where the Yukon country called to such men as Drennen.  The
friendship fanned into life a lingering spark of the old generous
spirit.  Drennen, gambling his life lightly, had won as careless
gamblers are prone to do.  He made a strike; he trusted his new friend;
and his friend tricked, betrayed and robbed him.  This blow and others
came with the gaunt years.  At the end of them David Drennen was the
man who sought to quarrel with Kootanie George; he was a man like a
lone wolf, hunting alone, eating alone, making his lair alone, his
heart filled with hatred and bitterness and distrust.  He came to
expect the savagery of the world which smote and smote and smote again
at him, and he struck back and snarled back, each day finding him a
bitterer man than the preceding day had left him.  Long before he had
turned back from the Yukon to the North Woods, empty handed, empty
hearted, men had come to call him "No-luck" Drennen.  And as though his
ill fortune were some ugly, contagious disease, they shunned him even
as invariably as he avoided them.

Men knew him in Wild Cat, two weeks hard going over an invisible trail
from MacLeod's; they knew him at Moosejaw, two hundred and fifty miles
westward of the Settlement; wherever there was news of gold found he
was known, generally coming silently with the first handful of
venturesome, restive spirits.  But while his coming and his going were
marked and while eyes followed him interestedly men had given over
offering their hands in companionship.  Now and then he moved among
them as a man must, but always was he aloof, standing stubbornly apart,
offering no man his aid in time of difficulty, flaring into blazing
wrath the few times on record when men showed sympathy and desire to
befriend him.

Superstition, abashed-eyed step daughter in the house of civilisation,
lifts her head defiantly in the wilderness.  She is born of the
solitudes, a true daughter of the silent places.  Here, where men were
few and scattered broadcast by the great hand of adventure across the
broken miles of all but impassable mountains, superstition is no longer
merely an incident but an essential factor in human life and destiny.
And here men long ago had come to frown when their questing eyes found
the great, gaunt form of David Drennen in the van of some mad rush to
new fields: He was unlucky; men who rubbed shoulders with him were
foredoomed to share his misfortune; the gold, glittering into their
eyes from a gash in the earth, would vanish when his shadow fell across
it.

In many things he had grown to be more like a wild beast than a man.
He had hunted with the human pack and he had found selfishness and
jealousy and treachery on every hand.  He came to look upon these as
the essential characteristics of the human race.  Even now that he was
wounded he saw but one sordid motive of greed under the hesitant offers
of help; even now he had been less like a wounded man than a stricken
wolf.  The wolf would have withdrawn to his hidden lair; he would have
contented himself with scant food; he would have licked his wound clean
and have waited for it to heal; he would have snapped and snarled at
any intrusion, knowing the way of his fellows when they fall upon a
wounded brother.  So Drennen.




CHAPTER IX

"TO THE GIRL I AM GOING TO KISS TO-NIGHT!"

An odd mood was upon him this afternoon.  Perhaps since moods are
contagious, his was caught from the girl, Ygerne.  With a sort of
jeering laughter in his heart he surrendered to his inclination.  The
world had gone stale in his mouth; a black depression beat at him with
its stiffling [Transcriber's note: stifling?] wings; an hour with the
girl might offer other amusement than the mere angering of Lemarc and
Sefton.  He wanted only one thing in the world; to be whole of body so
that he might fare out on the trail again, a fresh trail now that gold
lay at the end of it.  But since he might not have the greater wish he
contented himself with the lesser.

He shaved himself, grimly conscious of the contempt looking out at him
from the haggard eyes in the mirror.  Those eyes mocked him like
another man's.  Then he went to Père Marquette's store, paying scant
attention to the three or four men he found there.  He made known his
wants and tossed his gold pieces to the counter, taking no stock of
curious gazes.  He saw that Kootanie George was there and that
Kootanie's big boots were gummed with the red mud of the upper trail.
He took no trouble to hide his sneer; Kootanie George, too, had been
out in search of his gold and had returned empty handed.

To each question of Père Marquette his answer was the same:

"The best you've got; damn the price."

Marquette had but the one white silk shirt in the house and Drennen
took it, paying the ten dollars without a word.  There were many pairs
of boots to fit him; one pair alone took his fancy, though he knew the
rich black leather and the shapely high heels would cause him to hurl
them away to-morrow as things unfit for the foot of man.  He selected
corduroy breeches and a soft black hat and returned to his dugout,
leaving fifty dollars upon the counter.  And when he had dressed and
had laughed at himself he went back up the muddy road for Ygerne.  But
first he stopped at Joe's.

"I want the private room," he said, and Joe nodded eagerly as he saw
Drennen's hand emerge from his pocket.  "And I want the best dinner for
two you can put on.  Trimmings and all."

Joe, slipping the first of Drennen's money into his pocket and
cherishing high hopes of more, set himself and his boy to work, seeing
his way of arriving at the second gold piece with no great loss of time.

The long northern twilight was an hour old when Drennen called for
Ygerne.  She came out of her room at Marquette's ready for him.  She
had told him she must "dress" for the occasion.  He had thought her
joking.  In spite of him he stared at her wonderingly a moment.  And,
despite her own gathering of will, a flush crept into her cheeks under
his look while her own eyes widened to the alterations a little effort
had made in the man.  And the thing each noted swiftly of the other was
scarcely less swiftly noted by all men and women in the Settlement
before they had gone down to Joe's: he had suddenly become as handsome
as a devil from hell; she as radiant as an angel.

"Are we just going to step into a ballroom for the masquerade?" she
half whispered with a queer little intake of breath as she found his
arm with a white gloved hand.  "And is all this," waving at the
Settlement itself, the river snaking its way through the narrow valley,
the frowning fronts of Ironhead and Indian Peak against the saffron
sky, "just so much painted canvas for the proper background?"

He laughed and brought his eyes away from the white throat and
shoulders, letting them sweep upward to the mystery of her eyes, the
dusky hair half seen, half guessed under the sheen of her scarf,
wondering the while at the strange femininity of her in bringing such
dainty articles of dress to such a land.  Then, his eyes finding the
prettily slippered and stockinged feet, he moved with her to the side
of the road where the ground was harder.

Joe had seen with amazing rapidity that the "trimmings" were not
wanting.  With old knowledge born of many years of restaurant work, he
knew that any day some prospector might find that which all prospectors
endlessly sought and that then he would grind his bare grubstake
contemptuously under his heel and demand to eat.  Upon such occasions
there would be no questions asked as to price if Joe but tickled the
tingling palate.  Joe had unlocked the padlock of the cellar trapdoor;
he had gone down and had unlocked another padlock upon a great box.
And all that which he had brought out, beginning with a white
tablecloth and ending with nuts and raisins, had been a revelation to
his boy assistant.  There was potted chicken, there were tinned
tomatoes and peaches, there were many things which David Drennen had
not looked upon for the matter of years.

The "private room" into which Joe, even his apron changed for the
occasion, showed them was simply the far end of the long lunch room,
half shut off from the rest of the house by a flimsy partition having
no door, but a wide, high arch let into it through which a man at the
lunch counter might see the little table and both of the diners.

Drennen, stepping in front of Joe, took Ygerne's scarf, drew out her
chair for her, and having seen her seated, took his own place with the
table between them.  He nodded approvingly as he noted that Joe had not
been without taste; for the restaurant keeper had even thought of
flowers and the best that the Settlement could provide, a flaming red
snowplant, stood in the centre of the table in a glass bowl of clean
white snow.

Joe brought the wine, a bucket at which the boy had scrubbed for ten
minutes, holding the bottle as the glass bowl held the snow-plant, in a
bed of snow.  When he offered it a trifle uncertainly to Drennen's gaze
and Drennen looked at it and away, nodding carelessly, Joe allowed
himself to smile contentedly.  Champagne here was like so much molten
gold; it was assured that Drennen was "going the limit."

Drennen lifted his glass.  His glance, busied a moment reminiscently
with the bubbling amber fluid, travelled across the table.  Ygerne
Bellaire had raised her glass with him.  Her eyes were sparkling, a
little eager, a little excited, perhaps a little triumphant.

"Isn't it fun?" she said gaily.

He looked back gravely into her laughing eyes.

"May I drink your health?" he demanded.  "And success to whatever
venture has brought you so far from the beaten trail."

She set down her glass, making a little moue of pretended
disappointment at him with her red mouth.

"And I was thinking that I was to have the honour of drawing something
gallant, at least flattering, something befitting the occasion, from
you!" she said.  "Why don't you say, 'Here's lookin' at you,' and be
done with it?"

He laughed.

"Then I'll say what I was thinking.  May I drink this to the one woman
I have ever seen whom I'd fall in love with . . . if I were a fool like
other men?"

He drank his wine slowly, draining the glass, his eyes full upon hers.
She laughed and when he had done said lightly,

"At least that's better."  She sipped her own wine and set it aside
again.  "Why didn't you say that in the first place?  Why must you
think one thing and say another?"

"That way lies wisdom," he told her coolly.

"Or stupidity, which?" she retorted.

"Shall a man say all of the foolish things which flash into his brain?"

"Why not?"  She shrugged, twisting her glass in slow fingers.  "If all
of the nonsense were taken out of life what would be left, I wonder?"

"I have the honour to entertain the high-born Lady Ygerne Bellaire at
dinner," he said in mock deference.  "Her request is my command.  Shall
I voice my second idiotic thought?"

She nodded, making her mouth smile at him while her eyes were gravely
speculative.

"Then," and his bow was in accord with the mockery of his tone, "I was
thinking that for the reason best known to the King of Fools I'd like
to kiss that red mouth of yours, Ygerne!"

"You'd be the first man who had ever done so," she told him steadily.

"Quite sure of that?" he sneered.

"Yes."

"Tempting me further?" he laughed at her.

"I don't think you'd dare, with all of your presumption, Mr. Drennen."

"Because there are a couple of men out there to see, I suppose?"

"No.  I don't think that that would stop you.  Because of this."

A hand, dropped to her lap, came up to the level of the table top and
in its palm he saw the shining barrel of a small automatic pistol.
Again he laughed at her.

"It seems the latest fad for women to carry such playthings," he
ridiculed her.  "I wonder how frightened you'd have to be before you
could pull the trigger?"

"Just merely angered," she smiled back at him, as the weapon went back
into her lap, and out of sight.

"It's just a trifling episode, this shooting a man," he suggested.  "I
suppose you've done that sort of thing before?"

"If I hadn't perhaps I shouldn't be here now," she informed him as
quietly as he had spoken.

