"No."
"Oh!" The lines about the girl's mouth tightened. "Then I'll tell you. I am Chloe Elliston—Miss Chloe Elliston. The name means nothing to you—now. A year hence it will mean much."
"Aye, maybe. I'll not say it won't. More like, though, it will be forgot in half the time. The North has scant use for the passing whims o' women!"
CHAPTER VII
THE MASTER MIND
After the visit of MacNair, Chloe noticed a marked diminution in the anxiety of Lapierre to resume his interrupted journey. True, he drove the Indians mercilessly from daylight till dark in the erection of the buildings, but his air of tense expectancy was gone, and he ceased to dart short, quick glances into the North, and to scan the upper reach of the river.
The Indians, too, had changed. They toiled more stolidly now with apathetic ears for Lapierre's urging, where before they had worked in feverish haste, with their eyes upon the edges of the clearing. It was obviously patent that the canoemen shared Lapierre's fear and hatred of MacNair.
In the late afternoon of the twelfth day after the rolling of the first log into place, Chloe accompanied Lapierre upon a tour of inspection of the completed buildings. The man had done his work well. The school-house and the barracks with the dining-room and kitchen were comfortably and solidly built; entirely sufficient for present needs and requirements. But the girl wondered at the trading-post and its appendant store-house they were fully twice the size she would have considered necessary, and constructed as to withstand a siege. Lapierre had built a fort.
"Excellent buildings; and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, Miss Elliston," smiled the quarter-breed, as with a wave of his hand he indicated the interior of the trading-room.