# The Beloved Pawn (Everybody's Magazine 1922-23)/Part 3

Extracted from Everybody's Magazine Jan 1923, pp. 23-46.

### PART III

   David MacKinnon Finds That He Has Played the Game All Wrong from the Beginning. Norman Eldred Descends Upon High Island and Events Take a Totally Unexpected Turn
Begin this serial with any instalment. The story is here up to this issue.
DID Eve Eldred have any part in the dastardly and cowardly act her father committed when he set fire to David MacKinnon's trading hooker? It was hard for the lad to believe this, for hadn't the girl shown that she wanted to be his friend, and hadn't she gone away willingly with him—even begged him to take her—when the angry father had turned her out after that stormy scene in which she had proved her feeling for him? And yet—why had she detained him at the house while Norman Eldred slipped down to the dock to do his evil work?
Well, he had his revenge now. He had carried her off to High Island, and while he was treating her with all respect, the father back on Garden Island must be in an agony of doubt as to her fate.
Norman Eldred was the fisherman “king” of Garden Island in Lake Michigan, holding despotic sway over the rough characters whom he employed. With him lived his daughter Eve, whom he passionately loved, guarding her zealously from the men who surrounded her. Hers was a lonesome life, and her dog her only friend. Then, one spring night, a storm compelled young MacKinnon to seek shelter in Eldred's harbor—the very place he had been warned to keep away from, for some years before his father had been lured to his death there by Eldred.
Eve liked David from the first, and Eldred resented this. Before two days were over, things came to a climax. David protected Eve from the advances of a French-Canadian, Mosseau, and just then her father realized her feelings for the stranger. Followed the burning of the Annabelle and the casting-out of the girl. Then it was that David had taken her to High Island.
But now David's love for his daughter had reasserted itself, and he had sent Dimmock, one of his men, to High Island to make terms with MacKinnon.
On the neighboring Squaw Island lived “Aunt Jen” Borden. wife of the lighthouse keeper. She had, for some reason, a strong interest in Eve, and when she heard of the girl's predicament, she set about making some clothes to take to her.
While Dimmock was in St. James hearing the story that he had later related to Eldred, and which resulted in the visit to MacKinnon, the lighthouse supply-boat came to dock at High Island.
There were new grates to be put in the boiler at Squaw Island—a task for the two men which could not be delayed—and the keeper did not want his wife to go on this trip alone. Furthermore, though she had gone to bed for a brief time after her night at the sewing-machine, he knew she had not slept, but he did not find the heart to protest vigorously against her going by herself, because, for one thing, he saw her eagerness and, for another, he sensed that there was something here which she would not confide to him, and this realization hurt.
EVE saw the boat coming and watched from the house until it had docked and the woman started for shore alone, a bundle under one thick arm. Then the girl went to meet her, surprised and animated.
“Hello, dearie!” boomed Aunt Jen, when they were fifty yards apart. “Gosh A'mighty, this sand sure gives a body's heart all the gas it'll stand!”
She came to a halt, panting, but it was not natural that an active woman should breathe that rapidly, no matter if the sand was deep.
“I heard about it all,” she went on, before Eve could speak. “And just to show that I can be neighborly, I stitched up a few things you might be needing.”
Eve took the offered package wonderingly, looking from it to the woman.
“For me? Oh, isn't that nice?” There was something childish in this. “Clothes? Why—why, nobody ever made clothes for me! Nobody has since I was a little girl in the convent.”
“Then they're considerably overdue, ain't they?” Jen's eyes were busy—oh, so busy!—on that fine face. “I had to guess at your figger, having seen it only once since—since I come up here”—faltering and then hurrying on with only a slight show of her confusion. “Come up to the shanty and let's see what kind of a job I've done. Alone?”
Yes; Eve was alone. MacKinnon was on the lake, down the shore there. She tore the wrapping from the bundle eagerly, holding up the garments one after another and exclaiming over each.
“Nothing much,” Jen blustered modestly. “I only put beading in one of them shimmys, and I brung along that pink ribbon so's you could run it in if you like pink. I do myself, though there's them that prefers blue. Brought that tape-needle, thinking you might 'ave mislaid yourn. Then there's some pink silk there, too. A row of French knots on them nightgowns wouldn't be a bad idea”—indicating with a finger—“if you get the time. Hold it up ag'in' you— There! Yeah—long enough all right, and not much too big.” She reached for a waist and shook out the folds. “This is all that worries me, having to guess at your figger the way I did. It's a nice, soft voile if it fits. Take off that shirt an' slip it on.”
Exclaiming over the garment, as enthusiastic as a child with a new toy, as grateful as a woman for some necessary service rendered. Eve stripped off the flannel shirt she wore. The other watched her, nodding when the full lengths of her fine arms were exposed, and stroking the smooth, small shoulder.
“What a neck!” she whispered, as if to herself. “Dearie, you're built like a bird!”
Then she held out the waist for the arms and fastened buttons and helped adjust the skirt-band, standing back then, with critical gaze and head tilted, while Eve looked down and smoothed the front of the waist in delight.
“Not so bad,”' the woman said roughly. “Not so——”
And then the impulse that had been growing in her heart broke through the shamming words, and she lifted her hands to take Eve's face between her palms and stare into it with tears springing into her own eyes.
“Dearie, dearie, you're all right, ain't you?” The hands slid down to Eve's shoulders and the big arms folded the slight figure close to the broad bosom. “Thank the Lord!” she whispered. “Thank the Lord!” For the answer to her question was there to read.
Confused and embarrassed by this outburst, Eve stood passive, and after a moment Jen released her and, wiping her eyes, said hoarsely:
“There! I'm a blamed old baby, ain't I? A blamed old hen; but I've been thinking so hard about you, dearie, since I heard you'd come here. I was so scared last night; I was so worried coming down this morning. I didn't think he looked like the kind that'd hurt you; but men— Shucks! I didn't come down here to blubber and pry into your business. What's happened to you ain't any business of mine so long's you're all right, is it?”
Eve answered that question soberly and as if it had been put with the expectation of a reply.
“Not unless you make it your business. I mean”—when Jen looked quickly at her—“that maybe you'll understand when I say that there's times when a girl has to talk. I didn't know that until a little while ago. Then I did talk, and it helped; but this time I think I've been needing to talk to a woman—like you. Would you make it your business to listen?”
AND so the barrier of unfamiliarity that had been between them crashed down. For a moment, Aunt Jen eyed the girl while her own overwrought emotions swirled down to normal.
She put both hands on Eve's shoulders.
“You mean that? There's something you've got to tell? About your—about Norman Eldred?”
“No; not about him this time. It's about—David”—timidly.
The woman was at once relieved and surprised.
“Is it that you want to get away from him?”
The appraising look which scanned her face then was startling. Jen felt that she was being weighed in the girl's judgment. When Eve finally spoke, it was not in reply.
“Of course it's only been such a little while. This is just the second day; but when a man talks to you as though he hated you, when he does all he can to scare you, and when he can't always remember to act that way, but when he's sometimes—well, almost polite to you, and when he guards the place where you are at night from other men, do you think he means it when he says you're not safe with him?”
The woman drew a deep breath and took her hands from the girl's shoulders.
“I'd say offhand,” she began finally, “that a man who'd do that was one thing or the other—that it'd pay to watch him, close, never letting him surprise you, or that you was as safe as if you was in your mother's arms.”
“That's about what I've thought, but you see”—she frowned slightly—“there's so much I don't know, and this is the first time— Do you know about me?” The question was rather sharp, but that was not enough to give Jen Borden such a start. Strangely, too, she seemed relieved when the girl went on, “About the way I've lived on Garden Island, I mean.”
“I've heard, o' course.”
“I guess it's been as bad as anybody would hear it was, and if you've heard— I don't like to talk about it now. I did once; I had to once. I told David about it, and now I've got to talk to somebody about David, because it's worse—needing to talk, I mean.”
The two sat down then, facing one another, and the girl began slowly, thoughtfully, telling the story from the begininng, very earnest and sober, and halting occasionally as she tried to explain her bewilderment. She told of that night in the store, of the trip across to High Island, of the knife, of the next day, of how MacKinnon drove Fred Mink back to his shack last night, and of his silence and gruffness this morning.
“But once I looked up and he was looking at me—so—why, so funny! It seemed it was like the way my father used to look at me sometimes. And it seemed, too, that he was asking himself something, some question about me. I was quite happy yesterday, because I was so relieved at being away from my father, and to-day—I don't know. One time it seems like I'd be happy here always—just this way, and at others I don't know about him.”
She tugged at her thumb and looked away then, and Jen sat back, relaxing.
“He's done enough to make you ready to run away,” she said, “if it wasn't for the other things he's done. It balances up, don't it? Pretty well, I'd say. He's bark at you a lot, but he's—he's stopped at that, when there wasn't any reason for his not biting if that suited him. Is there anything, dearie, that you know about that'd make him want to hurt you?”
“He quarreled with my father.”
“Just that? With your father? Sure he don't have nothing to hold against you?”
“Why, no! Nothing.” That came after a moment of debate, and with some surprise. On the answer, Jen visibly relaxed.
“Thank the Lord—for the third time to day!” she murmured. “Oh, dearie, if there should be anything—if you can think of one little thing that he might be holding against you, don't you keep it back—tell him. Because”—her voice grew husky—“because it's hard to tell at the start, but it's worse a million times afterward. And you'll wish you told him if you keep on thinking you want to stay—as long as he stays.”
