The eyes of Maren Le Moyne left his face and swept swiftly down the gentle slope to where the Indians had piled their bales of furs. At the sight they darkened like the waters of a lake when a little wind runs over its surface.
“A heartening sight? Nay, M'sieu,” she said, shaking her head, “I can find no joy in it.”
“What?”
The trapper was aghast.
“No pleasure in the fruits of a fat season?”
“See the packs of marten, the dark streaks showing a bit at the edges where the fur rounds over the dried skin. How were those pelts taken, M'sieu?”
“How? Why, most cunningly, Ma'amselle,—in traps of the H. B. Company, set with utmost skill, perhaps on a stump above the line of the heavy snows, or balanced nicely at the far end of a slender pole set leaning in the ground. The delicate hand of a seasoned player must match itself with the forest instinct of these small creatures. The little pole holds little snow and the scent of the bait calls the marten up, when, snap! it is fast and waiting for the trapper and the lodge of the Assiniboines, the women and the drying.”
“Yes. And those hundreds of beaver, M'sieu?”
Marc Dupre's eyes were shining and the red in his cheeks flushing with pleasure.
What more to a man's liking than the exploitation of knowledge gained first-hand in the pursuit of his life's work?