THE PRIMAL LURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15650, 2 July 1914, Page 4

THE PRIMAL LURE

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

A ROMANCE OF FORT LU CERNE.

COPYRIGHT. ' OHiftTER (Cntinued. In that first moment of returning reason the later events were swept from his memory. He was onoe again the' factor, custodian of headquarters, server of his company, and hero was this girl, this thief, once more within the sacred hold of that company, still seeking its harm. He started to rise in his sudden anjjer, but fell back upon the pallet with a look of dumb horror and unspeakable amaze spreading slowly across his features. Not a muscle had obeyed his will below his hips. The sturdy limbs in their ragged moccasins and d 'et-grimed leggings stretched heavily upu. • the skins, inert, deadly in their weight, without sensation. As the man became conscious of this he pushed himself up to a sitting posture and gazed at them in wonder and unbeliei. With all his strength he tried to move one foot. The girl, watching him with narrowed lids, the old fury surging in her at his quick suspicion, saw the red blood purple his face, the veins stand out on his short neck with the magnitude of the effort. For. a breathless time 'ho struggled, wildly, with all his great strength, in the' doubled power of sudden fear, struggled as he had never struggled in alt his strenuous life, for the small conquest of hie own body, struggled and, strained and fought—and then, of a sudden, stopped. Stopped and dropped his hands on the floor besido him and lifted hi« eyes out the open door to where tlnn spirals of smoke went up to the cloudless sky, and the deserted poyt lay peacefully in the sun.

Memory had flashed back to his mind, dazed by its temporary eciipso, and' he saw the past few days, tho fight, everything up to that moment when he had reached out to close the great gate on the forsaken settlement and felt the sudden shock which preceded oblivion. But there ho faced a blank.

Where was the column! How came he back in the post? Why was the (strange girl, Lois Le Moyne, going across tho big room with the company stores in her arms ? His slow wits floundered here. He turned to her for answer, standing where his gaze had arrested her, and the puzzled scowl drew in his forehead. "What does it mean?" he asked bluntly. But with his return to consciousness the impersonal element had faded from tho situation. This was again McConnel, factor of Fort Lu Cerne, grim and hard in his narrow creed of zeal, the man who had stricken in its one vulnerable spot her meagre life,"dragged her high pride in the dust, dishonoured her in the face of the populace she had ever scorned, her ono implscaWo enemy, and she raised her head and walked .away without reply. She laid her burden at the hold's edge and passed back along the room and out. McConnel, helpless on the floor, gazed after her with pitiable incomprehension. It was never for him, with his heavy mind, his straight reasoning, and his simple strength to read the swiftly changing soul, the many-sided spirit of mystery which drove to such widely separated points of action the girl whose body was worn with its resistless command. Now again she was obeying that spirit which, though it was facing annihilation for this man, yet could not bear his presence. There was work outside headquarters. Work that waited in those deserted cabins, gharfly, work, terrible in its pathos, and she went wearily at it. Onco more she took up a blanket and in the silent heat of the burning afternoon alone and wishing for 110 help, she dragged, one by one, to the parched and yawning graves beside the church, those whoso own had been forced to desert them in the hard crisis of existence. , ' But first of all, and with most tenderness, be it said of her, she served all that remained of Richard Sylvester, sliding the stiffened form from its blanket to the padded bottom with moro gentle slowness than she.wasted on tho rest, and filing as softly sho could the shallow mound above him.

He had loved her and done her service. To the last she paid her debt. When she had finished the last mound and stood up from her labour the sun was just falling, like a great burnished shield, below the dark rim of the forest.

She knelt beside her work and with her clasped hands hanging before her lifted her weary face in the soft shadow of the coming twilight. I Aloud, and with infinite pathos, she re--1 ted the stately service, her only auditors a loon trailing low across the post and that great infinitude bending abovo her in its unmatched beauty of delicate lights. As she returned to the blockhouse in the silver and lilac of the evening she swept the aching desolation of the forsaken post with eye 3 too tired for sorrow. Within, the man lay on the pallet of skins, silent in the deepening dusk. He did not speak again. What Angus McConnel had read of a possible future in those solitary hours had been so bitter that he had'no heart for speech, even though it had been another than Lois Le Moyne who brewed tho steaming cu|) on the stove in his little room and presently held it to his lips in tho darkness, silent herself, as sullen and at war with life as he.

So night closed down on all that was left of Lu Cerne, a night whose young moon picked out vaguely its pitiful vacant cabins,. its open doors and windows and now moundß which held as one in their levelling power, Richard Sylvestor, his short reign of authority done, trapper and child between, and Simple John, the idiot. And in the shadows of that night one more task waited the hands of Lois Le Moyne, who placed in the hidden hole a pile of the H.D. Co.'s furs to near the level of the floor, dragged the helpless form of tho factor through the little gate whence he had entered so often in the pride of his life, laid him along the ' edge and gently rolled him down on the giving couch, as soft and grateful as the bed of a king. The girl slipped down beside the pile earnfully, lowered the heavy door, and going to a single skin in a corner of tho vault threw herself down in a bodily exhaustion so great that the world and all it held of tragedy, of wrong and passion and of misplaced love, were from that moment forgotten in a dreamless sleep. Noise awoke her on the heavy floor above, feet that slipped and whispered in their deerskin moccasins, blows that spoke of falling things and tho work of plunder. Tho Blackfeet had come back for pillage, as sho had known they would. Within tho hold, night held its unbroken sway, though up above the golden light of a new day gilded the scene and the/ little winds, that were of recent birth in tho wilderness, tortured so long of the merciless heat, fanned softly beaded fringe and waving feather.

