voice; none knew his comrades. Besides Pierre and Macavoy, there were
five half-breeds--Noel, Little Babiche, Corvette, Josh, and Jacques
Parfaite. When they came to recognise each other, they shook hands, and
marched on. In good time they reached that wonderful and pleasant country
between the Barren Grounds and the Lake of Silver Shallows. To the north
of it was Fort Comfort, which they had come to take. Macavoy's rich voice
roared as of old, before his valour was questioned--and maintained--at
Fort O'Angel. Pierre had diverted his mind from the woman who, at Fort
O'Angel, was even now calling heaven and earth to witness that "Tim
Macavoy was her Macavoy and no other, an' she'd find him--the divil and
darlin', wid an arm like Broin Borhoime, an' a chest you could build a
house on--if she walked till Doomsday!"

Macavoy stood out grandly, his fat all gone to muscle, blowing through
his beard, puffing his cheek, and ready with tale or song. But now that
they were facing the business of their journey, his voice got soft and
gentle, as it did before the Fort, when he grappled his foes two by two
and three by three, and wrung them out. In his eyes there was the thing
which counts as many men in any soldier's sight, when he leads in battle.
As he said himself, he was made for war, like Malachi o' the Golden
Collar.

Pierre guessed that just now many of the Indians would be away for the
summer hunt, and that the Fort would perhaps be held by only a few score
of braves, who, however, would fight when they might easier play. He had
no useless compunctions about bloodshed. A human life he held to be a
trifle in the big sum of time, and that it was of little moment when a
man went, if it seemed his hour. He lived up to his creed, for he had
ever held his own life as a bird upon a housetop, which a chance stone
might drop.