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Updated: June 21, 2025
A careless pack-horse, carrying our blankets, slips from the path and goes rolling and tumbling down the mountain side. A thousand feet below lies an arm of the Athabasca. Down, down, and over and over the pack-horse goes, and finally fetches up on a ledge five hundred feet below the trail. "By damn," says Jaquis, "dere is won bronco bust, eh?"
If any harm comes to that young Cree you go to your little hammock in the hemlocks you understand?" "Oui, Monsieur," said Jaquis. "Very well, then; remember skin for skin." Now to the Belle, watching from her shelter in the darkness, there was something splendid in this.
Another round of dusk and dawn and there came another day, with its hours that hung like ages. When she sighed her mother scolded and Jaquis swore. When at last night came to curtain the hills, she stole out under the stars and walked and walked until the next day dawned. A lone wolf howled to his kith, but they were not hungry and refused to answer his call.
Her cheeks showed a faint flush of red through the dark olive, the flush of health and youth, her nostrils dilated, like those of an Ontario high-jumper, as she drank life from the dewy morn, while her eye danced with the joy of being alive. Jaquis sized and summed her up in the one word "magnific."
The Belle's mother haunted him. As often as he broke camp and climbed a little higher upstream, the brown mother moved also, and with her the Belle. "What does this old woman want?" asked the engineer of Jaquis one evening when, returning to his tent, he found the fat Cree and her daughter camping on his trail. "She want that pot," said Jaquis.
Jaquis not only refused to tell her where the engineer was operating, but promised to strangle her if she mentioned his master's name again. At last the long day died, the sunset was less golden, and the stars sang sadder than they sang the day before. She watched the west, into which he had gone and out of which she hoped he might return to her.
The mountain lion looked on her in terror, the timber wolf took to the hills, the black bear backed from the trail and let her pass in peace," said Jaquis, with glowing enthusiasm. It was the first time he had talked of her, save to the stars and to We-sec-e-gea, and he glowed and grew eloquent in praise of her.
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