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And when they came to Little Choyeuse Creek they were welcomed in person by Victor Gagnon. He awaited them at his threshold. The clumsy stockade of lateral pine logs, a relic of the old Indian days when it was necessary for every fur store to be a fortress, was now a wreck. A few upright posts were standing, but the rest had long since been used to bank the stoves with.
Now they were listening to his slow, quiet, thoughtful talk. He was a man who liked talking, but he always contrived that his audience should be those who gave information. These two backwoodsmen, simple as the virgin forests to which they belonged, were not keen enough to observe this. Victor Gagnon understood such men well.
Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to offer her: after a year of waiting that she should become his wife, and live as now she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm ... Should do the household work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the stable when her man was away labour in the fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them ... Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes ... Now arid then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest ... The forest ... Always the inscrutable, inimical forest, with a host of dark things hiding there closed round them with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass, throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life ... No, that she could not face ...
It has been well observed by M. Gagnon, a French Canadian, that "many of them have no beauty except on the lips of the peasantry." There is "something sad and soft in the voices that imparts a peculiar charm to these monotonous airs, in which their whole existence seems to be reflected."
"Victor Gagnon!" exclaimed Nick. The stormy day was followed by an equally stormy night. Inside the dugout it was possible, in a measure, to forget the terrors of the blizzard raging outside.
An evening indeed to be remembered! "There! You are forever saying that we are buried in the woods and see no company," triumphed her husband. "Count them over: eleven grown-up people!" Every chair in the house was filled; Esdras, Tit'Be and Eutrope Gagnon occupied the bench, Chapdelaine, a box turned upside down; from the step Telesphore and Alma Rose watched the mounting smoke.
They knew themselves cut off from all the world, helpless, remote, without even a horse to bring them succour. The cruel treachery of it all held them speechless and transfixed, with streaming eyes. In their midst appeared Eutrope Gagnon. "And I who was thinking to find her almost well. This doctor, now ..."
And so the night ended to everybody's satisfaction. Ralph was even more quiet than usual. Victor Gagnon felt that the stars were working in his best interests; and he blessed the lucky and innocent thought that had suggested to him the yarn of the White Squaw. As for Nick, his delight was boisterous and unrestrained. He revelled openly in the prospect of the morrow's journey.
Some there be who think themselves pretty strong-able to get on without God's help in their houses and on their lands...but in the bush..." With solemn voice and slowly-moving head he repeated: "We are but little children." "A good man he was," said Eutrope Gagnon, "in very truth a good man, strong and brave, with ill-will to none. "Indeed that is true.
All wait to see w'at Gaviller will do. "Gaviller let the steamboat bring it down. He say the freight is fifteen dollars. Jean Bateese say: 'Tak' it back again. I won't pay. Gaviller say: 'You got to pay. He put it on the book against Gagnon." Tole related other incidents of a like character, Ambrose listened with ever mounting indignation.
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