Harold Titus

“ Now, it was no wonder that a man like Jean Mosseau should betray his surprise by a low ejaculation when a man like Norman Eldred let his amazement cross his face with such an unmistakable flash; but when the Frenchman made that sound, Eldred turned on him such a flash of rage that the rifle twitched again. For that sound, that look, that movement bred quick suspicion in David. ”

“ Eldred, you're a joke. And as for your bargain— Hell! I've got a responsibility, too. Any white man has a responsibility to any woman who's good to look at. A firebug? A plotter?” He nodded. “All of 'em, maybe, Eldred; but no matter what she's done, no matter what she is, no matter what she may do at any time, she's a girl, and you are King Norman of Garden Island, and livin' there with you is too bitter a dose for her.” The other lunged forward as if to rise. “Sit down!”
The smile was gone from David's face now as, with long oar upraised, he poised himself for a blow. ”

“ Then, speaking no other word, for their plan was well conceived, Eldred hauled on the long line that towed his skiff. He moved quickly, as a man will under great excitement, but when he put the oars aboard the small boat and lowered himself to it, he was most cautious to make no sound. He stood there, listening, and felt in his coat pocket, where the savage pistol lay ready.
He rowed toward the faint blotch of light and beached his boat on the sand spit. ”

“ Jen felt that she was being weighed in the girl's judgment. When Eve finally spoke, it was not in reply.
“Of course it's only been such a little while. This is just the second day; but when a man talks to you as though he hated you, when he does all he can to scare you, and when he can't always remember to act that way, but when he's sometimes—well, almost polite to you, and when he guards the place where you are at night from other men, do you think he means it when he says you're not safe with him?”
The woman drew a deep breath and took her hands from the girl's shoulders. ”

“ There were new grates to be put in the boiler at Squaw Island—a task for the two men which could not be delayed—and the keeper did not want his wife to go on this trip alone. Furthermore, though she had gone to bed for a brief time after her night at the sewing-machine, he knew she had not slept, but he did not find the heart to protest vigorously against her going by herself, because, for one thing, he saw her eagerness and, for another, he sensed that there was something here which she would not confide to him, and this realization hurt. ”

“ There were moments when he felt her call, as he felt it when she first came aboard his Annabelle and helped him, as when, the next night, she had stood on the hooker's deck and plaintively wanted to know why she deserved humiliation, as when, a dozen times yesterday, he had caught her looking at him with half-amused curiosity while he was doing his best to frighten her, as when, above all, he had peered in on her before the stove last night and beheld the splendor of her beauty. ”

“ There was a false note in his tone which caught David's ear, a discord when he spoke of Eve, stressing the pronunciation of her name, and Eldred moved on his seat once more eagerly—with overeagerness, David thought—and lifted a hand in quick gesture, animated, without reserve, so very eager in his argument. “Admit? Of course I admit! And I boast that worse things will happen unless you let me rest here”—tapping his breast. “No matter what she is, firebug or worse, she's mine, mine to protect—no other man will do that. You won't, MacKinnon. ”

“ Her eyes, you said, when they're somehow, when they smile! They smiled that night—didn't they, MacKinnon? That dragged you into helplessness, and I fired your hooker and you can't prove it. There's nobody here to listen now; there'd be men to swear me an alibi if I needed one. But I won't—I won't. It's our secret—yours and mine and Eve's. ”

“ Eldred's gaze roved to the shore, searching it keenly, but no one was in sight.
“I've come,” he began, still looking toward the island, “to talk about my daughter. She is here with you, and I want her back.”
“After you drove her out, eh?”
Eldred looked at David.
“A man can't put away his obligations so easily.”
“That's right, Eldred.”
“She's a girl, alone, without even a mother. She needs protection.” ”

“ His decision brought relief. He felt like a remade man, he told himself.
Yet he ate his breakfast with the Indians and did not go near Eve.
At four o'clock that afternoon, Fred Mink looked up from his work and stared hard at the tug which was bearing down on the Islander through the deepening haze from the direction of Eldred's harbor. He said no word, but MacKinnon, perceiving his concentration, looked also. After a moment he was certain that it was the craft which had brought Dimmock Tuesday, and a smile twitched at his lips. ”

“ To save himself, he could not keep a tremor from his voice, and Eldred detected that which he would conceal. Once again he stirred on the seat, and this time the hand did touch his side and clench there. Love! He was face to face with a man who not only had tormented him by an extravagant trick but who now had a reason equally strong with his, perhaps, for holding Eve close to him. ”

“ I'm going to hate you, David MacKinnon; I'm going to hate you!”
“Eve, don't do that! Open the door! You're all wrong—wrong from the beginnin'!” He beat with his flat palms on the panels and shook the latch, but the door remained fast. “Open it, Eve. You've got to listen to me!” he cried in panic. ”

“ And yet—why had she detained him at the house while Norman Eldred slipped down to the dock to do his evil work?
Well, he had his revenge now. He had carried her off to High Island, and while he was treating her with all respect, the father back on Garden Island must be in an agony of doubt as to her fate.
Norman Eldred was the fisherman “king” of Garden Island in Lake Michigan, holding despotic sway over the rough characters whom he employed. With him lived his daughter Eve, whom he passionately loved, guarding her zealously from the men who surrounded her. ”

“ And, to Dimmock, “Stand down the east side, past his harbor.”
AND before the wheel had gone down to send the tug southward, Jean Mosseau was peering into the window of the log house, watching Eve Eldred confront MacKinnon. He strained forward, because that day when he had told the girl that her beauty had put him beside himself there had been no untruth spoken. He gripped the window-sill and watched with lips twitching, and then drew back, waiting, straining to hear what went on in there, waiting for the sound from the lake. ”

