PAGE 7
The Stroke Of The Hour
by
“You must sleep, then, while I get some food for you.” She pointed to a couch in a corner. “I will wake you when the moon rises.”
For the first time he seemed to realize her, for a moment to leave the thing which consumed him, and put his mind upon her.
“You not happy–you not like me here?” he asked, simply; then added, quickly, “I am not bad man like me brudder–no.”
Her eyes rested on him for a moment as though realizing him, while some thought was working in her mind behind.
“No, you are not a bad man,” she said. “Men and women are equal on the plains. You have no fear–I have no fear.”
He glanced at the rifles on the walls, then back at her. “My mudder, she was good woman. I am glad she did not lif to know what Fadette do.” His eyes drank her in for a minute, then he said: “I go sleep now, t’ank you–till moontime.”
In a moment his deep breathing filled the room, the only sound save for the fire within and the frost outside.
Time went on. The night deepened.
* * * * *
Loisette sat beside the fire, but her body was half-turned from it toward the man on the sofa. She was not agitated outwardly, but within there was that fire which burns up life and hope and all the things that come between us and great issues. It had burned up everything in her except one thought, one powerful motive. She had been deeply wronged, and justice had been about to give “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But the man lying there had come to sweep away the scaffolding of justice–he had come for that.
Perhaps he might arrive at Askatoon before the stroke of the hour, but still he would be too late, for in her pocket now was the Governor’s reprieve. The man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his breast; but the reprieve was with her.
If he left without discovering his loss, and got well on his way, and discovered it then, it would be too late. If he returned–she only saw one step before her, she would wait for that, and deal with it when it came. She was thinking of Lucy, of her own lover ruined and gone. She was calm in her madness.
At the first light of the moon she roused him. She had put food into his fur-coat pocket, and after he had drunk a bowl of hot pea-soup, while she told him his course again, she opened the door, and he passed out into the night. He started forward without a word, but came back again and caught her hand.
“Pardon,” he said; “I go forget everyt’ing except dat. But I t’ink what you do for me, it is better than all my life. Bien sur, I will come again, when I get my mind to myself. Ah, but you are beautibul,” he said, “an’ you not happy. Well, I come again–yes, a Dieu.”
He was gone into the night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor’s reprieve in her hand. Looking at it, she wondered why it had been given to Ba’tiste Caron and not to a police-officer. Ah yes, it was plain–Ba’tiste was a woodsman and plainsman, and could go far more safely than a constable, and faster. Ba’tiste had reason for going fast, and he would travel night and day–he was travelling night and day indeed. And now Ba’tiste might get there, but the reprieve would not. He would not be able to stop the hanging of Haman–the hanging of Rube Haman.