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Up the main way passed a line of braves, each laden with his winter's catch of furs, to barter at the trading-room, haggle with the clerks by sign and pantomime, and pass down again with gun and hatchet and axe, kettle and bright blanket, beads, and, most eagerly sought of all, yards of crimson cloth. There was babble of chatter among the squaws, shrill laughter, and comparison of purchases.
With a daring heart the venturer from Grand Portage went in across the sill. To a man the men of De Seviere rallied to him and council was held. Everywhere in the trading-room, the living-room behind, were evidences of the factor and Ridgar. It seemed as if the two men had but just stepped out-were not in hostile hands drifting down the river toward an unspeakable fate.
In the trading-room sat the chief with his headmen and old Quamenoka of the Assiniboines, smoking gravely many pipes and listening to the trading. Like some wild eagle of the peaks brought down to earth he seemed, ever alert and watchful behind his stately silence.
Within the big trading-room at the factory, seats had been placed, the chief and his headmen sat in a solemn circle, and McElroy, holding in his two hands the long calumet, stood in the centre of the small conclave. Very gravely he pointed the stem, clinking with its dangling ornaments, to east and west, to the heavens and to the earth, and then with a deft motion swung it around his head.
The woman and the child passed on their way, disappearing again behind the next cabin, unconscious of observation, still lost in their play of the tossing ship at sea, and the two men entered the great trading-room of Fort de Seviere, where Edmonton Ridgar, chief trader and accountant, came forward to meet the stranger.
The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door solitudes.
His idea of a post was simplicity itself: One long, log trading-room with an ell for a storehouse, and a room two at the most in the rear for the accommodation of the three women. The whole to be erected in the centre of the clearing, and surrounded by a fifteen-foot log stockade. Boldly he broached his plan. "But this is not a trading-post!" objected the girl.
The great trading-room, lined with its shelves and circled with counters, was empty, save for a clerk, Gifford, who cast accounts in the big book on the factor's desk, and Maren's footsteps rang heavy to her ears as she passed through it to the little room behind, where she could see Rette passing back and forth at her tasks of mercy.
The figure upon the bed, half-risen, worked its lips and then fell back, and the little maid raised her voice and screamed again and again in mortal terror. It brought Rette running from where she had waited in the trading-room. She raised him, and her face was red with rage. "What have you done! You evil cat! What have you done to the man?"
"No longer could I withstand the call of the springtime and the woods," he finished falteringly; "the trading-room and the bargain were grown hateful to me in these warm days with the scent of flower and leaf and heated mould coming in at the door and bidding me come. I left my post, a traitor, Ma'amselle, betrayed by the forest. Too weak am I for courage when the big woods call."
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