Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
His fear of the factor from Lac Bain was gone. From the cabin door he looked back at Nepeese and Baree. "The Saints be blessed!" he murmured. "Now now it is Pierrot Du Quesne who knows what to do!" Back to Lac Bain, late in September, came MacDonald the map maker.
He shrank under the soft blows, and with that low, birdlike laughter in her throat, Nepeese drew his head into her lap where the scatter of flowers lay. She talked to him. Her hand stroked his head. Then it remained still, so near that he wanted to thrust out his warm red tongue and caress it. He breathed in the flower-scented perfume of it and lay as if dead. It was a glorious moment.
He saw the torpedolike wake of an old beaver towing a stick close to the opposite shore. He looked toward the dam, and it was as he had left it almost a year ago. He did not show himself for a time, but stood concealed in the young alders. He felt growing in him more and more a feeling of restfulness, a relaxation from the long strain of the lonely months during which he had waited for Nepeese.
"Something is killing off the young beavers," he explained to Nepeese, speaking to her in French. "It is a lynx or a wolf. Tomorrow " He shrugged his thin shoulders, and smiled at her. "We will go on the hunt," laughed Nepeese happily, in her soft Cree.
But again it was her hair. She paused to fling back the thick masses of it so that she could see, and McTaggart was at the door ahead of her. He did not lock it again, but stood facing her. His face was scratched and bleeding. He was no longer a man but a devil. Nepeese was broken, panting a low sobbing came with every breath. She bent down, and picked up a piece of firewood.
For hours at a time Baree would now lie at the Willow's feet, watching her slender fingers as they weaved swiftly in and out with her snowshoe babiche. And now and then Nepeese would pause to lean over and put her hand on his head, and talk to him for a moment sometimes in her soft Cree, sometimes in English or her father's French.
He drew forth his knife and began whetting it on a stone which he carried in his pocket. In these minutes Baree might have crawled out from under his rock and escaped down the canyon; for a space he was forgotten. Then Nepeese thought of him, and in that same strange, wondering voice she spoke again the word "Baree." Pierrot, who was kneeling, looked up at her. "Oui, Sakahet.
"It is Baree!" she cried. She took the bundle from McTaggart and turned to Pierrot. "Tell him that Baree belongs to me," she said. She hurried into the cabin. McTaggart looked after her, stunned and amazed. Then he looked at Pierrot. A man half blind could have seen that Pierrot was as amazed as he. Nepeese had not spoken to him the factor of Lac Bain! She had not LOOKED at him!
And if the organ was sold, they would work another winter, and get a new one. This plan gave Nepeese an enthusiastic and tireless interest in the trap line. With Pierrot it was more or less a fine bit of strategy. He would have sold his hand to give Nepeese the organ.
After a little he tolerated him, and at last accepted him as a part of the cabin and Nepeese. It was the Willow whose shadow he became. Pierrot noted the attachment with the deepest satisfaction. "Ah, in a few months more, if he should leap at the throat of M'sieu the Factor," he said to himself one day.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking