Knowing that the vengeance of MacNair’s Indians would not be long delayed, Lapierre determined to be well away from the Yellow Knife when the attack came.  However, he had no wish to leave without first assuring himself that the shooting of MacNair stood justified in the eyes of the girl, and to that end he had called upon her in her cottage.

Then it was that chance seemed to offer a safe and certain means of putting MacNair away, and he dropped the poisonous antiseptic tablets into the medicine, only to have his plan frustrated by the unexpected presence of Big Lena.  He was not sure that the woman had seen his action.  But he took no chances, and with an apparent awkward movement of his hat, destroyed the evidence, sought out LeFroy, who had already been warned of the impending attack, and ordered him to place three or four of his most dependable Indians in the cottage, with instructions not only to protect Chloe, but to kill MacNair.

Then he hastened southward to overtake his scowmen, who were toiling at the track-lines somewhere among the turbulent rapids of the Slave.  And indeed there was need of haste.  The summer was well advanced.  Six hundred miles of track-line and portage lay between Great Slave Lake and Athabasca Landing.  And if he was to return with the many scow-loads of supplies for Chloe Elliston’s store before the water-way became ice-locked, he had not a day nor an hour to lose.

At Point Brule he overtook the fur-laden scows, and at Smith Landing an Indian runner reported the result of the fight, and the escape of MacNair.  Lapierre smothered his rage, and with twenty men at the track-line of each scow, bored his way southward.

A month later the gaunt, hard-bitten outfit tied up at the Landing.  Lapierre disposed of his fur, purchased the supplies, and within a week the outfit was again upon the river.

At the mouth of La Biche a half-dozen burlapped pieces were removed from a cache in a thicket of balsam and added to the outfit.  And at Fort Chippewayan the scows with their contents were examined by two officers of the Mounted, and allowed to proceed on their way.

On the Yellow Knife, Chloe Elliston anxiously awaited Lapierre’s return.  Under LeFroy’s supervision the dormitories had been rebuilt, and a few sorry-looking, one-room cabins erected, in which families of Indians had taken up their abode.

Through the long days of the late summer and early fall, Indians had passed and repassed upon the river, and always, in answer to the girl’s questioning, they spoke of the brutality of MacNair.  Of how men were made to work from daylight to dark in his mines.  And of the fact that no matter how hard they worked, they were always in his debt.  They told how he plied them with whiskey, and the hunger and misery of the women and children.  All this the girl learned through her interpreter, LeFroy; and not a few of these Indians remained to take up their abode in dormitories or cabins, until the little settlement boasted some thirty or forty colonists.