The others were close about them now, and Jean was telling of the ambush in the forest.  Purple veins grew in the Missioner’s forehead as he listened.  There were no questions on the lips of the others.  With dark, tense faces and eyes that burned with slumbering fires they heard Jean.  There were the grim and silent Foutelles, father and son, from the Caribou Swamp.  Tall and ghostlike in the firelight, more like spectre than man, was Janesse, a white beard falling almost to his waist, a thick marten skin cap shrouding his head, and armed with a long barrelled smooth-bore that shot powder and ball.  From the fox grounds out on the Barren had come “Mad” Joe Horn behind eight huge malemutes that pulled with the strength of oxen.  And with the Missioner had come Ladue, the Frenchman, who could send a bullet through the head of a running fox at two hundred yards four times out of five.  Kaskisoon and his Crees had not arrived, and Philip knew that Jean was disappointed.

“I heard three days ago of a big caribou herd to the west,” said Janesse in answer to the half-breed’s inquiry.  “It may be they have gone for meat.”

They drew close about the fire, and the Foutelles dragged in a fresh birch log for the flames.  “Mad” Joe Horn, with hair and beard as red as copper, hummed the Storm Song under his breath.  Janesse stood with his back to the heat, facing darkness and the west.  He raised a hand, and all listened.  For sixty years his world had been bounded by the four walls of the forests.  It was said that he could hear the padded footfall of the lynx—­and so all listened while the hand was raised, though they heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, the crackling of the fire, and the unrest of the dogs in the timber behind them.  For many seconds Janesse did not lower his hand; and then, still unheard by the others, there came slowly out of the gloom a file of dusky-faced, silent, shadowy forms.  They were within the circle of light before Jean or his companions had moved, and at their head was Kaskisoon, the Cree:  tall, slender as a spruce sapling, and with eyes that went searchingly from face to face with the uneasy glitter of an ermine’s.  They fell upon Jean, and with a satisfied “Ugh!” and a hunch of his shoulders he turned to his followers.  There were seven.  Six of them carried rifles.  In the hands of the seventh was a shotgun.

After this, one by one, and two by two, there were added others to the circle of waiting men about the fire.  By two o’clock there were twenty.  They came faster after that.  With Bernard, from the south, came Renault, who had gone to the end of his run.  From the east, west, and south they continued to come—­but from out of the northwest there led no trail.  Off there was Thoreau’s place.  Pack after pack was added to the dogs in the timber.  Their voices rose above and drowned all other sound.  Teams strained at their leashes to get at the throats of rival teams, and from the black shelter in which they were fastened came a continuous snarling and gnashing of fangs.  Over the coals of a smaller fire simmered two huge pots of coffee from which each arrival helped himself; and on long spits over the larger fire were dripping chunks of moose and caribou meat from which they cut off their own helpings.