Jan Thoreau listened to him, hunching his shoulders a little at the other's manifest air of importance. In turn, the French-Canadian scrutinized Jan good-naturedly. Neither of them knew the part which Jean de Gravois was to play in Jan's life.
Every hour after the half-breed's arrival quickened the pulse of expectancy at the post. For six months it had been a small and solitary unit of life in the heart of a big desolation. The first snow had smothered it in a loneliness that was almost the loneliness of desertion. With that first snow began the harvest days of the people of the wilderness. Far and wide they were busy along their trap-lines, their lonely shacks hidden in the shelter of thick swamps, in deep chasms and dense forests. For six months the short days and the long nights had been days and nights of fur-gathering.
During those months the post was silent. It lived and breathed, but that was all. Its life, for Williams and the few people whom the company kept with him, was a life of waiting. Now the change was at hand. It was like the breath of spring to the awakening wilderness. The forest people were moving. Trap-lines were being broken, shacks abandoned, sledge-dogs put to harness. On the day that Jean de Gravois left for Hudson's Bay, the company's supplies came in from Fort Churchill—seven toboggans drawn by Eskimo dogs, laden with flour and cloth; fifty pounds of beads, ammunition, and a hundred other things to be exchanged for the furs that would soon be in London and Paris.
Fearfully Jan Thoreau ran out to meet the sledges. There were seven Indians and one white man. Jan thrust himself close to look at the white man. He wore two revolver-holsters and carried an automatic. Unquestionably he was not a missionary, but an agent of the company well prepared to care for the company's treasure.
Jan hurried back to the cabin, his heart bubbling with a strange joy.
"There ees no missioner, Mélisse!" he cried triumphantly, dropping beside her, his face glowing with the gladness of his tidings. "You shall be good and beautiful, lak HER, but you shall not be baptize by missioner! He has not come!"
A few minutes later Cummins came in. One of his hands was torn and bleeding.
"Those Eskimo dogs are demons!" he growled. "If they knew how to stand on their legs, they'd eat our huskies alive! Will you help me with this?"
Jan was at work in an instant, bandaging the wounded hand.
"It ees not deep," he said; and then, without looking up, he added:
"The missioner did not come."