"Bon fortune," whispered Nemaire.
CHAPTER VIII
THE NOR'WESTER'S FLESH
A deeper blot within the shadow which the headland cast upon the water, Dunvegan's craft silently rounded Caribou Point, beached softly upon the sand in the granite-walled cove, and spilled its crew into the aisles of the Black Forest. Beyond rose the craggy ridge called Mooswa Hill, a landmark to the Hudson's Bay men in times of quiet, a pillar of fire when the Nor'westers struck.
The winter cabin Gaspard Follet had mentioned stood on a rock shoulder above the cove. Pine and spruce crowded it. In springtime the shore ice jammed to its threshold. The ooze and drip of the years were insidiously working its ruin. But still the halfbreed and the voyageurs sometimes used it for a night's shelter on their journeys. Once it had saved the life of Basil Dreaulond in a great blizzard. Exhausted, he had reached it when he could never have made his remaining three miles to Oxford House.
A neck of the Black Forest hugged the incline where the hut stood. Marshy beaver meadows, fringing the Bay, hedged the timber line, spreading across to Mooswa ridge and giving no solid footing except what was afforded by a dam traversing the black water. This ridge fell away gradually to where Oxford House was reared, but reaching the Hudson's Bay post by land from Caribou Point was precarious business in the dark for no bridge, other than that which the beavers had built, spanned the morass. Hence the chief trader with his band had elected to come by water.
Very warily they emerged from the shelter of the tree boles into the clearing where the cabin rested.
"Lie down," commanded Dunvegan, in a whisper. "And go slow! The fellow may have friends with him."
They disappeared at once among the rock ferns, worming noiselessly upon their faces toward the rough log shelter. The chinks of the logs streamed candlelight, but no sound came from within. The night seemed holding its breath. The intense stillness was broken only by the leap of maska-longe on the distant bars and the rubbing of elbows in the ferny brake.