"W'en dey fly dat way," averred Baptiste, "de wintaire right on dere tails! She be come toute suite, M'sieu'."
And it did! A greasy wrack of clouds masked the sunset. The north wind blew out of the Arctic circle with a humming like vibrating wires. The wraith of desolation went eerily shrieking round and round. Then out of inky space the snow came down, driving fiercely on a forty-mile gale to smother the gauntness of the rugged forest in a swirl of white. For thirty-six hours the frozen flakes pelted the stout stockades. The snow lay in foamy levels in the timber, ten feet deep in the hollows, and wind-packed to tremendous hardness on the ice-bound lakes and rivers.
The days became less strenuous now in Fort Kamattawa. The nights grew long. The Hudson's Bay men attended to their winter needs and equipments, while the post Indians fashioned snowshoes with native quickness and skill.
There came a brief, cold, sleety rain which settled the drifts and the subsequent hard frosts formed a crust that made excellent tripping on the raquettes. The first tripper over the trail was Basil Dreaulond carrying Company dispatches on his way to Nelson House. He lurched in one night in the midst of a whistling storm with his dog team and a halfbreed assistant. The world outside the Fort was a shrieking maelstrom of snow and cutting blasts. Inside the men sat close together about the roaring fireplace.
So blinding was the tempest that Kamattawa's sentinel in the blockhouse tower could see nothing from his frosted windows and did not mark the courier's approach till Basil and the breed were hammering upon the closed gates with their rifle-butts. Eugene Demorel slid back the shutter in the watchtower and leaned out, his gun trained on the entrance.
"De password," he bellowed. "Who comes dere?"
"Diable tak' de password," roared Basil who was half frozen. "I'm Dreaulond. Open dis gate queeck!"
On the inferno of the elements his words puffed up like faint echoes, but Eugene Demorel knew the courier's tone. The stockade opened for a second, a raging snowgap in the draught. Basil stumbled into the log store.
"Holá, camarade," they greeted joyously. "How do you like the weather?"
"Mauvais," groaned Dreaulond, leaning toward the flames. "Saprie, but she be cold!"