The Honor of the Big Snows - James Oliver Curwood (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📗

his eyes snapped fire.
"Ah, if I was only Jan Thoreau--a Jan Thoreau with the heart of Jean de Gravois--what a surprise I'd give that foreigner!" he said to himself, leaping quickly from the trail into the thicket.
He peered forth from the bushes, his loyal heart beating a wrathful tattoo when he saw that Dixon dared put his hand on Melisse's arm. They were coming very slowly, the Englishman bending low over the girl's bowed head, talking to her with strange earnestness. Suddenly he stopped, and before Jean could comprehend what had happened he had bent down and kissed her.
With a low cry, Melisse tore herself free. For an instant she faced Dixon, who stood laughing into her blazing eyes. Then she turned and ran swiftly down the trail.
A second cry fell from her startled lips when she found herself face to face with Jean de Gravois. The little Frenchman was smiling. His eyes glittered like black diamonds.
"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, running to him.
"He has insulted you," he said softly, smiling into her white face. "Run along to the post, ma belle Melisse."
He watched her, half turned from the astonished Englishman, until she disappeared in a twist of the trail a hundred yards away. Then he faced Dixon.
"It is the first time that our Melisse has ever suffered insult," he said, speaking as coolly as if to a child. "If Jan Thoreau were here, he would kill you. He is gone, and I will kill you in his place!"
He advanced, his white teeth still gleaming in a smile, and not until he launched himself like a cat at Dixon's throat was the Englishman convinced that he meant attack. In a flash Dixon stepped a little to one side, and sent out a crashing blow that caught Jean on the side of the head and sent him flat upon his back in the trail.
Half stunned, Gravois came to his feet. He did not hear the shrill cry of terror from the twist in the trail. He did not look back to see Melisse standing there. But Dixon both saw and heard, and he laughed tauntingly over Jean's head as the little Frenchman came toward him again, more cautiously than before.
It was the first time that Jean had ever come into contact with science. He darted in again, in his quick, cat-like way, and received a blow that dazed him. This time he held to his feet.
"Bah, this is like striking a baby!" exclaimed Dixon. "What are you fighting about, Gravois? Is it a crime up here to kiss a pretty girl?"
"I am going to kill you!" said Jean as coolly as before.
There was something terribly calm and decisive in his voice. He was not excited. He was not afraid. His fingers did not go near the long knife in his belt. Slowly the laugh faded from Dixon's face, and tense lines gathered around his mouth as Jean circled about him.
"Come, we don't want trouble like this," he urged. "I'm sorry--if Melisse didn't like it."
"I am going to kill you!" repeated Jean.
There was an appalling confidence in his eyes. From those eyes Dixon found himself retreating rather than from the man. They followed him, never taking themselves from his face. The fire in them grew deeper. Two dull red spots began to glow in Jean's cheeks, and he laughed softly when he suddenly leaped in so that the Englishman struck at him--and missed.
It was the science of the forest man pitted against that of another world. For sport Jean had played with wounded lynx; his was the quickness of sight, of instinct--without the other's science; the quickness of the great loon that had often played this same game with his rifle-fire, of the sledge-dog whose ripping fangs carried death so quickly that eyes could not follow.
A third and a fourth time he came within striking distance, and escaped. He half drew his knife, and at the movement Dixon sprang back until his shoulders touched the brush. Smilingly Gravois unsheathed the blade and tossed it behind him in the trail. His eyes were like a serpent's in their steadiness, and the muscles of his body were drawn as tight as steel springs, ready to loose themselves when the chance came.
There were tricks in his fighting as well as in the other's, and a dawning of it began to grow upon Dixon. He dropped his arms to his side, inviting Jean within reach. Suddenly the little Frenchman straightened. His glittering eyes shot from the Englishman's face to the brush behind him, and a piercing yell burst from his lips. Involuntarily Dixon started, half turning his face, and before he had come to his guard Gravois flung himself under his arms, striking with the full force of his body against his antagonist's knees.
Together they went down in the trail. There was only one science now-- that of the forest man. The lithe, brown fingers, that could have crushed the life of a lynx, fastened themselves around the Englishman's man's throat, and there came one gasping, quickly throttled cry as they tightened in their neck-breaking grip.
"I will kill you!" said Jean again.
Dixon's arms fell limply to his side. His eyes bulged from their sockets, his mouth was agape, but Jean did not see. His face was buried on the other's shoulder, the whole life of him in the grip. He would not have raised his head for a full minute longer had there not come a sudden interruption--the terrified voice of Melisse, the frantic tearing of her hands at his hands.
"He is dead!" she shrieked. "You have killed him, Jean!"
He loosed his fingers and sat up. Melisse staggered back, clutching with her hands at her breast, her face as white as the snow.
"You have killed him!"
Jean looked into Dixon's eyes.
