The Huntress

"Fat chance you have! Twice her age!" snarled Joe.

"I take my chance," returned Big Jack calmly. "Already I feel better since I thought of putting it up to her. Whichever man she chooses can draw his share out of the concern, and go on with her. Husky speaks first, me second, Shand third, and Joe last – or we can match for chances."

"I'm satisfied," said Shand with a sidelong look at Jack. It appeared as if these two felt that the other was the only one to be feared.

Joe, suspicious of both, refused to commit himself.

"He's got to be satisfied," declared Big Jack indifferently.

Bela arrived with the sun and peeped in the window. Seeing them up and dressed, she came around to the door. In the meantime Husky had awakened, and Jack had told him what was planned.

It was almost too much for Husky. His objections and entreaties were unnoticed. Fully dressed but somewhat shaky, he was now sitting on the edge of his bed. Sam still slept in the corner.

From the character of the silence that greeted her, Bela instantly apprehended that something was in the wind.

"What for you get up so early?" she demanded.

"Bela, we got something to say to you," Big Jack began portentously.

"More talk?" asked Bela.

"This is serious."

"Well, say it."

"Let's go outside," said Joe nervously. "It's suffocating in here."

Filing out of the shack, they stood against the wall in a row – Big Jack, Black Shand, Husky, and Young Joe. Bela stood off a little way, watching them warily.

It had a good deal the look of a spelling-bee with a teacher who meant to stand no nonsense. But each of the men was taking it very seriously. Each was pale, tight-lipped, and bright-eyed with excitement, excepting poor Husky, whose eyes were harassed, and whose mouth kept opening and shutting.

"'Tain't fair! 'Tain't fair!" he kept muttering. "Look at me, the state I'm in, and all!"

"Well, what you want say?" demanded Bela.

Big Jack stood up straight and brought his heels together. He had been a soldier in his time. He felt that it was a great moment. An honest bluntness gave him dignity.

"I got to open this matter," he said, "before each man speaks for himself." He glanced at his companions. "If any man here thinks he can explain it better, let him speak out."

"Ah, go ahead, and cut it short!" muttered Shand.

"Yesterday," Jack resumed, "it may have seemed as if we acted like a parcel of unlicked schoolboys. I own I am sorry for my part in it. But I don't see how I could have done different. A man can't let another man get ahead of him when there's a woman in the case. It can't go on with the four of us here, and nobody knowing where he stands. So I proposed that we end it this morning by putting it up to you."

The other men were moving impatiently.

"Ah, cut out the preliminaries!" growled Joe.

Jack was direct enough when he got ready to be. "Are you married?" he asked Bela point-blank.

Bela was a stranger to the tremors and blushes imposed upon civilized women at such a crisis. "No," she said with her inscrutable face.

"Do you want to be?"

She shrugged with fine carelessness. "I suppose I got get 'osban' some tam."

"Well, take your pick of the four of us," said Jack. "I ain't sayin' we're prize specimens, mind you. But you'll hardly do better at that up here. Anyhow, look us over."

She proceeded to do so. Under her glance each man bore himself according to his nature. Her eyes showed no change as they moved along the line. None of them could tell what thoughts lay behind that direct, calm glance. Having inspected each one, her eyes returned to Jack as if inviting him to speak further.

"Husky speaks first, according to arrangement," said Jack, waving his hand.

Husky's speech was moist, incoherent, and plaintive.

"They fixed this up when I was asleep," he stuttered. "Sprung it on me unawares. Me just out of a sick-bed, not shaved nor slicked up nor nothin'. 'Tain't fair! I ain't had no chance to think of anything to say. Made me speak first, too. How do I know what they're goin' to say after me? Tain't fair! I'm as good as any man here when I got my strength. Don't you listen to anything they say. Take it from me, I'm your friend. You know me. I'm a loving man. A woman can do anything with me if she handles me right. I won you from them fair, and now they want to go back on it. That shows you what they are. Don't you listen to them. You and me, we had our scrap, and now it's all right, ain't it? Look at what I suffered for you!"

