Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/125

Rh the baby had started her up from the box overturned on the earth floor. There were pans and dirty pots about; a pair of snow-shoes flung off in a corner; the black shawl Florestine wore over her head when she went to Grey Wolf, and, where the light of the day swamped the darkness, Florestine on a stool, holding her baby, and Tempest kneeled on one knee beside her.

Jennifer halted, half-ashamed. For Florestine needed no rescue from the mercilessness of the law-bringer. Tempest was stroking the brown scrap of flesh that made the infinitely cold baby cheek with a gentle forefinger, and his tone as he spoke in his broken Cree-French was tenderness made wise.

He had drawn from her with such skill that she did not know it the few necessary words he wanted, and now he was trying to draw from her the dead child. For her long bitter journey to Fort Saskatchewan must begin in the morning. The girl was numb with the cold and dazed with hunger and terror. The ghost of the woman who was a weetigo had shrieked at her hourly, demanding the soft body as well as the life already given. She clutched it, staring at Tempest with eyes that were softening.

"Astum," said Tempest, and slid his firm hands about it. "Ah, le petit napasis. I take him, Florestine. So——"

A moment Florestine rebelled. Then she let go. Jennifer held her breath. There was no denying that quiet power. Tempest stood up with his light burden, and Florestine spoke.

"I want him not cry—and now I want him cry," she said in the mixed language that Tempest only understood. And he had no answer for it, because it was the unexplainable tragedy of impatient human life in a sentence.

The grunt of runners packing in the snow came from without sharpened by the snap of a whip as Kennedy pulled the pie-bald barrack pony back on its haunches. Dick ploughed through the snow to the door where Tempest met him, and Florestine's eyes followed in the dumb submission of a dog. Tempest spoke low and quickly. Both men looked at Jennifer, and then Tempest came to her.