Out of her eyes had gone a certain light to be
replaced by another, as if a star had passed near a smouldering world
and gone on, changed by the contact, its radiance darkened by a deeper
glow.
The firm cheeks, dusky as sunset, had lost something of their contour.
Like comrades, too, they shared the work and the watches, the girl
standing guard with rifle and ball while Dupre snatched heavy sleep,
herself dropping down like the veriest old wolf of the North on mossy
bank or green grass for the rest they sternly shortened.
"'Tis near the time of the Hudson's Bay brigade, is it not, M'sieu?"
she would ask sometimes. "Think you we shall meet them surely if we
skirt the eastern shore of Winnipeg?"
And Dupre would always answer, "Assuredly. By the third week in July
they will be at the upper bend where the river comes down from York.
The Nakonkirhirinons will hold to the west, going up Nelson River and
west through the chain of little lakes that lie to the south of
Winnipeg, thence gaining Deer River and that Reindeer Lake which sends
them forth into their unknown region beyond the Oujuragatchousibi. We,
then, will make straight for the eastern shore, skirting upward to the
interception of the ways, and we will surely meet the brigade.
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