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Updated: June 27, 2025
And not alone he, for the two voyageurs alike gazed after her, this new-comer from the farther ways of civilisation who dared the brute DesCaut and struck like a man. Then the factor bent above the little Francette. "Sh!" he said gently, "little one, let go. The dog is dead, poor beast. Come away."
"Nay," said Francette, "but I know of one who sickens inwardly and I would give her the charm." "Go into the flats of the Beaver House after Marci and her Indian, whither they went," Tessa laughed. "I know not the charm. But it was good, for she got him, and went to the wilds with him. Follow and learn, Francette." But Francette, with a gesture of disgust, turned away.
Now it was the little maid by love. Strange cat of the woods, Francette could be as riotous in her tenderness as in her enmity. In the bastions Dupre and Garcon and Gifford watched the scene with the grim quiet of men born in the wilderness, while at the portholes trapper and voyageur and the venturers from Grand Portage handled their guns and waited.
Would they lie as they had done before, with the thought of Francette behind their blue clearness? Ah, well, it was all in the day's march. This day at noon camp she came upon, close to a fallen tree, a wee red flower nodding on its slender stalk. She sighed and broke it. "In memory of a brave man," she said sadly. "Oh, a very brave man!"
Is it right, M'sieu, for a maid to die for love of a man, waiting, waiting, waiting for the look, the word that shall crown her bondage? Love lives all round in the post save in the heart that is all the world to Francette! Why should there be happiness everywhere but here?"
None other in all the post would have dared as much, for this smiling young man with the blue eyes was the Law at Fort de Seviere, factor of the Company and governor of the handful of humanity lost in the vast region of the Assiniboine. But to Francette he was Power and Help, and she thought of naught else, as it is not likely she would have done even at another time.
Maren held out her hand and Laroux grasped it in a clasp of faith. "See!" cried Tessa Bibye, peeping eagerly from among the women, "she holds hands with that blackhaired man of her people who spurs the rest. One man or another, as Francette says, little cat! all are fish who come to Ma'amselle's net! The factor, or the cavalier, or a common voyageur.
"Aye," flashed Francette, talking as though it were no uncommon thing for the factor to stop at the cabin of the Molines, "and no more shall the one brute serve the other. You have said, M'sieu." "Yes," laughed the factor, "I have said and it shall be so. I will buy the dog from Bois if he speaks of the matter. Take good care of him, little one," and McElroy turned down toward the gate.
She leaned a trifle forward and her eyes held fast to his passion-flooded face. It was evident that she had but just reached the spot from the fact that the club, arrested in its upward swing, still was poised in the air. They faced each other and the factor stopped in his tracks. "Quick, M'sieu!" begged Francette at his side, but he put out a commanding hand and ceased to breathe.
But Francette was not so childish, and he was one day to marvel at her artless skill. At the touch of his hand she came down, not upon the step beside him as he meant, but upon her knees before him, with her two little hands upon his knees and her face of elfin beauty upheld to him in the starlight.
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