"Judge for yourself. My man came down for supplies, and they got him drunk--he was a drinking man--then they stabbed him. They said a Chinaman did it in a brawl, but Willis Marsh was to blame. They brought the poor fellow here, and laid him on my steps, as if I had been the cause of it.

Oh, it was horrible, horrible!" Her eyes suddenly dimmed over and her white hands clenched.

"And you still stuck to your post?" said Emerson, curiously.

"Certainly! This adventure means a great deal to me, and, besides, _I will not be beaten_"--the stem of the gla.s.s with which she had been toying snapped suddenly--"at anything."

She appeared, all in a breath, to have become prematurely hard and worldly, after the fashion of those who have subsisted by their wits. To Emerson she seemed to have grown at least ten years older. Yet it was unbelievable that this slip of a woman should be possessed of the determination, the courage, and the administrative ability to conduct so desperate an enterprise. He could understand the feminine rashness that might have led her to embark upon it in the first place, but to continue in the face of such opposition--why, that was a man's work and required a man's powers, and yet she was utterly unmasculine. Indeed, it seemed to him that he had never met a more womanly woman. Everything about her was distinctly feminine.

"Fortunately, the fishing season is short," she added, while a pucker of perplexity came between her dainty brows; "but I don't know what will happen next summer."

"I'd like to meet this Marsh-hen party," observed Fraser, his usually colorless eyes a bright sea-green.

"Do you fear further--er--violence?" asked Emerson.

Cherry shrugged her rounded shoulders. "I antic.i.p.ate it, but I don't fear it. I have Constantine to protect me, and you will admit he is a capable bodyguard." She smiled slightly, recalling the scene she had interrupted before dinner. "Then, too, Chakawana, his sister, is just as devoted.

Rather a musical name, don't you think so, Chakawana? It means 'The s...o...b..rd' in Aleut, but when she's aroused she's more like a hawk. It's the Russian in her, I dare say."

The girl became conscious that her guests were studying her with undisguised amazement now, and therefore arose, saying, "You may smoke in the other room if you wish."

Lost in wonder at this unconventional creature, and dazed by the strangeness of the whole affair, Emerson gained his feet and followed her, with "Fingerless" Fraser at his heels.

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH CHERRY MALOTTE DISPLAYS A TEMPER

The unsuspected luxury of the dining-room, and the excellence of the dinner itself had in a measure prepared Emerson for what he found in the living-room. One thing only staggered him--a piano. The bear-skins on the floor, the big, sleepy chairs, the reading-table littered with magazines, the shelves of books, even the basket of fancy-work--all these he could accept without further parleying; but a piano! in Kalvik! Observing his look, the girl said:

"I am dreadfully extravagant, am I not? But I love it, and I have so little to do. I read and play and drive my dog-team--that's about all."

"And rescue drowning men in time for dinner," added Boyd Emerson, not knowing whether he liked this young woman or not. He knew this north country from bitter experience, knew that none but the strong can survive, and recognizing himself as a failure, her calm a.s.surance and self- certainty offended him vaguely. It seemed as if she were succeeding where he had failed, which rather jarred his sense of the fitness of things.

Then, too, conventionality is a very agreeable social bond, the true value of which is not often recognized until it is found missing, and this girl was anything but conventional.

Again he withdrew into that silent mood from which no effort on the part of his hostess could arouse him, and it soon became apparent from the listless hang of his hands and the distant light in his eyes that he had even become unconscious of her presence in the room. Observing the cause of her impatience, Fraser interrupted his interminable monologue to say, without change of intonation:

"Don't get sore on him; he's that way half the time. I rode herd one night on a feller that was going to hang for murder at dawn, and he set just like that for hours." She raised her brows inquiringly, at which he continued: "But you can't always tell; when my brother got married he acted the same way."

After an hour, during which Emerson barely spoke, she tired of the other man's anecdotes, which had long ceased to be amusing, and, going to the piano, shuffled the sheet music idly, inquiring:

"Do you care for music?" Her remark was aimed at Emerson, but the other answered:

"I'm a nut on it."

She ignored the speaker, and cast another question over her shoulder:

"What kind do you prefer?" Again the adventurer outran his companion to the reply:

"My favorite hymn is the _Maple Leaf Rag_. Let her go, professor."

Cherry settled herself obligingly and played ragtime, although she fancied that Emerson stirred uneasily as if the musical interruption disturbed him; but when she swung about on her seat at the conclusion, he was still lax and indifferent.

"That certainly has some cla.s.s to it," "Fingerless" Fraser said, admiringly. "Just go through the reperchure from soda to hock, will you?

I'm certainly fond of that c.o.o.n clatter." And realizing that his pleasure was genuine, she played on and on for him, to the m.u.f.fled thump of his feet, now and then feeding her curiosity with a stolen glance at the other. She was in the midst of some syncopated measure when Boyd spoke abruptly: "Please play something."

