Show the th e plains of abraham abraha by james oliver curwood Cun it was waa the testimony of the lat late JIM james 0 8 oliver curwood that there waa wa more filet fact than nation fiction in this novel th that t th the a h heroine or 0 ine bearie antoinette Tont eur and her fierce old tather father lived and loved as described in the story atory 1 that hat catherine brutal and her vallan valiant t eon on were flesh and blood of their day that ha t silve heels and as veral several other of the more important Import sint characters were not creatures of fan cy that the plains of abraham tilts Tt hi his a other t tale e the black hunter to X which eh it Is closely related Is largely a romance of life as it was lived and not as iam it might 1 g bt have been lived the author a also 1 0 asserted th that at th the gathering of the material had been t the he mo most a t ll 11 thrilling ril tin g adventure of his life the i traveling raveling toot by foot over the ha hallowed flow ed ground the reading 0 of bett bettem ere written by hands dead a h hundred u n and fifty years or more th the e dr dreaming m ing over yellow W m manuscripts anu scripts we written I 1 aten by priests and martyrs and lastly the unveiling of love loves a and holes hates and tragedies and happiness of the almost forgotten period embracing the very birth of both the american and canadian peoples and weighted with happenings that shook the foremost nations of the tha earth and largely made them what they ore are today the tory story pa passes ases through romances adventures advento res a and I 1 id other stirring phases of life I 1 in n t the he th champlain Champl amala aln in and 11 richelieu chelleu I 1 regions legions and reaches its finale on the pla plairs I 1 ra of f abraham at quebec in that historic struggle which curbed the ambitions of the french established the of the english and drew the first farst crude boundaries of the future united states and canada CHAPTER I 1 1 on a sunny afternoon in alay 1719 1749 ft a dog a boy a man and a had crossed the oak opens of Tont eurs hill bill and were trailing toward the deeper wilderness of 0 tile the french frontier westward of the richelieu and lake champlain the dog first the boy following the man next and th the woman edoman tast last it w was its a rever reversal sit I 1 of proper form T on tell r had bad growled as lie he watched them go A tools fools way of facing a savage infested country that had no end the man should have marched at the head of his precious column with vitt his long iong gun ready and his questing eyes alert the woman next to watch and guard with him then tile the boy and the dog if such nuisances were to he tolerated in travel of this kind with evening coming on was the one legged from whose gristmill down in fit the valley the four were going home ills eyes had followed the woman with a subdued and appraising hunger in them henri bblain was a strange astrande man lie he had thought ue LIP might be a little crazy might oven even be a fob but hewak he waa a var verj v lucky lucli y husband to 10 possess a woman with the sweet face and form and the divinely chaste heart of catherine his wife jeems was a fortunate boy to have her for a mother even the dog was a n scoundrel for luck an indian dog at that A sneaking good for nothing dog A wreck of a dog without a soul to be fed by tier her petted by her smiled at ay y her as he had bad seen her smile was first of the long string of heroic lighting fighting barons settled by france along the richelieu to hold the english and their red barbarians back lie ile was doorkeeper to the waterway that tant led straight to the heart of new france if the english came with their scalping ing fiends the mohawks and the Se they would have hare to pass over him first of all N no 0 general could be given greater distinction c than that honor wealth A wide domain over which he was king and yet lie ile envied heart bblain it was maytime shadows ware were growing longer toward the east it wits was the hour when bled birds 8 were singing softly morning lind had heard their defiance a glorious and fearless challenge of 0 feathered minstrelsy to all the spirits of darkness but with late afternoon sunset evening these same slim throated song found a note of gratitude and of prayer in their chastened chasteney chast ened voices flowers crushed underfoot in the open spaces they cirp carpeted eted tile the parth earth with white and pink and blue flowers and birds and peace a world filled with a declining sun a smiling heaven of blue over the treetops trec tops and with them a dog a boy a nian man and a woman advancing westward three of these even the dog ton beur envied this dog had a name which fitted him had thought for lip he was vias a wreck of a dog even mure more 8 wreck than the splendid seigneur himself with his stub a shot olt leg and a breast that lore sword marks which would have killed an ordinary man the dog first of all was a homely dog so hopelessly homely that one could not help loving him at sight aln lit ills his hair was bristly find and unkempt ills paws huge ills tall was halt half gone which left him only a stub to wag ile he walked with a limp a henvy heavy never falling limp that seemed to shake his loni long body from end to end for or his left fore paw like Tont eurs foot was missing A crooked cheery cli cery inartistic lovable doy dog to whom the woman in a momen moments visioning of the fitness of things hud had given the name of odds bild raids finds so wits half balf right in thinking of him film as a wreck of a dog but in one other tiling thing he was wrong the dog did have a soul a out loul that belonged to the bey his master that thai soul had find a great scar seared scared upon it by hunger and abuse in an indian comp camp where bend bblain ad found him four years before and from which out ont st 1 I pity for a dying crea IJ 1 m aa 0 S by doubleday doran co inc service ture lure he had taken him home to jeems it was a sear scar cut deep by clubs and kicks a wound that had never healed and that made the dog what he was a tireless and suspicious hunter bunter ol of scents an and d sounds in the woods of t lie four who were tiling filing westward lie he seemed to be the only one who watched and listened for danger to come out of the beauty and stillness iness of the world about them now and then he glanced up at his muster master trouble lay in tile the boys face and eyes eesi and the dog sensed it after a little and whined in a questioning way in his throat daniel james bulale was the boss bo a name but from babyhood buby hood his mother had called him jeems tie lie was twelve and weighed twenty pounds more than his dog odds and ends called odd for short weighed sixty if the scales in Tont eurs gristmill were right one would have has known the dog and the boy belonged together even had they been in a crowd