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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.
Could you get that face from a Limburger cheese? And the dope? After handing you a valentine that 'ud scare a blind Choyeuse, and you couldn't rec'nize for a man without a spy glass, they set right in to tell you he's 'wanted' for things he did in the North-west two and a haf years ago. The p'lice have been chasing him for two and a haf years.
Again he took up his stand in the doorway and remained gazing out upon the valley of the Little Choyeuse Creek, and the more distant crags of the foothills beyond. His face was serious; serious even for the wild, where all levity seems out of place, and laughter jars upon the solemnity of the life and death struggle for existence which is for ever being fought out there.
How came it that the legions of the forest were marching in the wake of that other upon the valley of Little Choyeuse Creek? Jean halted when they stood upon the rotten ice of the creek. Now he released his sister, and they stood facing each other well screened from view from the store. The sullen peace of the valley had merged into the deep-toned, continuous howl of hoarse throats.
To-morrow they would be swinging along over the snowy earth with their dogs hauling their laden sled. The morrow would see them on their way to Little Choyeuse Creek, on the bank of which stood Victor Gagnon's store. There was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement in the doings of that night. There was much to be done, and the unusual activity almost seemed a bustle in so quiet an abode.
By the route they must take it was one hundred miles to Little Choyeuse Creek. One hundred miles of mountain and forest; one hundred miles of gloomy silence; one hundred miles of virgin snow, soft to the feet of the labouring dogs, giving them no foothold but the sheer anchorage of half-buried legs. It was a temper-trying journey for man and beast.
I guess Horrocks, in spite of his shifty black eyes, isn't the man for the business. He might track the slimmest neche that ever crossed the back of a choyeuse. Lablache is the man Retief has to fear. That uncrowned monarch of Foss River is subtle, and subtlety alone will serve. Horrocks?" with fine disdain. "Say, you can't shoot snipe with a pea-shooter."
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