Far to the south, a bit of the red sunrise was creeping into the
northern world.
CHAPTER IX
JEAN AND JAN
Half a mile down the ridge, where it sloped up gradually from the
forests and swamps of the plain, a team of powerful Malemutes were
running at the head of a toboggan. On the sledge was a young half-Cree
woman. Now beside the sledge, now at the lead of the dogs, cracking
his whip and shouting joyously, ran Jean de Gravois.
"Is it not beautiful, my Iowaka?" he cried for the hundredth time, in
Cree, leaping over a three-foot boulder in his boundless enthusiasm.
"Is this not the glorious world, with the sun just rising off there,
and spring only a few days away? It is not like the cold chills at
Churchill, which come up with the icebergs and stay there all summer!
What do you think of your Jean de Gravois and his country now?"
Jean was bringing back with him a splendid young woman, with big,
lustrous eyes, and hair that shone with the gloss of a raven's wing in
the sun. She laughed at him proudly as he danced and leaped beside
her, replying softly in Cree, which is the most beautiful language in
the world, to everything that he said.
Jean leaped and ran, cracked his caribou whip, and shouted and sang
until he was panting and red in the face.
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