"Didn't Lazard attack him?" cried the chief trader. "He reported sighting and chasing the Nor'wester; and Pierre does not lie."

"Nor I," returned Flora Macleod--"when there is no need! Pierre feared our small party was but in advance of a Nor'west force and hung off on guard and ready for a skirmish. When he found that nothing was following our three canoes he did give chase, but we were lightly loaded, and left them easily. However, the mischief was done. Ferguson desired Lazard's niece as he had desired no other thing in all his life. My release came that night in camp. Black Ferguson and his paddlers were gone before I awoke in the morning. So I came here for shelter."

"d.a.m.nation to his black heart!" exclaimed Dunvegan. "Is there nothing of the man about this Nor'wester? Had he no thought of your rights and the rights of the child?"

The Factor's daughter flung a gesture of the arms riverward, a motion vindictive in the extreme. "I," she averred, "was a cast-off rag. The boy was nothing more. You know Ferguson has no heart--only impulse. He appears to have gone mad over Desiree Lazard."

"Much good it will do him if we have our hands on him!"

"But what if you haven't?"

"We can trust Desiree at the fort."

"Perhaps. But, remember, one person at Oxford House made trysts and kept them in spite of guards and gates."

Bruce smiled grimly. "And her reward?" he asked, and cursed himself instantly because of the pain that momentarily changed the girl's expression. He had, as it were, a glimpse of her soul in that moment and knew that for all her waywardness she was inwardly true. Blessed with a more merciful environment, she would doubtless have been a transformed woman.

"Watch Desiree well," she warned. "Black Ferguson is hard on her trail, and she is too fine to be lorded by such a beast."

Dunvegan paced some awkward steps before the Cree tents, his glance wandering uncertainly to the waiting brigade by the Katchawan's bank.

"I haven't the right," he complained.

"Win it," she flashed. "You are the pick of the Company's men. If you weren't you would not be Malcolm Macleod's chief trader."

"She is a Nor'wester at heart. Her father died in their service, and his spirit is in her. She cherishes his pride of allegiance. Desiree vows she will never wed a man of the H. B. C. Her vow stands!"

"Tut!" mocked Flora. "A woman's whim easily changed! She stays under the Company's roof with her uncle, a servant of the same organization. Does that fit in with her vow? A fig for such vows!"

"She has no other relative and no place else to live," a.s.serted the chief trader. "As for her resolve, it is proof against changing, for I--have tested it."

"Then," observed Macleod's daughter, "the Nor'wester has a good chance of marrying her. Here are the Cree men coming back!"

Over the ridge which rimmed the camp with a rampart of spruce the Indians dropped, one by one, bounding lightly from rock to rock in noiseless buckskins. They threaded the birch belt and crossed the cedar "slash," swung around the long beaver meadow below, and emerged upon the flat river point supporting their camp. The chief trader saw they were carrying nothing except weapons.

"They have left the carrying of the game for the squaws," he observed.

"No," cried Flora, "I can tell by their faces that the hunt has failed.

They have found no caribou and are in a bad mood. You had better leave me here."

"Not if we have to fight the whole tribe," declared Dunvegan.

But his eyes, only, saw the Crees coming up to the sun-scalded camp. His mental vision focused on the image of Desiree Lazard. He had told Basil Dreaulond that he was anxious to complete his mission and return to Oxford House. And Basil had smiled, knowing well why! Now was he doubly anxious. Flora's news had a perturbing effect. He hungered for a sight of Desiree singing gayly within the stockades. He yearned for the chance of conflict to sweep the Nor'wester's shadow from her path.

CHAPTER III

AN ULTIMATUM

The Cree bucks came slowly up the point, forming a sort of respectful retinue to Running Wolf, his son, Three Feathers, and others of the head men whose dignity of tribal status allowed them to stalk in front.

