"If they are hiding in order to get to close quarters," observed Connear, "they'll be sorry in the end. For we can hit in a clinch as well as they can. Eh, Terence Burke?"
"Yes, me enemy," muttered the vigorous-minded Irishman, whom no strange situation could abash, "an' if it's thim same Donnybrook Fair tricks they're after, they'll find me rifle butt makes a mighty foine black-thorn."
Baptiste Verenne spoke to Black Fox, the Salteaux Indian, in a soft aside.
"Black Fox, you be son of beeg medicine-mans," he whispered. "Mebbe you be tell us w'at dis mean. Spik de wise word an' say w'y de Nor'westaires don' joomp out for keel us queeck."
But the Salteaux shook his head.
"The French Hearts are fools and snakes," he replied. "Their ways are dark as the ways of evil spirits. Therefore they cannot be read."
"Dat mooch I be know, me," confided Baptiste.
Numerous whispers were making a very audible rustle. Bruce Dunvegan held up his hand for silence. He began to examine what lay beyond the other two of the three doors in the store.
Throwing open the one on the right, his candle gleam flashed across a large, empty floor. According to the custom of new forts built purely for aggressive purposes, Dunvegan judged that store, blockhouse, and trading-room adjoined or were connected by passages. This section, he presumed, was the blockhouse.
A hasty survey proved his conclusion correct. The light played around the rough walls, revealing weapons, trophies of the chase and the various equipments used in wilderness life throughout the different seasons. But, like the store, the blockhouse was without occupants of any kind.