It flashed upon Drennen, looking straight into her unfaltering eyes,
that the girl was telling him the truth.  Well, why not?  There was
Southern blood in her; her name suggested it and her appearance
proclaimed it.  And Southern blood is hot blood.  His instinct was
telling him that she was some new type of adventuress; her words seemed
to assure him of the fact.

"Since I cannot be about my business these days," he said slowly, "I am
fortunate in finding so entertaining a lady to share my idleness."

"And I in finding so gallant a host," she smiled back at him.

Joe served the first of his lighter courses and withdrew.  As time
passed a few men came into the lunch room, their eyes finding the two
figures in the private room.  Drennen observed them casually.  He saw
Marc Lemarc and Captain Sefton.  The old hard smile clung for a moment
to his lips as he marked the angry stare which the man with the coppery
Vandyck beard bestowed upon him.  He saw Kootanie George enter alone;
he saw, a little later, Ernestine Dumont flirting with Ramon Garcia,
ignoring the big Canadian.  Garcia stepped to Joe's side to arrange for
the use of the room in which Drennen and Ygerne were; Ernestine,
thinking the room empty as it usually was, came on to the arch of the
door before she saw its occupants.  As her eyes swept quickly from
Ygerne to Drennen a hot flush ran up into the woman's cheeks.  Then,
with a little, hard laugh, she turned back to find a seat with Garcia
at one of the oilcloth covered tables.  Garcia, for the first time
seeing Ygerne, bowed sweepingly, his eyes frankly admiring her, before
he sat down with Ernestine.

"Ygerne!" said Drennen out of a desultory conversation in which an idle
question put and unanswered was promptly forgotten.

"Well?" she asked quietly.

"I am going to tell you something.  You will note that I have had but
the one glass of wine; I have drunk only one toast.  Therefore we may
admit that I am sober and know what I am about.  We are going to talk
of the thing I have found somewhere in the mountains.  That is why we
are met to-night . . . so that you may have your opportunity to try to
learn what I alone know, what you and so many others want to know.
When we have finished our little banquet you, being a free agent, are
at liberty to call upon one of your friends there or even upon Joe, to
see you to your room.  Or you can accept my escort."

While she watched him, her elbows on the table, her chin upon her
clasped hands, he poured himself a second glass.  She saw the light in
his eyes change subtly as he continued:

"A second toast, my Princess Ygerne!  To the girl I am going to kiss
to-night on our way between Joe's and Marquette's!"  He held his glass
up and laughed at her across the top of it.  "To the girl I'd love now
were I a fool; the girl I wouldn't know to-morrow if I saw her!  The
girl who pits the beauty of her body against the calm of a man's brain.
The girl whose eyes are as beautiful as shining stars.  The girl whose
eyes are filled with the madness of the lust of gold!  To a
sweet-faced, cool-hearted little adventuress . . .  My Lady Ygerne!  Am
I insulting?  You knew that before you did me the honour to dine with
me.  Shall I drink the toast, Ygerne?"

She sat regarding him gravely, the dimples of a moment ago merely sweet
memories, her eyes stars no longer but deep twin pools, mystery-filled.

"Was there a time when you were a gentleman, Mr. Drennen?" she asked
steadily.

"Was there a time when you were as innocent as you look, Ygerne?" he
answered coolly.

He saw the anger leap up in her eyes, he noted a sudden hard, tense
curving of her lips.  Then, lifting her white shoulders, she laughed
softly as she leaned back in her chair, relaxing.

"Drink," she said lightly.  "As you say, we shall talk of your new
strike.  As you say, that is why I am here with you.  And then . . ."

He had tossed off his wine and now said sharply:

"Then you will allow me the pleasure of escorting you to the door of
Père Marquette's . . . or you will get one of your hangdogs or Joe here
to see you home.  Which?"

"Do you think I am a coward?" she said quickly.

"All women are, I think," was his blunt answer.

"Then try to kiss me when you please!  Since I am your guest to-night I
shall expect you to see me to my room."

"I have told you what will happen."

She smiled at him.  He saw the fleeting dimples at the corners of the
red lipped mouth.  And he saw too, in her eyes, the glint as of steel.

"Speaking of your discovery, Mr. Drennen. . ."

He laughed.




CHAPTER X

SEEKERS AFTER GOLD

There had been only three loitering men and one woman enjoying Joe's
hospitality as they went out.  The men were Lemarc, Sefton and Ramon
Garcia, the woman Ernestine Dumont.  Drennen saw that Ygerne made cool
pretence of seeing none of them; Lemarc and Sefton had no doubt
lingered to watch her leave and she did not take kindly to such
espionage.  She was busy with the careful buttoning of a glove, the
left glove.  The right hand she left bare.

Not fifty steps from Marquette's Drennen laid his hand upon her arm.

"Kiss me, Ygerne," he commanded quietly.

There was little light, but he saw the glint of it upon the pistol in
her hand.

"You know what you would have to pay," she said coolly.  "Is it worth
it?"

For answer he threw out his arms to draw her lithe body close up to
his.  But as her gloved hand struck him across the face she had sprung
back, twisting a little, avoiding him, putting a quick two yards
between them.  He felt, rather than saw, that her pistol, levelled
across the short space separating them, bore full upon his chest.

"Wait!  Listen to me.  You must listen."

She was no longer calm.  He could hear her panting, whether from the
exertion of snatching herself away from him or from the tense grip of
whatever emotion was playing upon her nerves he could not tell.

"Don't you know that I mean what I say?  That I can kill you, that I
will kill you if you dare insult me further?"

"I know only one thing," he told her, his voice sterner than she had
heard it before.  "The King of Fools has put a mad desire into my
brain.  And you have helped him.  I am always ready to pay for whatever
I get and I am not used to haggling over the price."

"I have told you that I would kill you if you dared!" she flashed the
words at him.

"And I," he retorted coolly, "told you that I'd kiss you if you dared
come with me.  Were we both bluffing?  Or neither, Ygerne?"

"Coward!" she panted, and he knew how the red lips curled to the words.
Even that picture but made madder the mad longing upon him.  With his
ugly laugh at the odd twist of feminine logic which had applied such an
epithet at such a time, he came swiftly toward her.

As he came on Ygerne fired.  The darkness was thick, but it seemed to
her frowning eyes that he had foreseen the shot at the second before it
was fired and had swung his shoulders to the side so that it cut by him
without touching him.  Again she fired; but now he was upon her and his
hand had struck the pistol aside so that the questing bullet sped
skywards.  His arms were about her, drawing her tighter until they hurt
her; she heard his breathing as his lips sought hers.  Her right arm
was held down at her side but her left hand struck at his face, tore at
him, thrust him each possible quarter of an inch away, shielded her
face.  Again and again she struck, an unthinkable strength in her tense
body.

The door at Marquette's was thrown open and half a dozen men rushed out
into the road.  The girl felt Drennen's arm relax, the right arm about
her shoulders.  With a quick movement she slipped free of it.

"Who shot?" called one of the men.  "What's wrong?"

Ygerne, two paces from Drennen's side, answered very quietly, her
coolness amazing him.

"I fired.  It was a wager with Mr. Drennen.  I shot at a wolf.  I think
I missed.  Didn't I, Mr. Drennen?"

Drennen did not answer.  The men in the road muttered among themselves,
guessed something of the truth, laughed and went back into the house.
Drennen walked with Ygerne to her own door.  As he lifted his hat she
threw open the door and the light streamed across his face.  She saw
that it was white and that his lips were set tight.  Her eyes went
quickly to the white silk shirt he had that day bought of Marquette.
There was a widening splotch of red at the side, below the shoulder.

"Are you badly hurt?" she asked coolly.

"I don't know.  I guess not.  Good night, Ygerne."

"I thought that somewhere in you there was the soul of a gentleman,"
she said, her voice rising in clear scorn.  "You are nothing but brute!"

"Nothing but brute," he repeated after her harshly.  "You are quite
right."

She looked at him fixedly a moment.  Meeting her eyes he saw a swift
change come.  She was smiling at him now quite as though nothing
unpleasant had arisen during a commonplace evening; she even put out
her hand, the ungloved one which had shot him two minutes ago, and said
lightly:

"I haven't thanked you for a very pleasant evening, Mr. Drennen.  It is
one I shall not forget soon.  Good night."

For a moment he made no answer.  Instead he stood looking steadily,
curiously at her.  Then suddenly he stooped a little, caught up her
hand and brushed it lightly with his lips; the right, ungloved hand.
Then he turned away.

She saw that he steadied himself by the fence about Marquette's yard
and now was moving slowly toward his dugout.  He had forgotten to put
on his hat and still held it crumpled in his hand.  She stood for a
little while staring after him.  Then she went into the house, closing
the door softly.

Drennen, making his slow way homeward, met the men Lemarc and Sefton in
a place where the light from an open door streamed across the road.
Before Lemarc cried out Drennen had seen the working muscles of his
face; the man was in the grip of a terrible rage.

"Damn you," cried Lemarc wildly.  "What have you done?  That was
Ygerne's gun; I know it.  If you have laid a hand on her . . ."

"Stand aside, you fool," snapped Drennen, less angry at Lemarc than at
himself for his own physical weakness.

"I tell you," shouted Lemarc, his hand whipping out from under his coat
and upward, the lamp rays from the house running down the keen
two-edged steel, "if you . . ."

"Shut up, Marc."  It was Captain Sefton's voice, sharp and threatening
and steady with its cold anger.  Drennen, looking to him, saw in his
face a fury no less than Lemarc's but held under control.  "Things are
bad enough as they are."

"What do I care?" snarled Lemarc, wrenching at the hand Sefton had shot
out to his arm.  "If you think I'll stand for everything . . ."

"You'll stand for anything I say stand for," Sefton said coolly.
"Remember that, Lemarc.  Besides, Ygerne's all right.  She can take
care of herself, my boy.  Come on."

Grumbling, Lemarc allowed himself to be led away.  Drennen passed on
and to his dugout.  He found his bunk in the darkness and sat down upon
the edge of it, resting, breathing heavily, his weakness grown already
into giddy nausea.  Finally, feeling the blood hot against his flesh
and knowing that he must get it stopped, he struck a match and lighted
a candle.  With fingers shaking a little he tore his shirt away at the
side and found the hurt.  A little, contemptuous grunt escaped him as
he made out just how bad it was.  The bullet had merely ripped along
his side, inflicting a shallow surface wound, coming the nearest thing
in the world to missing him altogether.  Had he not been pitifully
nerveless from another wound not ten days old and his strength
exhausted from his first active day since it had been given to him, he
could have laughed at this and at the girl who had fired it.  He
stopped the bleeding as best he might, drew a rude bandage about his
body, and sank back on his bunk dizzy and sick.