Slovenly squaws and dirty, round-eyed children now appeared from the dark interiors of wigwams which before had shown no sign of life. These began to cluck their derision and to indulge in shrieking laughs of ridicule to the visible discomfiture of the hunters. Half-tamed curs as fierce looking as their wolf ancestors grew bold enough with the advent of the masters to issue from various hiding-places and organize a snapping charge upon Dunvegan. They rushed in a body, howling wickedly and baring vicious, chisel-like fangs, but the chief trader plucked a stick from a tepee fire and belabored their hard heads till they retreated faster than they had charged.

Wild uproar spread through the camp. The dogs' battle snarls were changed to lugubrious wailings of defeat. Old women rated the mongrels, ordering them back to their places. The braves shouted injunctions of silence upon the squaws, while the children added to the climax by scuttling and shrieking out of sheer contagion.

Running Wolf obtained quiet at last by a violence of gesture that threatened to tear his arms from their sockets. With the quiet came his reprimand to his people, delivered in deep-throated Cree, and their instant a.s.sumption of meekness vouched for the acid quality of his phrases. Then he approached Dunvegan, with Three Feathers at his heels.

"_Bo' jou'_, Running Wolf; _bo' jou'_, Three Feathers," greeted the chief trader.

"_Bo' jou'_, Strong Father," returned the Cree chieftain with grave politeness.

Three Feathers did not speak, but contented himself with nodding sullenly. He was not a favorite with Dunvegan. Several times the two had clashed in the process of trade, for Running Wolf's son was a spoiled child of the wilderness grown up to ignorant and stubborn maturity. He represented the ambitious type of Indian, the dissentient, the inciter, the yeast of superst.i.tious unrest fated to be the curse of his race.

"Your hunting has been unrewarded," sympathized the chief trader, speaking to Running Wolf. He used the Cree dialect which he had acquired in his years of dealing with the natives.

"_Ae_," replied Running Wolf. "We did not find the caribou. Nor did we see the trail of any other game."

"How was that?" asked Dunvegan. "Your braves are wise in the ways of the caribou, the moose, and all of the wild creatures. How is it their cunning brought them nothing?"

"I do not know," the chief responded simply, "but the spirits were not kind to us. Perhaps the north wind told the caribou of our coming."

"It was not so," spoke Three Feathers maliciously. "It was instead the bad magic of the white traders. The spirits also were kind, for they gave us no game and turned us from our hunting that our squaws might not be stolen." He talked brazenly, having shrewdly guessed in his feverish brain that Dunvegan's errand concerned the woman his father wished to take as a squaw.

"Who steals our women?" cried Running Wolf, turning on his son with an expression of vague alarm.

"Ask the Strong Father there," Three Feathers directed, forcing the issue upon Dunvegan.

"Yes, ask the Strong Father," interposed Flora Macleod, speaking also in Cree. "Inquire whence he has journeyed. Question him as to why he has come." She was quick to seize any advantage which might arise for her from the injuring of Running Wolf's pride.

The chief looked searchingly at the trader and at the trader's brigade, as if to read their intent.

"Strong Father," he declared, "the lodges of my people are open to you.

My heart is right toward you in spite of the high words of my son and the White Squaw. They would have me think you walk against my wigwams to do me harm. Tell them whence you have voyaged. Perhaps even now you are come from the Stern Father by the Holy Lake!"

"That is so," admitted Dunvegan. "I come from Oxford House and from the Factor, him you call the Stern Father. He has sent me here to do his bidding."

"_Ae_," snarled Three Feathers, interrupting impetuously. "He comes to take back the White Squaw. I see it in his eyes. He is a traitor and a foe!"

Dunvegan seized the brave's arm with a vicious pinch.

"You young hothead," he cried angrily, "you go too far. Keep behind with the women till you get some wisdom!"

His back-twist of the arm sent Three Feathers hurtling in among a group of squaws about a tepee door, where he sprawled ingloriously with his heels in the air.

The downfall of the haughty son set the Indian women roaring afresh with laughter, but the braves muttered ominously. Among them Three Feathers was a power growing nearer the usurping point which would shatter the father's sane control of the tribe.