THE PRIMAL LURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 156, 30 June 1914, Page 4

THE PRIMAL LURE

BY V. E. ROE, Author of " The Maid of tho Whispering Hills." "The Heart of Night Wind."

A ROMANCE OF FORT IV CERNE. ! I

COPYRIGHT. CHAPTER XXI.-(Continued). Fob n moment there was silence of stupid amaze. Then Palo Lo Roc sprang forward and caught the factor, already some feet away in his plodding progress, by the arm. " Mother of God, m'aieti! What would you do?" he cried. McConnel faced him simply. " It needs but one sacrifice to save the post," ho said. " I am the factor of Fort Lu Ccrne." There was a dignity in the words which quietly claimed his tragic right. The man beside him dropped his hand and looked into his face. For a moment the glory of the thing tempted Palo to step aside. They were- two strong men, these two, but what to McConnel seemed a common and straight duty, was to Palo, with his keener soul, a glory which mounted to the skies. *

"Pardon, m'sicu," he said, "it is your right. But if I might speak, I would say that, one sacrifice given freely will but lessen the fighting force of us when thev come for the massacre, for do you ihinlt for one- moment, m'sieu, that with their dead in the fringe of trees yonder, with the smell of blood in their throats, with niir stockade gone and we acknowledging our helplessness, they will go and leave us with one living being within the post? No, m'sieu, they will come for blood and plunder, and wo will be but the easier prey with our factor gone, one more rillo the less."

Palo reused in his wisdom, wailing for his words to take effect. McConnel stood frowning upon the earth, his sandy head baro_ in the sun, his brows contracted, striving with all his soul to see the best. for his people—his people whom he had ever failed in serving, whom ho did not understand and who did not understand him, save for Palo Le Roc, wliobo eyes were opening in tho face of death when it was so late that it did not matter. Which | way would he serve them best? ; Honestly, with all his slow reason, he strove to see the highest service. " Hurry, m'sieu," warned Palo, "the wall is burning finely. We will need to gj soon within." Then tho factor raised his head. He had seen a way, the best way, it seemed, and his choice wan made.

"There is the idiot," lie said, frowning into Palo's eyes, " he is far gone in the sickness, not able to fight. Bring him." But for the first time bin hard voice broke and the stern line of his lips worked. The sharp blue eyes were suddenly pitiful in their sternness. Palo and France Thebati turned instantly. Inside the big room Simple John lay where Palo had placed him, only now the unstable light of reason, such .ib it was, had uone from his dull eyes, and he lay in apathy. The two nien-pii him up and started away. ''What <lo you do, Palo?" asked Lois Lc Moyne, in sudden horror, as she looked up from Tessa on the pile of furs. Palo was too wise to speak, but France was of a running tongue. " We are to offer the sacrifice at last to the Blackfct't," he said, " 'lis the factor's word." The girl sprang from the floor and bounded out to where they entered tlk' crowd of men. McConnel was looking down on the face of the strange being who lnd loved him, grotesque in its tin-coiifii-iousness. Lois whirled in and confronted this man, her head up. her eyes flaming above her thin cheeks, her breath coining in tramps of passion, while around the spreading nostrils there quivered the pinched white line of rage. "M'sieu. Hie factor is brave." she cried, her voire slinking with a contempt so deep tint it would not he suppressed, so intense th.it the smart of nngry (oars sttinj: in her eves. '' He would liny his worth loss life with so pitiable a thinu' as Simple John ' Take that, m'sieu !"

Doubline her right hand knuckles nut like a man, .-he struck him full in th'face.

" If there is to he a sacrifice from Fort Lu (Vine it sh:ill be a willing one.' 1

With that regal head still high as Clod meant it to hp, T/oia Le Moyne turned to finish that life whose worth was nothing and whoso cud wns peace. The flames had eaten through the palisade. Willi her last word there was a falline of broken timber* and through the leaping (lames there could be seen » mass of painted figures waiting to leap within with the first clearance of the heavy tire. As she started for this opening there was a cry behind, and Marcel Roquc rushed forward, caught the air! about the waist, falling on her knees with her ashen face uplifted. " Lois! Lois! Lois'." she panted in agony. Have calm, Marcel," said Lois quietly. With a little motion she turned and looked back to where the row of graves lengthened beside the church with the hot shadow of the wooden cross falling athwart its farther end.

