["She paused, swaying in the hot gale"]
["'I like you as well as I could like any American with un-American ways'"]
["He turned and looked into the fire"]
THE HEART OF THE RED FIRS
CHAPTER I
THE TEACHER AND THE FREAK OF THE
STRANGE THOROUGHBRED
The children were putting away their books. The afternoon sun, streaming through the uncurtained windows, made patches of heat on the hewn cedar flooring, and the new, unpainted desks sent forth pitch and the fragrance of fir. Suddenly a shadow crossed one of these squares of light, and Lem Myers, who was seated nearest the raised sash, whispered an audible warning: "Mose, your dad's comin'."
The boy sprang to his feet and stood facing the open door. The intruder entered without ceremony. He had the lank black hair and mustache, eyes flashing under shaggy brows, of the Canadian-French, and the powerful shoulders and sinewy frame of a voyageur of the Hudson Bay Company. Two hounds which followed him, stopped with their forepaws on the threshold and reconnoitered the room suspiciously.
He strode directly up the aisle to the waiting boy, and laying a hand roughly on his neck, said, with growing heat, "Din' I tell you doan' tek dat gun? Oui, two, t'ree tam I ees say let eet 'lone."
Mose rocked under the grasp but he bore it with the silent fortitude inherited from an Indian mother; the white in him only found expression in the dull glow of his cheek, the tense arms and the hands clenched at his sides.