The Plowshare and the Sword Part 18

La Salle awoke with a shudder. That figure seemed to be upon him, bending, holding him down with the hands of Briareus. Casting off the terrible sleep, he started upright. A face was indeed over him, and arms were dragging at his shoulders. The wind-tossed grove cleared, with its fire glowing, and sparks flickering like a thousand eyes, and the sleeper awakened recognised Onawa, who was summoning him to action in her unknown tongue.

"Perdition!" he muttered. "The witch haunts me like an old sin."

Onawa went on pleading, pointing wildly at intervals down the wind.

"You shall lead me into no more death-traps!" the priest cried.

The frightened girl brought a knife from her side, and made as though she would stab him. Then she pointed again, and, falling to her knees, indicated her own tracks.

La Salle peered along the glow of the fire and beyond where the sparks were beaten back, then rose and approached the palisading, Onawa clinging to him like a shadow. There was no danger there. He advanced to the wattled door, prepared to receive an attack. When there came no response to his unspoken challenge he turned back, and Onawa again pointed along the way she had come.

"Would to G.o.d I had spared that child! His face is there!" the priest s.h.i.+vered.

"Tuschota!" cried the girl. She touched the ground, reading him with her eyes.

A smothered cry broke from the lips of the priest. Onawa followed his gaze, which went, not along the trail, nor into the fire-lit grove, but above where the eastern sky had almost cleared of drift.

"A portent!" moaned the priest. "'Tis the end of the world, and I am found with the sword drawn in my hand."

There was war in heaven. Across the plane of eastern sky hung a wild picture of forest and rockland where pigmy men rushed together without shock, where spectral weapons fell silently, and shadowy smoke burst and rose. Tiny figures climbed a cliff, and similar grotesques fought on high and pressed them back. The combatants appeared ant-like and ridiculous objects as they swayed reflected upon the floor of heaven.

Onawa watched the spectacle unmoved. She had witnessed the mirage before, and by this present vision merely understood that an attack upon the citadel was even then in progress. As the weird picture broke up and scud came flying across a faint grey sky, she prayed in her treacherous heart that the French might win.

La Salle rose with some shame when he perceived that the sky had resumed its normal aspect, and light at length dawned upon him as he sighted a shadowy being stealing within the radius of the fire.

"Tuschota!" warned the voice at his side.

The priest knew then that Onawa had saved him from the knife which would have avenged the half-breed boy, who had flung himself with such desperate courage upon death. Casting away the arms which encompa.s.sed him, he pa.s.sed swiftly into the shadow of the grove, while Onawa advanced boldly and met the woman she had wronged so grievously, and dared to face her without shame. For a s.p.a.ce they stood, gazing at one another by the firelight, until the younger cast down her eyes and began to s.h.i.+ver with the coldness of fear.

"Approach me, sister," said the stern woman. "There is a question I would have you answer. Refuse you dare not, for we are flesh and blood; we are daughters of Shuswap the truthful, and the same mother gave us birth. I seek not to know what brings you here this night, but tell me now have you seen that proud priest who has slain my son?"

"I have not seen him," cried Onawa fiercely; but she was cold to the heart beneath the gaze of those colder eyes.

"'Tis well. A daughter of the Cayugas lies not, save to an enemy. But why do you slink thus away? You do not fear me, sister?"

Onawa stared aside speechless.

"After I became wife to the great white man you came often to our home among the lost waters," Mary Iden went on. "My Richard loved you.

Remember, sister, how often you played with the child, how many times you carried him in your arms, and told him the old stories of our race.

Hast forgotten how he would laugh at your coming, how he would run down to meet you with a gift, and draw up your canoe and bring you to our shelter by the hand? Remember when he had committed a fault how you pleaded for him, calling him _Dear child_ and _Sunlight of the camp_.

Sister, I know that you grieve for the boy."

Chilled at her words Onawa pa.s.sed to the fire, turning from those pursuing eyes.

"I shall not forget how Richard loved you. When you need me, sister, come, and I will give you your former place beside the fire. So shall you rest and forget the strangers in this land. By the love that you bore for my boy, sister, I will not forget you."

Onawa looked up and saw only the figure of La Salle emerging from the grove. Her sister had drawn back into the night.

The gale circled the embers in whitening eddies. Onawa wildly s.n.a.t.c.hed a stick and raked the glowing fragments into a pyramid, upon which she flung some roots of willow. A yellow fog ascended, torn hither and thither by the spirits of the wind.

She crept to La Salle's feet and fawned upon them. He spurned her and still she struggled to approach, to cling as the weed upon a rock. She had made the sacrifice of her life that she might serve him. She had discharged the arrow to slay the Englishman solely that she might win his love. She had relied upon her fierce beauty, her youth, and her strength to conquer the handsome Frenchman. She had staked her all upon her heart's desires.

And now he flung her from him, and strode away from the fireside and the grove.

She followed, crying along the wind. He motioned her back and even threatened with his sword, but she pursued, setting her feet in the marks which his had made. When he halted for weariness she stood near to guard him from her sister. When the grey day came she still followed him, across open country, and so northward into the hills, and towards the river, where the wind contained a breath of smouldering bush.

CHAPTER XV.

GLORIOUS LIFE.

When Madame found La Salle gone and the fire black in the early morning, she frowned until her eyes became hidden and went back to the palisade, pa.s.sing her old servant, who was shredding ears of wild rice.

She entered the windy house calling. Soon she came out, shaking a willow stick in her angry hand, and stopped opposite the old man, who continued his work, grumbling softly to himself, "Ah, Father Creator!

Father Creator! Why do you send this north wind in summer time? The day is dark and cold. Send us the west wind, Father Creator."

"Have you heard noises in the night?" Madame's voice grated.

"I slept with the wind in my ears," answered the native.

"Have you seen my daughter, or the young Englishman?"

"I have seen the light struggling to break, and the grey heaven rus.h.i.+ng, and the thick wind beating. I saw a red fox run and a blue-bird chattering across the wind," said the old man.

"Have you not seen the priest?" urged Madame.

"I was up at the dawn," replied the stolid worker. "The fire was dead and the sleeping-place white with rain. A bear was seeking warmth upon the embers."

"I have been blind and deaf," cried Madame in a rage.

At the first glance of light the cabin was as noisy as an ocean cave.

Madeleine's brain became too active for sleep when she knew that the day was at hand. She rose softly, glowing with her new-found happiness, and as she stirred she murmured the intensely human line of that unhappy boy Kit Marlowe, who had perished in a tavern brawl a few years before her birth, "Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?"

She darted up with that thought, but a coil of her long hair tightened, and there came a startled movement from beyond the wall.

"Hus.h.!.+" she whispered, lifting a pink finger, forgetful that he could not see.

"Is it the day?" said Geoffrey.

"Yes, yes. Release me. Let me fly. Do you not hear the wind?"

"I am listening to you," he answered.

"Forget me. Listen! That was like thunder. Are you listening?"

"I am coming out with you," he said.

Reaching the open, Geoffrey discovered Madeleine, her arms outstretched, her hair rising in ripples above her head as she bathed in the wind, battling and panting, her lovely face all heather-pink.