"And now," he muttered disgustedly, "because I have been a damned fool
over a pretty cat with a red mouth and poisonous claws I've got another
week of hell before I can go out on the trail again."

The knowledge that he was a fool was no new knowledge to Drennen.  He
sneered at himself for staking his life against a chance woman's lips,
and, snarling, put out his candle.  He drew the tumbled covers of his
bed about him, of neither strength nor will to undress or to go and
close the door he had left open.  He wanted to sleep; to wipe out the
memory of this day's folly as he sought to lose the memory of all other
days.  He wanted his strength back because of the mere animal instinct
of life, not because life was a pretty thing.

But he did not sleep.  His was that state of weakness and exhaustion of
a battered body which fends off immediate, utter restfulness.  He had
shut the gates of his mind to the girl, Ygerne.  But it was as though
his hands, holding the gates shut, were powerless, and her hands,
dragging at them that she might enter, were strong.  With weariness and
faintness came a light fever.

Through his fever the girl passed and repassed all night.  He saw her
as she had stood yonder on the mountain side, at the foot of the
rainbow.  He saw her as she had stepped out to meet him when he had
gone to Marquette's for her, as she had sat across the table from him.
Her white arms flashed at him, her white throat and bare shoulders
shone through a blur of wandering fancies.  Her red mouth was before
him through the long hours, luring him now, the lips blossoming into a
kiss; mocking him now; laughing with him, her cheeks dimpling as she
laughed; laughing at him, hard as carved coral.  All night the grey
mystery of her eyes was upon him, their expression ever shifting, now
filled with promise like dawn skies, now vague with threats like grey
depths of ocean over hidden rocks.

When his will broke down in his utter weakness and he gave over trying
to sleep, he drew himself up against the wall which was head-board for
his bunk, lighted his candle and filled his pipe.  Smoking slowly, the
candle light in his eyes, the objects of his dugout brought into sudden
harsh reality, he drove his mind away from the girl and sent it to the
gold which he had discovered in its hidden place in the mountains.  Now
he could tell himself calmly that a few days of inactivity didn't
matter.  A few more days and he would be himself again; and then he
might follow what path of life he chose, because he would be a rich
man.  And then he grew drowsy and dozed, only to have Ygerne Bellaire
slip back into his befogged imaginings with her white shoulders, her
grey eyes and her red mouth.

When in the faint light before the dawn the sick yellow flame of the
second candle was dying out Drennen was making his way to Joe's.  He
drank his coffee and then drove himself to eat two bowls of mush.  His
face was so bloodless and drawn that Joe stared at him as at a ghost.
Each time that Drennen moved he felt a burning pain in his side as
though the wound were tearing open afresh.

The forenoon he spent in his dugout, dozing a little, but for the most
part staring moodily out of his open door at the muddy waters of the
Little MacLeod.  He was aware, toward noon, of an unusual bustle and
stir in the Settlement.  Men were arriving, almost in a steady stream,
a few on horseback, the major part on foot.  There floated out to him
loud voices from Père Marquette's store; they were drinking there.  He
wondered idly what lay back of this human influx.  He was too sick to
care greatly.

He had left word with Joe to send the boy with lunch at noon.  The boy
came in shortly after one o'clock, explaining that there had been such
a rush at the counter that Joe couldn't let him go sooner.  Drennen
cursed him and drove him out, asking no questions.

The human tide sweeping into the Settlement rose steadily during the
afternoon.  A street which had been deserted twenty-four hours ago was
now jammed from side to side.  Drennen came to understand dully as the
day wore on that there could be but one explanation; a rush like this
meant that some fool had dropped his pick into a vein of gold and word
of it had flashed across the mountains.  Even then, his pain and
exhaustion and giddy sickness were such that he did not realise that he
himself was to thank for the pouring of hundreds of men into MacLeod's.

When at last the true explanation did dawn upon him he reached out for
his pipe, stuffed the bowl full of his tobacco and leaned back upon his
bunk, his eyes frowning, his lips hard about his pipe stem.  So, silent
and brooding, he waited, knowing that it was to expect too much of
human endurance to think that they would let him alone much longer.

The first man to visit him thrust through the doorway unceremoniously
and coming straight to Drennen's side said bluntly, "I am Madden,
Charles Madden of the Canadian Mining Company.  Maybe you've heard of
me?"

Drennen eyed him insolently, taking stock of the fresh cheeks, the keen
blue eyes, the square, massive, masterly jaw, the assertive air, the
clothing which was civilisation's conventional garb and which in the
matter alone of heavy laced boots made concession to the mountains.
The man was young, perhaps had not yet gotten into his thirties, and
none the less had already that dominance of personality belonging to a
seasoned captain of industry.  Drennen, drawing at his pipe, maintained
his silence.

"Well?" demanded Charlie Madden.

He whipped at one gloved hand with the gauntlet he held in the other
and stared at Drennen impatiently.  He had just arrived and had made no
delay in coming to the dugout; Drennen noted the dust of his ride upon
his face, the spurs still upon his boots.  The atmosphere he bore with
him was one of business urgency.

"Damn it, man," snapped Madden, "I've got something else to do besides
smother in your hovel.  I'm here to talk business."

He flung himself into the solitary chair in the one-room place, jerked
his head about, saw that the door was open, got up and closed it, and
came back to his chair.  Drennen, eyeing him with steady hostility, did
not open his lips.

"Now," and Madden had tossed gauntlets and hat to the floor beside him,
"I'm anxious to get this thing over with.  You've struck gold, they
tell me?  Let's see the colour of it."

"What's your proposition?" Drennen asked carelessly.

Madden laughed his stock-in-trade laugh; it was intended to make the
other man feel vaguely that he was talking nonsense to a seer.

"Do you think I run around with a proposition to make every prospector
who thinks he's found a bonanza?  Before I know where the claim is or
see the dirt out of it?"

Drennen lay back a little, his hands clasped behind his head.

"I know something of your company and your methods," he said coolly.
"You're a pack of damned thieves.  And, since you ask it, I do think
that you run around all loaded with your proposition.  Your game is to
pay a man enough to get him drunk and keep him drunk for a spell;
that's his cash bonus; he gets the rest in stocks.  Then you break him
with assessments and kick him out.  I'm not talking business to-day,
thank you," he ended drily.

Madden looked at him keenly, making a swift appraisal which had in it
something of the nature of a readjustment.  Then he laughed again.

"Look here, Mr. Drennen," he said confidentially, leaning close to the
man on the bunk, "my company has a bigger financial backing than any
other in the country.  We are willing to take what we can get as cheap
as we can get it, of course I'll admit that.  At the same time if
you've got a gold mine we're ready and we're able to pay all it's
worth.  You've got the brains to know that the day has passed for a man
to work his own claim if there's anything in it.  You've got to sell
out to somebody.  Why not to the Canadian?"

Now, Madden, having heard the tale of Drennen's dice game with a canvas
bag of virgin gold backing his play and of a fight in which Drennen had
gone down from a bullet fired by Ernestine Dumont, had made up his mind
that in the dugout he would come upon a certain type of man which he
knew well.  He expected to find Drennen half sodden with liquor,
garrulous, boastful and withal easy to handle.  His estimate changed
swiftly, but he altered merely in slight detail his plan of attack.
After a keen glance about the dugout his words came smoothly.  Drennen
was no illiterate miner but he was sorely ridden by poverty, just the
same.

"Give me your word that you've really found the real stuff," Madden
said, "and we'll talk business.  Oh, that isn't the ordinary course, to
be sure, but I'm willing to make an exception after seeing you; you are
not the ordinary man.  Come out with me to Lebarge; we'll pick up a
lawyer and sign some papers.  For your protection and mine, understand.
Then we'll have a look at your claim.  Incidentally," his hand coming
suddenly from his pocket with a roll of bills in it, "you can put in
your own expense account, and," with a wink, "you can go as far as you
like.  I'm a generous cuss with the company's money when they give me
full swing."

Drennen put out his hand; Madden urbanely stripped off one of the bills
and handed it to him.  It was for fifty dollars.  Drennen struck a
match, set fire to a corner of the bill and used the lighter to get his
pipe going.  Madden, upon his feet in pink-faced wrath, was silenced by
Drennen's voice booming out angrily:

"So you think you can bait me into your lawyer trap with jingling
pennies in a tin cup!  Look at that, man; look at that!"

With a sudden gesture he had caught out his canvas bag and had poured
the heavy contents upon the bunk beside him.  Madden bent forward
quickly, and a little gasp came into his throat, a new, more vivid tide
of pink into his cheeks as he saw.  Drennen shoved fifty dollars in
minted gold to one side.

"There's your change," he said crisply.  And when Madden's fingers had
reluctantly dropped the nuggets back to the quilt, "And as for
propositions, I'm the man who's making them.  I'm to be left alone to
file on my claims and protect myself first.  Then, if you're on hand,
you can look my property over.  I'm going to sell; if you're the first
company to take up my offer it might be that I'd sell to you."

"And your proposition?" demanded Madden sharply.

"An assurance that the mine will be worked; ten per cent of the total
number of shares in my name; a further assurance of exemption from
assessment for ten years; and a little bonus."

Madden used his stock-in-trade laugh again.  It was well that he made
use of it when he did; else he would not have been able to summon it up
from his paralysed throat.  For he put a question and got a brief,
direct answer, and the answer affected him much as a fist in the pit of
the stomach might have done.

"What sort of cash bonus?" was the question.

"One hundred thousand dollars!" was the cool rejoinder.




CHAPTER XI

THE WITCHERY OF YGERNE

Charlie Madden of the Canadian Mining Company wasn't the man to
squander time which might be valuable in idle surmises.  Ten minutes
after leaving Drennen he had sent a man on horseback scurrying down the
hundred miles of trail to Lebarge.  The man carried a letter to the
General Manager.  The letter ran in part:

". . . I don't know whether the man is crazy or not.  Having seen his
specimens I'm rather inclined to think he's not.  But he's fool enough
to have shown the stuff before filing on his claim.  Send me Luke and
Berry and Jernigan on the run.  Drennen is laid up with a couple of
bullet holes in him.  I'll keep him from filing as long as I can; the
rest is up to the men you send me."


Then, his eyes filled with the glint of his purpose, his jaw seeming to
grow lean with the determination upon him, Madden made himself as
comfortable as conditions permitted in MacLeod's Settlement and settled
down to a period of unsleeping watchfulness.  He took a room at Père
Marquette's.

