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Trial by Water

By SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT

_A son of the voyageurs tests the hearts of

his young wife and of his debonair friend._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Argosy All-Story Weekly March 30 1929.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Jean Baptiste Chabrier listened, with an odd gleam in his dark, quiet

eyes, to the roaring of the rapids. A dangerous place, those rapids!

Who knew better than Jean Baptiste, who for three years had made his

home within the sound of Assin-nebah's voice? Assin-nebah--that was as

the Crees said it; "rocky water" it meant in the English.

Chabrier's mild and thoughtful gaze rested upon the figure of the girl

seated in the middle of the canoe. He could not see her face, for she

was looking ahead, just as he was. There had been a time when she would

have faced Jean Baptiste, her husband; but now she looked toward the

man in the bow--big, blond, gay Les Walters, the sawyer.

For just an instant the odd gleam in Jean Baptiste's eyes flamed up

angrily. In the previous spring he had invited Les, who had never

killed a moose, to come up to his camp in the hunting season. Les

had accepted, and now he was here. He had been here for ten days, or

perhaps more. Jean Baptiste did not keep accurate check of the time. It

seemed many days--too many days.

Jean Baptiste had seen what had happened, for his eyes were sharp with

love. It was a fool who said that love is blind. Love lends a jealous

keenness to the vision, and Jean Baptiste was very much in love with

his pretty wife. That was why he knew that she was falling in love with

Les Walters.

The big sawyer was everything that Jean Baptiste was not. Les was

tall and blond and smiling, full of broad, quick jests and subtle

flatterings. Jean Baptiste was small, for all his strength, and dark

and grave. He spoke softly and infrequently, and his adoration for

Charlotte was in his heart and in his eyes, not upon his tongue.

Les was a novelty, and Charlotte was a woman. To Jean Baptiste, in whom

stirred the romantic blood of the gay _voyageurs_, there was given a

certain understanding of women. He knew their love of that which is new

and different.

He had not blamed Charlotte. He had merely waited until he was sure she

would be ready to decide between her husband and the other man; and now

they were coming swiftly to the place where, ready or not, the woman

must make her decision, instantly, once and for all.

The rapids were close ahead. The roar of the tortured waters filled

the air. The high flung spray hung in swirling clouds of wind-whipped

mist. Already the canoe was in the grip of the current. The water was

black and waveless, and fretted with odd, ever changing cross currents

and eddies. It writhed and twisted as if it knew and dreaded the

granite-fanged monster that waited just ahead.

Les, in the bow, glanced back nervously. They had shot the rapids

several times before, but the thunder of the angry waters still held a

menace for the sawyer. Jean Baptiste smiled grimly and motioned briefly

for Les to draw in his paddle. Then the little bushman stood up for an

instant in the canoe and surveyed the stretch of raging water.

Kneeling, now, his paddle flashing in and out so rapidly that one could

scarce have kept the tally of its stroking, Jean Baptiste shot the

frail fabric into the foam-lashed torrent.

The fresh, cool tang of the spray stung his nostrils, and he filled

his lungs with the exhilaration of it. A score of times he pitted his

strength and the strength of his thin spruce blade against the angry

might of the rapids, and a score of times he won.

Now he paddled as if the fiend was following him through this hell of

waters. Now his paddle hung poised, every nerve and muscle of Jean

Baptiste's body tense, his eyes sharp as hawk's eyes. Then the yellow

blade flashed down again, and its cunning thrust won the canoe to

safety past a dozen lurking dangers.

Spray splashed in over the bow. The canoe careened, twisted, poised,

darted. It shot by hissing ledges, dipped as it went over miniature

falls, swung around perilously with disaster threatening on every side,

shot like an arrow down a straight stretch, and came at last to the

rock-strewn, snag-guarded foot of the rapids.

Here the most dangerous places were passed. The banks of the stream

were farther apart, the water ran deeper and more slowly. Jean

Baptiste's eyes lit up suddenly, and he nodded to himself, as if in

agreement with some inner thought. Yes, this was the place of the

testing.

II.

Jean Baptiste dug his paddle cunningly into the foaming water and

darted the bow of his light craft between two big black rocks, against

which the water leaped in boiling fury. Instantly the stern of the

canoe was caught by the current and swung around sharply, so that

the boat lay directly across the course of the stream. It brought up

sharply against a snag, there was a slivery crash, Les Walters uttered

a yell of terror, and the canoe rolled over, hurling the three of them

into the icy, swirling current.

For a moment Jean Baptiste shot downstream under the water, like a

diving otter, the bursting bubbles crackling in his ears. Then, with

a shout, he came to the surface and flung the water from his hair and

eyes.

He turned quickly and looked back. Into his dark eyes came a sudden

look of pain--the hurt look of a dog punished for he knows not what.

Charlotte--she had not turned to Jean Baptiste, to her husband, in her

extremity. No, she had looked to the sawyer. A woman's dependence upon

a man, Jean Baptiste had figured out in his simple soul, is the sum

of her love for him. In the bush country, a woman selects the man who

can best protect her, who can provide most safely for her and for the

children she expects to bear; and Charlotte had turned for protection,

not to her husband, but to Les.

While Jean Baptiste watched, Charlotte reached up out of the swirling

waters and seized the frantically struggling sawyer by his shoulders,

calling out in a voice inarticulate with fear. Like a flash Les turned,

struck her full in the face, and threw her from him. Then, scrambling

madly, he made for the safety of the shore.

Charlotte cried aloud with the pain of the blow, and her mane of

black hair, loosened and streaming in the water, mingled again with

the current. Struggling, her dress impeding her movements, she came,

floundering helplessly, toward her husband.

She saw him standing there, waist deep in the surging flood, leaning

against its might, and she screamed to him in a voice shrill with

terror; but Jean Baptiste's face hardened, and he watched her with eyes

as cold as the wet, slippery rocks over which poured the merciless

black waters.

Swiftly the churning water bore her toward the sucking whirlpools at

the foot of the rapids. Just as she swept by the motionless figure of

Jean Baptiste, her face emerged from the flood, and on her white cheek

her husband saw a blood-washed scar--a tiny, curving cut made by the

heavy seal ring the sawyer wore.

Just in time Jean Baptiste reached out. His strong fingers sank

firmly through wet cloth and gripped like steel the wet and slippery

flesh beneath. With one powerful motion of his body he swept his wife

from the water, and against his breast. She lay there, gasping and

whimpering like the puppies Jean Baptiste raised to be sledge dogs,

while her husband, cautiously feeling his way on the treacherous

bottom, struggled toward the shore.

From time to time he glanced down at the white, dripping face so close

to his own, and his eyes glinted with a fierce satisfaction.

[Illustration: _He glanced down--and his eyes glittered with a sort of

satisfaction._]

From the little cut on her face fresh blood welled up to make a crimson

stain on the wet, pale face. Always there would be a scar there.

Always, when she looked in a mirror, that reminder would be before her

eyes. Jean Baptiste, who had a certain understanding of women as a

heritage from his gay _voyageur_ forbears, was content that it should

be so.

There had been a testing--a greater testing than he had planned. It had

been a testing of two souls, instead of but one; but that also was well.

THE END.