splay signs of rebellion
against Murray McTavish's administration of affairs.

Murray was considering this attitude just now. He was standing alone,
just within the gates of the Fort, and his meditative gaze was turned
upon a wonderful sunset which lit the distant heights of the outspread
glacial field with a myriad of varying tints.

There had been words with Alec only a few minutes before. It was on
the subject of appraising values. Alec, in a careless, haphazard
fashion, had baled some inferior pelts with a number of very beautiful
foxes. Murray had discovered it by chance, and his words to the youth
had been sharply admonishing.

Alec, tall as his father had been, muscular, bull-necked in his
youthful physical strength, bull-headed in his passionate impetuosity,
had flared up immoderately.

"Then do it your darn self!" he cried, the hot blood surging to his
cheeks, and his handsome eyes aflame. "Maybe you think I'm hired man
in this layout, an' you can hand me any old dope you fancy. Well, I
tell you right here, you need to quit it. I don't stand for a thing
from you that way. You'll bale your own darn buys, or get the boys to
do it."

With this parting the work of his day was terminated. He departed for
the Mission clearing, leaving Murray to digest his words at leisure.

Murray was digesting them now. They were rankling. Bitterly rankling
in a memory which rarely forgot things. But his round, ample face
displayed no definite feeling other than that which its tendency
towards a smile suggested.

His own work was finished. Though he would not have admitted it he was
tired, weary of the chaffer of it all. But his weariness was only the
result of a day's labor, mental and physical, from sunrise to sunset.

The scene before him seemed to hold him. His big eyes never wavered
for a moment. There was something of the eagle in the manner in which
they stared unflinchingly at the radiant brilliancy of the western sky.

He stood thus for a long time. He displayed no sign of wearying of his
contemplation. It was only an unusual sound which finally changed the
direction of his gaze.

It was the soft shuffle of moccasined feet that reached his quick ears.
It was coming up from the wooded slopes below him, a direction which
came from the river, but not from the landing. His questioning eyes
searched closely the sharp cut, where the pine trees gave way to the
bald crown on which the Fort stood. And