The Maid of the Whispering Hills | Page 4

River they had come,
pushing to the west in that hope of gain and desire of travel which
opens the wilderness of every land. They had met the factor at the great
gate and entered in to rest and feast, as is the rule of every fire. By
morning had come the leaders of the party to McElroy, and there had
been talk that ended in an agreement, and the tired venturers had
dropped their burden of progress.
When they had rested, there were to be three new cabins squeezed

somehow into the already overcrowded stockade, and five more men
and six women would belong to Fort de Seviere.
As he walked toward the factory the young man was thinking of all this.
Of a surety the tall girl, had come with the strangers, yet he had not
noticed her until that moment outside the stockade wall, when he had
caught the striking picture in the morning sun.
Name? Most certainly it would be in that list which the leader of the
party had promised him by noon. When he entered the big room the
man was there before him, a picturesque figure of a man, big and
graceful and dark of brow, with long black curls beneath his crimson
cap. As McElroy went forward he straightened up from his lounging
position against the railing and held out the paper he had promised.
"For enrollment, M'sieu," he said simply.
The factor took the proffered slip and read eagerly down its length,
done neatly in a finished hand.
"Adventurers," he read, "from Grand Portage on Lake Superior, bound
for the west,--agreed to stop for the length of one year at Fort de
Seviere on the Assiniboine River,--Prix Laroux and wife Ninette, Pierre
and Cif Bordoux and their wives Anon and Micene, Franz LeClede and
wife Mora, Henri Baptiste and wife Marie, and Maren Le Moyne, an
unmarried woman and sister to Marie Baptiste."
A sudden little light flamed for a moment in the young factor's blue
eyes.
For some unknown reason it had pleased him, that last ingenious
sentence.
"Prix Laroux," he said, turning to his new acquisition, "we will get to
the work of our contract."

CHAPTER II
THE SPRING
Springtime lay over the vast region of lake and forest. Along the shores
of the little rivers the new grass was springing, and in nook and
sheltered corner of rock and depression shy white flowers lifted their
pretty heads to the coaxing sun. Deep in the budding woods birds in
flocks and bevies called across the wilderness of tender green, while at
the post the youths sang snatches of wild French songs and all the

world felt the thirst of the new life.
A somewhat hard winter it had been, long and cold, with crackling frost
of nights and the snow piled deep around the stockade, and the gracious
release was very welcome.
The somewhat fickle stream of the Assiniboine had loosed its locks of
ice and rolled and gurgled, full to its low banks, as if the late summer
would not see it shrunk to a lazy thread, refusing sometimes even the
shallow canoes and barely licking the parched lips of the land.
In gay attire the maids of De Seviere ventured beyond the gates to stray
a little way into the forest and come back laden with tiny green sprays
of the golden trailer, with wee white blossoms and now and again a
great swelling bud of the gorgeous purple flower of the death plant.
"Bien! It is of a drollness, mes cheries," laughed Tessa Bibye one day,
stopping at the cabin by the south wall; "how Francette does but sit in
the shade and nurse that half-dead wolf. Is it by chance because of the
owner, or that hand which carried it here, Francette? Look for the man
behind Francette's devotion ever!"
Whereat there was a laugh and crinkling of pretty dark eyes at the little
maid's expense, but she sprang to her feet and faced her mates in anger.
"Begone, you Tessa Bibye!" she cried hotly; "'tis little you know
beyond the thought of a man truly, and that because you have lacked
one from the cradle!"
Tessa flushed and drew away, vanquished. Merry laughter, turned as
readily upon her, wafted back on the golden wind. Francette, her eyes
flaming with all too great a fire, set a pan of cool water beneath the
fevered muzzle of the husky and glanced, scowling, across her shoulder
toward the factory.
Five days had passed since the episode beside the stockade, and Bois
DesCaut had said no word, of his property. In fact, the great dog was
seemingly scarce worth a thought, much less a word. Helpless, bruised
from tip to tip, one side flat under its broken ribs, he