Before the crowd in the camp had thronged Joe's Lunch Counter toward
evening the fever of excitement had grown into a delirium.  Madden
hadn't talked; Drennen hadn't talked.  And yet the word flew about
mysteriously that Drennen had asked ten per cent of the stock of his
mine and a hundred thousand dollars cash!  "God!  He had driven his
pick into the mother lode of the world!"  That was the thing which many
men said in many ways, over and over and over again.  The Canadian
Mining Company was trying to frame a deal with him; Madden had rushed a
man to Lebarge with some sort of message; two other big mining concerns
had their representatives in town.  And Drennen hadn't filed on his
claim; the gold lay somewhere in the mountains offering itself to
whatever man might find it.  A man who could not buy his own grubstake
to-day might "own the earth" to-morrow.

Before darkness came MacLeod's Settlement, seething with restless
humanity for a few hours, was again pouring itself out into the
wilderness in many erratic streams.  And no man left who had not first
gone by Père Marquette's and seen the nuggets which the old man had put
into his one glass-topped show case, and no man but carried the picture
of them dancing before his eyes as he went.  Kootanie George, who had
had no word for Ernestine Dumont since she had shamed him, went with
them.  Ramon Garcia, having kissed Ernestine Dumont's hand, went with
them.  And, oddly enough, Kootanie George and Ramon Garcia went
together as trail pardners.

The one man who evinced no concern at what was going on was David
Drennen.  His calm was like that of a chip caught and held motionless
for a little in the centre of a whirlpool while scores of other chips
gyrated madly about him; himself the pivot about which all rotated
while he seemed unmoved.  There were hundreds of sharp-eyed old
prospectors looking for the thing he had found; if they in turn found
it it would become theirs and be lost to him.

The Settlement saw more strangers in a week than it had ever seen in
the days of its existence before.  The rare opportunity was given to
take stock first hand of men of whom it had talked many times, men
whose names meant something.  Such a man was Charlie Madden with the
fresh cheeks and the way of an old captain of industry.  Such was the
man who came in behalf of the northwestern company.  A man between
fifty and sixty, big bodied, stalwart, stern faced, silent tongued.  An
old prospector from the outside put an end to much speculation by
informing a knot of men that this was old Marshall Sothern; the name
carried weight and brought fresh interest.  Such a man was Ben
Hasbrook, little and dried up and nervous mannered, a power in the
network of ramifications of a big corporation having its head in
Quebec, its tail in Vancouver, its claws everywhere throughout Canada.
These men spelled big interests; these were the lions come to wrest
away the prey which the pack of wolves was ravening for.

Ben Hasbrook trod almost in Charlie Madden's footsteps going to
Drennen; he came away almost immediately, tugging at his beard,
hot-eyed and wrathful.  Marshall Sothern, having had a word with Père
Marquette, a word with Lunch Counter Joe, having seen Hasbrook's
retreat, frowned thoughtfully and postponed any interview he may have
desired with No-luck Drennen.  He paid for a room at Joe's for a week
in advance, went into solitary session, smoking his blackened pipe
thoughtfully, his powerful fingers beating a long tattoo upon the sill
of the window through which his eyes could find Drennen's dugout.  With
full square beard, iron grey hair, massive countenance, there was
something leonine about Marshall Sothern.  It appeared reasonable that
if he were going into the battle against Madden and Hasbrook, then
Madden and Hasbrook would need their wits about them.  He seemed at
once gifted with infinite patience and unalterable will.  He did not
move from his window until he had seen David Drennen come out of his
dugout, making his slow way to supper at Joe's.  Sothern's eyes, as
keen as knife blades, studied the dark face, probing deep for a
knowledge of the man himself.  It was as though he were making his
first move in the game from ambush, as though he felt that the most
important thing in the world just now were a thorough understanding of
the man with whom he must deal.  He had had Marquette's estimate and
Joe's . . . now he sought to form his own. . . .

There was a hard smile upon Sothern's face as Drennen passed on, a
smile not without a strange sort of satisfaction, flashing a quick
light into the eyes.

"By God, I like him!" he burst out softly.  "So you're David Drennen,
are you?  Well, my boy, the hounds of hell are after you . . . that's
in your face.  But it's in your face, too, that you can stand on your
own feet.  Hm.  In this game I'm going to keep an eye on Madden and
Hasbrook, and both eyes on you."

But, despite the dynamic possibilities of action and strife and history
making, the days went by without event.  Drennen came his three times
daily to Joe's for his meals, spent the major part of his time in his
dugout or taking short, lonely walks up and down the river, coaxing
back his strength.  He saw much of Lemarc and Sefton upon the street,
noting that they, like himself, had stayed behind, letting the other
fools go on their fools' errands, sensing that their craft bade them
linger to watch him.  He saw Ygerne several rimes, always from a
distance, and made no attempt to speak with her.  He saw Madden, Ben
Hasbrook and Marshall Sothern, grew accustomed to the knowledge that
they were playing their waiting game, not unlike Sefton and Marc
Lemarc, and gave them little attention.  They didn't interest him; when
he was ready he would deal with them and until that time came need not
waste his thoughts upon them.

But all of the stubborn will of a David Drennen could not keep his mind
away from Ygerne Bellaire though he held his feet back from taking him
to her, though he drove his eyes away from her.  He had let down the
bars once for her to come into his life as he had let them down for no
man or other woman in years.  He had yielded to a mood, thinking that
it was only a mood and that so far as he was concerned she would cease
to exist when he willed it.  He found himself, however, seeking to
explain her presence here, companioned by such men as Marc Lemarc and
Captain Sefton; he sought to construct the story of her life before she
had come into this land where women from her obvious station in life
did not come; he wrestled with the enigma of her character,
unconsciously striving to find extenuation for the evil he deemed was
in her.

"We are a bad lot here," he muttered once after long puzzling.  "A bad
lot.  Some of us are bad because we are weak and the world has tempted.
Some of us are bad because we are strong and the world has driven.
Some of us are cruel, like steel; some of us are treacherous, like
poison.  Where do you fit in, Ygerne Bellaire?"

Once only had he met her face to face on the street, many men marking
their meeting.  Coming unexpectedly upon her he had been tugged two
ways by his emotions, a division and sign of weakness which was no
usual thing in him.  But he had caught a quick expression upon her face
in time, and had seen that she was going to pass him with no sign of
recognition.  He had deliberately turned his back upon her.  He had
heard a man laugh, and a little spurt of venomous pleasure leaped up in
his heart as he knew that she too had heard and as he pictured the
blood whipped into her face.

And now again he came upon her all unexpectedly; this time she was
alone and there were no men near to see.  He stopped, staring down at
her insolently.  She was sitting upon a fallen log, a mile from the
Settlement down the Little MacLeod, her eyes fixed upon the racing
water with that expression which tells that they see nothing of what is
before them.  She had not heard him until he came quite close to her.
She started as she looked up, ready upon the instant to leap to her
feet.  Then she settled back quite calmly, an insolence in her eyes not
unlike his.  She waited for him to speak, and presently, again
conscious of the tugging two ways, he did so.

"There's a man in camp named Charlie Madden," he said with a
viciousness which evidently puzzled her until he had gone on.  "You've
met him, I dare say?"

"Yes," she answered coolly.  "He asked me to have dinner with him last
night."

Drennen's laugh jeered at her.

"You don't burn daylight, do you?" he sneered.  "The man has money; he
is young; he looks quite the pink-cheeked, impressionable pup, as good
as a gilded youth on Broadway.  How did he accept the wonder tale of
the virgin purity of your red lips, Ygerne?"

"I didn't accept his invitation," she retorted as coolly as before.

"Why not?" he said sharply, a little hotly.  "Couldn't you tell that
the fool has money?"

"I didn't like him," she said.

"Ho, you didn't like him!"  His tone drove a little higher colour into
her face, but she kept the serene indifference in her half-smile.  "But
you did dine with me . . . because you liked me, no doubt!"

"Let us say," she replied a trifle wearily, her eyes going back to the
river, "that I was lonely; and that I was prepared to like you, Mr.
Drennen."

He found himself in a sudden flaring anger.  The anger was
unreasonable, but it but burned the hotter for all that.  He had sought
to take a joy out of being brutal to the girl, just why he was very far
from understanding.  Now the joy did not come as he had expected it.
In his anger there was a sense of insane resentment against her that
she was just a girl, not a man as he would have her now so that he
might give her the lie and make her suffer physically by beating at her
with his hard fists.  In the blind rage upon him he blamed her for
having come into his life at all even though she were merely a passing
figure through a little corner of it.  The years, while they had
brought no happiness to him, had at least given him a calm indifference
to all things; now for many days and nights she had broken that calm.
In his heart he cursed her, his emotion rising toward a fierce,
passionate hatred.

"In hell's name," he cried abruptly, his voice ringing with a new
menace in it, "what are you doing here?  Why don't you go on?  What are
you staying here for?  Is the world so damned small that you've got to
come and preen yourself under my eyes?"

For a moment she did not answer.  The expression in the eyes turned
upon him changed swiftly.  There was a quick fear, gone in a flash in
pure wonder.  All this he saw clearly as too he saw a flicker of
amusement.  And back of the amusement which maddened him were other
things, emotions hinted darkly, baffling him.

"The other day," she said steadily in the face of his rage, "you
contented yourself by commanding me to take myself off of the mountain
back there.  Now you request me to get out of Canada?  Or out of
America?  Or the western hemisphere, which is it?  And, kind sir, _why_
is it?"

Looking up at him, to show him how little he moved her, to make him
doubt if he had read aright when he had thought it was fear in her
eyes, she laughed.  The laughter, welling up softly, musically, from
deep in the round white throat, the defiant posture, head thrown back,
something of the vague, sweet intimacy in it, affected him strangely.
His face reddened.  His hands shut spasmodically, clenching hard,
lifting a little from his sides.  Instinctively she drew back, her own
hand slipping into her bosom, a quick flutter of fear in her heart that
he was actually going to strike her.

"Why?"  His lips were drawn back from his teeth; his face was more evil
in the grip of the passion upon him than she had ever seen it before;
his voice harsh and ugly.  "Because you come when you do now, a
thousand years too soon or a dozen years too late!  Because I hate you
as I have never learned how to hate a man no matter what thing he had
done!  I don't know what there is in me that is stronger than I am and
that makes me keep my hands off your throat.  Do you know what you have
done, Ygerne, with the infernal witchery of you?  You have made me love
you, me, David Drennen, who knows there is no such thing as love in a
rotten world!  I want you in my arms; I want to kiss that red mouth of
yours; I want to kill any man who so much as looks at you!  My life was
as I would have it; in a few days I would be a rich man with all of the
power of a rich man; . . . and then you came.  Why do I hate you, your
eyes, your mouth, your body and your brain?  Why?"  He broke off in a
laugh which showed what his wounds, his sickness, his passion had done
for him, and she drew still further back from him, shuddering.  "I hate
you. . . .  By God! because you've made of me a fool like the others!
because you have made me love you!"

