As the grim fastnesses reaching away to the north and east and south in limitless, ice-locked solitude, had wakened to the magic touch of spring, so the little post at Whale River had quickened with life at the advent of June with the spring trade. For weeks, before the return of Marcel, the canoes of the Crees had been coming in daily from winter trapping grounds in far valleys. Around the tepees, which dotted the post clearing like mushrooms, groups of dark-skinned women, heads wrapped in gaudy shawls, laughed and gossiped, while the shrill voices of romping children filled the air, for the lean moons of the long snows had passed and the soft days returned.
Swart hunters from Lac d'Iberville, half-breed Crees from the Whispering Hills and the Little Whale watershed, belted with colored Company sashes, wearing beaded leggings and moccasins, smoked and talked of the trade with wild _voyageurs_ from Lac Bienville, the Lakes of the Winds, and the Starving River headwaters in the caribou barrens. From a hundred unmapped valleys they had journeyed to the Bay to trade their fox and lynx, their mink and fisher and marten, for the goods of the Company.
Below, along the beach, Huskies from Richmond Gulf and the north coast, from the White Bear and the Sleeping Islands, who had brought ivory of the walrus, pelts of the white fox, seal, and polar bear, and sealskin boots, which only their women possess the art of making waterproof, were camped in low skin tepees, their priceless dogs tied up and under constant guard. But while the camp of the Esquimos was a bedlam of noisy huskies, the quarters of the Crees in the post clearing, formerly overrun by brawling sled-dogs, were now a place of peace. The plague of the previous summer had left the Indians but a scattering of curs.
Carrying his fur-pack and outfit to the Mission, Marcel sought the trade-house. Passing the tepees of the Crees, he was forced to stop and receive the congratulations of the admiring hunters on his safe return from his "_longue traverse_" through the land of demons, which had been the gossip of the post since the arrival of Joe and Antoine.
When his partners appeared, to stare in amazement at the man they had announced as dead, Jean made them wince as he gripped their hands.