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"No, I am not afraid of MacNair really I am not. And you have already neglected your own affairs too long." The man assented. "If I am to get my furs to the railway, do my own trading, and yours, and return before the lake freezes, I must, indeed, be on my way." "You will wait while I write some letters? And you will post them for me?" Lapierre bowed.
Lapierre knew to a certainty that when my Indians read the signs, and learned what had happened there on the shore of Snare Lake, their vengeance would not be delayed." He looked straight into the eyes of the girl. "Did you arm your Indians?" "I did not!" answered Chloe. "I brought no guns." "Then where did your Indians get their rifles?" "Well, really, Mr. MacNair, I cannot tell you.
"'To fear the worst, oft cures the worst," quoted Lapierre. "'Don't cross a bridge 'til you get to it' is not so classic, perhaps, but it saves a lot of needless worry." "'Foresight is better than hindsight' is equally unclassic, and infinitely better generalship. Bridges crossed at the last moment are generally crossed from the wrong end, I have noticed."
When MacNair, with his Indians, reached Snare Lake, it was to find that Pierre Lapierre had taken himself and his outlaws to the Lac du Mort rendezvous. Whereupon he immediately despatched thirty Indians back to LeFroy for the supplies necessary to follow Lapierre to his stronghold.
At the time of his meeting with Chloe Elliston he was at the head of an organized band of criminals whose range of endeavour extended over hundreds of thousands of square miles, and the diversity of whose crimes was limited only by the index of the penal code. Pierre Lapierre was a Napoleon of organization a born leader of men.
Lapierre was handsome, debonair, easy of speech, and graceful of movement; deferential, earnest, at times even pensive, and the possessor of ideals; generous and accommodating to a fault, if a trifle cynical; maligned, hated, discredited by the men who ruled the North, yet brave and infinitely capable she remembered the swift fate of Vermilion.
Tostoff objected strenuously to the running of a consignment in winter, but Lapierre persisted, covering the ground step by step while the other listened with a scowl. "It's this way, Tostoff: For years MacNair has been our chief stumbling-block. God knows we have trouble enough running the stuff past the Dominion police and the Mounted.
It was whispered upon the Slave, the Mackenzie, and the Athabasca, and it was told in the provinces before MacNair and Ripley reached Fort Chippewayan. Along the river, men talked excitedly, and impatiently awaited word from Lapierre, while their eyes snapped with greed and their thoughts flew to the gold in the sands of the barren grounds.
At the call of the loon you shall cease firing." MacNair rapidly tolled out twenty who were to man the ladders. "At the call of the wolf, rush to the stockade with the ladders, and those who have guns shall follow. Then up the ladders and over the walls! After that, fight, every man for himself, but mind you well, that you take Lapierre alive, for Lapierre is mine!"
Lapierre glanced swiftly about him; nothing but the dying fires and the abandoned lodge-poles indicated the existence of the camp. On the shore the canoemen, leaning on their paddles, awaited the word of command. He stepped to the water's edge, where, Apaw the Indian, stood with the others.
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