There was a lot more of this. The other men became impatient. Finally Jack stepped forward.

"Time!" he said. "You're beginning all over. It's my turn now."

Husky subsided.

"Now I speak for myself," said Jack. It was the voice of what men call a good sport – cheerful, determined, weary, not unduly confident. "I am the oldest man here, but not an old man yet by a long shot. I am boss of this outfit. I got it up."

Joe angrily interrupted him. "Hold on there! You ain't proved the best man yet."

"Shut your head!" growled Shand. "Your turn is coming."

"Forty per cent of this outfit belongs to me," Jack went on. "That is, I got twice as much property as any man here. I can make a good home for you. A girl has got to think of that. But that ain't all of it, neither. You got to take me with it, ain't yeh? Well, I'm old enough to realize how lucky I'd be if I got you. I'd treat you good. Wherever you come from, you're a wonderful woman. You taught us a lesson. I'm man enough to own it. I say I take off my hat to you. Will you have me?"

Bela's face never changed. She turned to Shand.

"What you got say?" she asked.

Shand's dead white face made a striking contrast with his raven hair. His heavy head was thrust forward, his big hands clenched. He spoke in an oddly, curt, dry voice, which, however did not hide the feeling that made his breast tight.

"I am no talker," he said. "I'm at a disadvantage. But I got to do the best I can. I want you as much as him, though I can't tell you so good. I'm five years younger. That's something. I'm the strongest man here. That's something, too, in a land where you get right down to tacks. But that ain't what I want to say. If you come to me, you'll be the biggest thing in my life. I ain't had much. I'll work for you as long as I draw breath. All that a man can do for a woman I will do for you!"

The three others scowled at Shand, astonished and a little dismayed that the dumb one should prove so eloquent.

Young Joe plunged into the silence. A particular confidence animated him. With his curly hair, his smooth face, and his herculean young body, he had a kind of reason for it.

He showed off his charms before her as naively as a cock-grouse. But somehow the fire of his eyes and voice was a lighter, flashier blaze than that of the men who had last spoken.

"Sure, they'd be lucky to get you!" he said. "Any of them. Jack is twenty years older than you. Shand and Husky fifteen, anyhow. I guess you want a young husband, don't you? How about me? I'm twenty-four. We're young together. They've had their day. Girls have their own way of picking out what they want. Jack says look us over. I stand by that. Look us over good, and say which one you want."

She deliberately did as he bid her. The suspense was unbearable to them.

"You've heard us all now?" said Jack. "What do you say?"

Bela was the picture of indifference.

"There's anot'er man here," she said.

Jack stared. "Another? Who? Oh, the cook! He ain't one of us. He ain't got nothing but the shirt on his back!"

Bela shrugged. "You say you want mak' all fair. Let me hear what he got say."

Here was an unexpected turn to the situation. They glowered at her with increasing suspicion and anger. Was it possible there was a dark horse in the race?

"If you want him, I guess you can say so right out, can't you?" growled Jack.

Bela tossed her head. "I not want him," she said quickly. "I jus' want hear what he got say."

It was difficult for them to think of the despised grub-rider in the light of a rival, so they decided it was just a freak of coquettishness in Bela.

"All right," said Jack. "Anything to oblige." Turning, he opened the door and shouted for Sam.

Sam presently appeared, tousled and flushed with sleep, his blue eyes scornfully resentful.

"What do you want now?" he demanded. "You made me lose sleep last night."

"Well," said Jack, "all that is over. We're askin' Bela here to choose between us and settle the thing for good. We've all said our say, but she allowed she wanted to hear what the cook had to offer before she closed. Speak up."

Sam was efficaciously startled into wakefulness. He became very pale, and fixed Bela with a kind of angry glare. It seemed to him like a horrible burlesque of something sacred. He hated her for allowing it. He did not reflect that she might not have been able to prevent it. She did not look at him.

