“Take this, Jean,” he said, “and give each of the men a cup. 'Tis a shame to waste it.”
But for himself he had no taste for the stranger's gift of payment.
He was thinking of the red flower in Maren Le Moyne's black hair and a vexation, past all reason held him.
But the spring was open and there was soon more to occupy his mind than a maid and a posy and a reckless blade from Montreal.
At dusk of a day within that week a trapper brought word of a hundred canoes on the river a day's journey up-country, laden with packs of winter beaver, and bound for the post.
The Indians were coming down to trade.
Picturesque they were, in their fringed buckskin cunningly tanned and beaded, their feathers and their ornaments of elk teeth and claws of the huge, thick-coated bears. At day-dawn they came, having camped for the night a short distance above the fort, to the letter display of their arrival, and they swept down in a flotilla of graceful craft made of the birch bark and light as clouds upon the water.
All was in readiness for them, for the factor had been expecting them for a fortnight back; and, when the crackling shots of the braves announced their coming, McElroy gave orders that the three small cannon mounted on a half-moon of narrow breastwork to the south of the main gate, and just before a small opening in the stockade for use in case of attack, should be fired in salute.
These were the quiet and friendly Assiniboines, and the first of the tribes, being the nearest, to reach the factory that year.
De Seviere was early awake and all was astir within its walls, for this was the great time of the four seasons. Eagerly the maids and the younger matrons flocked down to the great gate to peer out at the gathering craft, afloat like the leaves of autumn upon the breast of the little river,—two braves to a canoe, the gallant front of the young men flanking and preceding that which held the leader of the expedition, chief of the tribe, distinguished by its flag fluttering in the morning wind upon a pole at the stern,—at the bedizened figure of the chief himself, and lastly those canoes which held the women, the few children, and even a dog or two.