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Updated: June 8, 2025
As Philip moved back, he called: "It is four o'clock, M'sieur. We will have darkness in an hour. There is a place to camp and tepee poles ready cut on the point ahead of us." Fifteen minutes later Philip ran his canoe ashore close to Jean Croisset's on a beach of white sand.
Croisset's wife was a good woman who had spent her girlhood in Montreal, and Iowaka, now the mother of a fire-eating little Jean and a handsome daughter, was a soft-voiced young Venus who had grown sweeter and prettier with her years which is not usually the case with half-breed women. "But it's good blood in her, beautiful blood," vaunted Jean proudly, whenever the opportunity came.
After all it was not to be a private affair, and Jean was to do his killing as the hangman's job is done in civilization before a crowd. Howland's arms dropped to his side. This was more terrible than the other this seeing and hearing of preparation, in which he fancied that he heard the click of Croisset's gun as he lifted the hammer. Instead it was a hand fumbling at the door.
And then, in the moment's silence that followed, Philip threw back his head, and in a voice almost as wild and untrained as Jean Croisset's, he shouted back: "Oh! the fur fleets sing on Temiskaming, As the ashen paddles bend, And the crews carouse at Rupert's House, At the sullen winter's end.
Howland was conscious that things were twisting about him and that there was a strange weakness in his limbs. Dumbly he raised his hands to his head, which hurt him until he felt as if he must cry out in his pain. "The girl " he gasped weakly. Croisset's arm tightened about his waist. "She ees gone!"
Eh, which shall it be?" For a moment Howland stood motionless, stunned by the Frenchman's words. Quickly he recovered himself. His eyes burned with a metallic gleam as they met the half taunt in Croisset's cool smile. "If I had not stopped you we would have gone on?" he questioned tensely. "To be sure, M'seur," retorted Croisset, still smiling.
"Believe in him always, my Iowaka, and Jean de Gravois will cut the throat of any missioner who says you will not go to Paradise! But this other. You are sure that you would break oath for none but me?" "And the children. They are a part of you, Jean." A fierce snarling and barking of dogs brought Gravois to the door. They could hear Croisset's raucous voice and the loud cracking of his big whip.
In her eyes he was a hero, who had gone forth to fight the death of which she still heard word and whisper all about her. Croisset's wife and Iowaka told her that he had done the bravest thing that a man might do on earth. She spoke proudly of him to the Indian children, who called him the "torch-bearer."
For a moment after the swift passing of the sledge it was on Howland's lips to shout Croisset's name; as he thrust Gregson aside and leaped out into the night he was impelled with a desire to give chase, to overtake in some way the two people who, within the space of forty-eight hours, had become so mysteriously associated with his own life, and who were now escaping him again.
"Ah, my sweet Iowaka, but would you guess now that Jean de Gravois had received two clouts on the side of the head that almost sent him into the blessed hereafter? I would not have had you see it for all the gold in this world!" A little later he went to the cabin. Iowaka and the children were at Croisset's, and he sat down to smoke a pipe.
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