Adventure, November 1915 — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 go, my daughter and I, to speak with Hel- baud.” | Lavergne, smoking silently upon the rocks and looking over their heads, nodded briefly. “T do not know what the outcome of our parley will be,” the fice-trader went on, - “but you know, Lavergne, that it is wisdom up here always to be prepared for the worst. One thing I see plainly: We can’t get back to Dubawni Post with these furs. Loaded canoes can not show sterns to empty ones in a chase bales off on the margin.” Again Lavergne nodded. “But they had better hand over their guns while they do it,” he suggested. “No,” growled Dubawni,” the guns will not be handed over. They will lie in the canoe bottoms, and I give my word that they will not be lifted.” “All right,” shrugged Lavergne. “TI take your word for it!” ~ CHAPTER III THE PLUNDER OF THE WILD UBAWNI’S brigade leader Cham- bonne, a big, pure-blooded French- man, hawk-nosed, heavy-mustached, step- ped out of the bow of the canoe into the shallow water. At a sign from him, the crew of the second of the half-dozen six- fathom fur canoes joined him. They stood knee-deep in the surf along- side Dubawni’s craft and began to lighten it of its roped fur bales. As each bale was removed, the craft rode higher and higher out of the water. The huge, curved bow and stern, emptied first of their weight, towered over the men’s heads, and to lift the bales amidships some had to press down the gunwales of the canoe while the others lifted the bundles over. Wrestling with the lashings of the last fractious bundle, Chambonne leaned far over the gunwale so that his head was close to Dubawni’s. ‘Shall we charge them?” he muttered in French, as if anathematizing the slippery ropes. ‘Give the word and the men will be out of the water and over the rocks before this unconcerned monster can drop his pipe.” “No,” commanded Dubawni, bending to assist with the bale, “make no mad move. So my men will throw the fur . Adventure a pe He has the eye of an osprey, for all his seem- ing unconcern, and his men in the spruce cover will have their guns trained on us all. Were Masita not here, I-do not know if even in the face of that I should sit so quiet. But she is here. So make no mad move to invite a volley, Chambonne. Besides, I have given my word of honor.” “Bah!” snorted Chambonne contemptu- ously. “It takes two to make a bargain of honor, a man of honor to give the word and a man of honor to accept. Helbaud’s code is this man’s code, and the shadow of honor can not be in him. Had you been fool enough to surrender the rifles, where would we be now? Word of honor to any liege of Helbaud’s? Bah, again!” “Still it does not matter. It is my word, is it not? I have passed it, and I abide by it. Lift no weapon. Go on with the un- loading.” If Dubawni’s craft with its load had float- ed as light as a lily pad, it now without its load floated as light as a blotch of foam, a superb piece of canoe building, fashioned of large sheets of birch bark fiber-sewn as fine as a moccasin, gum-sealed as tight as a ead. Graceful as a Northern swan it rose and fell upon the swell of Mushalagan, | and the girl standing up in it and pressing with the point of a paddle against the rocky shore-wall to keep the fragile side from chafing seemed modeled as part and parcel of it. , The lines of her figure were as lithe and as clean as those of the craft which poised her high on the crests of the slow-rolling waves or nestled low with her in the troughs. Graceful with the grace of the wilderness- born, she balanced herself upon the soles of her amber caribou-skin moccasins and seem- ingly without volition or forethought sway- ed with ease and suppleness this way or that to the caprice of wind and water. Chambonne and the other brigade men, catching sight of her thus as they waded to the shore with the bales, paused and stared, and the Northmen’s hearts of them leaped. For she was their leader as much as Dubaw- ni, their idol and their faith. Though her years were a bare twenty she seemed to have queened it over them for a long time, ever since the day Dubawni had brought her back from Quebec, an elf of fourteen, and they had tossed her in play to the roof-beams of Opawika Post, the free-trader’s former headquarters before Gomichbooks (C@)