Bargaining ceased. Trade slipped from the men's minds. Donald Muir jumped up and squinted through the open doorway, distinguishing nothing in the swishing cloud-rifts of snow. He turned back with a shiver and jammed the latch viciously.
"Maurice, ye fule," he ridiculed. "I've na doot ye'll be seein' ghosts next! Ye dinna glint onything but a herd o' caribou driftin' before the storm."
"Bâ, oui," persisted Nicolet, "w'en de storm she be sheeft wan leetl' bit an' de cloud break oop, I see dose trains 'cross de lac. Vraiment, dat's so!" Maurice nodded his head energetically and added a string of French superlatives.
"Fetch me the glass," ordered old Donald Muir.
A man brought the glass, a long ship's telescope which Pete Connear had bestowed upon Oxford House. In spite of having seen hard service, it was a good glass, and the same lens that had picked out many a foresail upon the high seas now searched the whirling smother which enveloped the frozen surface of Oxford Lake for signs of the men from Kamattawa. Donald Muir wedged the rattling door with his knees and sighted through the open slit, the hissing snow-eddies spitting in his beard.
"Yon's a glint o' dogs!" he exclaimed. "Noo the snaw's smoorin' in. I doot, I doot—Ah! yes, I maun believe ye're richt, Nicolet! Aye, mon, ye're richt. I can tell the stride o' yon lang-legged fort runner Maskwa an' the bulk o' Dunvegan. Spread yersels, ye fules—they're here!"
Boring through undeterred, breaking the trail for the teams, taking the brunt of the blizzard came the tireless Ojibway fort runner. The body bent double against the wind, the lurch of hips, the spring from the heel, the toe-twist of the lifting shoe, all bespoke the experienced tripper. Maskwa was old and wise on the trails!
A string of gray dots, the dog teams and the Kamattawa men crawled after. Up the bank they plunged and scurried through the stockade, scattering the loose drifts like foam.
"Hu! Hu! Hu!" shrieked the Indian dog drivers, directing the teams to the trading door with a tremendous cracking of their long lashes. There the giddés halted, whimpering in the traces. The arms and equipments were thrown inside. The storm-harried travelers stumbled after.
"Maurice, ye fule," fumed Donald Muir, "fire up. Dinna stan' there wi' yer mouth open! Fire up, mon, fire up! Can ye no see it's heat they want?" The fussy, kind hearted assistant trader seized Dunvegan's arm and hustled his superior to his room where he had thoughtfully prepared a set of dry garments.