The Star Woman

Crawford snuffed the candle on the table beside him, turned the page of his book, and went on reading; he felt the loneliness of Pentagoet. In the wide hearth crackled a new-lai...

Crawford could make out little of his new environment until morning, which disclosed the ketch _L’Irondelle_ standing east for Cape Sable and leaning over to a whirl of wind and...

In the late afternoon, five men sat about a fire on the hillside north of Bay de Verde. Below them was a scene of destruction; the settlers having broken their parole, Iberville...

Frontin’s hawk-nose led them aright, but not his calculations, for so toilsome was the road along the shore ice under the cliffs, that in the end Vanderberg rigged shears up abo...

“If your Star Woman lies this way, cap’n,” said Frontin, “devil take me if I want to find her! This ice--ah! A shot in this wilderness? Was that a gunshot or an ice-creak?”

Although dazed and momentarily paralyzed by the blow which felled him, Crawford did not quite lose consciousness. He dimly realized that he was being dragged back into the cabin...

On this early night of September there was gaiety aboard the _Pelican_. She lay anchored ten miles southwest of Fort Nelson, in the open bay. Upon reaching the river the previou...

In the twilight of another summer’s night, with the barely sunken sun again rising, Moses Deakin and Crawford and three men of Boston town, once enemies but now strangely friend...

On the shore of that landlocked harbour at the mouth of the Danish river, where after another snow or two was to rise the palisaded front of Fort Churchill, was now being enacte...

Now the story passes to a mid-afternoon of spring in the far northwest, where as yet spring was only a name of bitter mockery. Hal Crawford and his men, with the terrified Cree...

In the heart of this northland wilderness, set amid trees like a green crystal jewel, was a hard-frozen little lake, solidly rimmed in by heavy evergreens, its ice blown clear a...

During the following week, Crawford’s knowledge of the Star Woman remained exactly where it had been. The Dacotah refused to talk, being troubled and uneasy in spirit. All five...

“If the Star Woman knew that Metaminens came to seek her, then her heart would be glad. She would send her spirit to make him well. She would send her young men to meet him.”

It helped much that Hal Crawford had hunted with Mohawks and had worked his way during these frozen months across an unknown wilderness. Now, heading into the northwest, he had...

A dream came to Crawford. It seemed that he lay beneath a huge pine, wind-twisted and curiously crooked, at the very brink of a dizzy cliff. Below and before him was outspread a...

Late that night, while the thin crescent of a new moon hung in the sky, touching the twisted limbs of the pine tree above him with faint silver radiance, Crawford wakened to a l...

Noon passed into afternoon, and still the outer barricade remained untaken, for Black Kettle and Frontin held it. They were excellent shots, and with two Dacotah to keep the mus...

Sieur Nicholas Perrot came along, making his way among the strewn bodies, to the crooked tree; he wavered a little as he came, for weakness was still heavy upon him. No other wa...