Mushrat Portage had been but recently a willow clump, and a black rock ledge hanging over a precipitous valley: the hand of the Indian could be seen one day parting the leaves of the trail, and on the next, drills came and tins of black powder, and hordes of greedy men, blind with a burning zeal for "monkeying with powder" as our host of Sick Dog said. They were strange men, hoarse men, unreasonable men who cast sheep's-eyes at the dark woman from Regina, whose shack, rented of Scarecrow Charlie, crowned the high point of the ledge. She was the only woman on Mushrat, and at a time just before the blasting began, when Rainbow Pete sauntered over the trail with his pick and his flute and his dirty bag of rock specimens, she was hungrily watched and waited on by the new inhabitants of that ancient portage--Mushrat, whose destinies were soon to be so splendid, and whose skies were to be rocked and rent by the thunders of men struggling with reluctant nature, monkeying with powder. When Pete laid down his tools and guns on the table at Scarecrow Charlie's, where the woman was employed, had he in his heart some foreshadowing presentiment of the peril he was in, of the sharp destroying fire of a resolute woman's eyes, which he was subjecting himself to, in including her in his universal caress? Who knows? Perhaps his flute had whispered tidings to him. He was, said Papa Isbister, immensely proud of his plaything, this huge gaunt sailor, who had been bent into the shape of a rainbow--the foot of a rainbow--by a chance shot, which shattered his hip and gave him an impressive forward cant, which appeared to women, it seemed--I quote my old friend--in the light of an endearing droop. The romantic visitation of this musical sailorman made the efforts of all Mushrat as nothing. But Rainbow Pete seemed unaware of the fiery jealousies glowing in the night on all sides of him when he fixed his eyes on her for the first time--with that mellow assurance of a careless master of the hearts and whims of women. "What's this he said to her?" said our old friend. "It was skilful; it was put like a notable question if she took it so." "You don't want to go out to-night," he said to her, with his guns on the table. "No, I do not," she said to the man. "There you will be taking the words out of my mouth to suit your heart," he went on saying to her. "Mark this, I'm making this a command to you. You don't want to go out to-night. Do not do it." This he told her was on account of stray bullets, because he was meaning to shoot up that place. Heh! It was a trick of his, to trap her into denying him when he had made no offer. Old Isbister laughed heartily at this picture of Pete in the days of his triumph.