For two tense hours the pounding and dragging, the footsteps and the shouts kept up their bedlam in the big room and tho store room, gradually lessening as one by one and two by two the warriors staggered away loaded to tho skies on back and shoulder with all they could carry from the stores. It took them a full hour to dopart entirely, with tho uneasy return of this and that one more greedy than the rest to scan the sacked and emptied place for some treasure overlooked, and for another hour Lois lay in the dark and listened. She heard no sound from the pile of skins lienoath the trap, not the slightest rustle of a movement, and during that tense and waiting hour a strange fear grew in her bosom, gripping her throat. Presently she crept from her corner, feeling cautiously aloijg the pile, and putting her hands slowly lifted the door above. With the first Email rift of light her eyes sought swiftly, not the space beyond, but the silent burden 011 the rude couch. They looked directly into the level eyes of McConnel and for that one-instant they were off their guard, eager, fearful, yearning.. /

Then the. old enmity swept back and sho turned, pushing up the door to its full width, clambering put into the flooding light of the morning to stare around tho familiar place. Chaos reigned supreme. Every nook and corner had been ransacked. Over the floors were scattered the papers from the open drawers of tho desk,'every box and bale had been overturned and in the far corner of the open space before the great fireplace where nad been piled those hastily gathered gods of the deserted households in that first flight. to headquarters, lay a heterogeneous mass of scattered things where they had been kicked apart and such things taken as Bleared tne fancy of the marauders. Lois remembered that she had noticed among them a flaxen haired doll brought from HB>vriette, sad keepsake of a child, asleep buside the church, whose mother could not give f it up, and a carved crcifix Gouging to Netta tiaupre. Those lyero gone, along with Mario Merger's brass candlesticks, while there remained the little iron pot of the Cree do-;-tress, an old silver cup from across seis, and half-hidden by a gaudy garment prized by some young girl, the worn little box with ita cla6p and hinges, the' "chest" of Simple John. The girl looked carefully around, out the open door, nip and down among the cabins and, satisfied that now indeed they were deserted, set about her business of existence.

In tho storeroom blank emptiness greeted her inquiry. Not a thing had ' been left of all the stores of tt.o peat. Tilligamok must have sent a swarm of carriers indeed. Broken boxes and torn papers, scattered cases and packing littered the floors and counters. Tho place Was swept clean. From, here her search extended out among the cabins. Whatever of provisions there had been left she would gather into her own small store. But here agaiL the hand of the noblo red man had beon thrust in its thieving. Tho cabins wore as clean as the blockhouse.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SERVICE OF UNWILLING HANDS.

So Lois returned to tho big echojng place in tho soft gold of that day in the late summer, and took up her most peculiar service. *

With tho aid of a strong plank laid across a chair and the braced-up trapdoor, sho rigged a sling whereby McConnel might drag his helpless limb's up to the level of the floor, and with hor shoulder beneath his knees she rolled him out into the blessed light, closed down the door, spread a wide bed of skips and the blankets she had stored, and ensconced him in what comfort sho could within his own (jffice, whoso commanding had been his great achievement. When she straightened from the labour her faco was flushed beneath its pallid thinness, her lips were shut and resentment flaunted in her eyes. Yet she moved all day in tho ceaseless work of . making habitable empty place, straightening the disorder, neaping in a pile the scattered goods in the far corner and gathering up the papers to put them back in tho desk.

All day tho broken man on tho pallet stared at the beams without speech, and within the blue depths of his eyes the puzzled wonder 'at the ways of 'fate had given place to such a mighty despair that the heavy face with its square-set jaw was a thing for pity. In the little living room the girl set her hand to tho cooking. Here she had stood and looked around, taking in with a keen glancd tho simple evidonce of this man's way of lifethe bare furnishings, the cleanliness, the few worn books on the shelf. They were strangers to her, those books, and her fingers itched to touch them. They vera not like anything she knew, odd volumes in foreign bindings whose possession had been tho pride of that merry Scotch-Irishman who had left his mark on the wilderness in this Angus McConnel, loyal servant of the H.B. Company, some time factor of the post of Fort Lu Cer.ao.

They bore no likeness to those books which Father Tenau had given her since the far day when he taught her her letters, a frowning, eager, whimsical child whoso unfolding had been a delight to the old priest, but whoso strange nature had drawn back from him when he could 'each her no more.

So Lois read a little of tho factor's life from the place where ho had lived and her fingers trembled when she took up his utensils to cook his food for him.

No words passed between them wlion she served him his meal, McConnel raising himself on his elbow and accepting it without thanks, nor when she quietly dressed the small wound in either side, though when sho rose and went away his eyes followed her, uncomprehending' and at loss.

It was a queer bit of life that now had its boginning in tho forsaken post, between these two, each of whom had played so harsh a part in the existence of the'other. Lois, burning with scorching shame at her servitude, yet powerless beneath its imperious demand, .spent tho days in hn attendance meagre as sho could make it, yet methodically sufficient. To every need of the silent figure on tho pallet sho gave punctilious heed, caring for the stricken body tirelessly, though to tho spirit of the man within that body she was blind and doaf and dumb.

Nevor a word did her tight lips utter, never did her eyes encounter hip. in those short and glorious days that began to hang their banners of beauty around tho stockade. With the quick change of seasons habitual to the Ragged Lands, the pitiless heat bogan to way as the copper huo died .in the north, and within three days the little winds took on a refreshing coolness 'that spoke of autumn. At the end of the first week there came ,a night when the first breath of frost came out of the north, and what of the foliage was left with sufficient life blushed faintly beneath its touch. The feel of fall was in the air, and Lois, sitting in the big door, looked out across the loneliness and wondered.

(To be continued daily.)