“Ah!” said McElroy, “what is there to fear, think you? Is not the chief bound to you by all ties of ceremony and regard?”
“Most assuredly,” returned Ridgar quietly, “but those young braves are strung like a singing wire and swift as a girl to take suspicious fright; and there are somewhere near five hundred of them, as near as I can make out from the numbers seething among the lodges. They are in a strange country and watching every leaf and shadow.”
Thus the sun went down on De Seviere, with the eager maids and women passing and repassing near the gate to peep out at the rustling throng, at the tepees with their fine skin coverings painted with all the wonders of battle and the chase, at the comely squaws and maidens, the chubby brown children, the dogs snarling and savage, for they had full complement of the grey northern huskies.
To a woman they peeped at the gate from all the cabins of the post, save only that one who had been most eager before when the Indians came, Maren Le Moyne, sitting in idle apathy on her sister's doorstep.
“Ma'amselle,” said Marc Dupre, stopping hesitant before her, “have you seen the Nakonkirhirinons?”
“Nay,” she said listlessly, “I care not, M'sieu.”
And the youth went gloomily away.
“Something there is which preys on her like the blood-sucker on the rabbit's throat. But what? Holy Mother, what?”
His handsome eyes were troubled.
By dawn on the following day the trading had begun. Up the main way passed a line of braves, each laden with his winter's catch of furs, to barter at the trading-room, haggle with the clerks by sign and pantomime, and pass down again with gun and hatchet and axe, kettle and bright blanket, beads, and, most eagerly sought of all, yards of crimson cloth.