I remembered them very well; two taciturn, buckskin-garbed men, who came to an Indian camp while we were there talking trade. They greeted us civilly enough, slept in the next lodge overnight, and left us a clear field in the morning. But before they took to the trail they drew Barreau aside and the three of them sat upon a fallen tree and conversed thus for an hour. “Why, yes,” I replied. “What of them?” “I didn’t tell you, did I, that they were Company agents with a proposal to buy out _my_ interest in the house of Montell,” he said. “Now, that amused me at the time. But the confounded thing has stuck in my mind, and lately I’ve been thinking—in fact, I’ve wondered if——” He broke off as abruptly as he had begun. I was walking abreast of him, and I could see that he was engrossed with some problem; the mental groping in his tone was duplicated in the expression on his face. “What?” I blurted. “Oh, just an idea that popped into my mind,” he parried carelessly. “I’ll tell you by and by.” “To be perfectly honest,” I challenged, on the impulse of the moment, “I don’t think you trust me very much, after all.” “You’re mistaken there,” he said slowly. “You are the one man in all this country whom I would trust. But I am not going to burden you with mere theories of possible trouble. Wait till I am sure.” With this I was forced to content myself. In a mild way I resented his secretiveness, even while I recognized his right to tell me as much or as little as he chose. Thus a certain diffidence crept into my attitude, perhaps. If it was obvious, it made no difference to Barreau. In the two days it took us to reach the post, I do not think he spoke a dozen sentences. He followed the trail of the packtrain, wholly absorbed in thought. Only when the stockade-enclosed group of buildings huddled below us, casting long shadows across the flat, did his self-absorption cease. We had halted for a moment on the bank above the river, not far from where I had first seen the Sicannie. The sun rested on the jagged mountain range to the west, and the river caught its slanting beams till it lay below us like cloth of gold, a glittering yellow gash in the somber woods. Barreau’s hand fell lightly on my shoulder. “Lord! I’ve been a cheerful companion of late,” he said, as if it had but occurred to him. And some intangible quality of comradeship in the words, or perhaps his way of saying them, put me at ease once more. We stood a little longer, and the sun dipped behind the mountains, robbing the Sicannie of its yellow gleam, casting a sudden grayness over the North. Then we hitched our lean packs anew, and went down the hill. CHAPTER XII—THE FIRST MOVE Montell himself, burdened with a troubled air, met us at the gate of the stockade.