At dawn Hugh woke and found his half-brother stirring.
“I go to see how the lake appears,” Blaise explained.
“I’ll go with you,” was Hugh’s reply, and Blaise nodded assent.
They crawled out from under the canoe, and, leaving the beach, climbed up the rocky cross bar of the T-shaped point. The younger boy in the lead, they crossed the rough, rock summit, pushing their way among stunted evergreens and bushes now leafed out into summer foliage. Suddenly Blaise paused, turned his head and laid his finger on his lips. Hugh strained his ears to listen, but could catch no sound but the whining cry of a sea-gull and the rippling of the water on the outer rocks. Blaise had surely heard something, for he dropped on hands and knees and crept forward. Hugh followed in the same manner, trying to move as noiselessly as the Indian lad. With all his caution, he could not avoid a slight rustling of undergrowth and bushes. Blaise turned his head again to repeat his gesture of silence.
After a few yards of this cautious progress, Blaise came to a stop. Crawling up beside his brother, Hugh found himself on the edge of a steep rock declivity. Lying flat, screened by an alder and a small balsam fir, he looked out across the water. He saw what Blaise had heard. Only a few hundred feet away were two canoes, three men in each. Even at that short distance Hugh could barely detect the sound of the dipping paddles and the water rippling about the prows. His respect for his half-brother’s powers of hearing increased.
The sun had not yet risen, but the morning was clear of fog or haze. As the first canoe passed, the figures of the men stood out clear against lake and sky. Hugh’s attention was attracted to the man in the stern. Indeed that man was too notable and unusual a figure to escape attention. A gigantic fellow, he towered, even in his kneeling position, a good foot above his companions. A long eagle feather upright from the band about his head made him appear still taller, while his huge shoulders and big-muscled arms were conspicuous as he wielded his paddle on the left side of the canoe.
Hugh heard Blaise at his side draw a quick breath. “Ohrante!” he whispered in his elder brother’s ear. “Do not stir!”
Obeying that whispered command, Hugh lay motionless, bearing with Spartan fortitude the stinging of the multitude of mosquitoes that surrounded him. When both canoes had rounded a point farther up the shore and vanished from sight, Blaise rose to his feet. Hugh followed his example, and they made their way back across the rocks in silence. By the time camp was reached, the elder brother was almost bursting with curiosity. Who was the huge Indian, and why had Blaise been so startled, even frightened, at the sight of him?
“Who is Ohrante?” Hugh asked, as he helped to lift the canoe from the poles that propped it.
“He is more to be feared than the devil of the lake himself,” was the grim reply. Then briefly Blaise told how the big Indian, the summer before, had treacherously robbed and slain a white trader and had severely wounded his Ojibwa companion, scalped him and left him to die. The wounded man had not died, though he would always be a cripple. He had told the tale of the attack, and a party of Ojibwas, led by Hugh’s father, had pursued Ohrante and captured him. They were taking him back to stand trial by Indian law or to be turned over to white justice,—there was some disagreement between Jean Beaupré and his companions as to which course should be followed,—when the giant made his escape through the help of two of the party who secretly sympathized with him and had fled with him. From that day until this morning, when he had recognized the big Indian in the passing canoe, Blaise had heard nothing of Ohrante.