Back at the end window, Loseis saw the miserable little Slavis driven like sheep by the five tall men. But sheep were never used so brutally. The sneaking Etzooah, reappearing from the creek-bed, pointed out the wanted ones, who were driven up the rise with incontinent kicks and cuffs, and the furious lashing of the whip. Squeezing their bodies together to offer as small a mark as possible, the diminutive savages darted this way and that, to find that they could only escape punishment by running straight ahead. The Crees yelled with laughter. The Slavis, cowering, made haste to start packing the horses, and Loseis made up her mind that she had lost.
Oscillating between the two windows, she presently saw that the Slavis below were striking their tepees, and piling everything pell-mell into the canoes, and she took heart again. She knew the Slavis better than Gault did. Either Gault did not notice what the people were about, or he disdained them. There was no interference with them. They presently set off in a cloud up-river, paddling as if the devil were behind them. So precipitate was their departure that a small boy who had gone down amongst the willows to set muskrat snares, returned to find his village wiped off the flat. After prowling around to see if by chance any scraps of food had been overlooked, the child set off composedly up-river by the horse-track.
Soon afterwards Loseis perceived that Gault was having trouble with his gang. In the process of saddling the pack-horses, some of the Slavis had disappeared. The four Crees were sent off in different directions to round them up. This was a fatal move, because Gault and Moale could not possibly watch all the others, and Etzooah would always play double. The Slavis, on their part, have an uncanny faculty of choosing the moment when no eye is upon them to fade away silently: to slip behind a building, to roll down the creek bank, to lose themselves in the bush of the hillside. In spite of Gault’s whip, and his terrible voice, his crew literally melted away before his eyes. After making long detours, they would rejoin their people somewhere above. Even weakness is not without its resources.
When the Crees returned empty-handed, the Slavis were reduced to five. These were all but surrounded; nevertheless, it was presently discovered that there were but four, without anybody being able to say what had become of the fifth. In any case it would have been impossible for such a small number of men to pack and unpack seventy horses twice a day. Gault gave up. The remaining Slavis were dismissed with kicks, and the trader, doubtless in a hellish rage, strode back to his house. Near the door, the grinning Etzooah spoke to him. For an instant Gault showed a murderous face in Loseis’ direction; then went inside. Loseis experienced a feeling of the sweetest triumph.
However, within an hour, two of the Crees with their bedding and grub set off on the easterly trail, and her heart sunk again. In four or five days they would be back with a swarm of Crees from Fort Good Hope. What good would four days do her? She had only succeeded in prolonging the agony.
Seeing the last of their people disappear, the Slavi girls exhibited the frantic, unreasoning fear of half-broken horses deserted by the herd. Loseis scornfully let them go. They slipped around behind the Women’s House, and were not seen again.
The pack-horses had been turned out again; and the fur carried back into the little warehouse. The lock of the warehouse had been forced out of respect to Gault’s pretense that the key was sealed up in Blackburn’s desk, and no other lock was put on. The door was held shut by a propped pole.
Meanwhile Gault had not returned the key to the store; and after waiting a few hours, Loseis sent Mary-Lou across the square with a polite request for it. The girl returned without it, and bearing a message equally polite, to the effect that henceforward Gault would relieve Miss Blackburn of the trouble of attending upon the store. Until her duly constituted representative arrived, he would administer it together with the rest of her property.
Loseis was never the one to take this lying down. She instantly marched over to the store. The door was fastened with a padlock through staples. Loseis bethought herself that there were crow-bars somewhere about the post. However she found an easier way. Gault had overlooked the fact that the little back window was out. Loseis climbed through, and obtaining a file and a new lock from the store, returned to the front of the building and set to work. It was a long job in her inexperienced hands; but she was supported by the agreeable thought that Gault was watching her. By the end of the afternoon she found herself inside. Putting in the rear window, she fastened the new lock, and returned to her house to supper dangling the keys from thumb and forefinger.
After supper Moale came over. Loseis received him at the outer door. Whatever his private feelings may have been did not appear. He said in an impassive voice: