--who would know how to
get word to Bill. He might come back to the cabin in a month or so; he
might not come back at all unless he heard from her. She was smitten
with a great fear that he might give her up as lost to him, and plunge
deeper into the wilderness in some mood of recklessness. And she
wanted him, longed for him, if only so that she could make amends.

She easily found Courvoiseur, a tall, spare Frenchman, past middle age.
Yes, he could deliver a message to Bill Wagstaff; that is, he could
send a man. Bill Wagstaff was in the Klappan Range.

"But if he should have left there?" Hazel suggested uneasily.

"'E weel leave weeth W'itey Lewees word of w'ere 'e go," Courvoiseur
reassured her. "An' my man, w'ich ees my bruzzer-law, w'ich I can mos'
fully trus', 'e weel follow 'eem. So Beel 'e ees arrange. 'E ees say
mos' parteecular if madame ees come or weesh for forward message, geet
heem to me queeck. _Oui_. Long tam Beel ees know me. I am for depend
always."

Courvoiseur kept a trader's stock of goods in a weather-beaten old log
house which sprawled a hundred feet back from the street. Thirty
years, he told her, he had kept that store in Fort George. She guessed
that Bill had selected him because he was a fixture. She sat down at
his counter and wrote her message. Just a few terse lines. And when
she had delivered it to Courvoiseur she went back to the hotel. There
was nothing now to do but wait. And with the message under way she
found herself impatient to reach the cabin, to spend the waiting days
where she had first found happiness. She could set her house in order
against her man's coming. And if the days dragged, and the great, lone
land seemed to close in and press inexorably upon her, she would have
to be patient, very patient.

Jake was held up, waiting for supplies. Fort George suffered a sugar
famine. Two days later, the belated freight arrived. He loaded his
wagon, a ton of goods for himself, a like weight of Hazel's supplies
and belongings. A goodly load, but he drove out of Fort George with
four strapping bays arching their powerful necks, and champing on the
bit.

"Four days ve vill make it by der ranch," Jake chuckled. "Mit der mule
und Gretchen, der cow, von veek it take me, mit half der loat."

Four altogether pleasant and satisfying days they were to Hazel. The
worst of the fly pests were vanished for the season. A crisp touch of
frost sharpened the night wind