Jules nodded and went to his tepee, fed the dogs, gathered up his skins, and sought the factor.
“Voilà! Dat h’anough for you?” he asked.
“Aye, that’s guid!” the Scotchman answered, and counted the pelts. “That’s guid, mon,” he repeated, but Verbaux had gone out of the store.
Jules passed close to Le Pendu’s camp on the way to his own, and he stopped suddenly. Lying at one side were Le Pendu’s snow-shoes, and it was their remarkable and unpleasantly familiar shape that caught Jules’s attention; they were long and narrow, turning up at the toe and heel, with thin lacings.
“Ah rememb’ maintenant! Dat le track Ah see long ’go’ par dat femme mort près de Lac la Pluie!” he muttered, and went on.
The winter days, weeks, and months rolled sluggishly by. Verbaux kept to his promise and worked faithfully and hard. To be sure, he got good pay for his skins from the factor, and this he saved carefully. He had brought his dogs to perfect form and they held the reputation of being the fastest team on the post. The Indians had grown to like Jules, while the voyageurs were outspoken in their admiration for his great skill in the forests, and for his wonderful sagacity and cunning in setting traps. His luck had been phenomenal up to the close of the season, and represented a good share of the entire take of the post. Le Pendu was always ugly, but Jules laughed in his face and snapped his fingers at him.
Five long months had passed since he had given his word to stay with Factor Donalds. The snows had all gone; in their place the spring gray-green of the barren tundra showed, suggestive of hot suns and warm skies. In the forests the undergrowth was thick, and bright, tender leaves appeared from day to day. The birches spread their budding limbs hungrily to the southern winds that came caressingly from warmer climes, and the winter masses shrivelled on their trunks and died. The ice had melted from the lakes and rivers, and their cold waters shone dancingly in the lengthening days. Snow-shoes were laid away, and in their stead graceful bark canoes lay daintily on the beach before the post at the lake edge. The dogs strolled lazily about, their work finished for some months. And still Jules remained. One night he pushed a canoe from the shore, and leaping in sent it flying over the calm waters with long, sweeping strokes of his paddle. Some distance out he ceased paddling and drifted. The darkness was warm, the night air laden with the odours of the fresh things of early summer; the still waters mirrored the tiny bright lamps of the heavens, and as he watched and lived in the silence of the waters a gleaming crescent lifted its horns above the trees and cast long, glancing rays across the lake. Jules was kneeling in the canoe, resting his hands on the paddle, that lay athwart the craft.
“La lune, by gar she mak’ bon signe!” he said aloud as he noted that both tips of the new moon pointed strongly upward. Higher and higher it rose; the shining dew on his tanned shirt shone gray and the little drops of moisture on his cap gleamed in the blue-white sheen. The light swirls of trout as they rose to the surface here and there broke the silence; from far beyond in the marshes came the solitary qu-a-a-ck of a duck; the hoarse croaking of a heron sounded faintly; then the dull, booming calls of the marsh bittern floated up out of a distant valley stream.
“Ah mus’ go to-mor’,” Verbaux decided as he listened to these sounds of the summer wilderness; the heartache to find Marie overpowered him. He paddled slowly back, dipping the blade lightly into the dark waters; the soft lap of the little wave at the bow of the canoe sounded like liquid music to his ears, and he sighed as it ceased and changed to the harsh, sandy grating of land. He lifted the light craft, carried it on shore and turned it over, then he went to the tepee and lay down to sleep. “For de las’ taime,” he promised himself as he felt nature’s unconsciousness approaching.
The hard patter of rain on the skins woke him, and he got up and looked out. The heavens were dark and lowering, and the rain poured in thin sheets from the low-hanging clouds; it coursed in streamlets from the roofs of the buildings and twisted its way out under the stockade, furrowing deeper as he watched it. The roar of the falling drops in the forest came to him murmuringly. A heavy fog spread across the big lake, motionless and thick; the air was tinged with warmth. Jules made his preparations to go: he tied up his blankets, putting his food, tea, and the clothes he had made between them. Then he ate a cold breakfast and went out in the wet to the factor’s house.