“He has not come!” he cried for the twentieth time.  “He has not come!”

He moved on, and Reese Beaudin—­ten feet away—­turned and smiled at Joe Delesse with triumph in his eyes.  He moved nearer.

“Did I not tell you he would not find in me that narrow-shouldered, smooth-faced stripling of five years ago?” he asked.  “N’est-ce pas, friend Delesse?”

The face of Joe Delesse was heavy with a somber fear.

“His fist is like a wood-sledge, m’sieu.”

“So it was years ago.”

“His forearm is as big as the calf of your leg.”

“Oui, friend Delesse, it is the forearm of a giant.”

“He is half again your weight.”

“Or more, friend Delesse.”

“He will kill you!  As the great God lives, he will kill you!”

“I shall die hard,” repeated Reese Beaudin for the third time that day.

Joe Delesse turned slowly, doggedly.  His voice rumbled.

“The sale is about to begin, m’sieu.  See!”

A man had mounted the log platform raised to the height of a man’s shoulders at the far end of the clearing.  It was Henri Paquette, master of the day’s ceremonies, and appointed auctioneer of the great wakao.  A man of many tongues was Paquette.  To his lips he raised a great megaphone of birchbark, and sonorously his call rang out—­in French, in Cree, in Chippewan, and the packed throng about the caribou-fires heaved like a living billow, and to a man and a woman and a child it moved toward the appointed place.

“The time has come,” said Reese Beaudin.  “And all Lac Bain shall see!”

Behind them—­watching, always watching—­followed the bronze-faced stranger in his close-drawn hood.

For an hour the men of Lac Bain gathered close-wedged about the log platform on which stood Henri Paquette and his Indian helper.  Behind the men were the women and children, and through the cordon there ran a babiche-roped pathway along which the dogs were brought.

The platform was twenty feet square, with the floor side of the logs hewn flat, and there was no lack of space for the gesticulation and wild pantomime of Paquette.  In one hand he held a notebook, and in the other a pencil.  In the notebook the sales of twenty dogs were already tabulated, and the prices paid.

Anxiously, Reese Beaudin was waiting.  Each time that a new dog came up he looked at Joe Delesse, but, as yet Joe had failed to give the signal.

On the platform the Indian was holding two malamutes in leash now and Paquette was crying, in a well simulated fit of great fury: 

“What, you cheap kimootisks, will you let this pair of malamutes go for seven mink and a cross fox.  Are you men?  Are you poverty-stricken?  Are you blind?  A breed dog and a male giant for seven mink and a cross fox?  Non, I will buy them myself first, and kill them, and use their flesh for dog-feed, and their hides for fools’ caps!  I will—­”