Flower of the North - James Oliver Curwood (desktop ebook reader .txt) 📗

stirred within him. And Jeanne, as though she had read the working of his mind, looked straight at him and smiled, with a little purring note in her throat that took the place of a thousand words. It was such a smile, and yet not one of love, which puts the strength of ten men in one man's arms; and Philip laughed back at her, every chord in his body responding in joyous vibration to the delicate note that had come with it. No matter what events might find their birth at Fort o' God, Jeanne was innocent of all knowledge of plot or wrong-doing. Once for all Philip convinced himself of this.
The thought that came to him, as he looked at Jeanne, found voice through his lips.
"Do you know," he said, "if I never saw you again I would always have three pictures of you in my memory. I would never forget how you looked when I first saw you on the cliff--or as I see you now, wrapped in your bearskins. Only--I would think of you--as you smiled."
"And the third picture?" questioned Jeanne, little guessing what was in his mind. "Would that be at the fire, when I burned the bad man's neck--or--or when--"
She stopped herself, and pouted her mouth in sudden vexation, while a flush which Philip could easily see rose in her cheeks.
"When I doctored your foot?" he finished, rather unchivalrously, chuckling in his delight at her pretty discomfiture. "No, that wouldn't be the third, Miss Jeanne. The other scene which I shall never forget was that on the stone pier at Churchill, when you met a beautiful girl who was coming off the ship."
The blood leaped to Jeanne's face. Her soft lips tightened. A sudden movement, and the bearskin slipped from her shoulders, leaving her leaning a little forward, her eyes blazing. A dozen words had transformed her from the child he had fancied her to a woman quivering with some powerful emotion, her beautiful head proud and erect, her nostrils dilating with the quickness of her breath.
"That was a mistake," she said. There was no sign of passion in her voice. It trembled a little, but that was all. "It was a mistake, M'sieur Philip. I thought that I knew her, and--and I was wrong. You--you must not remember THAT!"
"I am no better than a wild beast," groaned Philip, hating himself. "I'm the biggest idiot in the world when it comes to saying the wrong thing, I never miss a chance. I didn't mean to say anything--that would hurt--"
"You haven't," interrupted the girl, quickly, seeing the distress in his face. "You haven't said a thing that's wrong. Only I don't want you to remember THAT picture. I want you to think of me as-- as--I burned the bad man's neck."
She was laughing now, though her breast was rising and falling a little excitedly and the deep color was still in her cheeks.
"Will you?" she entreated.
"Until I die," he exclaimed.
She was fumbling under the luggage, and dragged forth a second paddle.
"I've had an easy time with you, M'sieur Philip," she said, turning so that she was kneeling with her back to him. "Pierre makes me work. Always I kneel here, in the bow, and paddle. I am ashamed of myself. You have worked all night."
"And I feel as fresh as though I had slept for a week," declared Philip, his eyes devouring the slim figure a paddle's length in front of him.
For an hour they continued up the river, with scarcely a word between them to break the silence. Their paddles rose and fell with a rhythmic motion; the water rippled like low music under their canoe; the spell of the silent shores, of voiceless beauty, of the wilderness awakening into day appealed to them both and held them quiet. The sun broke faintly through the drawn mists behind. Its first rays lighted up Jeanne's rumpled hair, so that her heavy braid, partly undone and falling upon the luggage behind her, shone in rich and changing colors that fascinated Philip. He had thought that Jeanne's hair was very dark, but he saw now that it was filled with the rare life of a Titian head, running from red to gold and dark brown, with changing shadows and flashes of light. It was beautiful. And Jeanne, as he looked at her, he thought to be the most beautiful thing on earth. The movement of her arms, the graceful, sinuous twists of her slender body as she put her strength upon the paddle, the poise of her head, the piquant tilt to her chin whenever she turned so that he caught a half profile of her flushed, eager face all filled his cup of admiration to overflowing. And he found himself wondering, suddenly, how this girl could be a sister to Pierre Couchee. He saw in her no sign of French or half-breed blood. Her hair was fine and soft, and waved about her ears and where it fell loose upon the back. The color in her cheeks was as delicate as the tints of the bakneesh flower. She had rolled up her broad cuffs to give her greater freedom in paddling, and her arms shone white and firm, glistening with the wet drip of the paddle. He was marveling at her relationship to Pierre when she looked back at him, her face aglow with exercise and the spice of the morning, and he saw the sunlight as blue as the sky above him in her eyes. If he had not known, he would have sworn that there was not a drop of Pierre's blood in her veins.
"We are coming to the first rapids, M'sieur Philip," she announced. "It is just beyond that ugly mountain of rock ahead of us, and we will have a quarter-mile portage. It is filled with great stones and so swift that Pierre and I nearly wrecked ourselves coming down."
