Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/45

 This was the farewell of Private Lecroix to Rupert Land. But as he wormed his way, foot by foot out into the black silence of the No Man's Land between the trenches to the death-grapple that the hour would bring, there went with him the poignant memory of a mound in a far forest clearing, where now the birch leaves of two autumns lay thick under the shifting snow, at the lonely post by the Fading Waters.

The Canadians, flat in the mud fifty feet from the trench-head, waited for Lecroix to reconnoitre.

Wriggling on his chest, like a goose stalker of his northern marshes, often stopping for minutes to listen for voices, the Cree noiselessly advanced. Finally, out of the impenetrable gloom, came the low sound of conversation. Whether the parapet was feet or yards away he could not tell. So he crept nearer. Again he heard voices. His keen eyes were unable to pierce the black wall in front. Yet the trench must be close at hand. The Cree moved a few feet. The voices ceased.

Lecroix waited, hardly breathing, for what seemed an eternity, then he thrust out his hand and touched a rise in the ground. It was the sand-bag parapet. With mad indifference to the risk he ran he rose to his knees, groping up the face of the slope, when his fingers met a cold, unyielding surface. He extended his reach. It was the steel barrel of a machine gun.

Like a cat the Cree withdrew and circled the trench-head, hoping to find in the rear a vantage-point from which, if a match were struck to light a pipe, he might determine the number of his foes. Reaching the nar-