EVE showed no surprise at this, but, after a pause, asked seriously,
“Do you think I'll want to do that?”
Jen reached out a hand to the girl's and said bruskly,
“What is it you hope, dearie?”
Eve said steadily,
“I hope that I will want to stay with him—always.”
She could feel the tremor that ran through Aunt Jen's body and down to the hand that clutched hers.
“If that's what you want, work for it, pray for it, think about it, dearie! Don't let go of it, but don't be blind; suspect everything he does and says, but hope that it'll come out the way you want it to.
“Oh, you never can tell when the thing's coming that'll change your whole life. You never can tell on what a small stake you can tie your happiness fast.
“I know, dearie; I know what it means to pass up love. Not the love of a man—thank my stars I didn't pass that by when it come, but I did pass up other things that's next to it.”
Unconsciously she had substituted the word “love” for “happiness.” She had meant it so from the first.
“I've been on the lakes since I can remember. I was brung up on a trading hooker, sailing alone with my daddy after my mother died, and when he died I went from one thing to another until I got to be 'Red' Jenny—from my hair and my temper, they told me. I'd cooked on lumber schooners for years—lumber and ore schooners. A hard life in them days, without much love in it. And then, one night, when I was on the Belle o' Scotland, out o' Traverse City for Tonawanda, on the last trip of the season. Lake Erie was standing on end. Do you re—did you ever know about Lake Erie?”
She corrected herself hastily, but Eve did not notice the quick flush that came into Jen's cheeks, only to ebb as suddenly.
“No; I've never been there.”
“It's bad water—shallow—and when she blows down there, she goes inside out. Old man Denoir was master of the Belle, and all day he'd been beating up to the no'th'rd, trying to get shelter under the Ontario shore. 'Twas thick, too, with snow in the air. The deck-load was gone, and we was leaking when night come, and I guess everybody was thinking of their sins and what might 'ave been, more or less. Oh, the Lord's makes a lot of Christians on the Great Lakes with his November blows, dearie!”
She retrieved her handkerchief from her bosom and blew her nose.
“But what I was coming to was this: I'd been thinking of how my life hadn't brung me much to be proud or glad about while I stood in the galley holding the coffee-pot on the stove with my hands—the seas was that bad and the crew so in need of it. Then I heard somebody sing out and somebody answer, and seen one of the crew go running past the cabin with a line in his hands. He heaved it, dearie, and I thought first somebody'd gone overboard; but the mate come fighting his way back through the water in the waist, and I made the coffee-pot fast with a couple o' bricks for a minute and looked out. It was dark, but I could see 'em hauling on that line, slow-like, very careful, and then I made out a small boat. Yes, sir; a small boat out in that weather!
“Bad enough, that; and when I seen a man being swung aboard, I thought for sure the Lord was watching Lake Erie that night. But when he come over the rail with a bundle in his arms and I seen what was in that bundle, I forgot all about the Lord's goodness, my coffee, the storm and all. That man was carrying a baby, dearie!”
“From a wreck?”
Jen nodded grimly.
“A wreck? Yes; a wreck, and a lee-shore wreck.” Her voice, on that, was rough and harsh again, but it modulated as suddenly when she continued: “I found myself outside, wet to the knees with green water, and soaked from there up with spray, grabbing that baby out of his arms. You know, dearie, sometimes a body don't know much about herself. Kids had always been kids to me, noisy and dirty and underfoot, but I hadn't stood over my stove five minutes with that cold baby in a dry blanket before something give way inside me and let loose a lot thoughts and feelings I'd never had before.
“A terrible fear come up in me that that baby wasn't safe. From then on, that was all that mattered—a baby's safety. Holding her in my arms, feeling her get warm, sent something through me I'd never dreamed about before—a contented feeling, a peace like I'd never thought a woman could feel. And that with the old Belle groaning and taking water every minute! Oh, happiness come to me that night, but with it come that fear which was as terrible as the other was sweet.”
Her chin quivered, and she sniffed.
“But old Denoir made it that night, and we found shelter and got on to Tonawanda when the blow dropped, and I went ashore with the baby for the winter.”
“You kept it?”
The woman shook her head.
“Not for long. Not long enough. That's why I'm telling this story, dearie. She brought me something that I'd never dreamed about before. Men thought I was a bad woman—Red Jenny, a tough nut, but that baby made me over. It was better'n getting salvation in a sailors' mission. And I let her go! I let him take her away—devil that he was!—when I should 'ave kept her if I'd had to claw his eyes out for it.”
“But would he have let you?”
A low moan escaped the woman and she shook her head.
“He didn't love it like I did. Maybe I didn't have any right to that baby girl, but neither did he—'cause he don't know what love means. I let her go, and for years my life was worse 'n empty because in that time I had her I'd known what content and happiness meant.” She put a hand over her eyes for a moment.
“And she never came back?” asked Eve.
Jen did not speak for a moment, and when she did it was not to reply.
“It was a hard lesson, a terrible hard lesson—never give happiness a chance to drift off when it comes your way. Lay hold of it and make it fast, so's nothing can tear it from you.” After a moment: “Dearie, if I was to tell you that you could come to Squaw Island and stay with us as long as you wanted to, what would you say?”
It required a deal of courage for Jen to put that question, because if the girl answered in the affirmative, she did not know just what she could do. It would bring very close to the surface the thing she dreaded. So she watched with breath held down while Eve looked at her thoughtfully.
After that moment of consideration, during which Jen leaned forward, Eve said:
“That's the first time I've ever been asked anywhere in my life. It's what I wanted more than anything—friends, and places to go. But now—you see——”
It was not necessary for her to proceed. She had found this short experience, filled as it was with contradictions, most enjoyable, and the hope that those difficulties would melt away was so evident that her purpose was clear.
“I understand, dearie; I know.” Jen was rising, and had Eve's hand again. Her voice was firmer, and some of the keenness was back in her eyes. “I hope it's your chance—your big chance; and if it is. Lord forbid it's Aunt Jen who should drag you away!”
Their talk did not end there, but it was the beginning of departure, and a half-hour later Eve stood on the dock and cast off the line that held Jen's boat.
“If ever you need me, come; if you can't come, send word. I won't be far off, ever, and I'll be thinking of you and dropping in whenever there's a chance.”
That was Jen's parting promise, and a moment later she was inside, changing her suit coat for a denim jumper and spinning the fly-wheel of the motor, crying without restraint.
DAVID MacKINNON was lifting traps that morning, and from afar he had seen the boat making toward the harbor which was for the time his home. He got his glass hastily and made her out. For the moment he felt relief to know that it was from the light and not from Garden Island, but after that came perplexity, and he was curt with his helpers, mind more on what might be happening back yonder than on their work. Later he watch the departure, and could see Eve standing on the dock while the boat drew away, and that, also, was relief.
But this relief was wholly a relative matter and did not put his mind at rest. He had, strangely, resented the coming of another to talk with Eve and had put in a bad half-hour wondering what the upshot of that meeting would be; he was distinctly glad when the visitor left and Eve remained. Was he jealous, he asked himself, and denied that sharply. And then wondered again.
He settled down to the serious business of self-interrogation.
Was he fulfilling his avowed purpose in bringing this girl here—to keep her in suspense? He was not, most assuredly. The tables had been turned, and it was he who was guessing now. As he looked back on his attempts to impress Eve with the dangers of this circumstance, he felt chagrined, because his posturings seemed so artificial and feeble and futile—mere stalkings and mouthings, badly executed, with the girl looking on with an odd delight and seeing completely through the sham.
Was, for that matter, his intent to exact compensation from Eve for what she had done to him as hot as it had been night be fore last, when he carried her from her father's shore to his boat? Again his reply was in the negative, and this actually surprised him, for it was the first time that he had brought his own point of view up for conscious inspection. That she had conspired to destroy his hooker he did not doubt, that she had helped in a greater piece of treachery— No; he put that other suspicion back resolutely. Whatever she might have done and however great her ability to deceive, that surprise of hers when he told of the storied part she had had in his father's death could not have been assumed. That surprise was real; it was convincing—no matter what men said of her.
He rubbed his chin with his finger-backs, shocked by this ready defense of the girl before his own judgment. And then, after a moment, went back to consideration of the point which had brought it about. Somehow, since yesterday morning, when she gave him her thanks for the service he had rendered, when she had accused him of being decent and kind and at heart gentle, his animosity had been disintegrating. There were moments when he felt her call, as he felt it when she first came aboard his Annabelle and helped him, as when, the next night, she had stood on the hooker's deck and plaintively wanted to know why she deserved humiliation, as when, a dozen times yesterday, he had caught her looking at him with half-amused curiosity while he was doing his best to frighten her, as when, above all, he had peered in on her before the stove last night and beheld the splendor of her beauty.
He stirred uneasily at that, and felt himself in the grip of a helpless denial of all the purposes he had avowed concerning the girl.
People had warned him of her—Jen Borden, first; Gam Gallagher again. But the woman's warning had been more as a plea, and yesterday Gallagher had said that she was as fair as a June morning. She was!
He put down his knife and went out on the stern to be alone, and after he had stood there a moment, he laughed aloud.
Why, he had done everything for her that a lover could have done except woo her! He had made her comfortable; he had protected her from the remote possibility of harm at the hands of the Indians. He had felt responsible for her in every sense, and he had even been jealous when he saw that another had come to talk to her. A species of rage rose then, and the humor in his face gave up to darkness. Damn her—she'd ruined him, hadn't she? He'd show her, he told himself; he'd show her now, to-day—to-morrow; he'd break down her assumption that she was in no danger here; he'd do that or he'd get rid of her tantalizing presence!