"Do I understand right?" he said stiffly. "You're all proposing to her in a body?"

"That's right," said Jack. "And out of goodness of heart she gives you a chance, too."

Sam's jaw snapped together, and his mouth became a hard line.

"Much obliged," he said. "I resign my chance. I'm not looking for a wife." He went back into the house.

It was not what the other men expected to hear. Suspecting an insult to the object of their own desires, they turned on him angrily. They would never have allowed him to have her, but neither should he turn her down.

"And a good thing for you, too!" cried Joe.

"By George, I've a good mind to thrash him for that!" muttered Jack.

His attention was attracted in the other direction by a laugh from Bela. It had anything but a merry sound, but their ears were not sharp enough to detect the lack. Bela's nostrils were dilated, and her lip oddly turned back. But she laughed.

"He is fonny cook!" she said. "I got laugh!"

"Oh, never mind him!" said Big Jack. "He doesn't count! What is your answer?"

Bela stopped laughing. "Well, I got think about it," she said. "I tell you to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITTLE MEADOW

The situation at Nine-Mile Point was not improved by the wholesale proposal for Bela's hand. The twenty-four hours she required for her answer promised to be hard to get through.

The interim of waiting for a lady to make up her mind is sufficiently trying on a man's nerves under the most favourable circumstances; but to be obliged to endure the company of all his rivals meanwhile was almost too much.

Breakfast was eaten in a dangerous electrical silence. No man dared to speak of what was in every man's mind, and to make trivial conversation was impossible under that atmospheric pressure.

Afterward, when Bela announced her intention of going away for a while, every man, much as he desired her company, felt relieved, and no word was spoken to stay her departure.

They let her go without so much as looking out to see which way she went. As a matter of fact, nobody was willing to let anybody else look; therefore, he could not look himself.

Thereafter they breathed more freely. At least, they were all in the same boat. They were not under the intolerable strain of watching every look of her eyes and interpreting every word she spoke for a sign.

The worst they had to look forward to was one more day of unutterable boredom. Each man was buoyed up by the hope that it might be the last of such days for him.

Sam went about his work with a wooden face and a sore and angry heart. He was not much of a self-analyst. He called Bela all manner of hard names to himself, without stopping to ask why, if she were such a worthless creature, he should feel so concerned about her.

A woman who took her pleasure in provoking four men to the point of murder was not worth bothering about, he told himself a hundred times; but he continued to be very much bothered.

"I'll never let her get me on her hook!" he cried inwardly – meanwhile the hook was in his gills!

After he had given the men their dinner he, too, went away from camp, bent upon his own devices. No one paid any attention to him.

A couple of hundred yards east of the shack a good-sized creek emptied into the lake. The stones of the shore offered a barrier to its path, over which it tumbled musically. Farther inland it pursued a slower, deeper course.

Ascending its bank, in about a quarter of a mile one found it issuing out of a lovely little meadow, through which it meandered crookedly, its course marked out by willow bushes.

The meadow was Sam's objective. He had often been there before. It was about a quarter of a mile long, and no more than a good stone's throw across from pines to pines. Though the level of the ground was several feet above the creek, the ground, like the creek bottoms generally, was spongy and damp, with dry islands here and there.

The grass was amazingly luxuriant. Drenched in the strong sunlight, and hemmed all around by the secretive pines, the place was the very picture of a cheerful retreat. Silent, strong-winged water-fowl frequented it, and more than once Sam had caught a glimpse of a noble figure of a moose stepping out from among the trees.

Sam, ever anxious to learn the lore of the country, was experimenting in trapping muskrats. Finding a couple of the little beasts snared and drowned at the doors of their own dwellings, he set to work to skin them. His inexperienced fingers made a mess of the job.

He was sitting thus occupied on the edge of a little cut-bank, with his feet hanging over. A clump of willows flanked him on either side. The clear waters of the brook eddied sluggishly a few inches under his feet.

