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Once during the autumn Jan came in for supplies and traps, and his dogs and sledge. He was planning to spend the winter two hundred miles to the west, in the country of the Athabasca. He was at Lac Bain for a week, and during this time a mail-runner came in from Fort Churchill. The runner brought a new experience into the life of Melisse her first letter.
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Jean, whirling again, "you take it coolly!" A little later Melisse saw Jan coming from the store. When he entered the cabin his dark face betrayed the strain under which he was laboring, but his voice was unnaturally calm. "I have come to say good-by, Melisse," he said. "I am going to prospect for a good trap-line among the Barrens." "I hope you will have good luck, Jan."
Mile after mile slipped behind, and not until they reached the mountain on which he had fought the missionary did Jan bring his dogs to a walk. Melisse jumped from the sledge and ran quickly to his side. "I can beat you to the top now!" she cried. "If you catch me " There was the old witching challenge in her eyes. She sped up the side of the ridge.
"Was it not right for me to break my oath to the Blessed Virgin and tell Melisse why Jan Thoreau had gone mad? Was it not right, I say? And did not Melisse do as I told that fool of a Jan that she WOULD do? And didn't she HATE the Englishman all of the time? Eh? Can you not speak, my raven-haired angel?"
"Am I pretty, Melisse?" "No-o-o-o." "Then why" he shrugged his shoulders suggestively "in the cabin " "Because you were brave, Jean. I love brave men!" "You were glad that I pummeled the stranger, then?" Melisse did not answer, but he caught a laughing sparkle in the corner of her eye as she left him. "Come home, Jan Thoreau," he hummed softly, as he went to the store.
Cummins, red-headed, lithe as a cat, big-souled as the eternal mountain of the Crees, and the best of the company's hunters, had brought Melisse thither as his bride. Seventeen rough hearts had welcomed her.
They went back over the mountain, and stopped when instinct told them that they were opposite the spruce forests of the lake. There they separated, Jan going as nearly as he could guess into the northwest, Ledoq trailing slowly and hopelessly into the south. It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the big snows for the happiness of Melisse.
He did not hear the shrill cry of terror from the twist in the trail. He did not look back to see Melisse standing there. But Dixon both saw and heard, and he laughed tauntingly over Jean's head as the little Frenchman came toward him again, more cautiously than before. It was the first time that Jean had ever come into contact with science.
"I can't imagine how a girl would look with golden hair; can you, Jan?" Before he could answer she added mischievously: "Did you see any fairies at Churchill or York Factory?" "None that could compare with you, Melisse." "Thank you again, brother mine! I believe you DO still love me a little." "More than ever in my life," replied Jan quickly, though he tried to hold his tongue.
The education of the little Melisse began at once, while the post was still deserted. It began, first of all, with Maballa. She stared dumbly and with shattered faith at these two creatures who told her of wonderful things in the upbringing of a child things of which she had never so much as heard rumor before. Her mother instincts were aroused, but with Cree stoicism she made no betrayal of them.
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