rail--a few white men,
mostly French; half-breeds and 'breeds, Chippewans, and Crees, and here
and there a strange, dark-visaged little interloper from the north with
his strain of Eskimo blood. Foregathered were all the breeds and creeds
and fashions of the wilderness.

Over all this, pervading the air like an incense, stirring the desire
of man and beast, floated the aroma of the roasting caribou. The
feast-hour was at hand. With cries that rose above the last words of a
wild song the seven groups of men rushed to seven pairs of props and
tore them away. The great carcasses swayed in mid-air, bent slowly over
their spits, and then crashed into the snow fifteen feet from the fire.
About each carcass five men with razor-sharp knives ripped off hunks of
the roasted flesh and passed them into eager hands of the hungry
multitude. First came the women and children, and last the men.

On this there peered forth from a window in the factor's house the
darkly bearded, smiling face of Reese Beaudin.

"I have seen him three times, wandering about in the crowd, seeking
someone," he said. "Bien, he shall find that someone very soon!"

In the face of McDougall, the factor, was a strange look. For he had
listened to a strange story, and there was still something of shock and
amazement and disbelief in his eyes.

"Reese Beaudin, it is hard for me to believe."

"And yet you shall find that it is true," smiled Reese.

"He will kill you. He is a monster--a giant!"

"I shall die hard," replied Reese.

He turned from the window again, and took from the table a violin
wrapped in buckskin, and softly he played one of their old love songs.
It was not much more than a whisper, and yet it was filled with a
joyous exultation. He laid the violin down when he was finished, and
laughed, and filled his pipe, and lighted it.

"It is good for a man's soul to know that a woman loves him, and has
been true," he said. "Mon pere, will you tell me again what she said?
It is strength for me--and I must soon be going."

McDougall repeated, as if under a strain from which he could not free
himself:

"She came to me late last night, unknown to Dupont. She had received
your message, and knew you were coming. And I tell you again that I saw
something in her eyes which makes me afraid! She told me, then, that
her father killed Bedore in a quarrel, and that she married Dupont to
save him from the law--and kneeling there, with her hand on the cross