Adventure, November 1915 — page 104: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Six feet four he loomed in his moccasins, as big as a bear, as lithe as a panther. The corduroy trousers and flannel shirt he wore wrinkled to the swell of his sinews, and through the open front of his shirt bulged such shoulder and neck muscles as only the pack and the tump-line could make. With a thrill Masita realized that he had followed his bent. They had not kept him within walls. He had adventured. He had voyaged the Northland. She suddenly blushed scarlet as she won- dered if he had yet won the honor of a Fac- torship. For she was a true Northwoman, the breed who at first glance look a man through and through and scorn or admire, a or respect, hate or love him as they ook. As Lavergne’s eyes rested upon her when he emerged from the green cover, she saw him stop and start. A slow quiver seemed to pass upward through his powerful body from toe-tips to neck, but the next instant, giving no sign of recognition, he stared past her, a grimmer expression around his mouth and eyes as he confronted Dubawni. “Who comes there?” he repeated. Swift as a lynx Dubawni was upon his feet amidships. He knew nothing of Ma- sita’s youth-dreams and Francois Lavergne, and he saw nothing in the man ahead of him but a bold, and mayhap a sorry, enemy. “What business is that of yours, rene- gade?”’ he bellowed through his black beard. “Put down that gun.’ The gun remained leveled. Behind it the owner advanced a step or two nearer the Mushalagan margin. “You are Chateaubriand Dubawni, Free- Trader, from Dubawni Post!’ he observed, nodding with something approaching satis- faction as he looked the brigade over with a practised eye. “More briefly, Briand Dubawni,” spat the free-trader. “The ‘Chateau’ encum- brance harks back to days as well forgotten. And your own mission? Some woods plun- derer, I suppose? But you have cut the wrong man’s trail this time. Alone or in force I spit upon your breed. So out of the way! Back to your lair in the forest before my men land and drown you in the river!” “You can’t land here,” spoke Lavergne quietly. Dubawni’s eyes, black as a night of storm, blazed like the lightning that splits the storm. Adventure ““Can’t?” he thundered. path?” Lavergne made a sign toward the spruce, and instantly all along the cleft other rifles poked forth and other bronzed faces looked over them. ‘Those voyageurs,” he answered. ‘And if they aren’t enough, there are plenty more on the other end of the portage. Arctic Fur voyageurs, and I—I am Francois Lavergne, head voyageur of them all!” “Arctic Fur voyageurs!” exclaimed Du- bawni in a voice like a trapped bear’s growl. And Masita, affrighted, arose beside him, her hand upon his elbow. “Mon Dieu, Helbaud’s Company!” she breathed. ‘“‘But, father, do nothing rash. You are so passionate and swift!’’ Masita had seen the conflagration in bis eyes, seen the swelling in the huge cords of his throat, and she understood that the name Arctic Fur was to him like a bullet in the flank of an enraged moose. For well she knew them, the fur lords of the North, the competitors of the Hudson’s Bay Com- pany, the bane of free-traders, and well she knew their leader Hillaire Helbaud, the lawless, the licentious, who as well as clash- ing more than once with her father in trade had cast covetous eyes on her. ‘Nothing reckless, father,” she besought, clinging to his squat, thick-chested, sturdy figure as the canoe lurched loosely in the lake swell. “For. you know he is wicked, Helbaud is wicked, and he looks only for an excuse to oppress.” Dubawni seemed to control himself with the severest effort. The sinewy ridges on his neck quit quivering, and the lightning blaze of his eyes died to tender mellowness as they dwelt upon her anxious face. “No, nothing reckless, petite, for your sake nothing reckless!’’ he promised. “But still I must have the thing clear, though it involves a quarrel with this scum.’ Scum! It stung Masita. Yet there was justification for the appellation, and indig- nation, a sort of formless resentment, against Francois welled up within her. Mon Dieu, were there not respectable com- panies enough adventuring in the North with which to ally himself? Why must he choose allegiance to Helbaud? The same thought was agitating Dubaw- ni’s mind as he turned to Lavergne upon the marginal rocks. “Vou look to me,” he declaimed, “‘like a “Who'll bar my S Gomichoo (©) (c©) =)