Pierrot, deep in his own somber thoughts, scarcely heard the strange laugh that came suddenly from her lips.  Nepeese was listening to the growl that was again in Baree’s throat.  It was a low but terrible sound.  When half a mile from the cabin, she unslung the panniers from his shoulders and carried them herself.  Ten minutes later they saw a man advancing to meet them.

It was not McTaggart.  Pierrot recognized him, and with an audible breath of relief waved his hand.  It was DeBar, who trapped in the Barren Country north of Lac Bain.  Pierrot knew him well.  They had exchanged fox poison.  They were friends, and there was pleasure in the grip of their hands.  DeBar stared then at Nepeese.

“Tonnerre, she has grown into a woman!” he cried, and like a woman Nepeese looked at him straight, with the color deepening in her cheeks, as he bowed low with a courtesy that dated back a couple of centuries beyond the trap line.

DeBar lost no time in explaining his mission, and before they reached the cabin Pierrot and Nepeese knew why he had come.  M’sieu, the factor at Lac Bain, was leaving on a journey in five days, and he had sent DeBar as a special messenger to request Pierrot to come up to assist the clerk and the half-breed storekeeper in his absence.  Pierrot made no comment at first.  But he was thinking.  Why had Bush McTaggart sent for him?  Why had he not chosen some one nearer?  Not until a fire was crackling in the sheet-iron stove in the cabin, and Nepeese was busily engaged getting supper, did he voice these questions to the fox hunter.

DeBar shrugged his shoulders.

“He asked me, at first, if I could stay.  But I have a wife with a bad lung, Pierrot.  It was caught by frost last winter, and I dare not leave her long alone.  He has great faith in you.  Besides, you know all the trappers on the company’s books at Lac Bain.  So he sent for you, and begs you not to worry about your fur lines, as he will pay you double what you would catch in the time you are at the Post.”

“And—­Nepeese?” said Pierrot.  “M’sieu expects me to bring her?”

From the stove the Willow bent her head to listen, and her heart leaped free again at DeBar’s answer.

“He said nothing about that.  But surely—­it will be a great change for li’le m’selle.”

Pierrot nodded.

“Possibly, Netootam.”

They discussed the matter no more that night.  But for hours Pierrot was still, thinking, and a hundred times he asked himself that same question:  Why had McTaggart sent for him?  He was not the only man well known to the trappers on the company’s books.  There was Wassoon, for instance, the half-breed Scandinavian whose cabin was less than four hours’ journey from the Post—­or Baroche, the white-bearded old Frenchman who lived yet nearer and whose word was as good as the Bible.  It must be, he told himself finally, that M’sieu had sent for him because he wanted to win over the father of Nepeese and gain the friendship of Nepeese herself.  For this was undoubtedly a very great honor that the factor was conferring on him.