“Has Jacques Dupont a greater grip than that, Joe Delesse?” he asked in a voice that was so soft it was almost a woman’s.

“Mon Dieu!” gasped Delesse.  He staggered to his feet, clutching his crushed hand.  “M’sieu—­”

Reese Beaudin put his hands to the other’s shoulders, smiling, friendly.

“I will apologize, I will explain, mon ami,” he said.  “But first, you must tell me the name of that Yellow-back who ran away years ago.  Do you remember it?”

“Oui, but what has that to do with my crushed hand?  The Yellow-back’s name was Reese Beaudin—­”

“And I am Reese Beaudin,” laughed the other gently.

On that day—­the day of Wakoa, the dog sale—­seven fat caribou were roasting on great spits at Post Lac Bain, and under them were seven fires burning red and hot of seasoned birch, and around the seven fires were seven groups of men who slowly turned the roasting carcasses.

It was the Big Day of the mid-winter festival, and Post Lac Bain, with a population of twenty in times of quiet, was a seething wilderness metropolis of two hundred excited souls and twice as many dogs.  From all directions they had come, from north and south and east and west; from near and from far, from the Barrens, from the swamps, from the farther forests, from river and lake and hidden trail—­a few white men, mostly French; half-breeds and ’breeds, Chippewans, and Crees, and here and there a strange, dark-visaged little interloper from the north with his strain of Eskimo blood.  Foregathered were all the breeds and creeds and fashions of the wilderness.

Over all this, pervading the air like an incense, stirring the desire of man and beast, floated the aroma of the roasting caribou.  The feast-hour was at hand.  With cries that rose above the last words of a wild song the seven groups of men rushed to seven pairs of props and tore them away.  The great carcasses swayed in mid-air, bent slowly over their spits, and then crashed into the snow fifteen feet from the fire.  About each carcass five men with razor-sharp knives ripped off hunks of the roasted flesh and passed them into eager hands of the hungry multitude.  First came the women and children, and last the men.

On this there peered forth from a window in the factor’s house the darkly bearded, smiling face of Reese Beaudin.

“I have seen him three times, wandering about in the crowd, seeking someone,” he said.  “Bien, he shall find that someone very soon!”

In the face of McDougall, the factor, was a strange look.  For he had listened to a strange story, and there was still something of shock and amazement and disbelief in his eyes.

“Reese Beaudin, it is hard for me to believe.”

“And yet you shall find that it is true,” smiled Reese.

“He will kill you.  He is a monster—­a giant!”

“I shall die hard,” replied Reese.

He turned from the window again, and took from the table a violin wrapped in buckskin, and softly he played one of their old love songs.  It was not much more than a whisper, and yet it was filled with a joyous exultation.  He laid the violin down when he was finished, and laughed, and filled his pipe, and lighted it.