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I was across Lac Tremblant and in the shelter of the La Chance shore! There is no good in denying that for five minutes all I did was to sit back and breathe. Then I lit my pipe, that was dry because it was inside my shirt; bailed the unnecessary water out of the canoe and the immediate neighborhood of my legs; and, without meaning to, turned a casual eye on the shore at my right hand.
There could be no piling that ill-assorted company on horses and putting out for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could have got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson, I cursed and put that out of the question.
I half lied; he could not cut us off, since horses would be of no use to him in the heavy snow, and on foot it would take him two days to go round Lac Tremblant to the Halfway, where crossing the lolly could bring us in two hours. But I had no mind to air my real reason for haste. I should have known Paulette was too shrewd for me.
"And as for why we're here," I poured out the whole story of my return to La Chance, from Dudley's own funeral procession that met me and my bootless fight with Macartney, to the resurrection of Collins and Dunn, and Paulette's and my race across Lac Tremblant. I left out Marcia's share in my defeat, but Dudley gave a comprehending sniff. "Marcia always was a fool about Macartney!
Hungry, dog-tired, cross with the crossness of a man in authority whose orders have been forgotten or disregarded, I drove Billy Jones's old canoe across Lac Tremblant on my way home to Dudley Wilbraham's gold mine at La Chance, after an absence of months. It was halfway to dark, and the bitter November wind blew dead in my teeth.
And I was ashamed to have even wondered if he had been the man Paulette had shot at on the La Chance road; for there was not a mark on him, and a fool could have told he had just been drowned in Lac Tremblant. There was nothing in his pockets to tell how he had got there: only a single two-dollar bill and a damp pack of cards in a wet leather case. Thompson's solitaire cards!
The line of Lac Tremblant, and that of the road I had just made from Caraquet to La Chance, ran away from each other in two sides of a triangle, except that the La Chance mine was five miles down the far side of the lake from Caraquet, and my road had to half-moon round the head of Lac Tremblant to get home a lavish curve, too, by reason of swamps.
O tremblant coeur humain, si jamais tu vibras C'est dans l'étreinte altière et chaude de ses bras. An Egyptian klaft fell over her abundant blue-black curls. Its two points of heavy, gold-embroidered cloth extended to her slim hips. The golden serpent, emerald-eyed, was clasped about her little round, determined forehead, darting its double tongue of rubies over her head.
It lay in the bush, in a slanting line between Caraquet and Lac Tremblant: a nest of thriftless evil stuck in a hollow you might pass within twenty yards of, and never guess held a house.
I lowered myself gingerly to the rubbish heap that had been the smooth floor of Thompson's stope; edged to the tunnel entrance; slipped my feet into the toe and heel straps of the snowshoes I had held tightly against me through all the unspeakable, hellish uproar of rending rock, and sprang, sprang out into the sunlight, out on the clear snow, past wounded men, reeling men, dying men, and raced as I never put foot to ground before or since, for Lac Tremblant, glittering clear and free in front of me, that Lac Tremblant I had thought of subconsciously when I carried snowshoes into Collins's cave.
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