through the water and sent the white foam curling from its bow in
tiny ripples of protest.
Hour after hour, as the craft drove southward, Chloe sat with the
wounded man's head supported in her lap and pondered deeply the things
he had told her. Now and again she gazed into the bearded face, calm,
masklike in its repose of unconsciousness, as if to penetrate behind
the mask and read the real nature of him. She realized with a feeling
almost of fear, that here was no weakling--no plastic irresolute--whose
will could be dominated by the will of a stronger; but a man, virile,
indomitable; a man of iron will who, though he scorned to stoop to
defend his position, was unashamed to vindicate it. A man whose words
carried conviction, and whose eyes compelled attention, even respect,
though the uncouth boorishness of him repelled.
Yet she knew that somewhere deep behind that rough exterior lay a finer
sensitiveness, a gentleness of feeling, and a sympathy that had
impelled him to a deed of unconscious chivalry of which no man need be
ashamed. And in her heart Chloe knew that had she not witnessed with
her own eyes the destruction of his whiskey, she would have been
convinced of his sincerity, if not of his postulates. "He is bad, but
not _all_ bad," she murmured to herself. "A man who will fight hard,
but fairly. At all events, my journey to Snare Lake has not been
entirely in vain. He knows, now, that I have come into the North to
stay; that I am not afraid of him, and will fight him. He knows that I
am honest----"
Suddenly the very last words she had spoken to him flashed into her
mind--"Mr. Lapierre is far to the Southward"--and then Chloe closed her
eyes as if to shut out that look of mingled contempt and reproach with
which the wounded man had sunk into unconsciousness. "He thinks I lied
to him--that the whole thing was planned," she muttered, and was
conscious of a swift anger against Lapierre. Her eyes swept backward
to the brown spot in the distance which was Lapierre's canoe.
"He came up here because he thought I was in danger," she mused. "And
MacNair would have killed him. Oh, it is terrible," she moaned. "This
wild, hard wilderness, where human life is cheap; where men hate, and
kill, and maim, and break all the laws of God and man; it is all
_wrong_! Brutal, and savage, and wrong!"
The shadows lengthened, the canoe slipped into the river that leads to
Reindeer Lake, and still the tireless ca
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