A frenzy of delirium was upon him.  She did not know whether the man
were sane or not; he did not care.  But he knew that he spoke the
truth.  Twice had he yielded to her, and he was not the man to yield
easily.  Once, and he had thought it a passing light mood, when he had
let down the bars for her to come in.  Now that recklessly he flung
open the flood gates which had dammed his own emotions, allowing the
headlong torrent to sweep away everything with it.  It was madness; it
was folly; it was insanity for a man like David Drennen to let his
heart be snared out of him by the girl upon whom he had looked so few
times.  And yet, be it what else it might be, it was the simple truth.

"Laugh at me, why don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of
perspiration gathered on his forehead.  "Or blush and stammer any of
the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his
supreme idiocy.  Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it.  Are you a
good woman or a bad?  I don't know.  Are you generous or mean?  I don't
know.  Are you loyal and stanch and true--or treacherous and
contemptible?  I don't know.  I don't know a thing about you, and yet I
let you slip into my life one day and the next rile up all of the mud
which was settling to the bottom.  Go and brag of it to your two
hangdogs.  But, by heaven," and his fist smashed down into an open
palm, "you and your dogs keep out of my way.  If the three of you are
here another twenty-four hours I'll drive them out and with them any
other man you so much as look at!"

He stared at her for a moment, grown suddenly silent and white faced.
He lifted his arms as though he would sweep her up into them.  Then he
dropped them so that they fell to his side like dead weights and swung
about, turning his back upon her, going swiftly upstream toward the
Settlement.

Across the river came the call of a robin.  A splash of blue fire in
the willows was a blue bird's wing.  A solitary butterfly made a half
circle about him, passing close to him as though to beat him back with
its delicate, diaphanous wings.  The pale yellowish buds everywhere
were changing to a lusty verdant.  Air and grass were filled with
questing insect life thrilling upward with little voices.  The snows
were slipping, slipping from the mountainsides, the waters rising in
river and lake.  The sap was astir in shrub and tree, bursting upward
joyously.  Nature had breathed her soft command to all of the North
Woods; every creature and thing of life in the North Woods had heard
the call.




CHAPTER XII

MERE BRUTE . . . OR JUST PLAIN MAN?

Ygerne, sitting very still, watched Drennen until he had passed around
a bend in the river and was lost to her sight behind a clump of
willows.  His impassioned outburst had been too frenzied not to have
moved her powerfully.  But the expression in the eyes which followed
him was too complex to give any key to the one emotion standing above
the others in her breast.  When she could see him no longer she rose
and followed slowly.

Because the course of the Little MacLeod is full of twists and kinks,
spine of ridge and depression of ravine thrusting the stream aside or
welcoming it closer, she had no further view of him until they were
both near the Settlement, Drennen himself already abreast of the first
building at this end of the camp, his own dugout.  She thought that he
was going to stop at his cabin; then she saw that he had passed on.
She had suspected that the man was delirious with the fever upon him;
that his brain had reeled from the impact of the blows showered upon it
and had staggered from its throne.  Now the suspicion came to her that
Drennen had come to her in his cups; that the thing which had loosened
his tongue and distorted his vision was nothing more nor less than
whiskey.

He was lurching as he walked, but bearing on swiftly.  She had not been
mistaken when she had thought that he had turned in toward his cabin.
But in this his action had been involuntary.  He had reeled, had paused
as he caught and steadied himself, had gone on drunkenly.

There were a score of men up and down the short street.  Already some
of them had marked his coming.  Ygerne turned hurriedly to the left,
put the line of houses between her and the street, passing back doors
quickly on her way to Père Marquette's.

Only once did Drennen stop.  He ran his hand across his eyes as though
to brush away some filmy fogginess of vision.  There was impatience in
the gesture.  With a little grunt of satisfaction he went on.  He had
seen both Lemarc and Sefton talking with other men half way up the
street.

As he passed Joe's he was lurching more and more, his walk grown
markedly unsteady.  His eyes were flaming and growing red; his face was
splotched with colour, hot, angry colour; he was muttering to himself,
little broken, feverish, illogical outpourings of the seething passion
within him.  He passed three men who were lounging and smoking.  He did
not turn his eyes toward them.  They were the three big mining men,
Madden and Hasbrook and Sothern.  They saw him, their eyes following
him quickly, each man with his own personal interest.

"Drunk, eh?" laughed Charlie Madden.  "Suppose we draw straws to see
who takes him in tow!"

Hasbrook's sharp featured face grew shrewd in speculation, his tongue
clicking nervously.  Marshall Sothern's shaggy brows lowered a bit;
Madden and Hasbrook had looked from Drennen to each other and to him;
he alone kept his eyes hard upon the man making his way with unsteady
stubbornness up the street.

When a man stood in his way Drennen thrust out his arm, pushing him
aside.  His eyes grew ever the more terrible with the madness of the
rage upon him, bloodshot and menacing.  They lost Lemarc and Sefton,
wandered uncertainly across the blurr of faces, glowered triumphantly
as again they found the men he sought.

He drew up with a little jerk, not ten steps from the two men who as
usual were standing close together.  Such had been the strange
impressiveness of his approach that now he was greeted by a deep
silence.  The only sound was his own hard breathing, then his words
when he burst out violently.

As though his tongue were a poisoned whip he lashed them with it.
Burning denunciation exploding within his heated brain was flung off in
words to bite like spraying vitriol.  His voice rose higher, shriller,
grown more and more discordant.  He cursed them until the blood ran
into Lemarc's cheeks and seeped out of Sefton's.  And when at last
words failed and he choked a moment he flung himself upon them,
bellowing inarticulate, half-smothered wrath.

Men drew back from before him.  It was not their fight and they knew
how and when to shrug their shoulders and watch.  Lemarc, running his
hand under his coat for his knife, was struck down before the hand
could come in sight again.  Drennen's searching fist had found the
man's forehead and the sound of the blow was like a hammer beating
against rock.  Either Sefton had no arms upon him or had not the time
to draw.  He could only oppose his physical strength against the
physical strength of a man who was an Antaeus from the madness and
blood lust upon him.  Sefton's white face went whiter, chalky and sick
as Drennen's long arms encircled his body.  Lemarc was rising slowly,
his knife at last in his hand when Sefton's body, hurled far out,
struck the ground.

Drennen was not fighting as a man fights.  Rather were his actions
those of some enraged, cautionless beast.  Rushing at Lemarc he beat
fiercely at a man who chanced to stand in his way, and the man went
down.  Lemarc was on his feet now, his knife lifted.  And yet Drennen,
bare handed, was rushing on at him.  Sefton was up too, and there was a
revolver in his hand.  But Drennen, snarling, his fury blind and raging
higher, took no heed of the weapon's menace.  The thing in Lemarc's
eyes, in Sefton's, was the thing a man must know when he sees it; and
yet Drennen came on.

But another man saw and understood before it was too late.  Marshall
Sothern who had followed Drennen with long strides, was now close to
his side.  The old man's stalwart form moved swiftly, coming between
Drennen and Sefton.  With a quickness which men did not look for in a
man of his age, with a strength which drove up from those who saw a
little grunt of wonder, he put out his great arms so that they were
about Drennen's body, below his shoulders, catching his arms and
holding them tight against his ribs.

"Stop!" burst out Sothern's deep-lunged roar.  "Can't you see the man
is sick?  By God, I'll kill any man who lays a hand on him!"

Speaking he hurled his greater weight against Drennen, driving him
back.  Perhaps just then the strength began to run out of the younger
man's body; or perhaps some kindred frenzy was upon Marshall Sothern.
Drennen, struggling and cursing, gave back; back another step; and
then, wilting like a cut flower, went down, the old man falling with
and upon him.  As they fell Drennen lay still, his eyes roving
wonderingly from face to face of the men crowding over him.  Then his
gaze came curiously to the face so near his own, the stern, powerful
face of Sothern.  An odd smile touched Drennen's lips fleetingly; he
put out a freed arm so that it fell about Sothern's shoulders, his eyes
closed and consciousness went out of him with a sigh.

"Bring him over to Marquette's."

It was Charlie Madden's voice.  Madden and Hasbrook were crowding their
way close to the two men in the centre of the group, but little behind
Sothern in keeping their eyes upon the man because of whom they were
here, for whom they were prepared to fight jealously.

"Stand back!"

Sothern's answer.  He had risen, stooped a little, gathered Drennen up
in his arms.  After the way of men at such a time there was no giving
back, rather a growing denseness of the packed throng.

"Don't you hear me?" boomed Sothern angrily.  "I say stand back!"

Those directly in front of him, under his eyes, drew hesitantly aside,
stepping obediently to right or left.  Carrying his burden with a
strength equal to that of a young Kootanie George, Marshall Sothern
made his way through the narrow lane they made for him.  But he did not
turn toward Père Marquette's.

"Where are you taking him?" demanded Madden suspiciously, again forcing
his way to Sothern's elbow.  "That's not the way . . ."

"I'm taking him to his own home," said Sothern calmly.  "The only home
he's got, his dugout."

"Oho," cried Madden, suspicion giving place to certainty and open
accusation, while Hasbrook, combing at his beard, was muttering in a
like tone.  "You'll take him off to yourself, will you?  Where you can
do as you damned please with him?  Not much."

Marshall Sothern merely shook his head and moved on, thrusting Madden
to one side with his heavy shoulder.  He was carrying Drennen as one
might carry a baby, an arm about the shoulders, an arm under the knees.
Men offered to help him but he paid no heed to them.  Leonine the man
always looked; to-day he looked the lion bearing off a wounded whelp to
its den.

Expostulating, Madden dogged his heels, the rest following.  Lemarc and
Sefton, speaking together, had dropped far behind; Hasbrook was close
to Madden's elbow.  So they passed down the street.  Ygerne Bellaire,
standing now in front of Marquette's, watched them wonderingly.

Sothern came first to the dugout.  The door being open, he passed in
without stopping.  He laid the inert form down gently and came back to
the door.

"Well?" he demanded, his steady eyes going to Madden.

Madden laughed sneeringly.

"If you think I'm going to stand for a high-handed play like this," he
jeered, "you're damned well mistaken.  You're not the only man who's
got an interest in him.  He doesn't belong to you, old man."

