Law of the North (Originally published as Empery)

  CHAPTER XIII

  A VOW THAT HELD

  As a man who gets a knife blade in the ribs Dunvegan settled back in hischair. In spite of his tremendous self control, the pallor crept upthrough his tan. His eyes widened and remained so, staring glazily. TheFactor could not help but notice the change. He gazed a moment above thepages he held.

  "What's the matter?" he demanded in genuine surprise. Then recollectioncoming, he added: "Yes, I remember now. Let that be a lesson to you,Dunvegan. Don't trust a woman out of your sight! I speak from hardexperience."

  The chief trader pulled his pithless limbs together with an effort.

  "There is a mistake somewhere," he began in a quiet, hollow voice. "Whatyou say cannot have happened."

  "Why?"

  "As you know, Desiree's feeling leaned toward the Nor'westers. Sheregistered a vow that she would never marry a Hudson's Bay man."

  "Neither did she!"

  "Great God," breathed Dunvegan, "don't fool with riddles! Speak it out!"

  "She didn't marry a Hudson's Bay man," Macleod asserted grimly. "Thatdamned traitor of a Glyndon turned Nor'wester and fled. Now do youunderstand?"

  Amid a tumultuous rush of mingling feelings, condemnation, anger,jealousy, despair, Dunvegan understood to the bitter full. For severalsilent minutes he sat there, fighting his conflicting emotions, gettinga grip on himself. The Factor read on at the duplicate sheets withstolid absorption.

  "Who married them?" was the question that interrupted. Dunvegan hadforced his vocal chords into mechanical action.

  "Father Brochet," muttered Macleod, not looking up.

  "And where are they, do you know?"

  "Not I," snarled the Factor, stopping his study of the report. "Mostlikely they are now in the Nor'west fort at La Roche."

  "With Black Ferguson! Oh my God!" Bruce leaped to his feet and paced andre-paced the council room with long, savage strides. The Factor watchedhim, smiling cynically, as if at the discovery of some new trait in theman. A dozen times the chief trader tramped the floor. Then he whirledin the middle of a stride.

  "This thing was planned," he averred. "The clerk was approached from theoutside."

  "I know that." Macleod's eyes darkened and narrowed a little.

  "By whom?"

  "It is obvious."

  "The Nor'westers--directly?"

  "Undoubtedly." The Factor laid down the report upon the council table.Dunvegan resumed his frantic walk, again pausing uncertainly.

  "But the means--the means!" he exclaimed petulantly.

  Macleod's teeth snapped shut and opened grudgingly for his speech.

  "Ha!" he gritted. "God pity the means--if I discover it! We have hadspies sneaking about Oxford House. Sometimes I think they must have beeninside the stockades, although that is a wild thought. Be this fact asit may, the truth remains that Glyndon was approached directly by anagent of the Nor'westers. Under the powerful combination of the enemy'sinducements and the girl's persuasions his desertion must have been acomparatively easy matter."

  "Curse his soft eyes!" cried the chief trader. "We might have knownbetter than trust him. Good Lord, and they sent him away from Londontemptations in order that the Company might give him a certificate ofmanhood! How, in heaven's name, could a man be made from a bit of slime,a rotten shell, and a colored rag? Betrayal must have been born in him!Did you order no pursuit?"

  The Factor shook his shaggy hair as he gathered up the papers.

  "They had twenty hours start and good dogs," he explained. "Besides,they fled while it was snowing and left no trail."

  "Where's Brochet?" demanded Dunvegan suddenly and irrelevantly.

  "Somewhere down Blazing Pine River on a mission to sick Indians,"Malcolm Macleod replied. "He left shortly after it happened."

  At the end of this questioning, with the little dream-things he hadfashioned scattered to the far compass points as the blizzard outsidehad scattered the snow flakes, Dunvegan felt the sickening of supremedespair. No visible resource stretched before him. He relapsed intosullen inertia.

  "Is this all?" the Factor asked, placing his duplicate sheets innumbered sequence.

  "All but one other thing."

  "And that?"

  Dunvegan hesitated. "When I brought Flora Macleod and Running Wolfhere," he commenced awkwardly, "I met a strange canoe on Lake Lemeau. Inthat canoe with two Indian paddlers were two United States marshalsnamed Granger and Garfield. Their passes were good. Their papers Irequested of them."

  The chief trader paused to note the effect of his words on Macleod. Butthere was no effect except that the Factor had squared his bulk in hiscouncil chair as if to face an emergency.

  "Go on," he urged grimly.