And then he stopped this contradictory nonsense and watched closely the steam-tug that bore down on him from Garden Island.
ELDRED was on the dock when Dimmock brought his tug home from that day's errand. The man stepped over the rail almost hesitantly, and the gaze with which he fixed his master had something of anxiety, something of dread. Eldred saw it, and a rigidity ran through his figure, to be gone in an instant and replaced by a flexity which was almost lassitude.
“You—” A feeble gesture of Eldred's one hand suggested the question.
“Aye.” Dimmock nodded. “And he's a fool, Eldred!” No response, just the interrogation of those pain-filled eyes and a twitching of one hand. “But she's all right; I saw her on the beach.”
A long sigh of satisfaction slipped from Eldred, as though threat of an impending blow had been removed.
“You saw her, then?”
“Aye! But he's a fool, Eldred.”
“I know that; I told you that”—suggesting in his manner an approach of impatience. “What else? When will he——”
Dimmock had his cap in his hands and picked at it nervously.
“I told him you wouldn't,” he began doggedly. “I told him he was a fool to think that you'd——”
“Would what? Come!”
The other looked away, and his eyes watered with embarrassment.
“He went too far. I done like you said. I put it that you asked him to come see you, and that it was all—friendly like. He laughed at me!”
“He refused?”
“That's it. He won't come. He'll talk, but not here.”
“He'll talk, eh?” Eldred stirred. “He'll talk?” His face became alert.
But that gratification seemed to embarrass Dimmock further, for he nodded and hesitated, finally saying:
“He'll talk. He said he would, but—but where he wants, and when—and his own way. I—I'd 'ave choked him, Eldred. I'd 'ave broke his spine for it, but I knew you wouldn't want that. So I told him you'd see him in hell first. He said that he'd talk to you if you'd come to him; he won't come an inch. He said he was through with Garden Island until he come to—to touch you up again. Them was his words—to touch you up again. But he said that if you'd come to him he'd talk to you—Thursday, at four o'clock.” He paused and licked his lips nervously. “He said if you'd come as he said, he'd talk; that if you'd come in a small boat, leavin' your tug a mile away, he'd row out and meet you. He said—said for you to come without a gun. He said to tell you that—without a gun, and to leave your tug a mile away and row toward him—Thursday—and this is only Tuesday. I told him he was a fool, that he was playin' with fire. I told him you'd——”
“I'd what?” Eldred interrupted sharply.
The other stopped fussing with his cap, amazed.
“Why, that you'd see him in hell first. But he laughed and said 'twas no matter to him—Thursday—and this is Tuesday—and you to go that way!”
“Didn't I tell you to be humble?”
“Aye; but this, Eldred!”
He spread one hand in a gesture of incredulity as he watched the anger grow in Eldred's face. Incredulity, for he saw that he had been wrong, that King Norman meant not only to humble himself but to undergo degradation if there should be no other way!
“Sometimes, Dimmock, you're a fool,” Eldred said. “At four o'clock—Thursday.”
THE action which transpired on High Island between Tuesday afternoon, when David went ashore, until Thursday morning, when he left for his day on the lake, may be related in a very few words.
What went on in the mind of Eve Eldred as well may be set down in a small space, because her rôle in that interval was one of waiting, hopefully, expectantly, consoled by the fact that she was losing nothing if nothing had been gained.
But what happened to David MacKinnon is another matter. He was peculiarly reluctant to approach the house when he landed after returning from St. James, where he had taken his lift. He fussed around the fish-boxes long after Mink and John had gone to their shack, and did not finally stop his unproductive and unnecessary puttering until well after dark.
The lamp in his house was lighted, the fire roaring, because May on the lakes is not a temperate month, and Eve was just emerging from her bedroom when David entered. He did not intend to stop and stare at her; he detected the impulse to do this and fought against it, but it was irresistible. In her apparel was but one difference—she was wearing the white waist that Aunt Jen had brought her—but it was sufficient to produce an amazing change in the girl. It gave a slenderness to her torso that he had not seen before, and the neck, square and moderately low, relieved the splendid upward flow of her throat; it set off the rich olive of her skin, the blackness of her hair, the size and color of her remarkable eyes. More than all, its effect was chastening, taking away the hint of hardness that had so often been about her, softening the lines of her face as well as making more impressive those of her waist and arms and shoulders. Before, even in those intervals when he was made breathless by her striking beauty, she had yet remained for him the daughter of Norman Eldred; to-night, as she stood drawing that door shut behind her, she was a gentle, tender, beautiful girl, divorced from every suggestion of Garden Island.
He thought she would turn about and see him before he could recover, and he did not want that; and the device by which he recovered his self control was this: He said silently to himself, “But she dragged me away from my hooker so her father could burn me out.”
It was like a steadying drug. He took off his hat and went casually enough, to all out ward appearances, about the business of making their supper.
So much for that.
David did not speak—did not trust himself with words, though his curiosity was high—until well through the meal. Then he said,
“You had a visitor to-day.”
He tried to put the bite of accusation into that remark, but Eve must have missed it, for she looked up brightly.
“Yes. The woman from the light. 'Aunt Jen,' they call her.”
“And what business has she got here?”
“She brought me some things. This”—indicating the waist with a lowering of her head and placing a hand on her bosom to smooth the front of the garment—“and some other things.”
“Other things, eh?” he began harshly and with a swagger. “I suppose she brought you some——”
Oh, no! A hard school of manners, his; he was not much different from the run of men who have lived their lives on the lakes, and he was doing his best to make this girl uncomfortable. But he found, with something like surprise, that he could not stoop to coarseness with Eve Eldred. He flushed smartly and did not hear what she said, though she talked as long as she could on the matter of Aunt Jen's visit, taking that opening with enthusiasm because he had given it to her. And MacKinnon had come so close to a shameful blunder that he could not try again to play the tyrant that night.
He could not even pretend to read later, but walked the beach for miles, up and down, up and down. That was easier than sitting in his boat, but even such a diversion presented its difficulty. One was the potent urge to creep close to the house and watch Eve through the window—and he could not drive that away until he said to himself, aloud this time, “She was a damned decoy!”
And Wednesday morning he told himself the same thing when he approached the house for breakfast—just as a precautionary measure.
ALL day he gave himself momentary resolution and relief by a repetition of that accusation, and went ashore with a feeling of better fortitude than he had had last night, but this was shattered when Eve, without leading up to it and as though she had intended mentioning it for long, said,
“That woman—Aunt Jen—told me I could come to Squaw Island and stay if I wanted to.”
This gave David an unreasonable start and stirred, among other things, that flash of jealousy he had experienced when he saw the supply-boat come into High Island. It shook his self-possession, and he blurted out,
“Then why didn't you go?”
He was not looking at her, so he could not see the mischief which came into her face.
“Because I'm as good as—in jail here.”
The lightness was in her voice, too, and stung him, because again she was making a bubble of his attempt to intimidate her.
“Jail be damned!” he cried, rising. “You're free to go when you want to.”
His front, his defense—which had begun by being an offense—crumbled before that smile of hers; but a new resistance sprang to life when he saw her, the smile gone from her eyes, lips parted seriously, a hand half lifted toward him.
She spoke his name: “David!” just once, but the intonation was both reproach and plea. Oh, he knew why she reproached, but could only guess vaguely why she should plead, and in that moment he struggled desperately between two urges—the first of which was natural—the urge to take her, to hold her, to leave off this shamming, to make as brave an attempt to comfort her as he had a crude effort to humble her; and the other was that reasonable thing, that matter of logic in which he heard his own voice whispering, “She helped put me ashore; a woman like that'd stop at nothing!”
She was saying:
“I knew that. If I'd wanted to go, I'd have gone day before yesterday when she was here. But I wanted to stay here, because——”
“Why you wanted to stay don't interest me,” he said doggedly. He saw the hurt sweep over her face and, for the moment, took a savage delight therein, because he was again holding the whip-hand. “Nothin' you say about anythin' interests me.” He was at the door then, opening it, attempting to cover his confused retreat by this show of repugnance; but her words followed him across the threshold.
“Then why do you run away from me, David?”
Run away! The door slammed. And he did just that—ran away. Down on the beach again, he walked and grumbled and admitted defeat and told himself that she was a decoy, a hell-cat, and that, by all the laws of reason, he should loathe her. By all the laws of reason—yes!
But to-morrow was near. If Eldred had agreed to the meeting, provision for which David had sent back by Dimmock, he would be coming to ask for his daughter. And which would be the easier: to rid himself of the torment of her presence or to let Eldred off with only one payment made upon his incalculable debt? That was a fine point, indeed. Consideration of it demanded his concentration, and this gave him more peace than had been his measure for days. Finally he slept.
DAYLIGHT seeped across a lake that lay like a great, dusty mirror, the last undulations of yesterday's swell seeming as imperfections in glass. About the horizon hung a dirty haze which seemed heavy and deep and persistent enough to hold back the full measure of light for long, but when the sun pushed its rim above the distant mainland, it ate the mists in the east rapidly, and through the opening thus made poured across the water a flat yellow smear, turning the mirror to a plate of hammered brass. The rest of the murk was put to early flight by the breeze which came blowing out of the south, quite gentle and its chill tempered by a mellow promise. The stir of air touched the lake only here and there at first, spoiling the glaze on the surface, changing the color from brass to vivid blue. These patches grew, sending out long fingers, filling in the spaces between one another, throwing off a host of reflected light-rays as the wavelets picked up and recast the beams of the first sunlight, and finally, when the whole area of water became wind-riffled and the sun cleared the horizon, the lake became alive, a dancing and vivid blue, delicate, tremulous, beautiful.
