and shadow and sun across her face, Grange's Andree was something to stir the most phlegmatic blood. And Dick had never been phlegmatic. Andree held out the moccasins.
"I did make feenish—pour vous," she said; and a sudden impulse brought Dick down beside her to push away the curls that made blue veins on her temples and hid the dimple in her cheek.
It was a full half-hour before he rose and went down the hill with long, swinging strides. And his eyes were uneasy. For he did not care to remember all that he had done and said in that half-hour.
To-morrow the yearly Sessions were to be held in Grey Wolf, and the one street of it was choked with passing life. In the dust a half-dozen north-bred huskies were fighting; the smell of bananas and tar and hot leather and groceries hung heavily round the -Hudson Bay Store. Two Indian women squatted outside the Store with round-eyed babies on the backs, and within a score of bucks were buying ammunition and tobacco.
Dick heard Leigh's voice raised in fluent Cree expostulation, and he knew that the men were bargaining for debt on the furs of the coming winter. He swung past with a shrug. Most of those Indians were bankrupt now. They would be more bankrupt by spring, and then would begin trouble with the Hudson Bay and Revillons; starvation perhaps, and theft.
All these things and many more would come in Dick's way later on. They were the warp and woof of the North-West. They were the day's work and the grim night's anxiety.
Tempest met him outside the barracks.
"An Indian has reported a Galician sick and alone in a shack along the trail to Stony Point," he said. "I can't go, because of the Judge, and Kennedy's not back. If you go at once you can be back in time for breakfast, Dick. And I'm afraid I'll have to send you."
Dick was in no mood for twelve hours and more of lonely forest. Since he came back from Edmonton he had been in no mood for twelve hours of himself.
"Damn the Galician," he said. "We could do with a few less of him."