"He is not dead," he said, rising and going to her side. "Come, ma chere, run home to Iowaka. I will not kill him." Her slender form shook with agonized sobs as he led her to the turn in the trail. "Run home to Iowaka," he repeated gently. "I will not kill him, Melisse."
He went back to Dixon and rubbed snow over the man's face.
"Mon Dieu, but it was near to it!" he exclaimed, as there came a flicker of life into the eyes. "A little more, and he would have been with the missioner!"
He dragged the Englishman to the side of the trail, and set his back to a tree. When he saw that fallen foeman's breath was coming more strongly, he followed slowly after Melisse.
Unobserved, he went into the store and washed the blood from his face, chuckling with huge satisfaction when he looked at himself in the little glass which hung over the wash-basin.
"Ah, my sweet Iowaka, but would you guess now that Jean de Gravois had received two clouts on the side of the head that almost sent him into the blessed hereafter? I would not have had you see it for all the gold in this world!"
A little later he went to the cabin. Iowaka and the children were at Croisset's, and he sat down to smoke a pipe. Scarce had he begun sending up blue clouds of smoke when the door opened and Melisse came in.
"Hello, ma chere," he cried gaily, laughing at her with a wave of his pipe.
In an instant she had flung the shawl from her head and was upon her knees at his feet, her white face turned up to him pleadingly, her breath falling upon him in panting, sobbing excitement.
"Jean, Jean!" she whispered, stretching up her hands to his face. "Please tell me that you will never tell Jan--please tell me that you never will, Jean--never, never, never!"
"I will say nothing, Melisse."
"Never, Jean?"
"Never."
For a sobbing breath she dropped her head upon his knees. Then, suddenly, she drew down his face and kissed him.
"Thank you, Jean, for what you have done!"
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Jean when she had gone. "What if Iowaka had been here then?"


CHAPTER XXI
A BROKEN HEART
The day following the fight in the forest, Dixon found Jean de Gravois alone, and came up to him.
"Gravois, will you shake hands with me?" he said. "I want to thank you for what you did to me yesterday. I deserved it. I have asked Miss Melisse to forgive me--and I want to shake hands with you."
Jean was thunderstruck. He had never met this kind of man.
"Que diantre!" he ejaculated, when he had come to his senses. "Yes, I will shake hands!"
For several days after this Jean could see that Melisse made an effort to evade him. She did not visit Iowaka when he was in the cabin. Neither did she and Dixon go again into the forest. The young Englishman spent more of his time at the store; and just before the trappers began coming in, he went on a three-days' sledge-trip with Croisset.
The change delighted Jean. The first time he met Melisse after the fight, his eyes flashed pleasure.
"Jan will surely be coming home soon," he greeted her. "What if the birds tell him what happened out there on the trail?"
She flushed scarlet.
"Perhaps the same birds will tell us what has happened down on the Nelson House trail, Jean," she retorted.
"Pouf! Jan Thoreau doesn't give the snap of his small finger for the MacVeigh girl!" Jean replied, warm in defense of his friend.
"She is pretty," laughed Melisse, "and I have just learned that is why men like to--like them, I mean."
Jean strutted before her like a peacock.
"Am I pretty, Melisse?"
"No-o-o-o."
"Then why"--he shrugged his shoulders suggestively--"in the cabin--"
"Because you were brave, Jean. I love brave men!"
"You were glad that I pummeled the stranger, then?"
Melisse did not answer, but he caught a laughing sparkle in the corner of her eye as she left him.
"Come home, Jan Thoreau," he hummed softly, as he went to the store. "Come home, come home, come home, for the little Melisse has grown into a woman, and is learning to use her eyes!"
Among the first of the trappers to come in with his furs was MacVeigh. He brought word that Jan had gone south, to spend the annual holiday at Nelson House, and Cummings told Melisse whence the message came. He did not observe the slight change that came into her face, and went on:
"I don't understand this in Jan. He is needed here for the carnival. Did you know that he was going to Nelson House?"
Melisse shook her head.
"MacVeigh says they have made him an offer to go down there as chief man," continued the factor. "It is strange that he has sent no explanation to me!"
It was a week after the big caribou roast before Jan returned to Lac Bain. Melisse saw him drive in from the Churchill trail; but while her heart fluttered excitedly, she steeled herself to meet him with at least an equal show of the calm indifference with which he had left her six weeks before. The coolness of his leave-taking still rankled bitterly in her bosom. He had not kissed her; he had not even passed his last evening with her.
But she was not prepared for the changed Jan Thoreau who came slowly through the cabin door. His hair and beard had grown, covering the smooth cheeks which he had always kept closely shaven. His eyes glowed with dull pleasure as she stood waiting for him, but there was none of the old flash and fire in them. There was a strangeness in his manner, an uneasiness in the shifting of his eyes, which caused the half- defiant flush to fade slowly from her cheeks before either