Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/426

424 still ran savagely. And he felt the same untamed pulse-throb in Tommy Joseph.

"Well, you ought to know all about 'em," he said. "And you've had good luck, I see. We're paying twenty dollars a pelt this year."

Tommy Joseph glanced up with quick fire in his eyes. "There is no good luck and no bad luck. It is fate," he said in French; and Dick suddenly remembered the story of Florestine.

"Well, perhaps you're right. Tommy, have you seen Grange's Andree lately? She came up to Chipewyan last fall."

"Laissez," said Tommy sharply, and kicked at his fidgeting dogs. "Was it Andree? Certainement. I did see her last in Grey Wolf. It is two years since."

He proceeded to fill his pipe with an indifference which proved his words lies to Dick. But Dick never showed his hand. He gave Tommy good-bye amiably and went to Forsyth. Forsyth had seen Andree, and, what was more unlikely, he remembered the circumstance perfectly and described it with much detail.

"That bunch went on towards the Rocher," he ended. "Rafting along the Slave to Resolution, I guess. I didn't take much stock of 'em."

Forsyth never took much stock of anything. Dick nodded. "All right. I'll try to make Resolution before the ice goes out. Might as well be hung up there as anywhere else," he said.

Dick stood long at his window that night, looking over the Lake, where through nearly three hundred years, had plied the little canoe-patrol between old Chipewyan and Montreal. A grim, lonely patrol, put through by those wild-hearted men, gay-eyed and daring, quick in murder, in love and laughter. They called to their descendant, those pioneers with their silken sashes and their slender, strong wrists whence the ruffles had been ripped away when Prince Rupert's gentlemen girded themselves for that first fight with Canada. They called across the treading years which had blotted out so much of romance, so much of horror, so much of gallant endurance, so much of gladness and passionate grief. And for long Dick listened,