The man turned away with a frown. The figure was Big Lena.




CHAPTER V

PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS

At the mouth of the Slave River the outfit was transferred to twelve
large freight canoes, each carrying three tons, and manned by six
lean-shouldered canoemen, in charge of one Louis LeFroy, Lapierre's boss
canoeman. Straight across the vast expanse of Great Slave Lake they
headed, and skirting the shore of the north arm, upon the evening of the
second day, entered the Yellow Knife River.

The site selected by Pierre Lapierre for Chloe Elliston's school was, in
point of location, as the quarter-breed had said, an excellent one. Upon
a level plateau at the top of the high bank that slants steeply to the
water of the Yellow Knife River, a short distance above its mouth,
Lapierre set the canoemen to cutting the timber and brush from a wide
area. The girl had come into the North fully prepared for a long
sojourn, and in her thirty-odd tons of outfit were found all tools
necessary for the clearing of land and the erection of buildings.
Brushwood and trees fell before the axes of the half-breeds and Indians,
who worked in a sort of frenzy under the lashing drive of Lapierre's
tongue; and the night skies glowed red in the flare of the flames where
the brush and tree-tops burned in the clearing.