"YOU MAY COME IN A BLIZZARD!"
"_Voyez les_ Kamattawa trains," shrieked Maurice Nicolet, the cache
runner, speeding through the storm-thrashed gates of Oxford House.
"_Mon Dieu_, dat so?" exclaimed Clement Nemaire. "In dis blizzard? W'ere
you be see dem, Maurice?"
"'Cross de _lac_! W'en de snow she stop fallin' some, I see dose trains
wan meenit come ovaire de trail."
"Run!" Nemaire admonished. "Tell de Factor dat, queeck!"
The cache runner bolted into the trading room. Macleod was not there.
Donald Muir, the assistant trader, held charge.
"_Les_ Kamattawa trains," he howled. "M'sieu', dey be come ovaire de
_lac_."
Bargaining ceased. Trade slipped from the men's minds. Donald Muir
jumped up and squinted through the open doorway, distinguishing nothing
in the swishing cloud-rifts of snow. He turned back with a shiver and
jammed the latch viciously.
"Maurice, ye fule," he ridiculed. "I've na doot ye'll be seein' ghosts
next! Ye dinna glint onything but a herd o' caribou driftin' before the
storm."
"_Bâ, oui_," persisted Nicolet, "w'en de storm she be sheeft wan leetl'
bit an' de cloud break oop, I see dose trains 'cross de _lac_.
_Vraiment_, dat's so!" Maurice nodded his head energetically and added a
string of French superlatives.
"Fetch me the glass," ordered old Donald Muir.
A man brought the glass, a long ship's telescope which Pete Connear had
bestowed upon Oxford House. In spite of having seen hard service, it was
a good glass, and the same lens that had picked out many a foresail upon
the high seas now searched the whirling smother which enveloped the
frozen surface of Oxford Lake for signs of the men from Kamattawa.
Donald Muir wedged the rattling door with his knees and sighted through
the open slit, the hissing snow-eddies spitting in his beard.
"Yon's a glint o' dogs!" he exclaimed. "Noo the snaw's smoorin' in. I
doot, I doot--Ah! yes, I maun believe ye're richt, Nicolet! Aye, mon,
ye're richt. I can tell the stride o' yon lang-legged fort runner Maskwa
an' the bulk o' Dunvegan. Spread yersels, ye fules--they're here!"
Boring through undeterred, breaking the trail for the teams, taking the
brunt of the blizzard came the tireless Ojibway fort runner. The body
bent double against the wind, the lurch of hips, the spring from the
heel, the toe-twist of the lifting shoe, all bespoke the experienced
tripper. Maskwa was old and wise on the trails!
A string of gray dots, the dog teams and the Kamattawa men crawled
after. Up the bank they plunged and scurried through the stockade,
scattering the loose drifts like foam.
"Hu! Hu! Hu!" shrieked the Indian dog drivers, directing the teams to
the trading door with a tremendous cracking of their long lashes. There
the _giddés_ halted, whimpering in the traces. The arms and equipments
were thrown inside. The storm-harried travelers stumbled after.
"Maurice, ye fule," fumed Donald Muir, "fire up. Dinna stan' there wi'
yer mouth open! Fire up, mon, fire up! Can ye no see it's heat they
want?" The fussy, kind hearted assistant trader seized Dunvegan's arm
and hustled his superior to his room where he had thoughtfully prepared
a set of dry garments.
"Yon's wha' ye need," he declared. "Ye'll feel warmer wi' a change." His
attitude was full of solicitude hidden by a sort of proprietorship that
Dunvegan had long ago come to recognize.
"You're like a mother to me, Donald," he laughed. "But I'm really wet
through with hard work. The change of clothing is well thought of."
"The Factor wants tae confer wi' ye as soon as ye feel fit," announced
the Scot. "I masel maun see tae the outfits."
He bustled off, sending halfbreeds with the dog teams to the log
building where the Company's _giddés_ were kept, ordering food for men
and animals, bestowing general comfort upon the Kamattawa stalwarts
crouched around the fireplace.
Sandy Stewart, the lowland Scot, had been left in charge of the
newly-built Fort. The rest of Dunvegan's tired followers were here. The
flames licked the bronzed, familiar faces of Pete Connear, Terence
Burke, Baptiste Verenne, Maskwa, Wahbiscaw, the hardy halfbreeds, the
trusted post Indians, the faithful _mètis_.
