Margot paused in her sewing and smiled: "I am not sending him into the barrens," she said. "If he goes, I go, and the little Margot, too. If one dies, we all die together. But there must be gold there. Has not Murdo read it in books? And we have heard rumors of gold among the Indians."
"Read it in books!" sniffed Molaire. "Rumors among Injuns! Ye better stick to fur, boy. Ye take to it natural. There's no better judge of fur in all the traders I've had. Before long the Company'll make ye a factor."
As young Murdo MacFarlane filled and lighted his pipe, his eyes rested with burning intensity upon his young wife. When finally he spoke it was half to himself, half to Molaire: "When the lass an' I were married, back yon, to the boomin' of the bells of Ste. Anne's, I vowed me a vow that I'd do the best 'twas in me to do for her. An' I vowed it again when, a year later, the bells of Ste. Anne's rang out at the christening of the wee little Margot. Is it the best a man can do—to spend his life in the buyin' of fur for a wage, when gold 'twould pay for a kingdom lies hid in the sands for the takin'?"
Molaire's reply was interrupted by a sound from without, and the occupants of the room looked at each other in surprise. For it was February and the North lay locked in the iron grip of the strong cold.
Since mid-afternoon the north wind had roared straight out of the Arctic, driving before it a blue-white smother of powder-dry snow particles that cut and seared the skin like white-hot steel filings. MacFarlane was half way across the floor when the door opened and a man, powdered white from head to foot, stepped into the room in a swirl of snow fine as steam. With his hip he closed the door against the push of the wind, and advancing into the room, shook off his huge bear-skin mittens and unwound the heavy woolen scarf that encircled his parka hood and muffled his face to the eyes. The scarf, stiff with ice from his frozen breath, crackled as it unwound, and little ice-chips fell to the floor.
"Ha, it's Downey, who else? Lad, lad, what a night to be buckin' the storm!" cried the trader.
Corporal Downey, of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, grinned as he advanced to the stove. "It was buck the storm to Lashin' Water post, or hole up in a black spruce swamp till it was over. She looks like a three days' storm, an' I prefer Lashin' Water."
"Ye're well in time for supper, Corporal," welcomed Molaire, "and the longer the storm lasts the better. For now we'll have days an' nights of real whist. We've tried to teach Tom Shirts to play, but he knows no more about it now than he knows about the ten commandments—an' cares less. So we've be'n at it three-handed. But three-handed whist is like a three-legged dog—it limps."
Neseka, the squaw, looked in from the kitchen to announce supper, and after ordering Tom to attend to the Corporal's dogs, Molaire clapped his hands impatiently to attract the attention of MacFarlane and Downey who were beating the snow from the latter's moose hide parka. "Come," insisted the old man, "ye're outfit'll have plenty time to dry out. The supper'll be cold, an' we're losin' time. We've wasted a hand of cards already."
"Is the gold bug still buzzin' in your bonnet, Mac?" asked Downey, as Molaire flourished the keen bladed carving knife over the roasted caribou haunch.