She understood what he meant and began really to play, realizing very soon that at least one of her guests knew and loved music. Under her deft fingers the instrument became a medium for musical speech. Gay roundelays, swift, pa.s.sionate Hungarian dances, bold Wagnerian strains followed in quick succession, and the more utter her abandon the more certainly she felt the younger man respond.

Strange to say, the warped soul of "Fingerless" Fraser likewise felt the spell of real music, and he stilled his loose-hinged tongue. By-and-by she began to sing, more for her own amus.e.m.e.nt than for theirs, and after awhile her fingers strayed upon the sweet chords of Bartlett's _A Dream_, a half-forgotten thing, the tenderness of which had lived with her from girlhood. She heard Emerson rise, then knew he was standing at her shoulder. Could he sing, she wondered, as he began to take up the words of the song? Then her dream-filled eyes widened as she listened to his voice breathing life into the beautiful words. He sang with the ease and flexibility of an artist, his powerful baritone blending perfectly with her contralto.

For the first time she felt the man's personality, his magnetism, as if he had dropped his cloak and stood at her side in his true semblance. As they finished the song she wheeled abruptly, her face flushed, her ripe lips smiling, her eyes moist, and looked up to find him marvelously transformed. His even teeth gleamed forth from a brown face that had become the mirror of a soul as spirited as her own, for the blending of their voices had brought them into a similar harmony of understanding.

"Oh, _thank_ you," she breathed.

"Thank _you_," he said. "I--I--that's the first time in ages that I've had the heart to sing. I was hungry for music, I was starving for it.

I've sat in my cabin at night longing for it until my soul fairly ached with the silence. I've frozen beneath the Northern Lights straining my ears for the melody that ought to go with them--they must have an accompaniment somewhere, don't you think so?"

"Yes, yes," she breathed.

"They _must_ have; they are too gloriously, terribly beautiful to be silent. I've stood in the whispering spruce groves and tried to sing contentment back into my heart, but I couldn't do it. This is the first real taste I've had in three years. Three years!"

He was talking rapidly, his blue eyes dancing. Cherry remembered thinking at dinner that those eyes were of too light and hard a blue for tenderness. She now observed that they were singularly deep and pa.s.sionate.

"Why, I've gone about with a comb and a piece of tissue-paper at my lips like any kid. I once made a banjo out of a cigar-box and bale wire, and while I was in the Kougarok I walked ten miles to hear a n.i.g.g.e.r play a harmonica. I did all sorts of things to coax music into this country, but it is silent and unresponsive, absolutely dead and discordant." He made a gesture which in a woman would have ended in a shudder.

He took a seat near the girl, and continued to talk feverishly, unable to give voice to his thoughts rapidly enough. His reserve vanished, his silence gave way to a confidential warmth which suffused his listener and drew her to him. The overpowering force of his strong nature swept her out of herself, while her ready sympathy took fire and caught at his half- expressed ideas and stumbling words, stimulating him with her warm understanding. Her quick wit rallied him and awoke echoes of his past youth, until they began to laugh and jest with the _camaraderie_ of boy and girl. With their better acquaintance her a.s.sumption of masculinity fell from her, and she became the "womanly woman"--dainty, vivacious, captivating.

Fraser, whom both had forgotten, looked on at first in gaping, silent awe, staring and blinking at his travelling companion, who had undergone such a metamorphosis. But restraint and silence were impossible to him for long, and in time he ambled clumsily into the conversation. It jarred, of course, but he could not be ignored, and gradually he claimed more and more of the talk until the young couple yielded to the monologue, smiling at each other in mutual understanding.

Emerson listened tolerantly, idly running through the magazines at his hand, his hostess watching him covertly, albeit her ears were drummed by the other's monotone. How much better this mood became the young man!

Suddenly the smile of amus.e.m.e.nt that lurked about his lip corners and gave him a pleasing look hardened in a queer fashion--he started, then stared at one of the pages while the color died out of his brown cheeks. Cherry saw the hand that held the magazine tremble. He looked up at her, and, disregarding Fraser, broke in, harshly:

"Have you read this magazine?"

"Not entirely. It came in the last mail."

"I'd like to take one page out of it," he said. "May I?"

"Why, certainly," she replied. "You may have the whole thing if you like."

He produced a knife, and with one quick stroke cut a single leaf out of the magazine, which he folded and thrust into the breast of his coat.

"Thank you," he muttered; then fell to staring ahead of him, again heedless of his surroundings. This abrupt relapse into his former state of sullen and defiant silence tantalized the girl to the verge of anger, especially now that she had seen something of his true self. She was painfully conscious of a sense of betrayal at having yielded so easily to his pleasant mood, only to be shut out on an instant's whim, while a girlish curiosity to know the cause of the change overpowered her. He offered no explanation, however, and took no further part in the conversation until, noting the lateness of the hour, he rose and thanked her for her hospitality in the same deadly indifferent manner.

"The music was a great treat," he said, looking beyond her and holding aloof--"a very great treat. I enjoyed it immensely. Good-night."