for if odd was a battered old warrior the boy on the other hand gave every evidence of an ambition to achieve a similar physical condition wily why hes dressed up like a bold bad pirate come to abduct my iny little girl and hold her for ransom ton beur had roared down in the valley and jeems father had joined johned the baron in his laughter then to make the thing worse had turned jilin round and round slowly and api the man should have M the head of his precious L L pral sIngly with lovely little marle antoinette looking on her dainty nose upturned in patrician disdain and with paul tache her detestable cousin from the great city of quebec openly leering find and grimacing at him from be hind her back and this after he hat prepared himself with painstaking care for adarle Antoin ettes eyes should she happen to see him halml I 1 that was the tragedy or of it ile he had dad put on his new doeskin suit lie ile carried n gun which was two indies incites longer than himself A big powder powderhorn horn swung at his waist in his belt bell wits was a knife and over his shoulder linns hung the most treasured of his possessions a slim ash bow anil and a quiver tilled filled with arrows tie lie had worn his coonskin cap of fil fur in spite of the warmth of the day 1 because L it looked better thun than the lighter one which was stripped and in this cap was a long turkey feather odd the dog was proud of hla his look ing roaster master but he could not understand tile the change that hut had come over the boy or why he wits was going homp homo with such a strangely set and solema face from tier her position behind the dog the boy find and the man catherine bu fain looked upon her world with a joyous and unafraid pride no boy in her opinion could equal jeems and no man her husband huslin rid one could see and reel feel her happiness and as secretly built up the tire fire of his yearning when lie he wits was alone so she loved to exult in her own possessions when her men folk were ahead and could not see all that come came and went in her face this desire to hold within herself some small and sacred part of her rejoicing was because slie she was eng lish and not french that was wily why daniel james had an english jiin elsh nunie name inherited from her father who had been a new england schoolmaster and afterward an agent of the penns down in pennsylvania it was on the frontier of that lint for far province that uearl had find found and married tier her was aware possibly even more than heart bufala that cuth erines adoration of her men fol folk k and of everything that went with them even to the primitive discomforts comforts dis of the wilderness life which lind had claimed her wits built up against a bacu ground of something more than merely being the mate of a man and the mother of 0 a son culture and learning and broadness of vision and thought nurtured in tier first by a yentle gentle mother and after her death developed and strengthened by a schoolmaster father had given to her it medium of priceless value by which to measure happiness bemuse of tier lier adroitness in fash cash toning beauty and perfection out of simple and inexpensive things and also bemuse because she was of the spawn of the despicable english badame had come to regard tier lioi with much the same aversion I 1 and dislike whit which she would have looked upon a cup of poison knew this and cursed in his honest heart at the woman who was ills his wife with tier her coldly patrician fate face tier her powdered pondered hair her jewels and gowns goins and tier her platonic platon lc ignorance of love loe and then thanked his god that little marle antoinette was grow in ing less like her with each day that passed over her pretty head for marle antoinette was tempestuous like himself a without doubt but with a warm and ready fassl passion on to onset offset tint that curse and for this too he blessed the fortune which in one way had been so kind to him behind tier her husband and boy cath erine had been thinking of and of his wife the aristocratic hen flen for a lon iong time site she had known of macdanie s hatred but it vins not until this afternoon that the other discovery had come to her for in spite spile of his file most li heroic bolc effort S had betrayed himself when suddenly slie site had ought caught him looking at tier her catherine hail had seen the shad ow of his secret sen et like a ghost swiftly disappearing up over the hill she lial hail added many twos and twos together until in the sure way of a woman she knew what was khinki ng and did not tear fear or distrust him for it ant and madame hated her disbelieving whatever good might have been said of catherine she hated her first as a deadly enemy of tier her rave raie and hated tier her then because she dared hold her head as proudly as aa a baron aaronj lady and hated tier her last of all because nothing more than the lie wife of a worth less backwoodsman like lienol bblain slie she was impudent enough to be tile the prettiest woman anywhere near the urle and so far as it was in her power she had planted and nurtured this linfred to growth in the heart and mind of her proud daughter murle antoinette until blind to the reline feline subtlety of a woman in such matters wondered wily why it was that tile hla girl whom ho hi worshiped above 11 all 11 other things on earth should so ope openly 1 3 ly display unfriendliness and alsi dislike 1 ke whenever Jj enever jeems come came to manor of this same thing deenis had been thinking as he walked attend of nil his father and mother wa ills mind at present was busy with the stress of fight ing Alen manfully tally and physically in a way he be was experiencing the thrill of n r battle halt a doze times limes a ince beginning the long climb over Tont eurs hill he had find choked and beaten pa b tache and in every moment of these mental triumphs adarle antoinette looked on with wonder and horror as he pitilessly assal assailed led and vanquished her handsome young cousin from tile the nig dig city of quebec j ilven ven in the hen beat of these se vivid I 1 imaginings tin agin ings jeems wits was sick fit at heart arid it 11 was the shadow of this sickness which odd caught when lie looked up into his masters eyes from the lay day jeems had first seen seen marle antoinette when she was seven and he was nine he had dreamed of her and had anticipate through weeks and months the journeys ellb his father permitted him to make with him to manor on these rarer rare occasions he find gazed with childish adoration at tile the little princess of the seigne urle an and d told ninde made her presents presenta of flowers blowers and fen feathers and nuts and maple sugar and queer treasures treas which he brought from the forests these tokens of his lomage had never served to build a bridge across the th abyss which lay between them TO BE 1310 CONTINUED |