David watched this change from the stern of the Islander, where, he had gone to slosh water from a bucket over his head and chest, and the clearing-away of the mist which had cloaked the lake had a counter part in his mind. There was one thing only for him to do: to be rid of this girl. He fought back the twinge that decision caused, bu the must not let any action of his work to the advantage of her father. He would plunge himself into the business of making Eldred uncomfortable now, seeking in that purpose relief from the confusion which his first step toward it had brought upon his head. His decision brought relief. He felt like a remade man, he told himself.
Yet he ate his breakfast with the Indians and did not go near Eve.
At four o'clock that afternoon, Fred Mink looked up from his work and stared hard at the tug which was bearing down on the Islander through the deepening haze from the direction of Eldred's harbor. He said no word, but MacKinnon, perceiving his concentration, looked also. After a moment he was certain that it was the craft which had brought Dimmock Tuesday, and a smile twitched at his lips. He had sent that humiliating message to Eldred, prescribing conditions which were not prompted by caution or fear but solely by a deviling sense of humor, and now Eldred was accepting—probably.
The qualifying probability was wiped out in a few minutes, for the tug's progress was checked, the bone in her teeth dwindled to a riffle, and a skiff, which had been in tow, put out from her with one man aboard.
It was a condition which he had set down. Not until the small boat had come well toward where the Islander lay at anchor, however, did MacKinnon set about meeting it. He saw the man who rowed turn to look in his direction, saw him dip his oars and come slowly on, and then David took out the rifle that Gam Gallagher had given him, dropped into his heavy pound-boat, placed the gun across the seat and began sculling quickly out to the meeting.
He looked out and saw Eldred, who had stopped rowing and was waiting his approach, and the vigor of his oar's push against the water abated somewhat. It was one of two things now. This morning he had told himself that there must be no question about what he would do; the manner of doing it, he had decided then, left the only room for argument. And now, despite his best effort, there was room to choose.
“Turn back; give her up!” one voice within him insisted.
That was his reason talking, prodded by all his experience with men and women, with all his appreciation of what Garden Island had meant to him.
But there was another voice, a quieter, gentler, sweeter voice, which whispered: “Oh, she is lovely, wholly lovely—and you may be wrong. Her hands and her heart may be clean!”
And then he was swinging his heavy boat about, bringing it broadside to the one a dozen feet away, and smiling as he looked into the face of Norman Eldred, who sat awaiting him, obedient to his orders.
Shaken and unpoised though he had been after that last scene in the store, Eldred's faculties were clear now, sharpened by the necessity of the occasion. His eyes, alive and alert, with all those quick lights playing in their depths, traveled the figure before him, which stood spread-legged, holding the long oar in one hand, balancing with grace against the moderate sea. There was hatred in the gaze as it rested on MacKinnon's face, which bore now an expression of amusement; contempt in Eldred's eyes as they followed the lines of the lad's figure into the rolled-down hip-boots, and a slowly kindling wrath as they rested on the rifle across the seat.
“You bargain with reservations,” he said.
“Not a one, Eldred. You're here as I said.”
“Unarmed.”
“Perhaps. I didn't take a chance that you might cheat. I came ready.”
“No one has ever doubted my word.”
“And I wouldn't take it for the price of tacks.” This was spoken lightly with a smile flung into the black look of the older man. “I'm here to listen to you and to plug you if you make a crooked move.” And he laughed outright, hugely enjoying the situation.
Eldred's gaze roved to the shore, searching it keenly, but no one was in sight.
“I've come,” he began, still looking toward the island, “to talk about my daughter. She is here with you, and I want her back.”
“After you drove her out, eh?”
Eldred looked at David.
“A man can't put away his obligations so easily.”
“That's right, Eldred.”
“She's a girl, alone, without even a mother. She needs protection.”
“Damned funny how we think alike, ain't it?”
Eldred stirred nervously and dipped the oars to steady the drift of his skiff.
“That's why I could come—this way, as you prescribe. Her well-being is more important than a man's pride—a father's pride.”
“Well?” said David, as in challenge, and Eldred moved again on his seat.
“You've been rash—and a fool; you've played with fire. Ask any of them”—with a sweeping gesture—“and they'll tell you what comes to men who try to play me tricks. You've done more than any other ever has; you've sowed generously of—whirlwind, perhaps. You've one chance left to cancel that record and begin over again, with everything forgotten.”
His eyes held steadily on David's face, and the boy lifted a hand to rub his chin with the finger-backs.
“Yeah? Go on.”
“That's it; that's what I came to say. Turn her over to me now, unharmed, and I can forget. I can forget, boy, as well as I can remember.”
“Lucky!” David laughed. “Damned lucky! I can't, Eldred. I can't forget a thing, let alone the burnin' of my hooker. And besides, anyhow, it's new and comfortable to have a woman round the place, doin' things.”
ONE of Eldred's oars slipped from his grasp. It may have been a trick of the swell, but the hand did not catch at it immediately. It started toward his side, as though to grip the flesh there, but was checked and almost snatched at the oar again. His heart had leaped and stopped and gone on unevenly. That was the thing he had feared!
“So,” he said in assent, struggling to gather his wits. “But there are women—and women. She's—she's not your sort, MacKinnon—not the sort to do things for a man for long.”
THAT was what David's reason had been saying for days. For an instant, Eldred's voice struck a sympathetic vibration in his mind, and in that instant it passed, for there was in the man's manner something unreal, something counterfeit.
“And what of that?” he asked, trying to taunt. “It's said that King Norman's never been sent for before. That's what Dimmock told me the other day; but you're here. The impossible can happen. Your daughter has spirit, but spirits can be broken.”
The white teeth gleamed through Eldred's black beard, and a smile lighted his eyes.
“You boast. You don't know her—and her moods.”
“Yes; she has moods.” Ah, he knew that the girl had moods; he had been drawn away from his Annabelle by one; he had been made breathless by others, and once she had carried an unsheathed blade for his body. He wanted to tell all he knew; the impulse to show his sagacity to this man was strong, and he went on, taunting with tone and smile. “She has moods—some of them lovely. You should have seen her the other night, sittin' by my stove with the firelight across her face, alone and yet not afraid—sort of sad, but with the smile close to her lips.” To save himself, he could not keep a tremor from his voice, and Eldred detected that which he would conceal. Once again he stirred on the seat, and this time the hand did touch his side and clench there. Love! He was face to face with a man who not only had tormented him by an extravagant trick but who now had a reason equally strong with his, perhaps, for holding Eve close to him.
“Moods, ho! And there are others, Eldred. She'd have knifed me that night I brought her here. She drove a bargain with me for help, and she'd have knifed me before she said. She's that kind—yes! And that's the thing, likely, that lets her conspire with firebugs to draw men away from their boats while you put in your dirty licks!” The bitterness here was as pronounced as his unacknowledged love had been a moment before.
A new thrill ran through Eldred, but he did not so much as lift his gaze from the rail of his skiff, though the eyes narrowed slightly. So MacKinnon suspected innocent Eve, did he? So he believed she would practise duplicity. It was good! He warmed inwardly.
“So long as you do her no harm,” he began, with an effort to hold his voice low, “there'd be a way out for me if the responsibility could be shifted, you see.” He looked up craftily and saw the trouble in the lad's face, brought to the surface by his own talk of the girl. “I did drive her out; I was through with her. I would be now if I thought—But you've made a fool of your self once over the burning of your hooker; because of that, remembering what she did, her part in it, you might forget these other, gentler moods, MacKinnon. She might not be safe with you always.”
“So you're coming clean, eh? So you admit it?”
“Admit? Perhaps I boast that I—that Eve and I—stop at nothing.” There was a false note in his tone which caught David's ear, a discord when he spoke of Eve, stressing the pronunciation of her name, and Eldred moved on his seat once more eagerly—with overeagerness, David thought—and lifted a hand in quick gesture, animated, without reserve, so very eager in his argument. “Admit? Of course I admit! And I boast that worse things will happen unless you let me rest here”—tapping his breast. “No matter what she is, firebug or worse, she's mine, mine to protect—no other man will do that. You won't, MacKinnon. You”—he laughed again—“giving shelter to the woman who helps put you on shore, who took away your fine liberty and made Gam Gallagher's hired man of you!”
He threw back his head and laughed again, and though his mirth was loud enough, it had no ring and fell dead.
“You, in comfort with a woman of the Eldreds! Ah, that night— Moods? You should have seen her then, boy! She planned so carefully what she'd say; she plotted every move with me. I watched when she took you up the path to the house; I waited until she had you inside.
“Moods? I could see her then, and I could see you falling into the trap. Her eyes, you said, when they're somehow, when they smile! They smiled that night—didn't they, MacKinnon? That dragged you into helplessness, and I fired your hooker and you can't prove it. There's nobody here to listen now; there'd be men to swear me an alibi if I needed one. But I won't—I won't. It's our secret—yours and mine and Eve's.”