Loyal to the Company, they were here at the Company's call. And they had
come as Desirée Lazard had idly prophesied.
"Kip back," Maurice Nicolet ordered the Oxford House loungers round the
fire. "Let dese men have more room. You be well fed, warm--full of
_tabac_ smoke. Kip back. Better go ovaire to de store."
The permanent group obeyed. The new arrivals moved closer. Maurice
stoked up, jamming huge birch logs into the cavernous stone pit till it
roared and throbbed like a giant engine. Every flicker of the warming
fire draught sent the shivers over their frames, the reaction that comes
of thorough chilling.
"Ba gosh," chattered Baptiste Verenne, "dis ees de wors' blizzard yet.
_Saprie_, leesten dat, _mes camarades_!"
A tree crashed thunderously in the forest. Gathering momentum over the
level sweep of Oxford Lake, the blasts struck the stockade with a sound
like the rumbling of a thousand ice jams. The buildings rocked to the
storm's wrath. Monstrous drifts threatened to bury them completely. The
baffled frost, denied entrance, blew its angry, congealing breath
inch-thick upon the blurred window panes.
"Sound lak de spreeng, eh?" grinned Baptiste.
"We'll run into a calm in the morning," Pete Connear prophesied
knowingly. "She's been blowin' for fifty hours now. You'll see the wind
drop about midnight."
Verenne made a gesture of unbelief. "Mebbe," he grunted, "mebbe."
"I know it," growled Connear. "Let me tell you, Frenchy, that I've
weathered more gales than you ever heard of. It'll be calm to-morrow and
colder than a Belle Isle ice-berg." He lighted the pipe he had filled
and lay back within the heat circle blowing clouds of contentment.
Dunvegan dressed hastily. He was anxious to get out and go through his
interview with the Factor in order that he might then have some time to
pay a visit to a certain small cabin below the Chapel. He had not seen
Edwin Glyndon, the clerk when he came in. Bruce wondered jealously if
the young Englishman was at the Lazard home. The words of Basil
Dreaulond, given as a friendly hint, had worked in him with the yeast of
unrest, stirring up misgivings, forebodings, positive fears.
When Bruce crossed the trading room, he looked for Glyndon again, but
the latter was not to be seen.
"Where's the clerk?" he asked, addressing his retainers sprawling close
to the ruddy logs in the fireplace.
"Don't know," Connear answered. "I haven't seen him. Guess he's with the
other Oxford House men. They're over at the store. Old Donald's gone
across to start the packing."
"Better have your things dry and your gear all ready to-night," was the
chief trader's parting advice. "Unless there is a change of plans, we
start at dawn for Fort Brondel."
While he made his way to the Factor's house, the terrific wind seemed
lessening in velocity, and the snow was settling in straighter lines.
Yet the swaying forest held its dejected droop. The air had still that
voice of wild desolation, symbolic of sorrow, of heart-break, of
desecration.
Seated somberly at the table in his council room, Malcolm Macleod did
not speak at Dunvegan's entrance. The chief trader, quite accustomed to
the Factor's vagaries, waited unconcernedly on Macleod's whim. Buried
in his dark ruminations, the Factor sat immovable, his knitted eyebrows
meeting, his piercing black eyes focused on the table center. Suddenly
he banged the top with his fist.
"The girl Flora," he bellowed. "Any trace, any sight of her?"
"None," Dunvegan answered calmly. "I don't think we'll see her again
till we stand inside the stockades of Fort La Roche."
"Which will be soon," grated Macleod, with sinister emphasis. "I'll
stand there, mind you, before spring runs out. I swear it by all the
saints and devils of heaven and hell!" The oath was heartily backed by
his malignant face and the suggestive gnash of strong teeth behind
tightened lips.
The chief trader drew some closely written sheets from his pocket.
"Here is my report," he ventured by way of getting Macleod's mind lifted
from his hateful brooding. "This is the record of my daybook in
duplicate. It will tell you everything. While good fortune blessed us
at Kamattawa, things seem to have gone badly with you here."
"Gone badly," echoed the Factor, sneeringly. "I call the loss of two fur
trains, ten men, and a clerk hellish."
"Clerk? Was Glyndon with them? Did he fall in the fight?" Eager
curiosity was mingled with Dunvegan's great astonishment.
"No," growled Macleod, "he wasn't with the fur trains. How could he be?
Just a week ago to-day he married Lazard's niece, and they fled
together."