"Then here is a coward!" said Audrey. "I do not wish you to walk there. I
do not wish you to speak to me. Go back!"
Hugon's teeth began to show. "I go not," he answered, with something
between a snarl and a smirk. "I love you, and I follow on your path,--like
a lover."
"Like an Indian!" cried the girl.
The arrow pierced the heel. The face which he turned upon her was the face
of a savage, made grotesque and horrible, as war-paint and feathers could
not have made it, by the bushy black wig and the lace cravat.
"Audrey!" he called. "Morning Light! Sunshine in the Dark! Dancing Water!
Audrey that will not be called 'mademoiselle' nor have the wooing of the
son of a French chief! Then shall she have the wooing of the son of a
Monacan woman. I am a hunter. I will woo as they woo in the woods."
Audrey bent to her pole, and made faster progress down the creek. Her
heart was hot and angry, and yet she was afraid. All dreadful things, all
things that oppressed with horror, all things that turned one white and
cold, so cold and still that one could not run away, were summed up for
her in the word "Indian." To her the eyes of Hugon were basilisk
eyes,--they drew her and held her; and when she looked into them, she saw
flames rising and bodies of murdered kindred; then the mountains loomed
above her again, and it was night-time, and she was alone save for the
dead, and mad with fear and with the quiet.
The green banks went by, and the creek began to widen. "Where are you
going?" called the trader. "Wheresoever you go, at the end of your path
stand my village and my wigwam. You cannot stay all day in that boat. If
you come not back at the bidden hour, Darden's squaw will beat you. Come
over, Morning Light, come over, and take me in your boat, and tie your
hair with my gift. I will not hurt you. I will tell you the French love
songs that my father sang to my mother. I will speak of land that I have
bought (oh, I have prospered, ma'm'selle!), and of a house that I mean to
build, and of a woman that I wish to put in the house,--a Sunshine in the
Dark to greet me when I come from my hunting in the great forests beyond
the falls, from my trading with the nation of the Tuscaroras, with the
villages of the Monacans. Come over to me, Morning Light!"