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"Then I will make a wager with myself, M'sieu David. MA FOI, I swear that before the leaves fall from the trees, you will be pleading for the friendship of Black Roger Audemard, and you will be as much in love with Carmin Fanchet as I am! And as for Marie-Anne " He thrust back his chair and rose to his feet, the old note of subdued laughter rumbling in his chest.
With the dull stab of a thing that of late had been growing inside him, he wondered what had happened to Carmin Fanchet in the years that had gone since he had brought about the hanging of her brother. Last night and the night before, strange dreams of her had come to him in restless slumber.
For there was Carmin Fanchet, a fitting companion for a man like Black Roger, and there was Marie-Anne, who, if it had been a joke, would not have played her part so well. Suddenly his mind was filled only with her. Had she been his friend, using all her influence to protect him, because her heart was sick of the environment of which she was a part? His own heart jumped at the thought.
The question was insistent, and with it remained that cold grip of something in his heart that had come with the sight of Carmin Fanchet below. Was it possible that Carmin's hatred still lived, deadlier than ever, and that with Black Roger she had plotted to bring him here so that her vengeance might be more complete and a greater torture to him?
It was the same monstrous story, as old as the river itself, but in this instance it filled him with a sickening sort of horror which gripped him at first even more than the strangeness of the fact that Carmin Fanchet was the other woman. His vision and his soul were reaching out to the bateau lying in darkness on the far side of the river, where St. Pierre's wife was alone in her unhappiness.
He could make out no word of the song, yet the singing came to him with a thrill that set his lips apart and brought a staring wonder into his eyes. In the room below him, fifteen hundred miles from civilization, Black Roger and Carmin Fanchet were singing "Home, Sweet Home!" An hour later David looked through one of the barred windows upon a world lighted by a splendid moon.
"And Carmin Fanchet?" "I love her, too. They are so different. Yet I love them both. Is it not possible for a big heart like mine to do that, m'sieu?" With almost a snort David rose to his feet and stared through one of the windows into the darkness of the river.
As he went he saw again that Carmin Fanchet was very beautiful as she stood there, and that her lips were very red but her face was white, whiter than he had ever seen the face of a woman before. As they went up a winding stair to the second floor, Roger Audemard said, "I am proud of my Carmin, M'sieu David.
For a time David did not move from his seat near the table. He had not let Roger Audemard see how completely the confession had upset his inner balance, but he made no pretense of concealing the thing from himself now. He was in the power of a cut-throat, who in turn had an army of cut-throats at his back, and both Marie-Anne and Carmin Fanchet were a part of this ring.
Fanchet, the half-breed who had robbed a dozen wilderness mail sledges, had come nearest to trapping him and putting him out of business. Fanchet was a desperate man and had few scruples. But even Fanchet before he was caught would not have cornered a man with such bloodthirsty unfairness as Carrigan found himself cornered now. He no longer had a doubt as to what was in the other's mind.
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