"They'd have killed him if it hadn't been for me," returned Sothern
imperturbably.  "Until he's on his feet and in his mind again he does
belong to me.  We haven't the pleasure of knowing each other very well,
Charlie.  But I can give you my word that when I say a thing I mean it.
If you don't believe it . . . start something."

He stepped outside, closing the door after him softly.  He brought out
his pipe, knocked the dead tobacco from it and filled it afresh,
lighting it before Madden and Hasbrook, consulting together in an
undertone, had found anything to say.  His eyes were calm and steady;
there was even a hint of a smile in them as they rested upon Madden's
eager, angry face.  There had been no threat in his last words.  But he
had meant them.

There was but one door to the dugout; it was closed, and more than
that, Marshall Sothern stood calmly in front of it.  Drennen was inside
and he was going to stay there.  Madden muttered something; Sothern
lifted his brows enquiringly and Madden did not repeat.  The situation
being neither without interest or humour, some of the men laughed.
Madden considered swiftly: Drennen was unconscious; Sothern could do
nothing with him immediately.  He drew Hasbrook aside and the two went
slowly up the street.

Sothern beckoned a man he knew in the crowd, a little fellow named
Jimmie Andrews.

"Get a horse," he said quietly.  "I want you to carry a couple of
letters to Lebarge for me.  If you can't get a horse any other way buy
one.  Come back as soon as you're ready to start.  I'll have the
letters ready."

He turned back into the dugout, closed the door and dropped the wooden
bar into place.  Jimmie Andrews went hastily after a horse and twenty
minutes later rode out of MacLeod's Settlement, headed for the
railroad.  He carried a letter to the Superintendent of the
Northwestern.  The second letter was addressed to Dr. Thos. Levitt.

During the two days which followed the Settlement went tip-toe.  No man
of them saw David Drennen except now and then through the door when
Marshall Sothern had opened it for the warm midday air.  There were men
in the street who offered wagers that he was going to die and, what was
more to the point, that he would die without telling where he had found
gold.  Sothern ministered to him day and night, letting no one in,
having his own meals sent here, sitting by the bunk or at the doorstep,
smoking.  When a passer-by asked, "How's he gettin' along?" Sothern's
answer was always the same: "Slowly."

Drennen had been through much privation and hardship before his
discovery, severe bodily punishment and fatigue thereafter.  On top of
physical suffering had been imposed the mental stress, the veritable
mad agony and strife of the dual emotions which Ygerne had inspired in
him.  It was in the cards that he should come near death; but that he
should not die.  A man's destiny is characterised at times by an
instinct of savagery; it tortures him until his sense of pain is dulled
and lost in unconsciousness; then it lets him grow strong again for
fresh tortures.

After the forty-eight hours had passed Jimmie Andrews had returned
bringing the physician with him.  Dr. Levitt had stayed twenty-four
hours and had gone again, saying that there was nothing for him to do
that Sothern could not do as well.  He rather thought that Drennen's
beautiful physique would pull him through.  But it would take time,
careful attention, rest and properly administered nourishment.

"Can't you get a woman to help?" he asked as he was going.  "I don't
give a damn what kind she is.  One fool of a woman is worth a dozen men
at times like this."  He pocketed his fee, bestowed upon Sothern a
gratuitous wink with the words, "I guess it's a good investment for
you, eh?  Madden and Hasbrook look as sore as saddle boils."

Drennen slept much but restlessly.  When he was awake he stared with
clouded, troubled eyes at the smoke-blackened ceiling or out of the
door at the willows or into Sothern's rugged face.  His fever raged
high, his body burning with it, his brain a turbulent melting pot
wherein strange fancies passed through odd, vaporous forms.  He
confused events of a far-off childhood with occurrences of yesterday.
He was a little boy, gone black-berrying, and Ygerne Bellaire went with
him.  His dugout was a cabin in the Yukon where he had lived a year, or
it was a speeding train carrying him away from an old home and into the
wilderness.  There were times when Marshall Sothern, bending over him,
was an enemy, torturing him.  Times when the old man was his own father
and Drennen put out his hands to him, his face alight.  Times when the
sick man cursed and reviled him.  Times when he broke into shouting
song or laughter or raved of his gold.  But most often did he speak the
name Ygerne; now tenderly, now sneeringly, now with a love that
yearned, now a hatred which shook him terribly and left him exhausted.

The doctor had gotten back to Lebarge before Marshall Sothern sent for
Ygerne.  She came without delay.

"This man is very sick," he told her, bending a searching look at her
from under brows shaggy in thought.  "He talks of you very much.  Does
he love you or does he hate you?"

She looked at him coolly, her gaze defying him to pry into matters
which did not concern him.  He understood the look and said calmly:

"I want him to get well.  There are reasons why he has got to get well."

"I know," she laughed at him.  "Good, golden reasons!"

"If he loves you, as I have a mind he does," Sothern went on quietly,
"I think that you could do more to help him than any one else.  If he
hates you you might do more harm than good.  That is why I asked."

"He is delirious?"

"A great deal of the time; not always."

Her brows puckered thoughtfully.

"I think," she said at last, "that he loves me and hates me . . . both!
But I'll come in and see if I can be of any help.  I, too, have good
reasons for wanting him to live."

So the door to Drennen's dugout was opened to Ygerne Bellaire.  But to
no one else in the Settlement; Marshall Sothern saw to that.  Madden
came, Hasbrook came; but they did not get their feet across the rude
threshold.  They grumbled, Madden in particular.  They accused Sothern
of taking an unfair advantage; of keeping the delirious man under his
own eye and ear that he might seek to steal his secret from him; of
plotting with Ygerne to aid in the same end.  But, say what they might
outside, they did not come in.

"We'll see which is the greater, his love for me or his hate," the girl
had said.  She sat down by the bed, laying her hand softly upon the
bared arm which Drennen had flung out.  He turned, looking at her with
frowning eyes.  In silence she waited.  Sothern, standing by the door,
his eyes watchful as they passed back and forth from her face to
Drennen's, was silent.  For a score of seconds Drennen's gaze was
unfaltering.  Then, with a little sigh, he drew her hand close to him,
rested his cheek against it and went to sleep.  Sothern, looking now at
the girl's face, saw it flush as though with pleasure.

Now she was at the dugout almost as much as Marshall Sothern.  The long
hours of the day she spent at the bedside, going to her own room only
when it grew dark.  And even in the night, once Sothern sent for her.
Drennen had called for her; had grown violent when she was denied to
him and would not be quieted when Sothern sought to reason with him.
So Ygerne, dressing hurriedly, her sweater about her, came.

"Why do you come to me that way?"

Drennen had lifted himself upon his elbow, calling out angrily.

"What do you mean?" she asked wondering.

"In that miserable sweater!" he cried.  "That's good enough for other
women, not for you."

And he made her go back and put on the dress she had worn that night
when she had dined with him.  She argued with him but he insisted.  He
would have none of her in her sweater.

"Oh, well," she said, and went out.  Sothern thought that she had gone
for good.  His eyes narrowed and stared speculatively when in a little
she came in again.  Drennen smiled, openly approved of the Ygerne whom
he had sought to kiss, took her hands, kissed them and holding them
grew quiet.

He grew stronger almost steadily after that.  He had much fever and
delirium, but his wounds healed and he ceased to lose ground as he had
been doing.  In his ravings he made much passionate love to Ygerne, his
tones running from the gentleness of supplication to the flame of hot
avowal.  In lucid moments of sanity he accepted her presence as a quite
natural condition, too utterly exhausted by the periods of delirium
through which he had passed to ask questions.  A few times, indeed, he
railed at her as he had done when he had come upon her on the river
bank.  But for the most part his attitude answered over and over the
question Ygerne had implied when first she had come to his side; his
love was greater than his hate.

Then there came a day when David Drennen was the old David Drennen once
more.  He awoke with clear eyes and clear brain.  He saw both Marshall
Sothern and Ygerne Bellaire.  He closed his eyes swiftly.  He must
think.  As he thought, remembering a little, guessing more, a hard
smile, the old bitter smile came to his lips.  He opened his eyes again
and lifted himself upon his elbow.  The eyes which met Sothern's were
as hard as steel; they ignored the girl entirely.

"I've been sick?" he said coolly.  "Well, I'm not sick any longer.  In
a day or so I'll be around again.  Then I'll pay you for your trouble."

And seeing from the look in Sothern's eyes that the rude insult had
registered he laughed and turned his face away from them.  Sothern and
the girl stepped outside together, without a word.

"He is just plain brute!" the girl cried with passionate contempt.

The old man shook his head gravely.  He laid his hand very gently upon
her shoulder, his unexpected familiarity drawing a quick questioning
look from her.

"Little girl," he said thoughtfully, "he's just plain man, that's all;
man hammered and beaten awry by the vicious little gods of mischance.
If there's anything good left in him it's his love for you.  There is a
time coming when I am going to wield the destinies of one of the
greatest corporations in the West.  My responsibility then, compared to
yours now, will be as a grain of sand to Old Ironhead up yonder."




CHAPTER XIII

YGERNE'S ANSWER

  "The perfume of roses, of little red roses;
    (Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, _corazón_!)
  The laugh of the water who falls in the fountain;
    (Thou art the fountain of love, _corazón_!)
  The brightness of stars, of little stars golden;
    (_Estrella de mi vida_!  My little life star!)
  The shine of the moon through the magnolia tree;
    I am so sad till thou come, _mi amor_!
  _Dios_!  It is sweet to be young and to love!
    More sweet than wine . . . to be young and to love!"


There was tenderness in the voice.  Each note was like the pure sound
of a little gold bell struck softly with a tiny golden hammer.

There had been determination in David Drennen's eye, in his carriage,
in his stride which swiftly bore him onward through the early night
from his own dugout toward the old Frenchman's store.  Not fifty steps
from Marquette's he stopped abruptly, listening to the soft singing.
It was not so dark that he could not make out the slender, exquisite
form of the young Mexican.  Ramon Garcia, wrapped about in his long
coat like a cavalier in a graceful cloak, his face lifted a little, his
head bared, was close to a certain window of Père Marquette's.  Drennen
knew whose window.

With no conscious desire to eavesdrop, merely stopped by an unforeseen
contingency, Drennen stood still.  Garcia, his eyes upon a line of
light under the window shade, did not see him.  It was hardly more than
an instant that Drennen stood there, watching; but the little drama was
enacted before he moved on.

