"Mélisse, I say you shall be no papoose!" he cried, running to the table. "You ees ceevilize! You shall be no papoose—not if twen' t'ous'nd devil come tak Jan Thoreau!"
And he snatched her from her prison, flung Maballa's handiwork out into the snow, and waited impatiently for the return of John Cummins.
CHAPTER V
LOVE PATCHES
Cummins returned the next day—not that his work among the wild trappers to the south was finished, but because he had suffered a hurt in falling from a slippery ledge. When Jan, from his wood-chopping in the edge of the forest, saw the team race up to the little cabin and a strange Cree half carry the wounded man through the door, he sped swiftly across the open with visions of new misfortune before him.
What he saw when he reached the door was reassuring. Cummins was upon his knees beside the cot, his big shoulders hunched over, and Mélisse was welcoming him with her whole vocabulary of sound. The injury to Cummins' leg was not serious; and not being serious, it was accepted as a special incident of Providence by Jan, for the new thoughts that had come into his head were causing him great uneasiness.
He lost no time in revealing his fears, after Maballa had been sent to the factor's wife. With graphic gesture he told of what had happened. Cummins hobbled to the door to look upon the wallows in the snow, and hobbled back to the table when Jan ran there in excited imitation of the way in which he had found the little Mélisse in Maballa's sling.
"She ees ceevilize!" finished Jan hotly. "She ees not papoose! She mus' be lak—HER!" His great eyes shone, and Cummins felt a thickening in his throat as he looked into them and saw what the boy meant. "Maballa mak papoose out of Mélisse. She grow—know not'ing, lak papoose, talk lak papoose—"
Jan's feelings overwhelmed his tongue. His shining hair rumpled thickly about his face as he leaned anxiously toward Cummins; and Cummins, in turn, stared down in dumb perplexity upon the joyful kickings and wrigglings of the growing problem.
"Ees she not ceevilize?" demanded Jan ecstatically, bending his black head over her. "Ah, ze sweet Mélisse!"