"Aurore"

Antoine Marceau nodded quietly. The strangely aloof acknowledgment of Crossman's possible relation to this woman, his woman, who yet was not his or any man's, somehow shocked Crossman. His blood flamed at the thought, and yet he felt her intangible, unreal. He had but to look into her shifting, glittering eyes, and there were silence and playing lights. Suddenly his vision of her changed, became human and vital. He saw before him the sinuous movement of her strong young body. He realized the living perfume of her, clean and fresh, faintly aromatic as of pine in the sunlight, and violets in the shadow.

Antoine Marceau busied himself about the cook-house. He did not speak of Aurore again, not even when his eye rested on the paper doll skewered to the door by the deep-driven knife. He frowned, made the sign of the cross, jerked out the knife, and thrust its point in the purifying blaze of the charcoal fire. But he made no comment.

Crossman turned on his heel and entered the office-building. Through the south window he saw Jakapa snowshoeing swiftly up the short incline to the door; beside him walked the Curé, pleading and anxious. He could follow the words as his lips framed them. In the present mood Crossman did not wish to hear the Curé's denunciation. It was sufficient to see that the Foreman had, evidently, no intention of acting on the advice proffered.

As he softly closed the door between the main office and the living room at the rear, he heard the men enter on a quick word of reproof in the Curé's rich bass.

"She does her work sufficiently well, and I shall not order her from the camp," Jakapa snapped in reply. "She is with Marceau; if he keeps her in hand, what do I care? She leave him, that his affair, mon Dieu, mon père."

"She has bewitched you, too, Jakapa. She has bewitched that other, the young man who is here for the healing of his soul. What an irony, to heal his soul, and she comes to poison it!"

"Heal his soul?" Jakapa laughed harshly. "He's had the weak lung, shell-shock, and he's a friend of the owner. Mon père, if he is here for the good of his soul, that is your province--but me?--I am here to boss one job, and I boss him, that's all. I hope only you have not driven the cook away, or the pot-au-feu, she will be thin." He tried to speak the latter part of his sentence lightly, but his voice betrayed his irritation.

Crossman opened the door and entered. "Antoine will be here in a minute," he announced. "Aurore sent him back to feed the animals." He took down the enamelled tin dishes and cups and set their places. Jakapa eyed him covertly, with a half-sneering venom he had never before shown.

It was a silent meal. The Curé sighed and shook his head at intervals, and the Boss grumbled a few comments in answer to an occasional question concerning his lumberjacks. Crossman sat in a dream. Could he have understood aright when Antoine had spoken of the dawn?

Jakapa dropped a plate with a curse and a clatter. The sudden sound ripped the sick man's nerves like an exploding bomb. White to the lips, he jumped from his chair to meet the Boss's sneering eyes. The Curé laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he settled back shamefacedly.

"Your pardon, mon père--my nerves are on edge--excuse me--an inheritance of the trenches."

"Emotion is bad for you, my son, and you should not emotion yourself," said the Priest gently.

"Do you travel far when you leave us now?" Crossman asked self-consciously, anxious to change the subject.

"To the camp at the Chaumière Noire, a matter of ten kilometres. It is no hardship, my rounds, not at all, with the ground like a white tablecloth, and this good sun, to me like to my dogs, it is but play." He rose from the table, glad of the excuse to hasten his going, and with scant courtesy Jakapa sped his guest's departure.

As the sled disappeared among the trees, bearing the queerly bundled figure of the Priest, the Boss unhooked his snowshoes from the wall. He seemed to have forgotten Crossman's presence, but as he turned, his smouldering eyes lighted on him. He straightened with a jerk. "What did he mean when he say, she have bewitch you?" As always, when excited, his somewhat precise English slipped back into the idiom of the habitant. "By Gar! Boss or no Boss, I pack you out if I catch you. We make no jealousies for any one, not where I am. You come here for your health--hein? Well, better you keep this place healthy for you."

As if further to complicate the situation, the door opened to admit the woman herself. She closed it, leaned against the wall, looking from one to the other with mocking eyes.

"Well, do I leave? Am I to pack? Have you wash the hand of me to please the Curé, yes?"

Jakapa turned on her brutally. "Get to the cook-house! Wash your dish! Did I give orders to Antoine to leave hees work? By Gar! I feel like I take you and break you in two!" He moved his knotted hands with a gesture of destruction. There was something so sinister in the action that, involuntarily, Crossman cried out a startled warning. Her laugh tinkled across it.

"Bah!" she shrugged. "If you wish to kill, why do you not kill those who make the interferre? Are you a man? What is it, a cassock, that it so protect a man? But me, because I do not wear a woman's skirt, you will break me, hey? Me! Nevair mind, I prefer this man. He at least make no big talk." She slipped her arm through Crossman's, letting her fingers play down from his wrist to his finger-tips--and the thrill of it left him tongue-tied and helpless.

Jakapa cursed and crouched low. He seemed about to hurl himself upon the pair before him. Again she laughed, and her tingling, searching fingers stole slowly over his throbbing pulses.

She released Crossman's arm with a jerk, and snapped the fingers that had just caressed him in the face of the furious lumberman. "Allons! Must I forever have no better revenge but to knife one paper doll? Am I to be hounded like a beast, and threatened wherever I go? I am tired of this dead camp. I think I go me down the river." She paused a moment in her vehemence. Her next words came almost in a whisper: "Unless you can cross the trail to Chaumière Noire--then, maybe, I stay with you--I say--maybe." With a single swooping movement of her strong young arm she swept the door open, and came face to face with Antoine Marceau. "What, thou?" she said airily.

He nodded. "Shall I go back, or do you want that I go to the other side?" he asked the Foreman.

"Go to the devil!" growled Jakapa, and slinging his snowshoes over his arm, he stamped out.

"Tiens!" said Antoine. "He is mad, the Boss."

"I think we are all mad," said Crossman.

"Maybe," said Antoine. Quietly he gathered together his axe, mittens, and cap, and shrugging his huge shoulders into his mackinaw, looked out at the glorious brightness of the stainless world and frowned. "Come, Aurore," he said quietly.

Contents