The fort runner felt the pressed flakes gently before speaking. He arose immediately from the stooping posture.

"The Little Fool's," was his response. "And he has just pa.s.sed here!"

"Gaspard Follet's tracks!" exclaimed the chief trader incredulously.

"Maskwa, are you sure you are not mistaken?"

"I am not mistaken, Strong Father," the Ojibway declared gravely. "In the summer moons I made the shoes for the Little Fool. Give me leave to follow. I will bring him to you. He is no farther away than the ridge of balsam."

"Go," ordered Dunvegan curtly.

The fort runner launched himself into the gloom of the stunted shrubbery. Bunching where their leader was halted, the Hudson's Bay men waited silently. Presently there sounded the double crunch of two pairs of raquettes on the brittle crust. The branches of the dwarfed evergreens swayed. Maskwa strode out, dragging a diminutive figure by one arm.

"Here, Strong Father, is the Little Fool," he announced without emotion.

At the sight of the Oxford House men Gaspard Follet began to utter a series of joyous squeals.

"Blessed be the Virgin," he cried. "Here is safety. Oh! name of the dead saints, I was lost, lost--lost!"

He sprang to Dunvegan, ingratiating himself, praising, fawning, beseeching. The Ojibway fort runner looked grimly at the antics of his prize.

"The Little Fool is glad to meet with the Company's servants," he observed in ironic fashion. "It gives him great joy."

Dunvegan looked into Maskwa's face, quite surprised at the tone.

"Why not?" he questioned.

"That did not dwell in his mind until I caught him," the Indian declared. "Neither was the Little Fool lost."

"What do you mean, Maskwa?" Dunvegan asked. "My brother, you speak in riddles. Gaspard has evidently wandered from Oxford House and lost his way." To the idiot, he added: "Do you know where you are at all?"

"No, no," moaned Gaspard piteously. "I was lost, I tell you. I do not know this country."

The Ojibway fort runner grunted in derision. "Strong Father," he said, "the Little Fool was not lost as you believe. He has been following the Caribou Ridge all day. And Strong Father will remember that the trail on the Caribou Ridges, though it cannot be traveled with dog teams, shortens by half the distance to the fort of the French Hearts where we journey. That is how the Little Fool thought to reach it first!"

The Indian stopped his speech abruptly and took a stride onward as if this circ.u.mstance was no concern of his. Dunvegan halted him, crying out:

"Hold there, Maskwa! Do you pretend to suspect Gaspard?"

Maskwa made a gesture of complete unconcern. "I have spoken," he returned placidly.

"Why," fumed Dunvegan, "such a thing in my estimation is incredible--preposterous! The idea of that dwarf, that idiot----No! It's too ridiculous!"

"I have spoken," repeated Maskwa, in the same even key.

When the chief trader attempted to question him by way of discovering his exact meaning, the Ojibway maintained a stubborn silence which he broke only with a suggestion about the night camp.

"Turn to the ridge of balsam, Strong Father," he advised. "We shall find it good to rest there."

Dunvegan accepted his trusted runner's hint. He knew that the Indian eye read wilderness signs which no white man living could ever interpret. He understood that the Indian brain gleaned an intelligence from inanimate things which the greatest mind of civilization could never comprehend.

Therefore he was content to follow the native wisdom and follow it unseeingly, for at Maskwa's word he had walked blindly to his own ultimate advantage some hundreds of times.

So the Oxford House men diverged from their course on the first track that Gaspard Follet had tramped in the snowy ridge where it crossed Blazing Pine River. The Ojibway went ahead, and, when lost to the view of his fellows among the timber, he paralleled Gaspard's trail at some distance first on one side and then on the other. Soon he found what he sought and tramped on to the balsams, grunting with great satisfaction.

When Dunvegan and his retainers reached the balsam ridge, Maskwa stood there awaiting them. He called the chief trader aside.

"Strong Father," he began in a low voice, "does a lost man throw away his rifle and his food?"

"No! Great heavens, no!" exclaimed Dunvegan. "Why?"

Maskwa put his hand into a green tree and held out two objects.

"Because here is the rifle and the pack-sack of the Little Fool."

The chief trader wheeled with hot accusations for Gaspard Follet, but Maskwa checked them.

"Softly, Strong Father," was his caution. "I have something else to show you first."

"But he is the spy," murmured Dunvegan, trying to keep his voice down in spite of his anger. "I see it all now--curse his blithering impudence!

What dolts we have been at Oxford House! And he fooled Malcolm Macleod.

Good Lord, what infants, what imbeciles! A fool, a dwarf, an idiot to get the best of us! Maskwa, I think we need some guidance such as yours."

"The Little One is a dwarf," conceded Maskwa, "but he is not an idiot.

Neither is he a fool, though the name comes easily to my tongue. Strong Father, he has the wisdom of the beaver, and the heart of the fox. But at last he is trapped!"

"I'll bind him," declared Dunvegan, full of vexation and self-contempt.

"I'll tie the rat fast lest he outwit the elephants."

"Wait," begged the Ojibway fort runner. "Come to the top of the ridge of balsam first. Then we can bind the Little Fool."

Maskwa pushed through the trees with a slouching movement. He set his shoes without the slightest noise in the soft, deep undersnows of the evergreens. Dunvegan did likewise, taking care to snap no twig. On the crest which commanded the open valley the Ojibway pushed aside the thick branches hanging screen-like over the edge.

"Strong Father, look!" he directed.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST BLOW

Mechanically Dunvegan counted the dog teams that crossed the valley before his gaze. Five great sleds he made out, sleds piled high with huge bales of furs. Two men accompanied each sledge, a driver and an armed guard. Evidently the train was going into camp under the shoulders of the Caribou Ridges.

"Strong Father did not think that any of the French Hearts were so near?" ventured Maskwa quietly.

"No," the chief trader muttered, "I did not. Ah! they are halting. It is well that they did not get sight of us, Maskwa, for I fancy we could never catch them if those big teams once started galloping."

The Ojibway nodded gravely as he peered, animal-like, between two large tree trunks.