He was agitated, breathless, his poise completely gone as he overstressed his argument; but his assertions fell flat, and before the suspicion that formed in David's mind he found something melting within him, giving way, and that was his reason, which had held him away from Eve, which had told him that she was a firebug, that she had conspired to ruin him; and as he looked into that face so close to him—for the boats were bumping rails—with its lifted eyebrows, the anxiety in its eyes, the tensity as of a man who grasps at a straw, he felt that this all was a lie, a ruse.
Eldred had stopped talking. One hand was half extended as if to beg credence for his charge against Eve. David again rubbed his chin, perplexed and saving time.
“Yes,” he nodded; “it's all right. All that you say is right, Eldred. But what about the Annabelle? You want your property and your responsibility back, but where do I come in? What do I get?”
The other's hand dropped to his knee; he looked away a moment.
“Your hooker,” he said flatly, as in surrender.
“My——”
“The price of her, and on top of it a season's earnings.”
“For what?”
“The return of Eve—now—to-day.”
“If I don't agree?”
“You will.”
“You're mighty certain.”
“Certain that you won't keep her, because she's as dangerous to you as I am if you refuse.”
David laughed again.
“You—dangerous? Eldred, you're a joke. And as for your bargain— Hell! I've got a responsibility, too. Any white man has a responsibility to any woman who's good to look at. A firebug? A plotter?” He nodded. “All of 'em, maybe, Eldred; but no matter what she's done, no matter what she is, no matter what she may do at any time, she's a girl, and you are King Norman of Garden Island, and livin' there with you is too bitter a dose for her.” The other lunged forward as if to rise. “Sit down!”
The smile was gone from David's face now as, with long oar upraised, he poised himself for a blow. The other sank back, eyes flaming.
“That's why I brought the gun. If you'd had yours—and it's likely you have—you'd drill me cheerfully. Now you've said your say and you've got your answer. I've no more time for kings to-day.”
He bowed in stiff mockery and laughed boyishly, whole-heartedly, as one who embarks on an alluring adventure.
Eldred sat still for a moment, motionless and dumb, hate in his eyes. He watched MacKinnon drop the oar into place, watched the skilful wrench which put the heavy boat under motion, watched a breadth of water come between them. He rose then and lifted his clenched fists.
“You refuse?” he moaned. “You send me away? Damn you, MacKinnon; I'll——”
He choked to wordlessness in search of a threat which would relieve his rage, but David only bent forward and laughed again.
“Look out, King Norman!” he cried. “Your damned throne's makin' bad weather of it. If you don't stand by and watch somethin' 'll blow your tin crown overboard! And if I could reach you now, damn me if I wouldn't uproot a bunch of whiskers!”
He was gay in this, his second triumph, and the buoyancy of his mood was enhanced by the growing thing of wonder, the suspicion that Eve Eldred was not what he had thought her, that the last hold reason had upon his impatient heart was slipping.
For a long time Eldred stood in his boat, reeling as she rose and fell on the seas, watching David go away. He said no more, made no further gestures, but in his heart, mingling with the fear of the boy which had only been enhanced by this meeting, was a savage lust for revenge—and a growing hopelessness which had reached the point which all but discards caution.
THEY had eaten their meal together with hardly a word. Throughout, the girl's eyes had watched David, watched him from the time he landed at dusk, through the process of making the meal until now, when he was finishing his last swallow of coffee. But once, that she had observed, had he looked at her.
Yet there was something new about his silence now. He was thinking of her, and it was difficult for him to keep his eyes away from her. She was certain of that much. Finally she spoke.
“My father was out there this afternoon.”
He lifted his gaze.
“That's what I've got to talk to you about.”
His manner alarmed her, sent a sharp fright through her like a chill. She took no pains to conceal this, but shrank against her chair-back, giving herself that appearance of smallness which had been marked at those other times when he had seen her frightened. After a pause, he said abruptly,
“He wants you back.”
One of her hands, which had rested in her lap, slid off and hung limply at her side. She said flatly,
“I suppose so.”
Resignation was in that short sentence, as though all the hope that had been in her heart for these last days had drained out—had gushed out, leaving it cold and empty.
MacKinnon felt himself trembling. Now was his time! This was the moment in which he must know. His reason still clamored a warning, crying that he beware of this child of the Eldreds, that the only foundation for his hope that her hands were clean and her record free from duplicity was a wild guess. But his heart was leaping, because, for the first time since her appeal had taken such a place in his consciousness, he had at least some ground for believing that she was completely worthy of admiration. He was strangely self-possessed, capable of being deliberate to a degree; he would not rush forward blindly now, he told himself.
“He wants you back, and he wants to pay me for the Annabelle," he said.
His eyes missed no phase of the girl's expression, and he saw a dull show of surprise come through her hopelessness.
“To pay you? But she's burned up! She isn't worth——”
“That's why he came, to pay for burnin' her.”
At first it was as though Eve had not heard. Then she start slightly and leaned forward.
“Burning her?” There was no flicker of caution, no steeling herself to meet some dangerous accusation—only amazement. “David, do you mean that he set her on fire?”
HE FELT as though something were bursting in his breast. A great, joyous surge swept him, so remarkable in its potency that it brought in its wake a strange fright. If this should not be true! He heard himself saying—trying to search her heart from another angle:
“Your father set fire to her to drive me away. You should have known that.”
If it were acting which made her seem not to hear that last, it was superb acting.
“He burned your boat because he didn't like you!” she cried, voice very low and uncertain, a hint of color creeping into her face. “I didn't know—I never dreamed— So that was why you were mad at him that night!”
He eyed her through a long moment of silence, searching her face, prying into her very soul to detect fraud, and his heart leaped until his temples throbbed. She was lovely in this incredulous intentness,
“He set her afire while I was with you. He waited until you had taken me ashore and into your house.”
Her repressed dismay at this was wholly honest, and in that moment, between pulse-beats, MacKinnon's skepticism vanished. He ceased to be her judge and, instead, he became a timid suitor, covering his misgivings, assailed by all the doubts and fears that only youth with heart disturbed can know. With that change there came into his mind an absurd question—absurd, yes—but, nevertheless, one which put him into panic. She was clean of hand and heart, he knew; she was worthy of the love of any man, but what if the thing he wanted to say should be unwelcome—what if there should be some bond which held her to Eldred, which would make her want to go back to Garden Island? An unreasonable fear, of course, but it set him in a panic because an incredibly precious possession seemed to be within his reach, and he feared to believe that there was no trick about it, no lurking factor which would snatch it from him.
“And now he wants to make it right—as near right as he can,” he found himself saying. “He wants to pay me now for both.”
“Both?”
He stared hard at her.
“For the Annabelle and for you.” Her lips twitched, and she drew back into her chair again very slowly, with that small portion of color draining from her cheeks. “That's the bargain—that he'll pay me for the Annabelle and give me a season's earnin's, make me a free man again so I can be my own master instead of workin' for somebody else—if I'll send you back to him.”
She started as though frightened by a menacing sound.
“And you told him?”
He leaned forward with sudden intentness, so earnest that his face was set in an expression which was almost savage.
“What do you think I'd tell him? You've had a good deal to say since you've been here about my kindness and decency. What kind of answer do you think I'd give a man to such a proposition as that?”
AND then it was Eve's turn to steel herself against the hope that had been growing with the days. He had at once threatened and protected her; he had failed to cover his decent impulses. But those were forgotten now in the fear that swirled up to confound her. Her father had played a treacherous trick on David MacKinnon, and it was not reasonable to believe that he would have charity in his heart for her. Her hope of happiness and ultimate escape from Garden Island was the price of his hooker, his liberty, his independence to go when and where he chose. He was taunting her now with the fact that she was the daughter of Norman Eldred, that she could expect no mercy from him, who had suffered wrong at the hands of the man who was called king. There could be, she felt then, no other explanation for his tensity and the fire in his eyes. He was challenging her to fritter her hope on the improbability that a man who bore such a grudge against her kin would do anything less than trade her back for what he had lost, and she was in the grip of despair.
She rose sharply, without looking at him, and walked to the window and stood staring at the rain-clashed glass, opaque and glittering against the night. The wind sobbed about the building, but for a moment there was no other sound in the room save the drawing of the stove. Eve's knees shook once spasmodically, and a blindness not of tears shut out even the glisten of the drenched glass before her. MacKinnon, unconscious of what he did in the excitement of that moment, drew his pipe from his shirt pocket and scratched a match.
At the sound, the girl turned on him with such a look as he had never seen on human countenance. The features were not contorted; the eyes did not blaze; it was composed of none of the usual factors which go to make up expressions of violent emotion, but it was as though she saw clearly and with no mistake a fate which had neither mercy nor chance of change. A repressed bitterness was there—a bitterness directed at no individual but at the fate which had closed in about her after her hour of hope. And then she laughed—a tremendous laugh, as repressed as the look on her face, short and sharp and flat—mockery of mirth itself.
“If that's the case,” she said, “I guess I can go back well enough, and I guess that after this nothing that'll happen to me on Garden Island will be so very bad. I guess I can be hunted like a rabbit the minute I'm out of sound of my father's voice and it won't be such a terrible thing now, I guess I won't mind not having a f-friend——”
He rose quickly.
“Eve, you're all——”
And then fury blazed out at him from her eyes.
“Never mind!” Her look and her voice, sharp and explosive, balked him. For a second they stood confronting one another, and then she went on rapidly, drawing one hand through and through the other. “Never mind—anything, please! It's all over. Everything is over; and the sooner I make up my mind to it the better off I'll be. That don't mean anything to you, I suppose, but it counts with me, and I'll keep what I have—what peace I have”—with bitter irony. And she repeated the word again—“peace”—in a whisper, and followed it with a laugh, which may have been forced to cover a catch in her breath.
