Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/273

 obscure purpose of his own. But these straws sank under them.

This thing that had happened, Lachlan knew, was a thing that had happened often before. The spell of the wilderness was strong. It made many a man forget the world that he had known, renounce that world forever. The Southern Indians had advanced much farther along the road towards civilization than the ruder savages of the North and West. Their women, especially those of the ruling families or clans, were often beautiful, often highly intelligent, quick of wit and of speech. Many a white man of good birth, already captivated by the lure of the wilderness, had found in some dark-eyed Indian beauty the final and decisive reason for making the New World his home. Often these marriages failed, but sometimes—and Lachlan found double proof of it in his own ancestry—they endured.

No, this incredible thing that had burst upon him like a thunderclap was not incredible. On the contrary, it had happened before and would happen again. But that it should have happened to Jolie Stanwicke, that she should be numbered among those unhappy ones who had been cast aside by wandering lovers to whom the wilderness had called in tones that would not be denied—this was the fact which at first appeared too monstrous to be real.

He knew that he loved Jolie Stanwicke. The love that had been kindled in him had mounted and flamed during those long days on the wilderness trails