The quarter-breed waited, whistling softly a light French air, while Chloe wrote her letters. He breathed deeply of the warm spruce-laden breeze, slapped lazily at mosquitoes, and gazed at the setting sun between half-closed lids. Pierre Lapierre was happy.
"Things are coming my way," he muttered. "With a year's stock in that warehouse—and LeFroy to handle it—I guess the Indians won't pick up many bargains—my people!—damn them! How I hate them. And as for MacNair—lucky Vermilion thought of painting his name on that booze—I hated to smash it—but it paid. It was the one thing needed to make me solid with her. And I've got time to run in another batch if I hurry—got to get those rifles into the loft, too. When MacNair hits, he hits hard."
Chloe appeared at the door with her letters. Lapierre took them, and again bowed low over her hand. This time the girl was sure his lips touched her finger-tips. He released the hand and stepped to the ground.
"Good-bye," he said, "I shall try my utmost to pay you a visit before I depart for the southward, but if I fail, remember to send LeFroy to me at Fort Resolution."
"I will remember. Good-bye—bon voyage——"
"Et prompt retour?" The man's lips smiled, and his eyes flashed the question.
"Et prompt retour—certainement!" answered the girl as, with a wide sweep of his hat, the quarter-breed turned and made his way toward the camp of the Indians, which was located in a spruce thicket a short distance above the clearing. As he disappeared in the timber, Chloe felt a sudden sinking of the heart; a strange sense of desertion, of loneliness possessed her as she gazed into the deepening shadows of the wall of the clearing. She fumed impatiently.
"Why should I care?" she muttered, "I never laid eyes on him until two weeks ago, and besides, he's—he's an Indian! And yet—he's a gentleman. He has been very kind to me—very considerate. He is only a quarter-Indian. Many of the very best families have Indian blood in their veins—even boast of it. I—I'm a fool!" she exclaimed, and passed quickly into the house.
Pierre Lapierre was a man, able, shrewd, unscrupulous. The son of a French factor of the Hudson Bay Company and his half-breed wife, he was sent early to school, where he remained to complete his college course; for it was the desire of his father that the son should engage in some profession for which his education fitted him.
But the blood of the North was in his veins. The call of the North lured him into the North, and he returned to the trading-post of his father, where he was given a position as clerk and later appointed trader and assigned to a post of his own far to the northward.