Croisset reached the post forty-eight hours after he had encountered
Jan.
"The red flag is everywhere!" he cried, catching sight of the signal
over Mukee's cabin. "It is to the east and west of the Hasabala as
thick as jays in springtime!"
The Cree from the Gray Otter drove in on his way north.
"Six wigwams with dead in them," he reported in his own language to
Williams. "A company man, with a one-eyed leader and four trailers,
left the Gray Otter to burn them."
Williams took down his birch-bark moose-horn and bellowed a weird
signal to Cummins, who opened a crack of his door to listen, with
Melisse close beside him.
"Thoreau is in the thick of it to the south," he called. "There's too
much of it for him, and I'm going down with the dogs. Croisset will
stay in the store for a few days."
Melisse heard the words, and her eyes were big with fear when her
father turned from closing and bolting the door. In more than a
childish way, she knew that Jan had gone forth to face a great danger.
The grim laws of the savage world in which she lived had already begun
to fix their influence upon her, quickening her instinct and reason,
just as they hastened the lives of Indian children into the
responsibilities of men and women before they had reached fifteen.
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