Sudden tears clouded her frowning eyes. "Of all in Fort Lu Cernc I am the least needed." She loosened Marcel's clinging hands with quick roughness, and, crouching for a swift start, sped like a deer down toward the wall. They watched her go in spell-bound silence, open mouthed, .fust lveforr that red curtain of swinging flame they saw her crouch again, tense her body for' a spring, and in another second she had leaped through it, outside the wall. There was a midden stillness, and then out on the morning air there shrilled such a savage sound that those listeners within the doomed post crouched with hands to ears.

The Blackfeet had received their sacrifice. Angus McConnel stood where the gir! had struck him, and in his eyes Ihe old puzzlement at the ways of Fate deepened pitifully. "Lassie!" he cried thickly, as if against his will, unconsciously, " Lassie

CHAPTER XXII. the citrnnx is the forest. Outside Fort Lu Conic, Lois Lc Moyne. once branded thief and worse, ever a my. stay, had shot stumbling, her skirt aflame, into the open anna of crowded scores of savages for sake of that people who had repudiated her. They caught her. sending nip their cry of delight to high heaven at eight of her youth and beauty, for such a sacrifice must indeed be pleasing to the Great Spirit (in whose name the sons of men commit so many crimes!), beat out the fire on Iter garments—they were not ready for that factor vet— bound her hands behind her with a deerskin thong. They surged around her, yelling, press ing forward, thrusting their painted visages in her face, gibing, leering, split tin'' the golden day with their hideous triumph. She stood among them with her strong shoulders back and her head erect. She lifted her disdainful eyes above their heads and looked deep in the arching blue of the sky. and with a quirk perception that sent a 'brill to her heart she saw that its* hue was changed. It win deep and tender, soft and fur in its illimitable reaches of space, no longer brassy and hard as it had been these many weeks. To the lint Lh the queer copper haze was fading above the hills. With the irony of Fate, the signs of the scourge were passing. The. deep heart of that far-off sky semed. in that moment, to fill the soul of the girl with a quiet pone*, to answer the weary qmvtions which had wont her with their ooa>less iteration, to say that this was life and its purpose, its fulfilment and its end, this saving by it* sacrifice of a tattered fragment of a people who had never been her own even less than they had been JlcConnel'e,

_ At last the sweet words of prayer cam© i simply to her lips, their exalted solace to her spirit. j She clasped the fingers of her bound hands, forgot the yelling demons leaping about her, and-jscnt her Btrango soul, tinsorry and unal'aid, to the feet of her Maker. "Jemi mis," she whispered, "forgive Thou and accent—'' Rut there the words died on her parted lips, the weary calmness of her eyes changed to wonder. Faint and far on the morning air there came to her ears the sound of distant Hinging. Soft and faint and inimitably sweet, like the music of that other world to which she was drawing so near, it drifted down to her, stilling the beating of her heart, hushing the soul of her with its holy wonder. Angels singing beyond the veil of the world ! Surely her sacrifice was good. For once the high head of this girl bowed in humility, the fiery eves filled with humble tears, She strained her hearing for that silver strain, rising and falling like a shimmering billow of silken sound blown by the wind of heaven. Nearer it came, slowly nearer, rising in its unmatched beauty, falling in solemn cadence. It lifted in increasing volume, rising over the roof of the forest, and suddenly Lois Le Moyne lifted her ; bowed head, while the look of holy awe on her face changed to comprehension. She, recognised the cadence of that strain. | It was a Latin chant for the dying, j and none but Father Tenau had ever sung ! it in the wilderness. I Absorbed as she had been with the buai- j ness of her soul, she had paid no heed to that concourse of surging demons which , Ipressed around her, their naked skins j i brushing her bound arms, the smell of : ! their war paint in her nostrils. Now : I with her own descent from heaven to . I earth, she was conscious of them. In ' I every attitude they stood around her, like ! a molten sea nf action arrested at it"-- 1 I height. Some rigid and straight in their -bronze strength, some Lent in art of leaping, some leaning as they peered in her face, they stood as they had been stayed • and every ear was bent to that sound . in the forest. A swift and utter silence j had fallen. Only the eaten edges of the ' : burned opening in the stockade, stiil 'crackling with their flames, gave forth a ' voice in the stillness. On the outer edge of the mass of warriors the squaws , hovered among the trees. j Nearer and nearer came that silver song, i It resolved its floating glory to the open- | ing in the dark wall of the forest before j the great gate where the settlement trail , went into the wilderness, pouring forth as from some huge cathedral aisle, and presently there was a motion in the vast press ' of human forms that encompassed the girl, r a wave that started far ahead ?.:id swept ; i like a wave of the sea. past her and be- < yond, as that great concourse of savages ;' fell upon their faces on the sun-ciacked ■ i earth, leaving of all their number she ; i alone upright in their midst, her head still j up, her hands bound behind her. I < Out of the green mouth of the. forest ! aisle there came a small procession, a |1 band of dark-robed monks, walking two 11

