"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."