God's Country - And the Woman by James Oliver Curwood (most popular novels .TXT) 📕

heard Adare's words, and at Philip she flung back a swift, frightened look. "It is not that," he repeated. "See how much better she looks to-day than yesterday! You understand, Mon Pere, that oftentimes there comes a period of nervousness--of a sickness that is not sickness--in a woman's life. The winter will build her up."
The dinner passed too swiftly for Philip. They sat at a long table, and Josephine was opposite him. For a time he forgot the strain he was under, that he was playing a part in which he must not strike a single false key. Yet in another way he was glad when it came to an end, for it gave him an opportunity of speaking a few words with Josephine. Adare and Miriam went out ahead of them. At the door Philip held Josephine back.
"You are not going to leave me alone this afternoon?" he asked. "It is not quite fair, or safe, Josephine. I am travelling on thin ice. I--"
"You are doing splendidly, Philip," she protested. "To-morrow I will be different. Metoosin says there is a little half-breed girl very sick ten miles back in the forest, and you may go with me to visit her. There are reasons why I must be with my mother all of to-day. She has had a long journey and is worn out and nervous. Perhaps she will not want to appear at supper. If that is so, I will remain with her. But we will be together to-morrow. All day. Is that not recompense?"
She smiled up into his face as they followed Adare and his wife.
"You may help Metoosin with the dogs," she suggested. "I want you to be good friends--you and my beasts."
The hours that followed proved to be more than empty ones for Philip. Twice he went to the big room and found that Adare himself had yielded to the exhaustion of the long trip up from civilization, and was asleep. He accompanied Metoosin to the pit and assisted in chaining the dogs, but Metoosin was taciturn and uncommunicative. Josephine and her mother send down their excuses at supper time, and he sat down alone with Adare, who was delighted when he received word that they had been sleeping most of the afternoon, and would join them a little later. His face clouded, however, when he spoke of Jean.
"It is unusual," he said. "Jean is very careful to leave word of his movements. Metoosin says it is possible he went after fresh caribou meat. But that is not so. His rifle is in his room. He left during the night, or he would have spoken to us. I saw him as late as midnight, and he made no mention of it then. It has been snowing for two or three hours or I would send Metoosin on his trail."
"What possible cause for worry can you have?" asked Philip.
"Thoreau's cutthroats," replied Adare, a sudden fire in his eyes. "This winter may see--things happen. The force behind Thoreau's success in trade is whisky. That damnable stuff is his lure, or all the fur in this country would come to Adare House. If he could drive me out he would have nothing to fight against--his hands would be at the throat of every living soul in these regions, and all through whisky. Among those who were killed or turned up missing last winter were four of my best hunters. Twice Jean was shot at on the trail. I fear for him because he is my right arm."
When Philip left Adare he went to his room, put on heavier moccasins, and went quietly from the house. Three inches of fresh snow had fallen, and the air was thick with the white deluge. He hurried into the edge of the forest. A few minutes futile searching convinced him of the impossibility of following the trail made by Jean and the man he had pursued. Through the thickening darkness he returned to Adare House.
Again he changed his moccasins, and waited for the expected word from Josephine or Adare. Half an hour passed, and during this time his mind became still more uneasy. He had hoped that Croisset was hanging in the edge of the forest, waiting for darkness. Each minute now added to his fear that all had not gone well with the half-breed. He paced up and down his room, smoking, and looking at his watch frequently. After a time he went to the window and tried to peer out into the white swirl of the night. The opening of his door turned him about. He expected to see Adare. Words that were on his lips froze in a moment of speechless horror.
He knew that it was Jean Croisset who stood before him. But it did not look like Jean. The half-breed's cap was gone. He was swaying, clutching at the partly opened door to support himself. His face was disfigured with blood, the front of his coat was spattered with frozen clots of it. His long hair had fallen in ropelike strands over his eyes and frozen there. His lips were terrible.
"Good God!" gasped Philip.
He sprang forward and caught Jean as the half-breed staggered toward him. Jean's body hung a weight in his arms. His legs gave way under him, but for a moment the clutch of his fingers on Philip's shoulder were viselike.
"A little help, M'sieur," he gasped. "I am faint, sick. Whatever happens, as you love Our Lady, let no one know of this to-night!"
With a rattling breath his head dropped upon Philip's arm.


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Scarcely had Jean uttered the few words that preceded his lapse into unconsciousness than Philip heard the laughing voice of Adare at the farther end of the hall. Heavy footsteps followed the voice. Impulse rather than reason urged him into action. He lowered Jean to the floor, sprang to the partly open door, closed it and softly locked it. He was not a moment too soon. A few steps more and Adare was beating on the panel with his fist.
"What, ho!" he cried in his booming voice. "Josephine wants to know if you have forgotten her?" Adare's hand was on the latch.
"I am--undressed," explained Philip desperately. "Offer a thousand apologies for me, Mon Pere. I will finish my bath in a hurry!"
He dropped on his knees beside Jean as the master of Adare moved away from the door. A brief examination showed him where Croisset was hurt. 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 shifted 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 assured 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 God 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 damnable 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 prick 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