To one of the men Blaise spoke of having seen the outlaw Ohrante. The Ojibwa replied that he had heard Ohrante had come from his hiding place seeking vengeance on those who had captured him. He had never seen the giant Iroquois, the man said, but he had heard that it was through his great powers as a medicine man that he had escaped from his captors. Without divulging that he was the son of the man who had led the expedition against Ohrante, Blaise asked the Indian if he knew when and where the outlaw had first been seen since his exile.
“I was told he was here at this Bay of the Beaver late in the Moon of the Snow Crust,” the Ojibwa replied, and the boy’s hazel eyes gleamed.
Not until they had made camp did Blaise tell Hugh of the information he had received.
“In the Moon of the Snow Crust!” the latter cried. “That is February or March, isn’t it? And it was late in March that father died!”
The younger boy nodded. “Ohrante killed him, that I believe. Some day, some day——” Blaise left the sentence unfinished, but his elder brother had no doubt of the meaning. Hugh’s heart, like the younger lad’s, was hot against his father’s murderer, but he remembered the powerful figure of the Iroquois standing out dark against the dawn. How and when would the day come?
After thoroughly exploring the Bay of the Beaver that night, the boys were off shortly after dawn the next morning. Just as the sun was coming up, reddening the white mist that lay upon the gently rippling water, they paddled out of the bay. As they rounded the southern point, Blaise uttered a startled exclamation.
Hugh, in the stern, looked up from his paddle. “A ship!” he cried.
Coming directly towards them, the light breeze scarce filling her sail, was a ship. So high she loomed through the morning mist Hugh thought she must be at least as large as the Otter, though she seemed to have but one square sail. What was a ship doing here, so far south of the Kaministikwia and even of the Grand Portage? Did she belong to some of the Yankee traders who were now invading the Superior region? Hugh knew he had been in United States waters ever since passing the mouth of the Pigeon River.
And then, as the canoe and the ship approached one another, a curious thing happened. The ship shrank. She was no longer as large as the Otter. She was much smaller. She was not a ship at all, only a wooden boat with a sail. There was something about the light and the atmospheric conditions, the rising sun shining through the morning mist, that had deceived the eye and caused the approaching craft to appear far taller than it really was.
The sailboat was coming slowly in the light wind. As the boys paddled past, they saw it was a small, flat-sided, wooden boat pointed at both ends. It was well loaded and carried three men. Hugh shouted a greeting and an inquiry. A tall fellow in blanket coat and scarlet cap, who was steering, replied in a big, roaring voice and bad French, that they were from the Fond du Lac bound for the Kaministikwia.