was small in stature. He was known as far west as the Peace River, and
eastward to Fort Churchill. He loved to make his appearance at the
post in a wild and picturesque rush when the rest of the forest rovers
were there to look on, and to envy or admire. He was one of the few of
his kind who had developed personal vanity along with unerring cunning
in the ways of the wild. Everybody liked Gravois, for he had a big
soul in him and was as fearless as a lynx; and he liked everybody,
including himself.

He explained his early arrival by announcing in a nonchalant manner
that after he had given his Malemutes a day's rest he was going on to
Fort Churchill, to bring back a wife. He hinted, with a punctuating
crack of his whip, that he would make a second visit, and a more
interesting one, at just about the time when the trappers were there
in force.

Jan Thoreau listened to him, hunching his shoulders a little at the
other's manifest air of importance. In turn, the French-Canadian
scrutinized Jan good-naturedly. Neither of them knew the part which
Jean de Gravois was to play in Jan's life.

Every hour after the half-breed's arrival quickened the pulse of
expectancy at the post. For six months it had been a small and
solitary unit of life in the heart of a big desolation. The first snow
had smothered it in a loneliness that was almost the loneliness of
desertion. With that first snow began the harvest days of the people
of the wilderness. Far and wide they were busy along their trap-lines,
their lonely shacks hidden in the shelter of thick swamps, in deep
chasms and dense forests. For six months the short days and the long
nights had been days and nights of fur-gathering.