Maren on the step stared dry-eyed into the night, uncomprehending,
unrebelling, and McElroy strode ahead, blind with sudden anguish,
scarce knowing which way his steps tended.
And, like a ghoul behind a stone, a small dark face peeped keenly from
a corner.
Francette was watching her leaven work.
CHAPTER XII THE NAKONKIRHIRINONS
In the week that followed the waters of the Assiniboine grew black with
myriads of canoes. Like the leaves in fall, truly, they came drifting
out of the forest, long slim craft, made with a wondrous cunning of
birchbark peeled from the tree in one piece, fitted to frames of ash
fragile as cockleshell and strong as steel under the practised hand,
and smeared in every crinkle and crease and crevasse with the resinous
gum of the pine tree. By scores and hundreds and battalions, it seemed
to the traders at De Seviere, they poured out of the wilderness,
choking the river with their numbers, spilling their contents on the
slope under the bastioned walls until a camp was made so vast that it
stretched into the forest on each side the clearing of the post and
even extended to the marsh at the south.
Half-naked braves stalked in countless numbers among the tepees that
went rapidly up, tall fellows, mighty of build and fearless of carriage
and of eagle eye, aloof, suspicious, watching the fort, guarding the
rich piles of peltry and exchanging a word with none.
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