Dick did not sleep well that night. Though he was not willing to admit it even to himself, Wolf Brennan’s threatening letter had upset him. He lay for a long time on his bed in the loft over the trading room, his mind active and restless. Close at hand, he could hear the even breathing of Sandy and Toma and, through the open window, there was borne to him the soughing of the wind in the pines. It was a clear June night of half darkness and only partially stilled woodland noises. Birds still peeped sleepily in the trees, the little denizens of the forest spaces still moved about as they had during the brighter hours of day.
Lying there, Dick was aware of a myriad night sounds. The staunch old log building, built nearly eighty years before by members of the Honorable, the Hudson’s Bay Company, creaked and groaned in the brisk night wind. Something was flapping up there on the roof. Was that a bird that made that peculiar pecking noise just under the eaves? Trying desperately to sleep, Dick succeeded only in becoming more and more awake with each passing moment.
In despair, finally, he swung his legs over his bunk, reached for his clothes and commenced to dress.
“I’ll go outside,” he thought, “and walk around for a while. The exercise may make me sleepy.”
He slipped quietly down the stairway and thence outside. Walking briskly, he turned his steps toward the river and, upon reaching the boat landing, sat down with his back against one of the pilings, watching the water eddying along under him.
Along the shore for nearly a quarter of a mile, both up and down stream, were the brown, skin tepees of the post population. About them the stillness of night had descended. From the inverted, cone-like top of one of them, smoke issued. Dick sat and watched it speculatively. The members of that household were up early. Probably someone sick. Through the translucent walls he could see the faint reflection of a fire within.
Must be someone sick, he mused. An Indian child perhaps. A papoose suffering an attack of colic. Once he thought he heard a child’s plaintive whimper.
The flap was drawn aside and a figure emerged. Behind the first figure came a second. Dick drew in his breath sharply, slid along the rough planking and concealed himself behind a flat-bottomed boat which had been drawn up on the pier for caulking. Lying flat on his stomach, he raised his head and peeped over the top.
The Indians, who had brought the letter from Wolf Brennan, were making their way along the shore. They walked after the manner of men who knew where they were going. Reaching a point just opposite the boat landing, they swung sharply to the left, taking the path that led up along the warehouse to the trading post.
Dick’s heart thumped excitedly as he rose soon afterward and commenced following them. He went leisurely. He endeavored to keep himself concealed as much as possible by walking, not along the path, but through the bushes that grew on either side of it. For two hundred yards he stalked his quarry, finally bringing up in a clump of willows not sixty feet from the trading room. Lying concealed, his eyes were glued upon the forms of the two prowlers, who had strolled boldly up to the building itself.