  "It seemed they were searching for a man whom they suspected of livingin this wilderness under an assumed name. They had his photograph!"

  Malcolm Macleod shifted forward in a startled fashion.

  "You saw that photograph?"

  "I did."

  "You knew it?"

  "No."

  The movement of the Factor's body was swiftly reversed. He breatheddeeply with something of relief, a relief that fled at the chieftrader's next statement.

  "I did not know the original of the picture," Dunvegan asserted, "but Iwas told who it was."

  "By whom?" The question shot like a bullet.

  "By Flora Macleod. Privately, you understand! Her information was givenme after these two marshals had gone."

  "Whose picture was it?" Macleod asked doggedly, with the manner ofputting an issue to the test.

  "Your own," the chief trader answered, "at the age of thirty."

  Expecting a dynamic outburst, Dunvegan was completely surprised at theFactor's stoic composure. The massive limbs never offered to spring fromthe chair; the face preserved its rigid, inscrutable lines.

  "You were satisfied with that information, were you?" Macleodinterrogated.

  "Yes."

  "It satisfies you still?"

  "It does."

  "You did not mention the circumstance at the time," the Factor went on."Why refer to it now?"

  Dunvegan leaned his arms on the table directly opposite Macleod,meeting unafraid the piercing glances of those electric eyes, the eyeswhich he could now recognize as belonging to the original of thephotograph.

  "Because it is now necessary," he answered. "If it were not, I would nothave opened the subject. In the space of another day, or two, thosedeputies will make Oxford House. At this moment they are laid up beyondKabeke Bluffs, not caring to face the blizzard. We passed them there."

  Macleod was half out of his chair, an unspoken question blazing fromthose magnetic eyes. Dunvegan answered it with hauteur and a littlescorn.

  "I'm no informer," he declared. "Somehow they've got trace of you at theother forts. These men had official entry to both Hudson's Bay andNor'west posts, and they must have covered the territory pretty well."

  "Why do you tell me this?" demanded Macleod, with sudden asperity.

  "Out of a sense of duty."

  "You think me a hunted criminal?" The Factor's tone held resentment andbitterness which was probably impersonal.

  "I forbear to think," answered Dunvegan. "Your affairs are none of mybusiness."

  "Yet you serve me! Why serve a man with a supposed stain upon him? Whynot follow, rather, our friend Glyndon's move?"

  "I serve the Company," was the chief trader's response. "The moralstatus of the Company's officers cannot effect that fundamentalduty--service."

  The Factor looked long at Dunvegan, marveling at his integrity, his lackof low curiosity, his allegiance.

  "Bruce," he said--and it was not often he used the Christianname--"you're one of the true, northern breed, the shut-mouthed men! Letme tell you a little phase of American life. Twenty years ago therelived over there in one of the big cities a family by the name ofMacfarlane. The family consisted of the husband and wife, a daughter,and a son. There was also an intruding element, and this intruder wasnamed
James Funster. You see, Funster had loved Macfarlane's wife beforeshe married, and even after the marriage he could not like an honorableman get over his passion. Do you follow me?"

  Dunvegan nodded. He had guessed this much from former hints Macleod hadgiven him.

  "Well," continued the Factor, "project your thoughts ahead. Imagine themad things that come into the brain of the infatuated. Imagine alsoMacfarlane's horror at what happened. One day he was away with hisdaughter. On his return he found his wife murdered and the son stolen.Without a doubt it was Funster's work. But notice how Fate acted!Suspicion fell upon the husband, suggesting the motive of jealousy. Hefled, and the blot still rests on his name."

  "How old were the children?" asked Dunvegan, excitedly.

  "They were very young," Macleod answered evasively; "just a year betweenthem. I think I have said enough to show you that I am no criminal. Thatwas twenty years ago, but the false accusation follows me."

  "And you," ventured Bruce--"you are Macfarlane!"

  "I am Alexander Macfarlane."

  "And where is Funster?"

  "Ah!" grated Macleod. "Tell _me_ that."

  Dunvegan rose up, his own sorrow overshadowed by the portentousresurrection of an old tragedy.

  "You are innocent," he cried, "and those men will be here to-morrow orthe next day."

  "And to-morrow, or the next day I shall be at Fort Dumarge!"

  "But they can follow."

  "Let them! Or let them await me here! What good will it do? They came inon a long trail, but by Heaven they may go out on a longer one."

  Dunvegan stared at the dark, glowering visage and shiveredinvoluntarily.

  "What one?" he asked under his breath, although he knew.

  "_La longue traverse_," the Factor decreed.