The powerful instruments of their healthy bodies were applied by the shrewdness of their concentrated minds, guarded always by the blessing of sane leadership. Through his wise counsels Bruce Dunvegan conserved the powers of his retainers and turned them along the required channels, directing brain and sinew, blood and spirit, to the profit of the Ancient and Honorable Company.
Over every part of the Fort hung his rigid, progressive discipline. At daybreak all the post Indians, the voyageurs, the H. B. C. servants were engaged upon their various tasks, fashioning, constructing, finishing! They labored with care, but with the merriest of dispositions. At seven they breakfasted. In an hour the hum of work rose again. Leisure could wait for the deep winter snows!
Outside the trading room a great flagstaff was reared before the ground froze too solidly. Up the pine stick ran the Company's crimson ensign, marking another step of conquest, flinging defiance to the Nor'westers, shutting out the stronghold of Fort La Roche from the Katchawan Valley.
Tumultuous cheering greeted the first flap of the banner. Shouts more sincere than patriotic cries rang out loudly. The Company's adherents but voiced their allegiance.
"Vive La Compagnie!" exulted the impetuous Baptiste Verenne, a typical voyageur.
"Grace à Dieu!" pealed his comrades, stridently—"Grace à Dieu!" Like some wild orison to an invisible god—the Company god it might be—their musical tongues chanted the phrase.
Could the Nor'westers have seen these outland sons thus greet their flag, chests big with the emotional breath of love, cheeks bright with the inspiring blood that comes of proud prestige, eyes burning with the fire of eternal loyalty, they would have stopped to think. Could Black Ferguson have witnessed the scene, he would have understood that he was combating not iron determination alone; not reckless strength, not unswerving pertinacity, but a stern faith in a power so vast as to be almost beyond comprehension; a belief in a precedence dominant and complete, a love of an ideal which even death could not conquer because it extended beyond through that exalted medium of heroism. And where the ideal is raised to the clear eye of faith rests the cause invincible.