He led the way a short distance along the face of the ridge, and then they plunged down the valley of deeper gloom. The forest was thick and low, and Philip guessed that they were passing through a swamp. When they came out of it the fire was almost in their faces. The howling of dogs greeted them. As they dashed into the light half a dozen men had risen and were facing them, their rifles in the crooks of their arms. From out of the six there strode a tall, thin, smooth-shaven man toward them, and from Jean's lips there fell words which he tried to smother.
"Mother of Heaven, it is Father George, the Missioner from Baldneck!" he gasped.
In another moment the Missioner was wringing the half-breed's mittened hand. He was a man of sixty. His face was of cadaverous thinness, and there was a feverish glow in his eyes.
"Jean Croisset!" he cried. "I was at Ladue's when Pierre came with the word. Is it true? Has the purest soul in all this world been stolen by those Godless men at Thoreau's? I cannot believe it! But if it is so, I have come to fight!"
"It is true, Father," replied Jean. "They have stolen her as the wolves of white men stole Red Fawn from her father's tepee three years ago. And to-morrow—"
"The vengeance of the Lord will descend upon them," interrupted the Missioner. "And this, Jean, your friend?"
"Is M'sieur Philip Darcambal, the husband of Josephine," said Jean.
As the Missioner gripped Philip's hand his thin fingers had in them the strength of steel.
"Ladue told me that she had found her man," he said. "May God bless you, my son! It was I, Father George, who baptized her years and years ago. For me she made Adare House a home from the time she was old enough to put her tiny arms about my neck and lisp my name. I was on my way to see you when night overtook me at Ladue's. I am not a fighting man, my son. God does not love their kind. But it was Christ who flung the money-changers from the temple—and so I have come to fight."
The others were close about them now, and Jean was telling of the ambush in the forest. Purple veins grew in the Missioner's forehead as he listened. There were no questions on the lips of the others. With dark, tense faces and eyes that burned with slumbering fires they heard Jean. There were the grim and silent Foutelles, father and son, from the Caribou Swamp. Tall and ghostlike in the firelight, more like spectre than man, was Janesse, a white beard falling almost to his waist, a thick marten skin cap shrouding his head, and armed with a long barrelled smooth-bore that shot powder and ball. From the fox grounds out on the Barren had come "Mad" Joe Horn behind eight huge malemutes that pulled with the strength of oxen. And with the Missioner had come Ladue, the Frenchman, who could send a bullet through the head of a running fox at two hundred yards four times out of five. Kaskisoon and his Crees had not arrived, and Philip knew that Jean was disappointed.