CHAPTER XI

MARY STARLING

I do not know how long I walked, nor where, but the sun dropped some space.  When I returned to the camp, I found the men before me.  They had returned early, empty-handed, and were in an ill humor because the Englishman was away, and there was nothing done.  I commanded Pierre to build a larger fire than usual, and keep it piled high till I returned.  Then I began a search for footprints.

They were easily found.  The young grass crushed at a touch, and it was child’s work to pick out the moccasin track across the meadow.  When the steps reached the beach they were harder to follow.  I lost them for a while, though there were scattered pebbles that would have led me straight as a homing pigeon, had I been cool enough in mind to have my eyes and wits as sharp as usual.  As it was, I doubled, and squandered time, until the sun began to loom red near the horizon.  And all the time I was saying to myself, “It is not true.  It is not true.”

The windings of the track puzzled me.  It would go straight into the forest for a space, then double sharply, and come back to the beach.  It came to me at last that the wish to hide pulled the steps into the timber, and that the fear and solitude of the great woods speedily drove them out again.  Then I determined to pay no attention to these detours, but push along the beach.  And doing this, I speedily came upon the red blanket flung down in the shelter of a rock, and its owner resting upon it.

When I saw that all was well, I became suddenly exhausted, and went forward slowly.  I reached the red blanket, and looked down.  Yes, all was well.  A hunting knife lay in an open bundle.  I stooped and seized it, and hurled it far into the water, and then I asked, rather huskily, a question that had not been in my mind at all:—­

“What is your name?”

“Mary Starling.”  The woman had risen, and stood with her hands pressed tight against her throat; the look she gave me was the saddest I had ever seen.  “Monsieur, you wrong me.  The knife that you threw away was for my protection,—­for my food.”

I stood over her.  “You swear this?” I said, breathing hard.

She held her head high.  “Monsieur, I am a coward in many ways, but not in this.  Life is bitter, but I will live it as long as the Powers please.  I will take what comes.  Even among the Indians I was not tempted to—­to that.”

“You would have died.  Starved here in the wilderness, if I had not found you.”

“Perhaps, monsieur.  Yet I gave myself what chance I could.  I took some food, a fishing line, and that knife.”

“Why did you leave me?”

“Monsieur!”

“I say, why did you leave me?”

“Monsieur, what else could I do?  I would have discredited you.  Those were your words.  ‘A woman would discredit our canoes.’”