"Watch Desirée well," she warned. "Black Ferguson is hard on her trail, and she is too fine to be lorded by such a beast."
Dunvegan paced some awkward steps before the Cree tents, his glance wandering uncertainly to the waiting brigade by the Katchawan's bank.
"I haven't the right," he complained.
"Win it," she flashed. "You are the pick of the Company's men. If you weren't you would not be Malcolm Macleod's chief trader."
"She is a Nor'wester at heart. Her father died in their service, and his spirit is in her. She cherishes his pride of allegiance. Desirée vows she will never wed a man of the H. B. C. Her vow stands!"
"Tut!" mocked Flora. "A woman's whim easily changed! She stays under the Company's roof with her uncle, a servant of the same organization. Does that fit in with her vow? A fig for such vows!"
"She has no other relative and no place else to live," asserted the chief trader. "As for her resolve, it is proof against changing, for I—have tested it."
"Then," observed Macleod's daughter, "the Nor'wester has a good chance of marrying her. Here are the Cree men coming back!"
Over the ridge which rimmed the camp with a rampart of spruce the Indians dropped, one by one, bounding lightly from rock to rock in noiseless buckskins. They threaded the birch belt and crossed the cedar "slash," swung around the long beaver meadow below, and emerged upon the flat river point supporting their camp. The chief trader saw they were carrying nothing except weapons.
"They have left the carrying of the game for the squaws," he observed.