In the middle of his bloody task, something caused him to look over his shoulder, and there, not twenty feet from him, peering through the willows, he saw Bela.

From a variety of causes, he blushed to the roots of his hair. For one thing, he was thinking bitterly of her at that very moment; for another, he saw, or imagined he saw, scorn in her eyes for his clumsy handiwork upon the muskrat.

He hastily tossed the little carcass into the water, and then regretted having done so.

"What are you spying on me for?" he demanded hotly.

The word was strange to Bela, but the tone conveyed its sense. She promptly took fire from his heat.

Showing herself proudly, she said: "I not know spyin'."

"Following me around," said Sam. "Watching what I do without my knowing."

"I follow you for cause I want talk," said Bela indignantly. "I think maybe you got sense. If you not want talk to me, all right; I go away again. You ain't got sense, I think. Get mad for not'ing."

Sam was a little ashamed.

"Well – I'm sorry," he muttered. "What did you want to talk about?"

She did not immediately answer. Coming closer, she dropped to her knees on the little hummock of dry earth.

"I show you how to skin him, if you want," she suggested, pointing to the other muskrat.

Sam swallowed his pride. "All right, go head," he replied.

Cutting off the paws of the little animal and making an incision over his broadest end, she deftly rolled back the skin, and drew it off inside out over his head like a glove.

Then cutting a willow stem beside her, she transformed it with two half cuts into a little spring-frame, over which she drew the late muskrat's over-coat. The whole operation did not consume five minutes.

"Easy enough when you know how," admitted Sam sheepishly.

"Hang it up to dry," she said, handing it over.

They stretched in the grass side by side, and, hanging over the edge, washed their hands in the creek. A silence fell upon them. Each was waiting for the other to speak. Sam was trying to resist a great tenderness that threatened to undermine all his fortifications.

Finally he asked again: "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

Bela was not yet ready to answer. She threw up little cascades of water with her hands. Sam, watching, was suddenly struck by the fact that they were not at all like ordinary hands.

This was the first pair of hands he had ever distinguished in his life. They were most beautiful objects, the backs ivory coloured, the palms and finger-tips a lovely dusky pink. They were useful hands, too – thin, strong, nervous. Watching them play in the water, he forgot the argument going on inside him.

"You not mad wit' me now?" murmured Bela softly.

This reminded him that he had every reason to be angry with her – though he had temporarily forgotten the reasons. He turned his face away, frowning, blushing again, the picture of anger. It was partly directed against himself, that he should have so little self-command.

"No!" he replied stiffly.

"Then why you mak' wrinkles in your face to me?" asked Bela.

"Ah, cut it out!" he said, exasperated. "Never mind my face! What did you want to say?"

"I can't say it when I think you mad," murmured Bela.

"I'm not," said Sam. "I want to be your friend," he added. "You can't always regulate your face."

There was another silence. Bela studied his averted face with a curious wistfulness. He was very difficult to handle.

"You want to see my cache?" she asked abruptly, at last. "Where I stay?"

Sam's heart leaped up. Old Prudence shook his staff in vain. "Yes, if you like," he said breathlessly, scowling harder than ever.

She scrambled to her feet. "Stay here," she said. "I come back soon."

She disappeared around the willows without vouchsafing any further explanation. Sam lay as she left him, scowling at the water, very much confused as to his internal sensations.

As it happened before, no sooner was the intoxication of her presence removed than he began to berate himself for his weakness.

"Weak as water!" he mentally scolded himself. "Just because she's pretty, you forget every blame thing! There's a whole lot of funny business about her that needs explaining. But you swallow it whole. What business have you got fooling with any girl, anyhow? You've got other problems to solve. For God's sake, take a brace!"

As he was communing with himself in this fashion, the graceful prow of a dugout poked itself around a bend of the little grass-fringed canal below. Presently followed, kneeling in the stern, Bela with her quiet face and glowing eyes, wielding a paddle with inimitable grace.

