This day at noon camp she came upon, close to a fallen tree, a wee red
flower nodding on its slender stalk. She sighed and broke it.
"In memory of a brave man," she said sadly. "Oh, a very brave man!"
CHAPTER XXVII RETURN
Eastward through the little lakes, across the portages where McElroy
was carried by means of pole and blanket swung from sturdy shoulders,
they went at hurried pace, and never a man of Maren's small command but
watched the sadness of her face, that seemed to grow with the days and
to feel an aching counterpart of it within his own heart.
"Take my coat for your head, Ma'amselle," when she rested among the
thwarts,--"Let me, Ma'amselle," when she would do some little task.
Thus they served her from the old desire that sight of her face had
ever stirred in the breasts of men, she who had never played at the
game of love, nor knew its simplest trick.
Southward, presently, up the rivers hurrying to the great bay at the
north, and at last out upon the broad waters of Winnipeg, and never for
an hour had McElroy's wandering soul come back to his suffering body.
Day by day Maren tended him, feeding him as one feeds a helpless babe,
shielding him from the sun by her own shadow when the branches gathered
at morn withered ere noon, wetting the fair head with its waving
sunburnt hair with water dipped from overside, and praying constantly
for his life.
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