God's Country-And the Woman Part 19

The half-breed had received a scalp wound from which the blood had flowed down over his face and breast. He breathed easier when he discovered nothing beyond this. In a few minutes he had him partially stripped and on his bed. Jean opened his eyes as he bathed the blood from his face. He made an effort to rise, but Philip held him back.

"Not yet, Jean," he said.

Jean's glance s.h.i.+fted in a look of alarm toward the door.

"I must, M'sieur," he insisted. "It was the last few hundred yards that made me dizzy. I am better now. And there is no time to lose. I must get into my room--into other clothes!"

"We will not be interrupted," Philip a.s.sured him. "Is this your only hurt, Jean?"

"That alone, M'sieur. It was not bad until an hour ago. Then it broke out afresh, and made me so dizzy that with my last breath I stumbled into your room. The saints be praised that I managed to reach you!"

Philip left him, to return in a moment with a flask. Jean had pulled himself to a sitting posture on the side of the bed.

"Here's a drop of whisky, Jean. It will stir up your blood."

"Mon Dieu, it has been stirred up enough this night, tanike," smiled Jean feebly. "But it may give me voice, M'sieur. Will you get me fresh clothes? They are in my room--which is next to this on the right. I must be prepared for Josephine or Le M'sieur before I talk."

Philip went to the door and opened it cautiously. He could hear voices coming from the room through which he had first entered Adare House.

The hall was clear. He slipped out and moved swiftly to Jean's room.

Five minutes later he reentered his own room with an armful of Jean's clothes. Already Croisset was something like himself. He quickly put on the garments Philip gave him, brushed the tangles from his hair, and called upon Philip to examine him to make sure he had left no spot of blood on his face or neck.

"You have the time?" he asked then.

Philip looked at his watch.

"It is eight o'clock."

"And I must see Josephine--alone--before ten," said Jean quickly. "You must arrange it, M'sieur. No one must know that I have returned until I see her. It is important. It means--"

"What?"

"The great G.o.d alone can answer that," replied Jean in a strange voice.

"Perhaps it will mean that to-morrow, or the next day, or the day after that M'sieur Weyman will know the secret we are keeping from him now, and will fight shoulder to shoulder with Jean Jacques Croisset in a fight that the wilderness will remember so long as there are tongues to tell of it!"

There was nothing of boastfulness or of excitement in his words. They were in the voice of a man who saw himself facing the final arbiter of things--a voice dead to visible hope, yet behind which there trembled a thing that made Philip face him with a new fire in his eyes.

"Why to-morrow or the next day?" he demanded. "Why shroud me in this d.a.m.nable mystery any longer, Jean? If there is fighting to be done, let me fight!"

Jean's hollowed cheeks took on a flush.

"I would give my life if we two could go out and fight--as I want to fight," he said in a low, tense voice, "It would be worth your life and mine--that fight. It would be glorious. But I am a Catholic, M'sieur. I am a Catholic of the wilderness. And I have taken the most binding oath in the world. I have sworn by the sweet soul of my dead Iowaka to do only as Josephine tells me to do in this. Over her grave I swore that, with Josephine kneeling at my side. I have prayed that my Iowaka might come to me and tell me if I am right. But in this her voice has been silent. I have prayed Josephine to free me from my oath, and she has refused. I am afraid. I dare reveal nothing. I cannot act as I want to act. But to-night--"

His voice sank to a whisper. His fingers gripped deep into the flesh of Philip's hand.

"To-night may mean--something," he went on, his voice filled with an excitement strange to him. "The fight is coming, M'sieur. We cannot much longer evade what we have been trying to evade! It is coming. And then, shoulder to shoulder, we will fight!"

"And until then, I must wait?"

"Yes, you must wait, M'sieur."

Jean freed his hand and sat down in one of the chairs near the table.

His eyes turned toward the window.

"You need not fear another shot, M'sieur," he said quietly. "The man who fired that will not fire again."

"You killed him?"

Jean bowed his head without replying. The movement was neither of affirmation nor denial:

"He will not fire again."

"It was more than one against one," persisted Philip. "Does your oath compel you to keep silent about that, too?"