She floated toward him noiselessly, bringing the boat's nose this way and that with deft turns of the wrist. She was as harmonious against the background of brown water and green grass as a wild duck.

It was such an intimate, cosy little stream; the grassy banks seemed to embrace the canoe as they let it pass. So charming was the sight that Sam forgot his prudence and broke into a beaming smile.

She brought her little craft to a stop before him.

"Get in," she said, pointing to the bow. "Tak' care!"

It was Sam's first experience with a native craft. It looked cranky. He let himself carefully over the bank on his stomach. Finding the floor of the dugout with his feet, he gingerly stood up. It staggered alarmingly under him, and he hastily embraced the bank again, unhappily conscious of a lack of dignity.

A great piece of the sod came away in his hands. He lost his balance and was catapulted overboard. He landed in the water in a sitting position, wearing an absurd expression of surprise. Bela, seeing what was coming, saved herself from a like fate by throwing herself forward in the canoe.

Sam's streaming head emerged from the creek with the same look of surprise on his face. The water reached to his waist. Bela looked at him, and went off into a rippling peal of laughter.

Sam blinked and scowled and dashed the water out of his eyes. His face offered a study in varying expressions. At first he tried to laugh with her, but her laughter was intolerable. Suddenly he exploded:

"Ah, cut it out! Sounds like a chicken!"

The angrier he got the harder Bela was obliged to laugh. It had an apologetic ring, but the tears rolled down her cheeks.

Sam began to think she had done it on purpose, and said so.

"No! No!" gasped Bela. She pointed across the creek. "Shallow there. You can step in easy."

Sam, full of dignity, waded out and started home.

Bela was suddenly sobered. "Wait!" she cried. "Ain't you comin' wit' me?"

He affected not to hear her.

"I sorry I laugh," she said, genuinely distressed. "But – but you look so fonny!" The unruly laughter threatened to escape her again. "Please come back, Sam."

"I can't come like this, can I?" he said scornfully.

"Sure!" she said. "I mak' good fire. You soon dry off."

He gradually allowed himself to be persuaded. Finally, with dignity somewhat marred by his bedraggled appearance, he took his place very gingerly in the bow. Bela bit her lips to keep the laughter in.

"I not want to laugh," she said naively. "Somesing inside mak' me. Your face look so fonny when you sit down in the water! Laka bear when him hear a noise – oh!"

Sam glowered in silence.

She exerted herself to charm away the black looks. "See papa mus'rat," she said, pointing. "Sit so stiff under the leaves, think we see not'ing. Sit up wit' hands on his stomach lak little ol' man and look mad. Look lak Musq'oosis."

Meanwhile she was nosing the dugout cleverly around the grassy bends of the tiny stream and under the willows. It was like a toy boat on a fairy river. Sometimes the willows interlaced overhead, making a romantic green tunnel to be explored.

Finally, as they drew near the woods at the head of the meadow, she turned her boat into a narrow backwater starred with little lilies, and drove it forward till it grounded as snugly as a ship in its berth.

Leading the way up the grassy bank, she pushed under the willows and introduced Sam into a veritable

Titania's

 bower, completely encircled by the springing bushes. This was her cache.

Her blankets lay neatly rolled within a tarpaulin. There was her grub-box with stones upon the cover to keep out four-footed prowlers. Her spare moccasins were hanging from the branches to dry.

She made Sam sit down, in a patch of goodly sunshine, and in a jiffy had a crackling fire of dry willow blazing before him. He took off his coat and hung it to dry.

"Tak' off your shirt, too," she said. "Dry quicker."

Sam shook his head, blushing.

"Go on," she said coolly. "I guess you got ot'er shirt on, too."

The blue flannel shirt joined the coat beside the fire.

She handed him a towel to dry his hair with. Afterward she produced a comb.

"I comb your hair nice," she said.

Sam started away in a panic and held out his hand for the comb. Bela let him have it with a regretful look at the thick, bright hair. She started to brew tea.