Slowly, while the last notes were fainting away plaintively, the window
was raised.  Drennen saw Ygerne Bellaire, half in light, half in
shadow.  She leaned out.  She was laughing softly.  Garcia, his bow
carrying to the ground his hat which in the dim light appeared to
Drennen's fancy to wear the black plume which would not have been
misplaced there, came closer to the window.  Upon the girl's face was a
gaiety Drennen had not seen there until now; her lips curved to it, her
eyes danced with it.  She had a little meadow flower in her hand;
Drennen wondered if she had been eagerly selecting it from a cluster of
its fellows while Garcia sang.

"You are not real, señor," she said lightly.  "I wonder if you know
that?"

"It is you . . ." he began, his voice charged with the music about
which the man's soul was builded.

"No, no," she laughed.  "You are not real.  You have just wandered out
of an old romance like a ghost; when the sun comes up you'll have to
creep back between dusty covers of a book a hundred years old."

He put out a hand towards hers on the window sill.

"Give me the little flower," he pleaded, southern lover-wise.  "I shall
never let it go away from its place on my heart, though I fear," and
his hand crept a little closer, "that my heart will burst with the joy
of it!"

The little meadow flower went from her fingers to his.

"A flower for your song, señor.  A poor little flower which should have
golden petals."

"Living," he murmured, no heights or depths of sentiment seeming beyond
him, "it shall always be with me, a joy so sweet that it almost kills.
Dead, I shall be happy just to wear it."

She laughed as he caught her hand and kissed it.  The window closed
softly, the shade was drawn down, and Ramon Garcia, hat still in one
hand, the flower in the other, passed down the street, still singing in
a gentle undertone.  Drennen turned abruptly at right angles to the way
he had come and passed out of the Settlement into the darkness under
the trees.

Swiftness and determination had gone out of his stride.  Unconsciously
he allowed his feet to carry him along a well known trail which led
along the flank of the wooded slope.  Once or twice he stopped.  Then
again he moved on, always further, from the Settlement.

He was well again and strong.  Rest and nature had done all they could
for him in a handful of long, quiet days.  He was still twenty pounds
lighter than he should be normally, but he had both feet firmly set in
a smooth highway of convalescence.  The mental and spiritual roadways
were not so smooth or straight.

He had seen much of Ygerne of late.  He had come to know that, wise man
or fool, he loved her.  They had met frequently, at Joe's, upon the
short street, in their walks up and down the river.  They had not
spoken of all that had gone before and there had been as much silence
as talk between them.  He continued to tell himself coolly that he knew
nothing of her, that she might be good or bad, loyal or treacherous.
But he knew that he did not hate her and that he did love her.  He knew
that he was not angry because she had come into his life but that he
was glad.

He knew to-night that his whole spiritual being was made simply of two
elements: of love, which is a white flame in a man like Drennen; of
jealousy, which is a black shadow.  He had been on his way to her, his
mind made up that he would not sleep without telling her of his love.
The sight of Garcia had halted him.  Garcia's singing to her had
awakened a fierce anger within him; his flesh had twitched and
something had seemed to sear hot through it as Garcia's lips touched
her hand.

Now he tried to look at these matters calmly.  He knew that in the fury
which had sent him at Lemarc and Sefton before Marshall Sothern had
gathered up his limp body the driving force had been jealousy.  He knew
that even then, in his delirium, he wanted her all to himself.

Less than a month had passed since first he had seen her and he did not
now know what manner of woman she was.  But he did know that that does
not matter.  His fate had driven him into the North Woods ten years ago
that he might be here when she came; her destiny had brought her to
MacLeod's Settlement from New Orleans to him.  Because the greatest of
all laws lies hidden under a clutter of little things that law is none
the less great or real.  He had grown to see as a miraculous
manifestation of this law even the fact that he and Ygerne Bellaire had
been born in the same generation. . . .  Stern-minded men of science,
whose creed is to doubt all things until they are proven in such wise
as an objective brain can accept them as incontrovertible, see no
miracle in the fact that a certain female moth, left alone upon a
mountain top, will draw to herself a male mate from mountainous miles
away.  Even in the insect world there is a silent call which is a voice
of destiny.  Omnipotence is not above concerning itself with the
embrace of two tiny, fragile-winged creatures in the darkness of the
solitudes.  Surely there is an urge and yearning of human souls which
knows not distance and obstacles, which brings together man and his
mate.

These were strange, new thoughts to David Drennen and yet they came
naturally as an old knowledge set aside, half forgotten, ultimately
vividly recalled.  He loved Ygerne; she must love him.  Therein alone
could lie the explanation of his presence here and of hers.  When he
had quitted his dugout this evening there had been more than
determination in his heart; there had been confidence.

And now?  He wandered aimlessly.  Determination and confidence had both
left him.  Garcia had sung to her and the singing had pleased.  Garcia
had made love to her in his song and she had thrown open her window.
Garcia had kissed her hand and she had given him a flower.

Deep in his troubled thoughts Drennen had stopped a third time.  He was
in thick shadow and saw two figures that had followed him.  He made out
that here were Lemarc and Sefton as they came on, cautiously and
silently.  This thing was to be expected; these men were plucking with
greedy fingers as fortune's robe and for such as they he was one to be
watched.  He saw them pass on along the trail; his still form in the
shadows was blotted out from them by the tall boles of the trees.  His
eyes followed them a moment, then lost them.  Already he had forgotten
them.  His thoughts went back to Ygerne Bellaire, to the scene at the
window.

The moon pushed a great golden disc up over the ridge.  It was at the
full and made glorious patterns of light through the forest.  Little
voices of the night which he had not heard until now began to thrill
and quiver under the soft light.  It was as though the North Woods were
filled with a secret, pigmy people who were moon worshippers; as though
now they greeted their goddess with an elfin chant of praise.

A strange sadness fastened itself upon the man.  The beauty of the
night touched him deeply.  It brought with its stillness an
unaccustomed emotion of melancholy.  He was suddenly lonely.  The night
was rarely perfect and yet it wanted something.  It was complete yet it
was empty.  The moonrise, the golden glory of stars set against the
soft bosom of the sky, brought a sense of lack of something.  It
touched the soul and yet did not satisfy.  It awoke a sort of soul
thirst and hunger in him.  Upon him was the old yearning, the yearning
of the man for his mate, that longing experienced never so poignantly
as in a spot like this where a man is alone with the woodland.

Dimly conscious of many emotions mingled and confused, David Drennen
was keenly awake to the sweeping alteration which a few days had
effected in him.  Not that he fully understood that which he
recognised.  He was inclined to look upon himself as a different man;
like many a man before him whom love or hate, a great joy or a great
disaster, had appeared to make over, he was but experiencing the
sensation resultant from the emancipation of a certain portion of his
being which had existed always until now in a state of bondage, silent
and hidden.

He stood a long time, very still.  So motionless that when the moon had
driven the shadows back and found him out he looked a brother to the
inanimate objects about him.  But when at last he moved, while slowly,
it was without hesitation.  He was going to Ygerne.

Marquette's store was closed, the doors locked.  There was a light from
Ygerne's window, another light from a second window, Madden's room.
Drennen passed about the house and came to the door of the living room.
There was no light shining under the door, but he knocked.  In a little
Mère Jeanne, a wrap thrown about her, came in answer.

"May I see Miss Bellaire?" he said simply.  "Will you tell her that it
is important?"

Mère Jeanne looked at him shrewdly, with little hesitation made up her
mind that he came as a lover, left him at the door and went to the
girl.  A moment later Ygerne entered the little living room.  Drennen
stepped across the threshold.

"I wanted to talk with you," he said gravely.

The girl shot a quick, curious look at him and went to a chair.

"Will you come outside with me?" he asked quietly.  "It is quite a
private matter.  We can walk up and down in the moonlight, just
outside."

A moment she seemed to hesitate.  Then she shook her head.

"We are alone here," she replied.  "What is it?"

"It is many things, Ygerne."  He closed the outside door and stood with
his back to it, his eyes very steady upon hers.  A sudden pulsing of
blood coursed through him but he held himself steady, forcing his voice
to remain grave and quiet.  "To begin with I want to apologise to you
for having been a brute to you since I first saw you.  If you can't
find it in your heart to make any excuses for me at least you can know
that I am both sorry and ashamed of myself."

Again she shot that quick, questioning glance at him.  She felt as he
had felt: "This is some new David Drennen."

"You know me pretty well," he went on.  "Better than I know you, I
think.  I am a man whose name has been dragged through a lot of muck
and mire.  I am the son of a thief.  My father was without honour.  God
knows how good or how bad I am.  My life for ten years has been an ugly
thing, a good deal more evil than good.  If you are the sort of woman I
like to think you are, then I suppose that my presence here is little
less than an insult to you, though God knows I don't mean it to be."

He paused.  She watched him as before, save that now a quick light of
understanding had come into her eyes, a faint flush to her cheeks.
Like Mère Jeanne, she had glimpsed the lover in the man--he couldn't
know that already he had told her all that he had come to say; but she
knew.

"I told you the truth the other day, Ygerne.  That day when I went mad.
I love you.  I'd like to be another sort of man, a better sort, coming
to tell you this.  But if I were a better man I couldn't love you any
better."

Despite the surety that the words were coming they must have brought a
little shock to her.  She rose swiftly, her hands coming up from her
sides until they clasped each other in front of her.

"I didn't believe in love until you came, Ygerne.  I have never seen
such a thing in the life I have lived.  You see, to begin with, I
thought my father loved me and that I loved him.  I was mistaken.  I
thought I had a friend once and again I was mistaken.  But now I know
there is such a thing.  I want you and you are all that I want in the
world.  I want you, Ygerne, in a way I did not know a man could want
anything.  Through you I have come to look at all creation in a new
way; it seems to me that there is a God.  Am I talking like a madman
again?  Or just like a fool? . . .  I feel sometimes that I love you
because I was created for the sole purpose of loving you; that you must
love me for the same reason.  There are other times when that doesn't
seem possible, when I can't conceive of your coming to me as I come to
you.  But in the end I had to know, Ygerne.  Am I a fool?  Or do you
love me?"

He had made no movement toward her.  He stood very still at the door.
He had striven with his emotion so that outwardly he mastered it.  His
voice had remained calm and very steady.

"You said a moment ago," Ygerne answered him, and her voice too was
cool almost to the point of indifference, "that you had been a brute to
me.  Knowing you as I do, is it likely that I should have come to love
you?"

"No," he said.

"Then why do you come to me this way, now?"

"Because I had to come.  Because it is not always the likely thing
which happens.  Because I have thought that we were made for each
other, you and I.  Because I must know."

