"He does?" Flora interrupted, the glow in her eyes flaming till they blazed with anger.
"Yes. As for you—I cannot say. We all know the Factor is a stern, hard man."
"I will never go back to his punishment."
Dunvegan's face hardened. "You must! I am under orders to take you at any cost; and there are the means!" His brown, muscled hand indicated the canoe brigade nosing the serrated river bank and filled with his sinewed northmen whose combined might seemed quite sufficient to carry away bodily the pole and skin structures which made up the Cree camp.
"You coward!" exclaimed the girl malignantly, releasing her neck from its attitude of craned inspection and hushing the child's sudden whimper. "You are both cowards, you and the one who sent you. You slip in here with a score of voyageurs while the men are away after caribou. I say you are nothing but a coward, Bruce Dunvegan!"
The chief trader's handsome face flushed to a deeper tint under its bronze, but he kept his patience.
"Hardly that," he objected. "We happened to meet Dreaulond, the Company's courier, on the Nisgowan portage, and he told me of your whereabouts. I was glad of the meeting, since this brigade has been searching for a long while, and in these bitter times the posts have need of all their men. However, there was no secret about our coming; in fact, we shall not dip a paddle till Running Wolf returns. The Company cannot afford to lose the trade of his tribe through any real or fancied offense in taking you away."
"Dreaulond told you," Flora Macleod repeated spitefully. "He has an old woman's tongue. Basil Dreaulond is a gossip!"
"No," declared the chief trader, "he talks wisely when he talks at all, and many an act of justice follows his words on the trail. He wondered, though, at seeing you in the lodge of Running Wolf. What has Black Ferguson, a Nor'wester, to do with our Indians?"
"Nothing," snapped the girl. "He deserted me here."