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Updated: September 23, 2025
The boat, forging rapidly onward, is soon sighted by the canoemen, who, starting to their feet, commence a chorus of shouts, which come pealing over the water, waking echoes along both shores. And something is seen now which gives the boat's people a thrill of fear.
Rising with first dawn-streak, I was surprised to find Little Fellow and La Robe Noire, two of my canoemen, setting off for the woods. They had laid a snare so they explained and were going to examine it. Of late I had grown distrustful of all natives. I suspected these two might be planning desertion; so I went with them. The way led through a dense thicket of ferns half the height of a man.
The lines on his face deepened. Fire flashed from his gleaming eyes, and if ever I have seen murder written on the countenance of man, it was on Hamilton's. "What tribe were they, anyway?" I asked, trying to speak indifferently, for every question was knife-play on a wound. "Mongrel curs, neither one thing nor the other, Iroquois canoemen, French half-breeds intermarried with Sioux squaws!
"Be civil this minute, or I'll spill ye to the bottom, ye load of cursin' braggarts! Faith an' ut's a durty meal ye'd make for the fush! Foine answers ye give polite questions! How d'y' know we're not here to warn ye about the fort? For shame to ye. Whur's Eric Hamilton, I say?" Some of the canoemen recognized the priest. Conciliatory whispers passed from man to man.
The man who had ordered Vermilion to release her, and who had fired the shot that had killed him, stood calmly watching four lithe-bodied canoemen securely bind the arms of the two scowmen who had attacked Big Lena. So sudden had been the transition from terror to relief in her heart that the scene held nothing of repugnance to the girl, who was conscious only of a feeling of peace and security.
As different from the half-breeds and Indian canoemen with whom she had been thrown as his speech was from the throaty guttural by means of which they exchanged their primitive ideas. "Pray pause, Sir Cavalier," she smiled, falling easily into the gaiety of the man's mood. "I have ventured into your wilderness upon a most unpoetic mission.
The great river flowed in front, and an almost full moon shone divinely across it, and sent shafts of sidelong light into the forest. The huge camp-fires of the trackers and canoemen, the roughly garbed groups around them, the canoes themselves, the whole scene, in fact, recalled some genre sketch by our half-forgotten colourist, Jacobi.
"I've seen a goat, shot above by a hunter above, land at my feet a thousand yards underneath. BELIEVE me, that landscape seemed to rain goats and rocks for ten minutes. One of my canoemen fell off the trail between the two little valleys of Aipio and Luno. He hit first fifteen hundred feet beneath us, and fetched up in a ledge three hundred feet farther down. We didn't bury him.
By arrangement with Chloe, a system of credits had been established, and from daylight to dark he was busy about the storehouse, paying off and outfitting his canoemen, who were to fare North upon the trap-lines until the breaking up of the ice in the spring would call them once more to the lakes and the rivers, to move Lapierre's freight, handle his furs, and deliver his contraband whiskey.
The flash of the yellow bark, the movement of the broken waters, the gleam of the paddle, the tense alertness of the men's figures, their carven, passive faces, with the contrast of the flashing eyes and the distended nostrils, then the leap into space over some half-cataract, the smash of spray, the exultant yells of the canoemen! For your Indian enjoys the game thoroughly.
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