"They's sure comin' here!" said Toby. "I'm thinkin' now she may be a team from the French Post in Eskimo Bay, up south. They comes down north every year about this time to buy fur, though they never comes here before."
"Maybe they heard about your silver fox," suggested Charley, "and they're coming to try to buy it from you. Ask a good price for it. It's a good one."
"Maybe 'tis that now," admitted Toby. "Aaron and David's been telling they about un, and they thinks they'll be comin' and buyin' she. But I'll not sell un. I'll let Dad sell un."
The boys excitedly threw the fish into two boxes that Toby had brought down on the old sledge that they used for sailing, and hastening to the cabin announced the approaching visitors to Mrs. Twig.
She was in a flurry at once. She put the kettle over, and told Violet to set two places at the table, and Toby to clean some trout, and in a jiffy she had a pan of trout on the stove frying.
"There'll be two of un, whatever," she predicted. "The traders always has a driver."
But as the komatik approached nearer, the boys discovered that there was but one man, and, therefore, Toby was certain it could not be the French trader.
"He'd be havin' a driver, whatever. He never travels without un," Toby asserted. "I'm not knowin' the team. 'Tis sure not the Company[12] team."
"We'll soon know now," said Charley, as the dogs swung in from the bay ice and up the incline toward the cabin.
Toby's dogs had been standing in the background growling ominously as they watched the approach of the strange team. Now, as one dog, they moved to the attack and as the two packs came together there was a mass of snapping, snarling, howling dogs. The stranger with the butt of his whip, Toby with a club that he grabbed from the woodpile, jumped among them and beating them indiscriminately presently succeeded in establishing an armistice between the belligerents, the Twig dogs retiring, and the visitors, persuaded by their master's whip, lying down quietly in harness.