"Too nice a name for such an impolite dog!"
Jean stroked Fleur's head as she crouched against his legs muttering her dislike of strangers. At his caress, her warm tongue sought his hand.
"There," he said proudly, his white teeth flashing in a grin at Julie, "you see here is one who loves Jean Marcel."
At the invitation of Père Breton, the voyageur shut his dog in the Mission stockade, where she would be free from attack by the post Huskies and safe from some covetous Cree, and gladly took possession of an empty room in the building.
CHAPTER V
THE MOON OF FLOWERS
As the grim fastnesses reaching away to the north and east and south in limitless, ice-locked solitude, had wakened to the magic touch of spring, so the little post at Whale River had quickened with life at the advent of June with the spring trade. For weeks, before the return of Marcel, the canoes of the Crees had been coming in daily from winter trapping grounds in far valleys. Around the tepees, which dotted the post clearing like mushrooms, groups of dark-skinned women, heads wrapped in gaudy shawls, laughed and gossiped, while the shrill voices of romping children filled the air, for the lean moons of the long snows had passed and the soft days returned.
Swart hunters from Lac d'Iberville, half-breed Crees from the Whispering Hills and the Little Whale watershed, belted with colored Company sashes, wearing beaded leggings and moccasins, smoked and talked of the trade with wild voyageurs from Lac Bienville, the Lakes of the Winds, and the Starving River headwaters in the caribou barrens. From a hundred unmapped valleys they had journeyed to the Bay to trade their fox and lynx, their mink and fisher and marten, for the goods of the Company.