“But, Eve, listen to me! I didn't——”
“Please—don't—talk—to—me.” Her words, widely spaced, fell on him like blows, though her voice was hardly of normal tone. “If it weren't for you, this-wouldn't have happened—what's going on in here now, I mean”—a hand at her breast. “It's all because you came to Garden Island. It was bad enough before that, but now it'll be ten times worse—and it won't matter.
“You were Jode MacKinnon's boy, in the first place, and then you were nice to me and that made me think that maybe things were going to be different. It was the first time I'd hoped for it, and that hope made me dissatisfied.
“It wasn't my fault that my father burned your boat, unless it's my fault being his daughter. I didn't know anything about that, but I see now why you—what makes you— You came into the store looking for him to start trouble”—voice steadying after the momentary break—“and you did what you did and then I made my choice between my father and you—because I liked you. I saved your life, I guess; but I was glad to. I didn't even want anything in pay for it at first, and then all I wanted was to get away from Garden Island——”
“Oh, I got away, all right and I got to a place where I saw you every day and I let myself be a fool over you. I let myself hope that you'd keep me here, that you'd get to like me. I even thought you did, and that you were having a hard time hiding it. And now I'm going back to my father——”
“If you'll listen——”
She drew back at his approach, putting a chair between them and crying out:
“Don't come near me! Don't try to argue with me! Don't you see that the only way I can go back there and live is to hate you? Don't you see that after I've loved you I've got to hate you to have any peace? Don't you see that I've got to look at what you're going to do as if you were selling me back to slavery?
“For the price of your hooker! Why, I'd have worked my hands off for you; I'd have paid you that much money a dozen times over—I'd have got it somehow—just to be near you, and now, because I happen to be my father's daughter, I've got to be traded back—and I've got to hate you, David MacKinnon! I've got to think you're worse—worse than—worse——”
She stammered, and something changed in her manner—a swift passing of the iron that had been in her will. She paused a moment, not hearing his burst of words, seeing him approach through that dry blindness in her eyes, and then she whirled, stumbling into her room, slamming the door behind her, and as MacKinnon, recovering his balance finally, his tongue loosened, flung himself against it, she drove the bolt home, crying out brokenly:
“It locks from the inside! And you told me that—and it was the first thing that made me— But I don't! I don't! I'm going to hate you, David MacKinnon; I'm going to hate you!”
“Eve, don't do that! Open the door! You're all wrong—wrong from the beginnin'!” He beat with his flat palms on the panels and shook the latch, but the door remained fast. “Open it, Eve. You've got to listen to me!” he cried in panic.
“No! Go away! If you want to make it easier for me, go away!”
HE HEARD her move and tried the door again, but the bolt had not been withdrawn. Then he relaxed and listened.
“Eve, are you there?” No reply. “You've not left the room; I know that. You're goin' to listen to me now. I'm not goin' away, and all I have to say is this: That if you go back to him, you'll go after I'm helpless to stop you. Hear that? After I'm helpless to stop you! I wanted you to say that you knew I wouldn't let you go back. I wanted you to say again that I couldn't do you any harm. I wanted you to know that without bein' told. That was why I didn't tell you what I told him—that I was goin' to keep you here—as long as you'd stay. Do you hear that, Eve?”
He could not know that, with dry throat and lungs which seemed crushed by a great weight, she tried to speak and could not.
“I brought you here to play a trick on him. I didn't care anythin' about you then, but somethin's happened to change that, and you're here to stay or go when and where I go—always! Do you hear that?”
He had been very emphatic, almost belligerent in his intentness. He stopped, and, though no response came, he thought he could hear her breathing, close against the other side of the door.
“I've been all wrong about you. I've been fightin' against admittin' I was wrong. I listened to stories and believed them. I listened to the story that said that you with your own hands changed the beacons that sent my father on the reef, and I believed it!” He could not hear the light moan of the girl who crouched low against the door. “I believed that until I talked with you that night aboard my hooker. And then I thought for sure you must have planned with your father to get me away so he could set the fire. I believed that until now, until to-night. Oh, Eve, Eve, I've been the fool! I've played the game all wrong from the beginnin'; but it was because I was afraid!”
He was seized with a spasm of remorse and desire and beat again on the door.
“Let me in!”—tone savage with intent. “You think bolts can keep you from me now? You think you can keep me out, now that I've come this far? I'll have you now if it takes my last breath; I'll have you if it's the last thing I do!”
He heard her stirring, and then her voice came, strangely weak:
“Oh, first, David—haven't you something to say first?”
His beating on the door frightened her; the hoarseness of his voice was alarming. She wanted him to come, yes—wanted with every fiber of body and soul—but not that way—not as a destroyer, but as a lover with words of that love on his lips.
He drew back, puzzled by her faint plea, and to them, from out on the lake, came four short, dull blasts of a boat's whistle.
It struck through David's tumult, froze the girl, too, because it was the call of sailors in distress. Four whistles, four barks from the metal throat of a steamboat coming when a swirl of passion was in the breast of David MacKinnon; but it meant need, and his were the ears which had heard it, his the duty to answer.
“Eve; hear that?”
His voice was still strained. He heard her say, “Yes” as though startled, heard her move, with a hand on the bolt, but waiting to listen. It was the whistle of her father's tug Elsa, and apprehension shot through her.
“Come,” he said, as the whistle came again, four times, short and sharp.
He crossed the floor, and Eve knew by the sound that he was lighting a lantern. As she moved for her heavy jacket, she hard him getting into his oilskin coat. The outer door opened, and he said again,
“Come, Eve!”
She drew back the door that she had bolted against him and, stopping to adjust a sou'wester on her head, followed into the night, where he had gone.
DAYLIGHT had faded early that evening, and rain, which had come on the rising wind from the southwest, had made weather thick, and before darkness itself shut down, three boats were making slowly through the water of the lake, each of which would have its bearing sooner or later on the fortunes of the man and girl in the house on High Island.
The first was a steam-tug, slipping out of Norman Eldred's harbor just as dusk came, showing no lights, holding south of west. One man worked between the fire-hole and the engine; Dimmock puttered for'ard, and Eldred himself at the wheel made up the crew. The latter did not sit on the stool in the pilot-house, but stood over the wheel, staring into the night. Now and again his lips moved, and e faint light from the binnacle showed that rage was dancing in his eyes. Since yesterday he had smarted in silence; since yesterday he had nursed and prodded that rancor, fed it in the hope that it would eat away the fear that lingered in his heart. Fear was still in him, but with the motion of the tug over the dingy seas, he sensed relief. This was action—and night was coming.
And another boat, too, was bearing on High Island. A catboat, this, launched from the western shore of Beaver Island, its one sail catching the breeze and driving it on its way. One man was aboard, steering by the aid of a pocket-compass and by instinct, for he knew boats and water and weather. Now and then he drew his oilskin hat closer and wriggled and chuckled over the thing which he anticipated. The man was Jean Mosseau. Each day since his friend had brought the story of MacKinnon's prank on Eve Eldred, Mosseau had lain for long, watching the water. Tuesday, his vigil had been rewarded by sight of Eldred's tug standing across to High Island; it had come again to-day and he had witnessed the meeting of small boats. He could only conjecture as to the men in them, though he spied with a glass, but Eldred's tug went away without touching land. So there was a good chance that the girl was still there. He also was going into action now, his courage rehabilitated by the passage of days, his chagrin mounting as the story of what David had done to him became light and common gossip.
And away to the north a third boat, which had been under way all that day, came to rest against a rickety dock at Naubinway. An old man, with soiled and grizzled hair, whose eyes were vacant and staring, whose neck was thin, whose lips moved constantly, made her fast and went ashore. He stood staring about for a time and then went up the dock to the land. He stared up and down until he made out the nearest lighted window; he went forward and peered into the room, fixing his immoderate stare on each of its occupants in turn. The face he sought was not there evidently, for he went slowly away, peering into other houses, watching rare figures on the village street. When all the windows were darkened, he returned to his mackinaw, crawled into the crazy little cabin and drew soiled blankets over his withered body. He muttered to himself for long, and now and then sat up and looked about in the darkness. Toward morning he slept.
WHEN David MacKinnon walked from the beach to his house that night to prepare the evening meal and confront Eve, his were not the only feet treading those sands.
The tug which had borne down on High Island from Indian Harbor had come the last mile silently, its engine turning ever so slowly, its exhaust making no noise that could be detected far up-wind.
“Here,” said Eldred finally, and gave the wheel to Dimmock. He stepped outside, moved aft and gave a gesture to the engineer; the machinery stopped.
Then, speaking no other word, for their plan was well conceived, Eldred hauled on the long line that towed his skiff. He moved quickly, as a man will under great excitement, but when he put the oars aboard the small boat and lowered himself to it, he was most cautious to make no sound. He stood there, listening, and felt in his coat pocket, where the savage pistol lay ready.
He rowed toward the faint blotch of light and beached his boat on the sand spit. He stood for some time, watching and listening, and then he moved forward a few steps, waited, and went on again with great stealth, approaching the house from the rear by a circuitous route, as any prowler would. His heart beat quickly against his ribs and his hand went from time to time to that side pocket where the weapon nestled. He had need of the feel of that compact bolster for his courage. His fear of David was no less than it had been; perhaps it was greater after their interview of yesterday, but his humiliation had given way to rage, and that rage knew little compromise, not even in the face of great fear—only the compromise of coming in secret and after dark, with a weapon handy to use.
