"The Nor'westers!" echoed Gaspard Follet, in a strident scream, his whole face lighting with the gleam of certain knowledge born of suggestion. "One of them was the devil I saw in the Black Forest in the winter cabin. Name of the Virgin, how he frightened me! Now I remember well. It was the worst of them all. Any of you would have run as I did. Don't tell me you wouldn't! Ferguson sits in yon cabin!"
The floor shook with the spring of the men to their feet. Dunvegan had instantly leaped the length of the room and lifted the dwarf in his hands, shaking him to search out the truth of the statement.
"Do you lie?" he cried tensely. "Speak! Is this an idiot's fancy?"
Gaspard wriggled. His face no longer bore vacancy of expression. The flush of real intelligence mantled it.
"No, by the cross," he vowed. "I speak truth. I know what I saw. If you think I lie, take me there. Should the Black Nor'wester not sit in the cabin as I say, you may kill me."
Because Gaspard Follet was above all things a coward, this offer forced immediate conviction upon the group. As the chief trader set the fool upon his feet, he turned and saw Malcolm Macleod's form bulking broad in the doorway.
"You have heard?"
"I have heard." The Factor's tone boomed out, savage, exultant. The order that followed was given with a swiftness as sinister as it was explicit.
"Take a dozen men," he directed briefly. "Bring me the Nor'wester, living or dead. You understand?" Again he spaced the words for them: "Living—or—dead!"
Clement Nemaire swung wide the stockade gates. Bearing a forty-foot fur canoe, Dunvegan and his men filed out on their mission. The entrance closed behind the mysterious going.