“ Then she held out the waist for the arms and fastened buttons and helped adjust the skirt-band, standing back then, with critical gaze and head tilted, while Eve looked down and smoothed the front of the waist in delight. ”

“ She's—she's not your sort, MacKinnon—not the sort to do things for a man for long.”
THAT was what David's reason had been saying for days. For an instant, Eldred's voice struck a sympathetic vibration in his mind, and in that instant it passed, for there was in the man's manner something unreal, something counterfeit.
“And what of that?” he asked, trying to taunt. “It's said that King Norman's never been sent for before. That's what Dimmock told me the other day; but you're here. The impossible can happen. Your daughter has spirit, but spirits can be broken.” ”

“ EVE saw the boat coming and watched from the house until it had docked and the woman started for shore alone, a bundle under one thick arm. Then the girl went to meet her, surprised and animated.
“Hello, dearie!” boomed Aunt Jen, when they were fifty yards apart. “Gosh A'mighty, this sand sure gives a body's heart all the gas it'll stand!”
She came to a halt, panting, but it was not natural that an active woman should breathe that rapidly, no matter if the sand was deep. ”

“ And there are others, Eldred. She'd have knifed me that night I brought her here. She drove a bargain with me for help, and she'd have knifed me before she said. She's that kind—yes! And that's the thing, likely, that lets her conspire with firebugs to draw men away from their boats while you put in your dirty licks!” The bitterness here was as pronounced as his unacknowledged love had been a moment before.
A new thrill ran through Eldred, but he did not so much as lift his gaze from the rail of his skiff, though the eyes narrowed slightly. So MacKinnon suspected innocent Eve, did he? ”

“ The other put back the surge of jealousy that swept him and laughed again.
“You can't seem to learn, MacKinnon. Your rashness seems to grow with the days. You were rash when you took Eve away, a fool to make threats against me; you were worse than that when you refused the offer I made you yesterday—to settle for your hooker. To-night you have no boat, no money, no Eve! It would have been so different for you if you'd taken me up. But you were a fool—and again a fool for coming here this way.”
David let the muzzle of the gun drop.
“You're right, Eldred. I was a fool. ”

“ A hard school of manners, his; he was not much different from the run of men who have lived their lives on the lakes, and he was doing his best to make this girl uncomfortable. But he found, with something like surprise, that he could not stoop to coarseness with Eve Eldred. He flushed smartly and did not hear what she said, though she talked as long as she could on the matter of Aunt Jen's visit, taking that opening with enthusiasm because he had given it to her. And MacKinnon had come so close to a shameful blunder that he could not try again to play the tyrant that night. ”

“ Then, one spring night, a storm compelled young MacKinnon to seek shelter in Eldred's harbor—the very place he had been warned to keep away from, for some years before his father had been lured to his death there by Eldred.
Eve liked David from the first, and Eldred resented this. Before two days were over, things came to a climax. David protected Eve from the advances of a French-Canadian, Mosseau, and just then her father realized her feelings for the stranger. Followed the burning of the Annabelle and the casting-out of the girl. Then it was that David had taken her to High Island. ”

“ You know, dearie, sometimes a body don't know much about herself. Kids had always been kids to me, noisy and dirty and underfoot, but I hadn't stood over my stove five minutes with that cold baby in a dry blanket before something give way inside me and let loose a lot thoughts and feelings I'd never had before. ”

“ The downpour had increased to an extent which obliterated tracks which might have told much of the story of the evening, but they did discover three things which betrayed the presence of men who had not been seen. ”

“ Eldred stirred nervously and dipped the oars to steady the drift of his skiff.
“That's why I could come—this way, as you prescribe. Her well-being is more important than a man's pride—a father's pride.”
“Well?” said David, as in challenge, and Eldred moved again on his seat.
“You've been rash—and a fool; you've played with fire. Ask any of them”—with a sweeping gesture—“and they'll tell you what comes to men who try to play me tricks. You've done more than any other ever has ”

“ He was challenging her to fritter her hope on the improbability that a man who bore such a grudge against her kin would do anything less than trade her back for what he had lost, and she was in the grip of despair. ”

“ But now David's love for his daughter had reasserted itself, and he had sent Dimmock, one of his men, to High Island to make terms with MacKinnon.
On the neighboring Squaw Island lived “Aunt Jen” Borden. wife of the lighthouse keeper. She had, for some reason, a strong interest in Eve, and when she heard of the girl's predicament, she set about making some clothes to take to her.
While Dimmock was in St. James hearing the story that he had later related to Eldred, and which resulted in the visit to MacKinnon, the lighthouse supply-boat came to dock at High Island. ”

“ Lay hold of it and make it fast, so's nothing can tear it from you.” After a moment: “Dearie, if I was to tell you that you could come to Squaw Island and stay with us as long as you wanted to, what would you say?”
It required a deal of courage for Jen to put that question, because if the girl answered in the affirmative, she did not know just what she could do. It would bring very close to the surface the thing she dreaded. So she watched with breath held down while Eve looked at her thoughtfully. ”

“ But he said that if you'd come to him he'd talk to you—Thursday, at four o'clock.” He paused and licked his lips nervously. “He said if you'd come as he said, he'd talk; that if you'd come in a small boat, leavin' your tug a mile away, he'd row out and meet you. He said—said for you to come without a gun. He said to tell you that—without a gun, and to leave your tug a mile away and row toward him—Thursday—and this is only Tuesday. I told him he was a fool, that he was playin' with fire. I told him you'd——”
“I'd what?” Eldred interrupted sharply. ”