> and two, their rosaries in their hands, 'and at their head the good father himself, the sun on his bare head ajjd borne I aloft in his hands, swaying with hij step, ! the jarred symbol of redemption, the I Holy Crucifix. The mvstory of that year beyond the Red Hills now laid its hand upon the I Blnckfeet. They fell befoie him in super- ; stitious reverence. I The rtid eyes of the priest, sweeping ; the sudden scone before him, the barred entrance of the post, the signs of battle, I the burning wall of the stockade, the prostrate hordes of savages, and the tall i girl standing hound in their midst, took in it»* import and his mind leaned back jto twenty years before, when this same j tiling h'd happened. | He knew the Binclef« w t and their ways— ah, who mijjiit know them better! i So plainly in that instant he saw again. [looking from the past, the lovely face of the little Sister Felice, whoso spotless life had bought the safely of this same post of Fort l.u Cerne. Now again a vouiil' '.'irl had been its price. The gentle lips of the father I twili lied, to tighten with grim sternness, ■ His voire, strong and thrilling, (hough ,ho was an old man, boomed out across ( the grovelling mass. "Tilligninnk!" he cried, "chief of wari riori. Tilligamok !'' i From dose at Lois' side the gigantic i form of the chief aiose. lowering in its 'majesty. He faced the priest in silence, i "Tilligumok ha? done a great wrong." J thundered the voire of Father Tenau. "he | has followed the words of Mishwn to deI strurtii.n. The Oreat Spirit wants 116 sacI rilice bv fire. He sends at this moment ! Hip priests to bid the Biarkfeet flee bej fore His wrath, else more than the si<k- ! iicss will punish all the tribe. Go, Tilli- | gamok ! (lather nil the wariors and the j women and the children, the ponies and I the tepees, and go quick to your land | beyond the Pol Hills Tito sickness shall 'leave the camps of the Biaokfeet as the rod lights leaves the heavns. It is even now dying in the north. Look ! Is it not true?" The priest waved the tall symbol toward the north. The chief, raising his awe-struck fac<\ gazed after the motion. Of a truth the copper hue. so long staining the canopy of the sky. was fading, even as Lois had noticed r.n hour hack. Fear and conviction played across the features of the. Indian. He gave a short command. From all around they began, those painted savages, to creep to their feet, hastening as the movement spread among their, and pressing in eager haste, likstartled cattle, toward the shelter of the j forest. They pushed and burned and swayed, silent and in some uncanny awe, I and presently the girl stood alone beside I the biirniu; wall, the last, of that vast mass to face tin father as he came across the open spare- that, had been a Held of battle bo short a time before. With quick hands Father Tenan himself unbound her, and his tones quivered as he muttered above her the tender | words of the hetiedicj.it. i Then he pushed her through the opening, marshalled his brown brothers after her inside the post, and turning his back j upon them, took his position outside ! the open way. facing tin; forest where that herd of wdd creatures moved in the obeying of his command, with the holy symbol still raised befoie. him and the Kim on his pale far**. For a tense and silent hour, while Fort l.u Cerne held its breath, this splendid "id fighter of the wilderness stood so, forcing those savages to his will bv the sheer force of his presence and his unknown power over them. 1 (To be continued daily.)