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Updated: April 30, 2025
"Fool woman!" he said in his heart; "sweet, brave, loving fool with the woman's heart and the man's simple courage!" Long Ridgar lay in the darkness listening to the hushed sounds that came from lodge and dying fire vague, awed sounds, that presently died into silence as night took toll of humanity and sleep settled among the savages.
"Maren?" whispered the weak lips. "Maren, where ?" And they, too, failed him. "Safe," said Ridgar gently; "all is well. We are at De Seviere and there is no need to think. Do you drink a sip of Rette's good broth and sleep again."
There was a scene not to be likened to any other outside the region of the Hudson Bay country, where strange relations existed between white trader and savage, when Edmonton Ridgar met the canoe of the chief at the landing. Savage delight overspread the eagle features of Negansahima as he beheld the white man.
For several moments Ridgar stood in the darkness as those outside peered fearfully in, and, when the last moccasin had slipped silently away, he reached up and took down the fearsome thing, folding it beside the chief. "We were wise together, old friend," he said sadly; "would I had your knowledge and your power." Outside the word was spreading wildly.
"Let us be off, M'sieu," he whispered; "now is the time." "Aye, if ever." Slowly, inch by inch, lifting their bodies that they might not rustle the loose earth and trampled leaves of the camp, Ridgar and Dupre drew forth into the shadows.
From the door of the factory McElroy saw her go and the call of the spring suddenly became unbearable. With a word to Ridgar he stepped off the long log step and deliberately followed. The Irish blood within him lifted his head and sent his heart a-bounding, while the half-holy mysticism that came from the Scottish hills drew his glance upward to the blue sky arching above.
And then Ridgar, drawn by that intangible sense of eyes upon him, raised his head; and, as their glances met, that great void flashed suddenly into full panoply of life peopled with a ring of painted faces against the background of a night forest, a leaping fire, and the heroic figure of a tall woman who stood in the dancing light and threw a hatchet at a painted post.
Edmonton Ridgar, with that keenness which gave him such tact, had shut himself in the living-room, and the two clerks were off among the maids at the cabins. Once again McElroy had made himself ridiculous by that abrupt turning away because of a small red flower sent a maid by a man he now knew to be his foe and rival in all things of a man's life.
Too small for a council, it gave allegiance wholly to its factor, young Anders McElroy, at whose right hand for sage advice and honest friendship stood that most admirable of men, Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader and anything else from accountant to armourer. Beneath them and in good command were some thirty able men whose families lived in the neat log cabins within the stockade.
The business of the factory was brought to him nightly by Ridgar and the young clerk Gifford, and he would look over things and make a few suggestions, dispose of this and that as a matter of course and fall back into his lethargy. "What think you, M'sieu?" asked Rette anxiously, of Ridgar. "Is there naught to stir him from these hours of dulness?" "I know not, Rette. Would I did!
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