“Here, girl, where did this mon Verbaux ye told me of go?” The factor’s loud voice at the entrance startled them both. Cuchoise’s face was blank in amazement.
“Sa-gai-egan wa-bu-no-ng [Lake to the East],” she answered.
“Hurry up there, he’s gang over Bear Lake to the island; take the quick road,” Nelson shouted to some one in the yard, and went back to the store.
Jean Cuchoise’s eyes were ugly; he stepped toward the girl, who stitched on silently.
“Oo-kut-ta-aw koo-me-cha-n! [You betrayed my friend!]” he said in a low voice. Evening Light nodded. The voyageur’s face grew black with rage at the thought of Jules, who confided in him, having been betrayed by his wife. He lunged forward, and his big hands closed round the girl’s brown throat. Her head fell back and the black eyes looked up into his, but she did not make the slightest struggle. “Serpent!” he snarled, flung her from him, rushed from the tepee, picking up his snow-shoes as he went. In the yard he stopped and listened. All the men had gone on the chase, and the place was deserted. He stole out of the post and hurried away toward Bear Lake, that showed flat and dreary in front of him. He could see many specks straggling over the surface, heading for an island whose timber showed black in the distance.
XV
“NO GREATER FRIEND....”
When Jules left Fond du Lac he intended to strike off south of east back to his own country, but something forced him to go across Bear Lake. He reached the wooded island and looked back. At the edge of the lake, four miles away, he saw many specks coming toward him fast. “Dat fille, she tell!” he ejaculated, and thought a moment, then hurried on round the base of the woods, keeping on the ice and making a broad trail. Half-way round he took off his snow-shoes under a big pine, then pulled himself up carefully in the branches. He worked his way, swinging from tree to tree, for a hundred yards, then dropped lightly, ran to the other side of the island, and crawled under some thick young spruce.
Voices came in a few minutes, and he saw the Indians stop in front of him and wait for those that came on behind. When all were together, they crept forward carefully in a mass on his trail, and disappeared round the point of the woods.
Jules waited a few moments longer, then darted with wonderful speed across to the mainland, half a mile away. Under cover of its protecting shadows he laughed, put on the snow-shoes again, and travelled on, following the dense timber by the edge of the lake. He looked across and saw the Indians hunting about and gesticulating under the pine that he had climbed. He laughed again. “You h’all no catch Jules Verbaux,” he said grimly.