The girl turned her eyes from the canoes, some twenty of them, to his face. It was grave and quiet.
“Assuredly,” she said after a moment's scrutiny. “Had I best hide in the bushes, M'sieu?”
“No, they have seen us.”
Sweeping forward, the brigade of the Nor'westers, for such it proved to be, headed near in a circle and the head canoe turned in to shore.
“Friend?” called a man in the prow; whom Dupre knew for a wintering partner by the name of McIntosh of none too savoury report.
“Hudson's Bay trapper, M'sieu,” he said politely, going a step nearer the water. “I wait, with Madame my wife, the coming of our brigade from York, now one day overdue.”
“Ah,—my mistake. I had thought the H. B. C.'s this fortnight gone down. As ever, they are a trifle behind.”
While he addressed Dupre his bold eyes were fastened on Maren, where she hung a dressed fish on a split prong.
“Not behind, M'sieu,” said the young man gently. “They but take the time of certainty. A Saulteur passing this way at daylight reported them as at McMillan's Landing.”
“Then your waiting is short. I am glad,—for Madame. So lone a camp must be hard for a woman.”