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Updated: June 22, 2025
Slowly Lapierre bent backward, forced by the heavier body of MacNair. MacNair released his grip on the other's wrist, but his right hand still held Lapierre's gun. A huge forearm slid up the quarter-breed's chest and came to rest under the chin, while the man beat frantically with his two fists against MacNair's shoulders and ribs.
Lapierre, a master of organization, saw almost at the moment of his arrival that the gold-camp system of two-man partnerships could be vastly improved upon. Therefore, he formed the men into shifts: eight hours in the gravel and tending the fires, eight hours chopping cord-wood and digging in the ruins of MacNair's storehouse for the remains of unburned grub, and eight hours' rest.
Up on Snare Lake the men to whom Lapierre had passed the word had taken possession of MacNair's burned and abandoned fort, and there the leader had joined them after stopping at Fort McMurray to tip off to Ripley and Craig the bit of evidence that he hoped would clinch the case against MacNair.
And through MacNair's mind flashed the memory of the rapier-blade eyes that stared from out the dull gold frame of the portrait that hung upon the wall of the little cottage -eyes that were the eyes of the girl before him. "Well," he asked with evident impatience, "are you afraid of these Indians?" The flashing eyes of the girl told him that the shot had struck home. "No!" she cried.
While to the credit of each man, upon MacNair's books, stood an amount in tokens of "made beaver," which to any trapper in all the Northland would have spelled wealth beyond wildest dreams. And so they came to respect this stern, rugged man who dealt with them fairly to love him, and also to fear him. And upon Snare Lake his word became the law, from which there was no appeal.
Lapierre, however, had his own eminently more practical, if less Utopian, ideas concerning the erection of a trading-post; for in the quarter-breed's mind the planting of an independent trading-post upon the very threshold of MacNair's wilderness empire was of far greater importance than the establishment of a school, or mission, or any other institution especially when the post was one which he himself had set about to control.
Whereupon he selected the fastest and freshest dog-team available and, accompanied by a half-dozen of his most trusted lieutenants, took the trail for Chloe Elliston's school on-the Yellow Knife, after issuing orders as to the conduct of defence in case of an attack by MacNair's Indians. Affairs at the school were at a standstill.
His own canoe he loaded with rifles and ammunition, and returned to the Yellow Knife. It was then he learned that Chloe had gone to Snare Lake, and while he little relished an incursion into MacNair's domain, he secreted the rifles in the store-house and set out forthwith to overtake her.
With Lapierre, she came to regard the crushing of MacNair's power as the most important and altogether desirable undertaking that could possibly be consummated.
Else why should a man of the Mounted have been found before the barricade of the Bastile du Mort in company with Brute MacNair? The quick-witted Lapierre was the first to recover from the shock of the stunning blow. Leaping onto the charred logs of MacNair's storehouse, he called loudly to his men, who in a panic were wildly throwing their outfits onto sleds.
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