He reached a point directly back of the house and waited. Light from one window threw a yellow blotch out on the sand, and the scattering rain-drops shot across it. A half-dozen steps, with his heart beating almost to the point of suffocation, and he could see within.
He saw Eve, first, and his hand opened and shut against his side spasmodically, and a shudder ran through him, as though he had tasted something terribly bitter. Then he stared at the bent back of MacKinnon as he ate, eyes on his food, and Eldred's hand slipped down to caress once more the pistol.
And now, what? he debated, as he stood there with the fear coming up through his resolution again. He could shoot from where he stood, could shoot the lad from behind and without danger to himself, and yet he feared even to strike from behind. It was uncanny—the way this youth could mock at him! It was an unheard-of thing! And though Eldred clamped his teeth and fought against weakness, he found himself turning, withdrawing into the darkness—to wait—and for he knew not what.
He went on carefully to the rear of the house and stood there, listening. He heard the sound of voices within suddenly and squatted.
The voices subsided, covered by the wind and the waves on the beach. Eldred moved again, then froze against the ground. The faintest sound had come from back there against the gloom of the forest, and he checked his breath to listen. He could hear no more, not until his sight had functioned, and he made out a slightly luminous blotch in the darkness, and from that traced the outlines of a man's head and shoulders, standing still.
A hissing breath slipped from his lips before he could check it. Suspected? Stalked? He felt again for the pistol, but it had lost its charm. The fool knew no fear! That figure was moving forward for all the world as though it hunted some one, and Eldred shrank even closer to the ground to let him pass.
Such slow steps! The figure was discernible now; it was abreast of him. Inside the house a lifted voice, and the figure moved quickly, changing its direction, and, with a sound like a moan, a shape rose at its feet and binding arms clamp about its legs, for this other had all but stepped on Norman Eldred.
They went down into the sand, fighting blindly, madly, threshing about, grappling for holds. Hands sought Eldred's throat, and he could not give up his struggle against them even long enough to try to get the pistol.
They rolled over, Eldred now on top, again underneath, seeking to bring the great power of his arms and hands to bear, but the other was agile, lightninglike in his shiftings. He threshed his arms free. A hand clamped on Eldred's chin, tearing at the beard, fumbling, relaxing, and then, close in his ear, a voice:
“Sacré! Eldret!”
On those words, all movement stopped, and Eldred remained fixed. He was not hunted. The man was not MacKinnon! He leaned forward—they were both on their knees—thrusting his face close to the other.
“Mosseau!”
“Ah!”—a gasp of fright.
“You followed me"—is that it?”—fingers fastening in the clothing of the now thoroughly frightened Frenchman.
“Na! No, Eldret!” Mosseau's voice rose in the cry of protest. “I did not come here for you.”
“Eh? Not for me?” Eldred was holding the other man half erect as he got to his feet, and felt rather than saw the other shake his head. “What are you here for, then?”
An inspiration was shooting through him as he recollected the facts which governed the relations between Mosseau, himself and MacKinnon.
“Leesten, Eldret; you know mahbe for why Jean Mosseau she come here. You know what de trader she do to Jean. Py gosh, I come to get efen!”
“Even? How? What were you going to do?”
Jean shrugged.
“He push my face off in your store, by gosh! Jean she not forget. She wait an' watch an' plan an' to-night she come wit' wan long knife, mabbe, to get back!”
FOR a moment they stood silent, staring at one another in the darkness. So this man, too, had come to seek vengeance on David MacKinnon! So he, too, was a coward, and ready to strike in the dark!
There was, true, the probability that Mosseau had deigns on Eve, but that did not bother Eldred then. The Frenchman feared him, was abject before him, and perhaps he could use this fear and humility, perhaps he could bring it to bear against David MacKinnon.
“I've a score to settle with you—a heavy one, Mosseau. We won't talk of that to-night. He”—gesturing toward the house—“too, owes me. You know who is here with him?”
“Oui!”
“I am here for her; that is all—to-night. If you want to work out a part of your debt to me, Mosseau, maybe I'll let you help.”
The Frenchman could feel that gaze in his face, felt, too, a hand grope for his wrist and mighty fingers clamp there. He drew back, and the strength that was in Eldred's arm gripped down, and he found himself jerked close to the other.
“No; you can't get away! I've had other things to think of, Mosseau, or you'd have paid before now. I've known all about you; you'd never have gotten to the mainland——”
“Ah—for sure, Eldret! Jean she was drunk——”
“Never mind; we won't talk of that now. You're here, and you'll help me, or——”
“Sure, Eldret!” Mosseau was thoroughly alarmed now. “You come to get her bark. Py gosh, Jean she come to use hees knife, eh? Py gosh; mabhe Jean hurt heem more by helpin' you, eh?”
“You seem to understand—” The hand that had gripped Jean's wrist relaxed. “Back this way—” They walked fifty paces from the house and stopped. “Listen, Mosseau!”
Eldred talked rapidly, injecting a question now and then, voice becoming firmer and louder as his plan developed, as dread of that meeting which had, a half-hour ago appeared inevitable, diminished. He breathed easier; he even showed his old ironic triumph, and the Frenchman, listening, shrugged and nodded and watched this man whom he feared above all others. And he could appreciate the subtleties of revenge, could Jean!
Again Eldred went through the darkness, but this time swiftly, and he laughed to himself as he pushed off his skiff and rowed out. He stopped and listened and whistled sharply. An answering whistle came out of the thickness, and in a moment he was against his tug, being helped aboard.
“Easily,” he said to the engineer. “Easily.” And, to Dimmock, “Stand down the east side, past his harbor.”
AND before the wheel had gone down to send the tug southward, Jean Mosseau was peering into the window of the log house, watching Eve Eldred confront MacKinnon. He strained forward, because that day when he had told the girl that her beauty had put him beside himself there had been no untruth spoken. He gripped the window-sill and watched with lips twitching, and then drew back, waiting, straining to hear what went on in there, waiting for the sound from the lake.
It came, and Mosseau flattened himself against the wall of the house. David ran down the beach peering into the thickness. His lantern flared as he reached the water's edge—and just as Eve was crossing toward the outer door—and he stopped, holding it against his body to lift the chimney and adjust the wick. Its light, for the moment, was screened from the house.
And so, when Eve looked out, she saw no evidence of a lantern. The bark of the whistle came again. She stepped into the sand; she started forward on a run, and an arm swept across her face, covering her mouth, cutting off her breath, and another grappled for her hand. She whirled, making the man's oilskin crackle.
“David!” she choked. “David, why——”
He made no answer. His arms were about her, trying to lift her from her feet. She caught a glimpse of him against the background of light.
“David!” She choked again. “Don't!”
And then she was free. A smashing of her two small fists into his face, a doubling of her knee that sent the breath driving from him broke his hold. She whirled and flung into the house, slamming the door, and the lamp was blown out by the draft. Then on, into her room, slamming that door, too, and bolting it, falling with her back against it, hands outspread.
“Why?” she cried to herself. Why had he done this? Why had he lured her outside? He had warned her that bolts would not suffice to-night—and there he was, coming across the other room!
She stood stock-still, trying to summon her faculties. He came on, knocking over a chair. He was at the door, fumbling for the latch, rattling it.
“David!” she called in low appeal; but he made no reply.
Instead, as though her word assured him of her whereabouts, he shoved against the door and wood cracked, but the barrier did not give. He drew back, and she could hear the breath beaten from him as he put his weight on the panels. The hinges started. No; bolts would not hold him!
Eve retreated across the room, weak and panic-stricken. She heard him again lunge against the door, and something broke and fell with a tinkle—a hinge, likely. Yes; she could see the glow of the stove through the opening made by the sagging door.
She thrust a foot over the window-sill and slid out. She was under the dripping eaves when the door gave. And then she was running through the wet sand, down toward the little harbor, to the only safety left her—he big lake and a small boat.
The girl stumbled into a skiff and fumbled for oars. The thing glided from shore. She dropped the oars into their locks with trembling hands and rowed awkwardly to turn the boat about.
She felt the heave of the first light swell and rowed faster to be away from that pestilential place where men waited and grappled with her in the dark. Her stroke settled to an even measure; she was outside the harbor, rolling in the trough of the seas.
She stopped all movement then. The distress-signal had stopped. The wind was brisk in her face and the hiss of rain on water was incessant.
And where now? She was alone on Lake Michigan, alone in the world, with the man who had given her sanctuary turned into a madman, lying in wait for her, shattering all the trust that he had built for himself in those broken protests outside her broken door. Alone! A feeling of being the only life anywhere swept through her, and then, out of the night, far away, ever so faint at that distance, blotted out completely except for this moment's respite of wind and rain, came the steady, deep moan of a fog-whistle.
Squaw Island—and Aunt Jen Borden!
With a cry of relief the girl dipped her oars and, guided by the wind in her face, by the sound of the whistle which at first came only at rare intervals, she set herself for that journey.
And Jean Mosseau, leaving the broken door and the open window, slipped quickly out of the house and down the beach toward where he had left his catboat. He watched MacKinnon coming back carrying his lantern, stopping now and then to listen for the whistle which came no more, and when David was safely past him,the Frenchman ran on along the hard sand.
Afloat, he sat for a time indecisively. Eldred had charged him with this errand and he had failed. He might try to flee now, but he knew that Eldred was right. He could never get away—and, anyhow, he had tried—and he might try again because their scores—both his and King Norman's—were still unsettled.
