'He's not much of a chap. Told him that straight lots of times. I shouldn't have cut such an everlasting dido if he hadn't been monkeying around. Drank more than I did, too. Dirty mean trick that, for he can get lots across lake. Quite a little storm rustling most of the while, eh?'
Lamont smiled feebly. 'Just a bit,' he said slowly.
The Factor looked at him critically. 'Darn it, Lamont, a fellow might think you'd been on the jag stead of me.'
He was right. The young man's face was colourless and heavy; his eyes dull and deeply marked with black lines; his appearance thinner and older. The Factor, on the other hand, represented the perfection of health. His great face glowed with colour beneath a wide straw bonnet; his eyes shone; his step was firm and vigorous.
'I'm a bit played out. Up most of the night; out first thing without grub.'
'That's what,' returned McAuliffe, heartily. 'Come off now; there's a decent chunk of moose steak lying inside.'
They disappeared within the log fort, while the silence and desolation grew again.
Through the fresh dampness of the forest came Menotah, with her wonted happiness and joy of heart. Her hair was unbound as usual; she wore a tiny pair of beaded and grass-worked mocassins, with dainty leggings of fringed buckskin. Light notes of joyous music dropped from her smiling lips as she danced along with scarce a limp or a pause—for the old Antoine, with the miraculous native art of healing, had rubbed an ointment upon the wounded foot.
She passed along like a butterfly floating with the wind, threading an unmarked track for some distance, then glided through torn and rugged bush, to finally emerge at the edge of a gloomy swamp, where strange creatures croaked and crawled, where poisonous herbs reared fetid heads aloft.
Here an unmistakable odour permeated the air. A thick film coated nauseous puddles of silent water, where circles of bright colour curled and twisted beneath the bright sunlight. A colossal fortune, open gift of Nature, lay beneath that lonely wilderness, only awaiting someone to seize upon it. Yet neither the old Antoine, nor the light-hearted girl, the two who alone knew of the place, ever had the imagination troubled with the golden vision of an oil king's dream.