In turn, the French-Canadian
scrutinized Jan good-naturedly. Neither of them knew the part which
Jean de Gravois was to play in Jan's life.
Every hour after the half-breed's arrival quickened the pulse of
expectancy at the post. For six months it had been a small and
solitary unit of life in the heart of a big desolation. The first snow
had smothered it in a loneliness that was almost the loneliness of
desertion. With that first snow began the harvest days of the people
of the wilderness. Far and wide they were busy along their trap-lines,
their lonely shacks hidden in the shelter of thick swamps, in deep
chasms and dense forests. For six months the short days and the long
nights had been days and nights of fur-gathering.
During those months the post was silent. It lived and breathed, but
that was all. Its life, for Williams and the few people whom the
company kept with him, was a life of waiting. Now the change was at
hand. It was like the breath of spring to the awakening wilderness.
The forest people were moving. Trap-lines were being broken, shacks
abandoned, sledge-dogs put to harness. On the day that Jean de Gravois
left for Hudson's Bay, the company's supplies came in from Fort
Churchill--seven toboggans drawn by Eskimo dogs, laden with flour and
cloth; fifty pounds of beads, ammunition, and a hundred other things
to be exchanged for the furs that would soon be in London and Paris.
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