IT WAS a bewildered David MacKinnon who walked back to his house and found no Eve there.
From the beginning, the incident which had interrupted his stormy wooing had borne a strange face, he felt now. The boat sounding the distress-signal had gone steadily to the southward; then, he thought, it swung into the east and, circling, went back on the way it had come.
He had the impression once that the ship was not far from him and stopped to listen and consider. If it were merely lost, it would be giving the prescribed fog-warning; but this was unmistakably a call for help.
Standing there, he felt a strange uneasiness come over him and looked about quickly beyond the small space lighted by his lantern with a sensation as if some one were near by who meant him no good. For long he was motionless, listening to the repeated whistling; then he began to walk down the beach.
All the way back he had that impression of impending danger, of the closeness of one who meant him harm, and reaching the point from where he could see the house, he was further alarmed at discovering it dark. So he went on at a run until he reached the door. It was open, and he stopped to listen, even calling Eve's name and waiting for reply. None came. He went in and held up his lantern and looked about in bewilderment. A chair was overturned, and he crossed the room to the bedroom door.
“Eve!” he said sharply and opened his lips to speak again, but did not; the fresh crack in the door-panel, the slight sagging of the door itself caught his eye. He put out a hand and shoved lightly; the door reeled inward on its broken hinges.
He was all action. He burst into that room, calling the girl's name, staring about, bewildered. In mid-floor lay a part of the broken door-latch, and one window was open.
Fright came then, and he could hear his own breath, quick and a bit hoarse, mingling with the light moan of the forest out there and the sound of rain on the roof. The apprehension which he had felt, the doubt of the genuineness of that call of distress from the lake became more pronounced. Eve was gone; a strong body had broken down the door of her room, and that call of distress had been a fraud!
Panic overwhelmed him as he ran toward the shack where the Indians were sleeping, and had been sleeping, likely, since their early meal. He swung his lantern into their faces and cried out excitedly, and they rolled out of their greasy quilts, befuddled with sleep. He question them a moment, when his judgment should have told him that they surely could know nothing. Then he explained and got lanterns from the boat, while they struggled into their boots, and sent them searching the beach.
The downpour had increased to an extent which obliterated tracks which might have told much of the story of the evening, but they did discover three things which betrayed the presence of men who had not been seen. A boat had landed on the sand spit and another, a larger craft—probably a sail boat—had been grounded far up the island. Lastly, a skiff was missing. Scant evidence, surely, but to MacKinnon, considering the broken door in the house, it meant enough, and when, after a hurried tramping through the forest behind the house and repeated shoutings, he was satisfied that Eve was no longer on the island, he led his helpers to the dock and aboard the Islander.
There the men demurred, for they had guessed what David had deduced.
Peter John said something to Mink in his native Chippewa.
“What's that?” David asked.
“Eldred is a damn bad man, Dave.” the Indian said. “He——”
“Never mind about Eldred! I'm as bad as he is. Get a move on!”
AN HOUR later, Norman Eldred and Jean Mosseau sat, one on either side of the table which bore an unshaded oil-lamp, in Eldred's house.
Mosseau leaned forward with elbows on his knees and talked and watched the other. There was craft in his expression and hope and inspiration in his heart. He made the second man to share knowledge of this weakness of Eldred's; Dimmock was the first—and Dimmock had been amazed—but Mosseau experienced only a strong elation at his discovery. Eldred had made a poor job of covering his secret, and his clumsy efforts did nothing but establish in Jean's mind the conviction that the man who was called king feared David MacKinnon desperately. He had sensed that first when Eldred, on the heels of their struggle in the darkness, evolved his hasty plan which placed the burden of a physical encounter with the trader on other shoulders; that was not like the Eldred who had ruled so ruthlessly. His suspicion had grown to certainty as he sat and debated with himself in his boat after shoving off from High Island when their plan had failed by the flight of the girl. Jean was even then a bit fearful of Eldred's successful pursuit if he tried escape from the islands, but the thing which set him sailing before the wind for Indian Harbor was not reluctant acknowledgment of this man's far-reaching power but the brazen hope that he now had Eldred in a corner.
He saw unlimited possibilities opening before him. He was not afraid of MacKinnon, and that courage was something for which Eldred would pay handsomely. His deduction was without error, and that was proven when he landed on Garden Island and Eldred had only a brief show of scorn for his failure and great eagerness to learn what had happened, and a manner of forgetfulness that there had ever been a quarrel between them. He was saying now:
“Py gosh, when she go t'rough dat window, Jean he t'ink for sure he catch her now! Hon my word, she go out from sight laak wan deer. She ron—py gosh, how she ron, an' nobody can see her!”
“But MacKinnon wasn't there? He was away up the beach, you said. Why didn't you stay?”
Mosseau shrugged.
“Py gosh, Eldret, a man wan beeg fool to taak many chances from MacKinnon, Wait! Py gosh, wait! Wan odder taam an' we catch heem.”
“You should have waited to-night,” Eldred said, with truculence. “She's there on the island somewhere. She couldn't get off, and if you were there now, maybe——”
He stopped and turned sharply, and Mosseau caught his breath, for a foot jammed against the door. It swung open, and David MacKinnon stood there, a rifle in the crook of his arm.
For an instant none of the three moved, and then Eldred rose rather unsteadily. The rifle twitched ever so slightly.
“Well?” grunted Eldred in a weak, characterless exclamation of amazement; then he steadied himself. “Hunting, eh? You must be hunting trouble.”
“Not trouble, unless somebody gets in my way. Then there'll be trouble a-plenty. I'm after your daughter.”
Now, it was no wonder that a man like Jean Mosseau should betray his surprise by a low ejaculation when a man like Norman Eldred let his amazement cross his face with such an unmistakable flash; but when the Frenchman made that sound, Eldred turned on him such a flash of rage that the rifle twitched again. For that sound, that look, that movement bred quick suspicion in David.
When Eldred's gaze came back to MacKinnon, the latter saw something like gratification mingling with the chagrin and temper, and then Eldred laughed quite easily and with a genuine ring, because something had happened, and this man who had crossed him was also foiled. Eve was gone from High Island, and the trader was guessing wide of the mark, coming here for her.
David was damning himself. He had stepped into something unexpected; he had certainly guessed badly, because Mosseau's surprise, which showed him his mistake, and Eldred's one look of anger, which proved that Eldred knew the French man's poor poise, had set David right, convinced him that he had followed a cold trail and that Eve was not here.
But Eldred was covering up as well as he could the botch that had been made. He said:
“After my daughter, are you? And by what right do you come hunting her—with that?”
Something of his old fine scorn was in the voice and a measure of his once secure superiority in the contempt with which he gestured toward the rifle.
So he was going to play it through this way, was he? David asked himself. They were going to try to cover up what they knew? Well, several could play at that.
“Right!” he said, under his breath. “Every right under the sun, Eldred. I'm after her to take her back with me, to keep her. And that's what I'll do, s'help me!”
The other put back the surge of jealousy that swept him and laughed again.
“You can't seem to learn, MacKinnon. Your rashness seems to grow with the days. You were rash when you took Eve away, a fool to make threats against me; you were worse than that when you refused the offer I made you yesterday—to settle for your hooker. To-night you have no boat, no money, no Eve! It would have been so different for you if you'd taken me up. But you were a fool—and again a fool for coming here this way.”
David let the muzzle of the gun drop.
“You're right, Eldred. I was a fool. I gave you credit for doin' somethin' you're not up to. You had me guessin' wrong, but you couldn't fool Eve. You didn't bring her back, did you? Your little scheme only worked half-way!”
He laughed freely then, for shaking off the pretense of not understanding that both he and Eldred had given themselves away made him easier. That laugh sent a dark flood into the other's face, and his voice was thick.
“She is here! She's safe under this roof where she belongs, where she——”
“And that'll make me mad, Eldred, if you keep on! There's nothing that'd make me madder than to have you think you could lie to me and make it good. She's not here. Fair enough—I've showed my hand, but you've showed yours. Good-night, and when you come again, bring a bigger crowd. King Norman, because you're going to need it!”
And he was laughing as he ran down the steps and disappeared, hurrying back to the Islander, with relief wiping out the dismay at having guessed badly.
Eve was not here; she had not left High Island; he was going to find her!
BUT she was not on High Island.
Tardy dawn was seeping through the mist, and David, alone before the cook-stove in his house, shivered and stirred himself to replenish the fire. He was still clammy wet from the sweat that tramping through the forest had started; he began that tramping as soon as he had returned from his ill-advised trip to Eldred, and it had continued for hours without encountering a sign of the girl.
He stood up and stared at the broken door and rubbed his chin with the backs of his fingers. He was for the first time in hours wondering again. He had felt so singularly alone, so impressively beaten and confounded that recently there had been no energy for speculation. The Annabelle was gone, and now the girl, who had come to take a place that no material possession could fill, was gone. She was not in his house, not on his island, not with her father, either. But where?
He began to wipe his palms on his hips in excitement, and after a moment he laughed briefly, as a man will who is recovering from severe fright.
“Of course!” he said aloud. “A skiff's gone, and she's gone, and the other day the old girl told her she could come there. It was Eldred who broke down this door, and she got away—she got away!”
He went out hastily to rout his men once more.
What will be the outcome of the desperate game that David and_Eldred are playing? See the concluding instalment of “The Beloved Pawn” in February Everybody's—out January 15th.