It was the most that had been said since the beginning of that wonderful hour that had come before the first gleam of sunrise, and Philip, laying his paddle athwart the canoe, stretched himself and yawned, as though he had just awakened.
"Poor boy," said Jeanne; and it struck him that her words were strangely like those which Eileen might have spoken had she been there, only an artless comradeship replaced what would have been Miss Brokaw's tone of intimacy. She added, with genuine sympathy in her face and voice: "You must be exhausted, M'sieur Philip. If you were Pierre I should insist upon going ashore for a number of hours. Pierre obeys me when we are together. He calls me his captain. Won't you let me command you?"
"If you will let me call you--my captain," replied Philip. "Only there is one thing--one reservation. We must go on. Command me in everything else, but we must go on--for a time. To-night I will sleep. I will sleep like the dead. So, My Captain," he laughed, "may I have your permission to work to-day?"
Jeanne was turning the bow shoreward. Her back was turned to him again.
"You have no pity on me," she pouted. "Pierre would be good to me, and we would fish all day in that pretty pool over there. I'll bet it's full of trout."
Her words, her manner of speaking them, was a new revelation to Philip. She was delightful. He laughed, and his voice rang out in the clear morning like a school-boy's. Jeanne pretended that she saw nothing to laugh at, and no sooner had the canoe touched shore than she sprang lightly out, not waiting for his assistance. With a laughing cry, she stumbled and fell. Philip was at her side in an instant.
"You shouldn't have done that," he objected. "I am your doctor, and I insist that your foot is not well."
"But it is!" cried Jeanne, and he saw that there was laughter instead of pain in her eyes. "It's the bandage. My right foot feels like that of a Chinese debutante. Ugh! I'm going to undo it."
"You've been to China, too," mused Philip, half to himself.
"I know that it's filled with yellow girls, and that they squeeze their feet like this," said Jeanne, unlacing her moccasin. "My tutor and I have just finished a delightful trip along the Great Wall. We'd go to Peking, in an automobile, if I wasn't afraid."
Philip's groan was audible. He went to the canoe, and Jeanne's red lips curled in a merriment which it was hard for her too suppress. Philip did not see. When he had unloaded the canoe and turned, Jeanne was walking slowly back and forth, limping a little.
"It's all right," she said, answering the question on his lips. "I don't feel any pain at all, but my foot's asleep. Won't you please unstrap the small pack? I'm going to make my toilet while you are gone with the canoe."
Half an hour later Philip unshouldered the canoe at the upper end of the rapids. His own toilet articles were back in the cabin with Gregson, but he took a wash in the river and combed his hair with his fingers. When he returned, there was a transformation in Jeanne. Her beautiful hair was done up in shining coils. She had changed her bedraggled skirt for another of soft, yellow buckskin. At her throat she wore a fluffy mass of crimson stuff which seemed to reflect a richer rose-flush in her cheeks. A curious thought came to Philip as he looked at her. Like a flash the memory of a certain night came to him--when it had taken Miss Brokaw and her maid two hours to make a toilet for a ball. And Jeanne, in the heart of a wilderness, had made herself more beautiful than Eileen. He imagined, as she stood before him, a little embarrassed by the admiration in his eyes, the sensation Jeanne would create in a ballroom at home. And then he laughed--laughed joyously at thoughts which he could not reveal to Jeanne, and which she, by some quick intuition, knew that she should not ask him to express.
Twice again Philip made the portage, accompanied the second time by Jeanne, who insisted on carrying a small pack and two paddles. In spite of his determination and splendid physique, Philip began to feel the effects of the tremendous strain which he had been under for so long. He counted back and found that he had slept but six hours in the last forty-eight. There was a warning ache in his shoulders and a gnawing pain in the bones of his forearms. But he knew that he had not yet made sufficient headway up the Churchill. It would not be difficult for him to make a camp far enough back in the bush to avoid discovery; but, at the same time, if he and Jeanne were pursued, the stop would give their enemies a chance to get ahead of them. This danger he wished to escape.
He flattered himself that Jeanne saw no signs of his weakening. He did not know that Jeanne put more and more effort into her paddle, until her arms and body ached, because she saw the truth.
The Churchill narrowed and its current became swifter as they progressed. Five portages were made between sunrise and eleven o'clock. They ate dinner at the fifth, and rested for two hours. Then the journey was resumed. It was three o'clock when Jeanne dropped her paddle and turned to Philip. There were deep lines in his face. He smiled, but there was more of haggard misery than cheer in the smile. There was an unnatural flush in his cheeks, and he began to feel a burning pain where the blow had fallen upon his head before. For a full half-minute Jeanne looked at him without speaking. "Philip,"