There was nothing about the people he did not know and not much that he was unwilling to tell. Finished, he got down to business. "Any eggs for me, Marta?"
"Twenty dozen," she said, "all fresh."
"Fourteen cents a dozen," Tradin' Jack said promptly.
"Yaah," Marta, too, was bargaining now, "I can get that in Three Points."
"Take it in trade an' I'll allow you fifteen," Tradin' Jack said. "Got to keep my customers sweet."
Before he went to bed Tradin' Jack arranged with Pieter to have a butchered pig ready for him when he returned from Three Points the day after tomorrow. Two and a half cents a pound he would pay, or two and three-quarters if Pieter would take it in trade. He left with the Van Hoovens a tempting array of calico, ribbons, needles, pins, a new axe and hammer, a box of nails and other things which were always useful and always needed.
The next morning Ramsay roused himself out of bed at dawn to find Tradin' Jack already gone. He had sensed the storm that was approaching, Pieter said, and, if possible, he wanted to get into Three Points before it struck. Ramsay felt a strange uneasiness and an unrest. Going outside, he saw that yesterday's blue skies had given way to ominous masses of gray clouds. His uneasiness mounted.
Something terrible was being brewed within the giant lake, and shortly it would erupt. A strong wind sent high waves leaping up onto the shore. They fell back, only to be replaced with more waves. Ramsay shuddered.
If there was terror in this, there was also grandeur. The lake, angered, was a fearful and wonderful spectacle. It was a gargantuan thing which seemed to writhe in an agony which, somehow, was created by itself. A few drops of rain pattered down. The wind blew harder.
Pieter and Ramsay went to the barn to repair tools, and neither spoke as they stared through the barn's open door. The waves were raging now, launching endless attacks on the shore and always rolling back.