"Don't be mad wit' me for 'cause I laugh," she said cajolingly. "Some tam, maybe, I fall in water. I let you laugh all you want."

He looked at her startled. He dared not glance forward at any future with her. Nevertheless, in spite of himself, he was relenting. He would have relented quicker had she not continually put him out of conceit with himself by making him blush. Naturally, he blamed her for that.

Meanwhile there was delicious bodily comfort in sitting under shelter of the willows, warmed on the outside by the generous sunshine and the crackling fire, and made all mellow within by hot tea. The corners of his mouth began to turn up.

His curiosity concerning her was still active. Remembering something she had said before, he asked: "Who is Musgooses?"

She smiled at his pronunciation.

"Musq'oosis," she corrected. "That name mean little bear. He is my friend. He friend to my fat'er, too. He is little. Got crooked back. Know everything."

"Where do you live, Bela?" he asked.

"Over the lake by Hah-wah-sepi," she answered readily. On second thought, she corrected the statement. "No; before I am live there. My mot'er live there. Now I live where I am. Got no home. Got no people."

"But if your mother lives there, that's your home, isn't it?" said Sam the respectable.

Bela shrugged. "She got stay wit' her 'osban'," she replied. "He no good. He w'at you call 'obo!"

"What did you leave for?" asked Sam.

She frowned at the difficulty of explaining this in English. "Those people are poor an' foolish, an' dirty people," she said. "They not lak me ver' moch. I not lak them ver' moch. Only my mot'er. But I am live there before for 'cause I not know not'ing. Well, one day I hit my fat'er wit' a stick – no, hit my mot'er's 'osban' wit' a stick. So my mot'er tell me my fat'er a white man. Her fat'er white man, too. So I mos' white. So I go 'way from those people."

"But you've got to have some home – somebody to live with!" said Sam anxiously.

She glanced at him through her lashes. She shrugged. "Musq'oosis tell me what to do," she said simply. "He is my friend."

Sam in his concern for her situation forgot himself.

"I – I'd like to be your friend, too," he stammered.

Bela smiled at him dazzlingly. "I lak hear you say that," she returned simply.

They fell silent, mutually embarrassed, but not unhappy. There was something both delightful and dangerous in their proximity within that secret circle. The eyes of both confessed it.

"Will you eat?" asked Bela, "I have bread and fish."

He shook his head. "I have to go soon," he replied with a glance at the sun.

Her face fell. "I lak feed anybody come to my place," she said wistfully.

"Oh, well, go ahead," assented Sam, smiling.

She hastened to prepare a simple meal. Self-consciousness did not trouble her if she might be busy. Sam loved to follow her graceful movements by the fire. What harm? he asked the watch-dog within. This dog had grown drowsy, anyhow.

Bela's curiosity in turn began to have way.

"Where you live before you come here, Sam?" she asked.

"In a city. New York. It isn't real living."

"I know a city!" she exclaimed. "Musq'oosis tell me. They got houses high as jack-pines. Windows wide as a river. At night a thousand thousand moons hang down to give the people light."

"Right!" said Sam. "What would you say to a sky-scraper I wonder?"

"What is sky-scraper?"

"Like fifty houses piled up one on top of the other, and reaching to the sky."

Bela pouted. "You mak' fun I think because I know not'ing."

"Honest to goodness!" he swore.

"What good to be so high?" she asked. "High roof no good."

"There are different floors inside. Fifty of them."

"How do people get to the top?"

"In an elevator. Kind of box you get into. Whiz, up she goes like that!"

Bela's face showed strong incredulity. She let the subject drop.

"You got fat'er, mot'er out there, Sam?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Both dead."

"You got no people 'tall?" she asked, quick with sympathy.

"Brothers," he said grimly. "Three of them. They don't think much of me."

One question followed another, and the time flew by. They were making famous progress now. They ate. Afterward Sam stretched out in the grass with his hands under his head, and told his story freely.

"Gad, what a relief to talk!" he said. "I haven't really opened up since we left Prince George. Those f