r into a waiting York boat.
Then Bateese shoved it off, and the four men in it began to row. Two
canoes were already half-way to the raft, and David recognized the
occupant of one of them as Andre, the Broken Man. Then he saw
Marie-Anne rise in the York boat and wave something white in her hand.

He looked again toward the raft. The current and the sweeps and the
tugging boats were drawing it steadily nearer. Standing at the very
edge of it he saw now a solitary figure, and in the clear sunlight the
man stood out clean-cut as a carven statue. He was a giant in size. His
head and arms were bare, and he was looking steadily toward the bateau
and the approaching York boat. He raised an arm, and a moment later the
movement was followed by a voice that rose above all other voices. It
boomed over the river like the rumble of a gun. In response to it
Marie-Anne waved the white thing in her hand, and David thought he
heard her voice in an answering cry. He stared again at the solitary
figure of the man, seeing nothing else, hearing no other sound but the
booming of the deep cry that came again over the river. His heart was
thumping. In his eyes was a gathering fire. His body grew tense. For he
knew that at last he was looking at St. Pierre, chief of the Boulains,
and husband of the woman he loved.

As the significance of the situation grew upon him, a flash of his old
humor returned. It was the same grim humor that had possessed him
behind the rock, when he had thought he was going to die. Fate had
played him a dishonest turn then, and it was doing the same thing by
him now. Unless he deliberately turned his face away, he was going to
see the reunion of Marie-Anne and St. Pierre.

Yesterday he had strapped his binoculars to his belt. Today Marie-Anne
had looked through them a dozen times. They had been a source of
pleasure and thrill to her. Now, David thought, they would be good
medicine for him. He would see the whole thing through, and at close
range. He would leave himself no room for doubt. He had laughed behind
the rock, when bullets were zipping close to his head, and the same
grim smile came to his lips now as he focused his glasses on the
solitary figure at the head of the raft.

The smile died away when he saw St. Pierre. It was as if he could reach
out and touch him with his hand. And never, he thought, had he seen
such a man. A moment before, a flashing vision had come to him from out
of an Arabian desert; the m