ll the river was of jagged ice cakes in the spring, and how perilous
was the passage of a deeply-laden canoe. Surely the new post must not go
to Little Peter. And Red Dog was most crafty.

There must have been, however attenuated, a fiber of French blood
throughout the being of Red Dog. It would have been odd, indeed, had the
case been otherwise, for the half-breeds penetrated long ago through the
far northwest, and the blood underneath does not always show itself
through the copper skin. Anyhow, Red Dog gazed interestedly and fixedly
upon the gloriously soft carpet before him, and there came to his brain
a sense of the wonderfully contrasting coloring. He rose to his feet and
arranged and rearranged the pelts to please his fancy. At last he
secured a combination which made him pause. He returned to his seat and
gazed long and earnestly upon the picture before him; then he turned his
eyes downward and thought as long again. Bigbeam came to him and
muttered words regarding some affair of the teepee. He did not answer
her, but, as she passed silently toward the doorway, he raised his eyes
and noted her broad expanse of back in the doorway to which the far
distant blue sky gave a distinct and striking outline. He shouted to her
gutturally and hoarsely to stand there as she was, and the woman stopped
herself in the doorway; then Red Dog bent his head and thought again. He
thought of a window he had seen in far Quebec, where soft and brilliant
furs were shown upon a flat surface to the most advantage. Why could he
not with such display most impress McGlenn, the Scotch factor, with the
importance of his hunting ground, and where could better display be made
than upon the broad back of his squat squaw Bigbeam? He would make her
sew the furs together in a mighty cloak, and she should ride the river
with him when the ice broke and the spring tides bore them down in their
great canoe to the factor's place toward Fort Reliance.

And the cloak was made. Talk of the wrappings of your princesses, of the
shallow-ermine-girded trappings of your queens--they were but yearning
things, but imitations, as compared with this great cloak of the
bounteous Bigbeam.

In the center of the field of this wondrous cloak lay white as snow the
skin of an ermine of the far north, and about it were arranged sables so
deep in color that the contrast was almost blackness, but for the play
of light and shade upon the shining fur. About the sables came co