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Here he spent several lonely and depressing months, eminently disgusted with the unprepossessing appearance of the Indian maidens, and greatly worried by his growing sons who stood in need of a mother's care. Then his eyes chanced upon Lit-lit. "Lit-lit well, she is Lit-lit," was the fashion in which he despairingly described her to his chief clerk, Alexander McLean.
Had the Factor gone but one step farther, perforce Snettishane would himself have mentioned the name of Lit-lit, but the Factor had not gone that one step farther. The chief was non-committal concerning Lit-lit's suitability, till he drove the white man into taking the next step in order of procedure. "Well," the Factor meditated aloud, "the only way to find out is to make a try of it."
McLean was too fresh from his Scottish upbringing "not dry behind the ears yet," John Fox put it to take to the marriage customs of the country. Nevertheless he was not averse to the Factor's imperilling his own immortal soul, and, especially, feeling an ominous attraction himself for Lit-lit, he was sombrely content to clinch his own soul's safety by seeing her married to the Factor.
The Factor opened whisky before breakfast, to the delight of McLean and McTavish, gave his dogs double rations, and wore his best moccasins. Outside the Fort preparations were under way for a POTLATCH. Potlatch means "a giving," and John Fox's intention was to signalize his marriage with Lit-lit by a potlatch as generous as she was good- looking.
Whereupon he was informed that Snettishane had seen the missionary at Three Forks, who had notified him that such marriages were not made in heaven, and that it was his father's duty to demand his daughter back. "I am good Christian man now," Snettishane concluded. "I want my Lit-lit to go to heaven."
And as he went home through the wee sma' hours, the three-o'clock sun blazing in the due north-east, he was unpleasantly aware that Snettishane had bested him over the bargain. Snettishane, tired and victorious, sought his bed, and discovered Lit-lit before she could escape from the lodge. He grunted knowingly: "Thou hast seen. Thou has heard.
He raised his voice. "So I will give for Lit- lit ten blankets and three pounds of tobacco which is good tobacco." Snettishane replied with a gesture which seemed to say that all the blankets and tobacco in all the world could not compensate him for the loss of Lit-lit and her manifold virtues.
She returned to the feast, and, midnight being well at hand, the Factor sought her out and led her away to the Fort amid joking and outcry, in which the squaws were especially conspicuous. Lit-lit quickly found that married life with the head-man of a fort was even better than she had dreamed. No longer did she have to fetch wood and water and wait hand and foot upon cantankerous menfolk.
Remember well, when I call in the night, like a raven, from the river bank." Lit-lit nodded; for to disobey her father was a peril she knew well; and, furthermore, it was a little thing he asked, a short separation from the Factor, who would know only greater gladness at having her back.
Lit-lit, tearfully shy and frightened, was bedecked by her bearded husband with a new calico dress, splendidly beaded moccasins, a gorgeous silk handkerchief over her raven hair, a purple scarf about her throat, brass ear-rings and finger-rings, and a whole pint of pinchbeck jewellery, including a Waterbury watch.
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