The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights Part 6

"It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have fair weather."

"I think we are," she answered.

Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of the windows.

At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.

Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his weapons.

"Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them," he said to the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. "They'll kill you, and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer.

I'm going to open this window."

A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a way through the window.

"Get off of the flower-bed," said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his gun on the sill. "You're tramping down my wife's flowers."

"It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We seen them shlipping in here!"

"It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own da-cent wife that hard to come at, by raison of King Strang!"

"Augh! thim bloomers!--they do be makin' me sthummick sick!"

"What hurts you worst," said Ludlow, "is the price you had to pay the Mormons for fish barrels."

The mob groaned and hooted. "Wull ye give us out the divil forninst there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?"

"I haven't any devil in the house."

"It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women."

"Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the women."

"He'll not lave it alive."

"You, Pat Corrigan," said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the torch-bearer, "do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in to the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?"

"Do I moind it? I do!"

"Did I let the Mormons take you then?"

"No, bedad."

"When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to arrest you, didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?"

"You did, bedad!"

"I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to you.

They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver."

"But the two wives of him," argued Pat Corrigan.

"How many wives and children have you?"

"Is it 'how many wives,' says the hay then! Wan wife, by the powers; and tin childer."

"Haven't you about as large a family as you can take care of?"

"Begobs, I have."

"Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for her?

Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it yourself."

"No, bedad!"

"Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him alone. I don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?"

The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil for good.

"I tould you Ludlow was the foine man," said the torch-bearer to his confederates.

"There's no harm in you boys," pursued the fine man. "You're not making a war on women."

"We're not. Thrue for you."

"If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you get more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You've done about all you can on Mount Pisgah."

As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.

"I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes on Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the sand-hills. We'd better load the boat right off, Jim."

In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth waiting at the foot. They could see each other only by starlight. They were alone, for the others had gone out to the boat.

"Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?" spoke Elizabeth. Her sweet voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. "James says he'll build me a little house in your yard."

"Oh, Elizabeth!"

Rosanne did not cry, "I cannot hate you!" but she threw herself into the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no longer as a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth kissed her husband's wife as a little sister.

The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind Elizabeth like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after the others to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the indignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal rights were not even recognized by the society into which she would be forced. The world was not open to her as to a man. In that day it would have stoned her if she ventured too far from some protected fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who could tramp winter snows and were not despised for their brief marriages may have flashed through Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man lighted around his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in all the swarming centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature with such genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown away?

Solitary and carrying her pa.s.sion a hidden coal she walked in the footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.

"Take care, Rosanne. Don't stumble, darling!" said the man to whom Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a higher law unhus-banded her.

Cecilia noted the pa.s.sionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal without touching him as he lurched over a rock.

He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind formality to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.

"Well, bon voyage," said the lighthouse-keeper. "Mind you run up the lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don't think there'll be any chase. The Irish have freed their minds."