There was a note of irritation in his voice which was almost a challenge to Jean. It did not p.r.i.c.k the half-breed. He looked at Philip a moment before he replied:

"You are an unusual man, M'sieur," he said at last, as though he had been carefully measuring his words. "We have known each other only a few days, and yet it seems a long time. I had my suspicions of you back there. I thought it was Josephine's beauty you were after, and I have stood ready to kill you if I saw in you what I feared. But you have won, M'sieur. Josephine loves you. I have faith in you. And do you know why? It is because you have fought the fight of a strong man. It does not take great soul in a man to match knife against knife, or bullet against bullet. Not to keep one's word, to play a hopeless part in the dark, to leap when the numma wapew is over the eyes and you are blind--that takes a man. And now, when Jean Jacques Croisset says for the first time that there is a ray of hope for you, where a few hours ago no hope existed, will you give me again your promise to play the part you have been asked to play?"

"Hope!" Philip was at Jean's side in an instant. "Jean, what do you mean? Is it that you, even YOU--now give me hope of possessing Josephine?"

Slowly Jean rose from his chair.

"I am part Cree, M'sieur," he said. "And in our Cree there is a saying that the G.o.d of all things, Kisamunito, the Great Spirit, often sits on high and laughs at the tricks which he plays on men. Perhaps this is one of those times. I am beginning to believe so. Kisamunito has begun to run our destinies, not ourselves. Yesterday we--our Josephine and I--had our hopes, our plans, our schemes well laid. To-night they no longer exist. Before the night is much older all that Josephine has done, all that she has made you promise, will count for nothing. After that--a matter of hours, perhaps of days--will come the great fight for you and me. Until then you must know nothing, must see nothing, must ask nothing. And when the crash comes--"

"It will give Josephine to me?" cried Philip eagerly.

"I did not say that, M'sieur," corrected Jean quietly. "Out of fighting such as this strange things may happen. And where things happen there is always hope. Is that not true?"

He moved to the door and listened. Quietly he opened it, and looked out.

"The hall is clear," he whispered softly. "Go to Josephine. Tell her that she must arrange to see me within an hour. And if you care for that bit of hope I have shown you, let it happen without the knowledge of the master of Adare. From this hour Jean Jacques Croisset sacrifices his soul. Make haste, M'sieur--and use caution!"

Without a word Philip went quietly out into the hall. Behind him Jean closed and locked the door.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For a few moments Philip stood without moving. Jean's return and the strange things he had said had worked like sharp wine in his blood. He was breathing quickly. He was afraid that his appearance just now would betray the mental excitement which he must hide. He drew back deeper into the shadow of the wall and waited, and while he waited he thought of Jean. It was not the old Jean that had returned this night, the Jean with his silence, his strange repression, the mysterious something that had seemed to link him with an age-old past. Out of that spirit had risen a new sort of man--the fighting man. He had seen a new fire in Jean's eyes and face; he had caught new meaning in his words, Jean was no longer the pa.s.sive Jean--waiting, watching, guarding. Out in the forest something had happened to rouse in him what a word from Josephine would set flaming in the savage b.r.e.a.s.t.s of her dogs. And the excitement in Philip's blood was the thrill of exultation--the joy of knowing that action was close at hand, for deep in him had grown the belief that only through action could Josephine be freed for him.

Suddenly, softly, there came floating to him the low, sweet tones of the piano, and then, sweeter still, the voice of Josephine. Another moment and Miriam's voice had joined her in a song whose melody seemed to float like that of spirit-voices through the thick fog walls of Adare House. Soundlessly he moved toward the room where they were waiting for him, a deeper flush mounting into his face now. He opened the door without being heard, and looked in.

Josephine was at the piano. The great lamp above her head flooded her in a mellow light in which the rich ma.s.ses of her hair s.h.i.+mmered in a glorious golden glow. His heart beat with the knowledge that she had again dressed for him to-night. Her white neck was bare. In her hair he saw for a second time a red rose. For a s.p.a.ce he saw no one but her.

Then his eyes turned for an instant to Miriam. She was standing a little back, and it seemed to him that he had never seen her so beautiful. Against the wall, in a great chair, sat the master of Adare, his bearded chin in the palm of his hand, looking at the two with a steadiness of gaze that was more than adoration. Philip entered. Still he was unheard. He stood silent until the song was finished, and it was Josephine, turning, who saw him first.

"Philip!" she cried.

Adare started, as if awakening from a dream. Josephine came to Philip, holding out both her hands, her beautiful face smiling with welcome.