He waited for her answer, an answer which he feared she had already
given him.  He hungered for her so that he could only wonder how he
could hold himself back from taking her up into his arms.  But he
mastered himself so that the girl could not guess how hard he strove
for the mastery.

"Is love a little thing or a big thing?" she said suddenly.

"A big thing.  I think it is the biggest thing in the world."

"And still, believing that, you think that I am a girl to let you treat
me as you have treated me since we first saw each other, and then to
come to you when you decide to crook your finger to me, giving you my
love?  Is that it?  Is that why you are here to-night?"

"Is that my answer, Ygerne?" he said, his tone more stern than it had
yet been.

"That is no answer at all, Mr. Drennen.  It is a question."

His face grew a little white as he stared at her.

"I think, Ygerne, that I shall tell you good night now.  And in the
morning, before you are up, I'll be gone.  All my life I hope I shall
never see you again.  And you can know that every day of it I'll be mad
to see you."

He bent his head to her, turning away, a dull agony in his heart.  His
hand was upon the knob of the door.  Then she came toward him swiftly.
Half way across the room she stopped.  Suddenly her face was scarlet,
her eyes were shining at him like stars.  Her beauty was a new beauty,
infinitely desirable.

"Were I the man," she said with a voice which shook with the passion in
it, "I'd not want my woman to come to me!  I'd want to go to her, to
take her with my own strength, to hold her with it, to know that she
was too proud to yield even when she was burning to be taken!"

"Ygerne!" he said sharply.

There was a sort of defiance in the sudden, tensity of her erect body,
an imperiousness in the carriage of her head.  Her eyes met his with
something of the same defiance in them.  But in them, too, was a great
light.

Drennen came to her swiftly.  His arms tightened about her, drawing her
so close that each heart felt the other striking against it.  She let
him hold her so, but even yielding she seemed to resist.  His lips,
seeking her red mouth, found it this time.  She gave back the passion
of his kiss passionately.  He felt a thrill through him like an
electric current.

"By God, Ygerne," he cried joyously, "we'll make life over now!"

Suddenly she had wrenched herself free of him.

"I didn't love you yesterday," she said pantingly, holding him back at
arm's length, her wide, half-frightened eyes upon his.  "Will I love
you to-morrow? . . .  You must go now; go!"

He put out his arms for her but she had run back to the door through
which she had come to him.  He heard the door close, then another.  She
had gone to her own room.

Caught up between heaven and hell he made his way homeward.  Passing
her window he saw that it was dark.  He hesitated, then moved on.
Suddenly he stopped.  He had heard her singing, her voice lilting
gaily, quite as though no strong emotion had come into her life
to-night.  A swift anger vaguely tinged with dread leaped into
Drennen's heart.  She was humming a line of Garcia's little song:

  "_Dios!  It is sweet to be young and to love!_"




CHAPTER XIV

DRENNEN MAKES A DISCOVERY

For David Drennen, in whose mouth the husks of life were dry and harsh
and bitter, a miracle had happened.  Nor was that miracle any the less
a golden wonder because to other men in other times it had been the
same.  Marshall Sothern had been right; the time had come when a
woman's responsibilities were to be greater than those of the head of a
monster corporation.  Banked and covered as it was in the ashes of the
after years, there was the old living spark of humanity in David
Drennen.  Ygerne Bellaire came in time to fan it into a warming glow.
The fire which should come from it should be her affair.  It would
cheer with its warmth; or it should devastate with its flames.  The
spark, fanned into love's fire, had in an instant sent its flickering
light throughout the darker places of a man's being.

A woman, accomplishing that which Ygerne Bellaire had done, is
sometimes not unlike a child scattering coals in a dry forestland.  The
forest, the child itself, may be consumed.

Men who had not called him Drennen the Unlucky had named him Headlong
Drennen.  His is that type which, in another environment and taking the
gamble of life from another angle, is termed a plunger.  There was no
room for half-heartedness in so positive a nature.  Where he loved he
worshipped.  He had had an idol once before, his father.  Now, after
half a score of years, he made himself another idol.  And it, in turn,
made of him another man.

Worship must be unquestioning.  It is builded upon utter faith.  So
Drennen, his slow words spoken to Ygerne, his love for her freed, as it
were, from any restraint he had hitherto tried to put upon it, his
whole being given over to it, came without question to believe in her.
She was the woman meant to be his mate and he had called to her and she
had come to him.  His moment of doubt had fled with his declaration.
Otherwise he would have been the paler personality which it was not in
him to be, half-hearted.  Of her passion and pride he made character.
From the look which he had seen in her eyes he made tenderness and
truth.  Every attribute of that ideal which is somewhere in the heart
of every man, until at last the one woman comes to occupy its place
more sweetly and warmly and intimately, he brought forth from its dark
recess to bestow upon Ygerne.

All night he did not sleep.  The sun, rising, found him quite another
man than that upon which it had set last night.  In men like Drennen a
few hours and a strong emotion can accomplish results which in other
men would require the passing of years.  And the same rising sun showed
a new world to the eyes opened eagerly to see it, displayed a fresh
universe to a heart starved for it.  He had sought to see only the
shadows yesterday; now he looked for the light and it was everywhere.
It lay quivering upon the mountain tops, it flooded the valleys, it
brightened his own heart, it touched the bosoms of other men, it shone
in their eyes.

He had shaved and dressed himself neatly.  On his way to his early
breakfast he met Marshall Sothern on the street.  Drennen came to him
swiftly, putting out his hand.

"I have been rather a brute and an unqualified boor," he said quietly.
"I owe you a very great deal, Mr. Sothern, my life I suppose.  I'd like
to shake hands."

Sothern looked at him strangely, both sensing and seeing the change in
the man.  He put out his hand and it settled hard about Drennen's.

"My boy," he said simply, "you have my word for it that you owe me not
so much as a word of thanks.  You are getting along all right?"

"Yes.  So well that I'm off to-day for Lebarge to file on my claims.
I'll not waste any time in getting back.  If then you care to look over
the property . . ."

The buoyancy within him had been speaking through the vibrant tones of
his voice.  Suddenly he broke off, his eyes widening to a look of
groping wonderment.  His jaw had dropped a little, he stood as if
frozen in his place, even the hand which Sothern had just released held
motionless half way on its brief return journey to his side.  In an
incredibly short instant he had grown pale; his voice, when he spoke
the two words, was harsh and unsteady:

"My God!"

Sothern threw up his hand as though to beat back physically a flow of
words.

"Not now!" he commanded sharply.  "Wait.  Later. . . ."

He had turned abruptly and moved away in a haste which carried him with
long strides down the street.  Drennen, the rigidity of his body giving
way to a little shiver which ran up and down him from shoulders to
calves, stared speechlessly after Sothern.  His mouth, closed slowly,
now opened suddenly as though he were going to call, but no words came.
He took one swift step after Sothern, then stopped in an uneasy
indecision.

Far down the open roadway he could see Marc Lemarc with Captain Sefton
coming into the Settlement from the direction of the dugout.  In front
of Marquette's, as he glanced swiftly the other way, he could see
Charlie Madden at the doorstep.  Joe was at his own door.  It seemed to
Drennen that they were all looking at him.  He turned then, his back
toward Sothern, and went to the lunch counter.

Joe asked twice what he would eat before Drennen heard and gave his
order.  Madden came in while he was stirring the coffee which was
growing cold under his vacant eyes, and took a stool near him, studying
him none the less keenly because the look was so swift.

"Well, Drennen," he said lightly, "you'll be ready to talk business
pretty soon now."

Drennen started.

"Why, good morning, Madden.  Yes; yes, I'll be ready to talk business
pretty soon."

"You're not still holding out for that ridiculous proposition you made
me the other day, are you?"

"Yes.  And it isn't ridiculous, Madden.  It's worth it."

Madden smiled.

"Look here, Drennen," he said easily, "you can bluff all you like now,
but you can't go on bluffing much longer.  You'll have to get down to
business.  Whatever your mine is worth is just what you can ask for it.
Hasbrook and Sothern are both on the job, and they're both good enough
old ducks.  But they haven't got the companies behind them I've got
behind me.  They can't get their fingers on the money as I can.  And,"
shrugging his shoulders, "they're old guys and too damned cautious to
live.  I'll take a gamble.  Damn it, I'm always ready for a gamble."

He nipped a check book from his pocket and unscrewed the cap of a pen.

"I'll take a chance," he said sharply.  "Right now I'll write you a
check for a thousand dollars.  That's just for a ninety days' option.
We'll clean out of this, go down to Lebarge and file your title.  Then
we'll see what you've got.  Are you on?"

The temptation of the pen against the blue slip of paper was lost to
Drennen.  While Madden was talking there had again crept into his eyes
that look which tells that a man's mind is wandering to other thoughts.
Again, with a start, he brought his gaze back to Madden.

"A thousand dollars?  An option?"  He shook his head.  "No."

"Why, man, are you crazy?"  Madden's look hinted that Madden half
believed he was.  "I'm just chucking a thousand dollars at you,
throwing it away for the fun of it . . ."

"I don't want it.  And I don't want to be tied up ninety days or nine."

"Have you made a dicker with any one?" queried Madden suspiciously.
"Old Sothern has had you all to himself. . . .  Did you tie up with
him?"

"No."

"Then, can't you see, I'm the man you want to deal with?"

"I don't think so," Drennen replied thoughtfully.

"Why not?"  Madden's check book was snapping against the counter as
though its voice cried out with his.

"Because I think I'm going to sell to the Northwestern!"

"But," cried Madden angrily, "you just told me that Sothern
hadn't . . ."

"He hasn't!" Drennen grinned.  "He doesn't know it yet!"

And that was all that Charlie Madden, though he pleaded and waxed
wroth, could get out of him.

Drennen, passing out, nodded pleasantly to Marc Lemarc, coming in.
Lemarc stared after him wonderingly.  Drennen looked up and down the
street as though searching for some one.  His eyes moved restlessly;
his agitation was so obvious that any man, seeing him, might see it,
too.

It was far too early to hope to see Ygerne.  After a brief hesitation
Drennen returned thoughtfully to his dugout.  His door open, his pipe
lighted only to die and grow cold, forgotten, he waited.  Now and then
when a man passed as infrequently happened, Drennen looked up quickly.
He frowned each time as the man went on.

A little after nine o'clock a man did stop at his door, carrying a note
in his hand.  Drennen's thoughts went swiftly to Ygerne, and a
quickened beating of his heart sent the blood throbbing through him.
But the note was from Sothern and said briefly:

"I have gone on to Lebarge.  You were not mistaken.  But it is nobody's
business but yours and mine.  I shall expect you to come on as soon as
you are able to 

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