The Scotchman listened to Verbaux’s frank admission of his intended departure, then he laughed.
“Na, na, ye’ll no be gangin’ awhile yit. I want ye to bide and wait for the big brigade that’ll coom now damn soon,” he answered.
“Ah tak’ back ma promesse!” Jules said, shrugging his shoulders as he left; but the factor only laughed again incredulously.
Verbaux waited all day in his tepee; he called his dogs and caressed them for the last time. In the afternoon the rain ceased and only the drip, drip from the soaking roofs remained of the earlier splashing fall. The trappers and Indians were in their tepees, some asleep, others talking, their voices sounding muffled and dead in the damp air.
Jules listened; no one moved. He took up his meagre load, left the tepee, crossed the yard, and went out of the gate unnoticed. His team leader trotted up to him, and Verbaux patted the big shaggy head kindly. The dark mist rolled upon the bank and enshrouded the trees; Jules disappeared into it, and soon a light scratching sound was audible, then an instant’s gurgle of disturbed water. That slight sound was heard by a figure that appeared dimly on the bank. It listened, then ran back to the post and hurried to Jules’s tepee, glanced in, saw that it was stripped of everything, and rushed, calling loudly, to the Store.
XXI
ON THE HEIGHTS
Verbaux put his bundle in the canoe and carried it to the water; he stepped in, shoved off into the dense opaqueness, and paddled away to the south-east, and had gone but a short distance when he heard shouts and cries in the direction of the post. The sounds penetrated eerily to him, and seemed first behind, then to one side; a gun-shot vibrated softly, the harsh edges of the sound smoothed off by the motionless, lifeless fog. Jules smiled grimly, laid his paddle across his knees while he unfastened his shirt at the neck, turned up the loose sleeves, and laid his cap on the bottom of the canoe; then he knelt and braced himself strongly with his knees, grasped the paddle firmly in his big hands, and listened. In a minute he heard the faint rolling of shingle as canoes were pushed rapidly over it. He thrust the paddle deep into the water and swung the canoe sharply to the right, and then worked noiselessly along. The thick atmosphere was cleft by the bow and rolled visibly to either side as his little craft cut through it rapidly; he swung to the right again and backed water when he saw the trees looming up a few yards ahead. Then he drifted. Not far along the shore he could hear the fast-fading thumps of hastily wielded paddles, and the advices shouted to his pursuers. He heard the factor’s strident tones cursing and growling, and he chuckled when the sounds of the canoes had gone and the voices went back to the post.
Then with silent, revolving strokes of the long paddle he left the murky shadows of the trees and moved in stillness out on the lake; little eddying bubbles showed his track over the calm surface. Soon he increased the speed of the canoe, and long threads of wavelets parted and fell away from the bow with liquid whisperings.
“Ha! dey aire là-bas!” he muttered as his keen senses caught the distant clu-u-ck thump of the paddles. He stopped to listen.