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Updated: June 15, 2025
He was too much a man of iron for that. His soul had lost the plasticity of imagination. But he could not forget Breault's lips as they had seemed to grin up at him. There was a reason for it. On his last trip down, Breault had said to him, with that same half-grin on his face: "M'sieu, some day you may go after my murderer, and when you do, Francois Breault will go with you."
"You lost something when you camped that night near Pierre Breault's cabin," he said, and his own voice seemed strange and thick to him. "I've followed you to give it back. I could have killed you if I had wanted to when I fired over your head. But I wanted to stop you. I wanted to give you this." He held out to Bram the golden snare.
And also knew that back of the narrow slits of Breault's eyes was the cunning of a fox. "You might also tell him the law has a mind to forgive him for sticking up that free trader's post a few years ago." Jolly Roger turned with his snowshoe piled high with a load of snow. "I'll tell him that, too," he said, chuckling at the obviousness of the other's trap.
Many times he found himself at the edge of the black lip of water, but never quite at the right time to see a shadow in its darkness, or hear the sound of Breault's pole. But in the swamp, as he went on, he saw nothing but shadow, and heard weird and nameless sounds which made his blood creep, even though his courage was now full-grown within him.
There was a defiance and a contempt of last night in the crack of his long caribou-gut whip and the halloo of his voice as he urged on his dogs. Breault's voice in the wind? Bah! Only a fool would have thought that. Therefore he was a fool. And Jan Thoreau it would be like taking a child.
More important business had crossed his trail, and he explained the whole matter to Superintendent Fitzgerald, commanding "M" Division at Fort Churchill. He told Pierre Breault's story as he had heard it. He gave his reasons for believing it, and that Bram Johnson, three times a murderer, was alive.
His mind worked swiftly, even as swiftly as Breault's in its way, and without any process of reasoning he sensed menace and enmity in this man's appearance, and associated with it the mysterious flight of Jolly Roger and Nada. Breault had nodded, without speaking. Then his eyes rested on Peter, and his face broke into a twisted sort of smile.
When the starved and exhausted malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a sapling bar were required to pry Francois Breault from his bier. Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelope pinned to Breault's red scarf.
Their one chance was to strike south across the thin arm of the Barren for Pierre Breault's cabin. To go in the opposite direction farther north without dogs or sledge would be deliberate suicide. Several times during the afternoon he tried to bring himself to the point of urging on her the naked truth that her father was dead. There was no doubt of that not the slightest.
And also knew that back of the narrow slits of Breault's eyes was the cunning of a fox. "You might also tell him the law has a mind to forgive him for sticking up that free trader's post a few years ago." Jolly Roger turned with his snowshoe piled high with a load of snow. "I'll tell him that, too," he said, chuckling at the obviousness of the other's trap.
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