Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/191

Rh It surged by her; surged back, and burst out in a volley from each mellow throat that knew the voyageur call of the other days.

"Huh! Huh! Huh! We come. We come. Huh! Huh! Huh! We come!"

The naturally dauntless spirit in Jennifer waked. She sat up. And Jack, squirming about her with restless arms and legs, cuddled into her suddenly.

"Oh," she cried. "I guess we're going into the fairy-tale place where the dreams belong."

"You darling," said Jennifer, and laughed with a delicious feeling of excitement. "Perhaps it will be a fairy-tale place, Jack."

Then she too passed on into the dark, and from behind she heard Dick call her name.

"I am in the next scow," he said, and his voice came clear across the gap. "If you want anything call me. Have you all you need?"

"Yes, thank you," called Jennifer, with a new resiliency in her voice. And as she said it she realised that, for the first time in many months, she had all she needed. Freedom from the almost unsupportable life with Ducane; peace, and the soothing of nature in the hush of the night; the unjarring glide of the scow, the dear familiar stars and the scent of the wind's warm breath. Above her came the low creak of the decking where Ooti swung his weight from one noiseless foot to the other, and at her side Jack snuggled, close and soft. The voice across the water had held the old protecting kindliness of other days, and she tried to cling to that, forgetting what had come between.

Day by day the tread of a host passed up the long river reaches; the tread of the brown men to whom the brown earth was the natural heritage. Again they took the trails which their voyageur forefathers opened in hours of fierce adventure and grim horror; trails which shall be closed for ever on that labour when the white men drive their railroads down, far and farther, until the engine-roar drowns out the beat of the moccasins, and big cities rise where the tepees fall and the men of the outer ways go, keen-eyed, keen-eared and silent, before the in-wash of the city men.