"You can't work none of your damned charms on me!" he sneered. "G'wan up the river. There ain't no one up there but Fallon's camp, an' you might better stick with me. Only don't stay too long. This here old leather image can't live without eatin', an' when you come we'll have heap big potlatch." The wigwam of old Wabishke, the Indian trapper, was pitched in a dense thicket on the shore of the little muskrat lake. In the early gray of the morning the old Indian was startled by the sound of a shot. He peered cautiously through the branches and saw a man pitch forward among the rice-stalks. Five minutes later another man carrying a rifle passed within a hundred feet of him and disappeared in the timber in the direction of Blood River Rapids. When he was gone Wabishke ran swiftly to the fallen man and conveyed him to the wigwam, where he plugged the bullet-hole with fat and bound up the wound. Two hours later the bushes parted and Jeanne Lacombie burst panting into the wigwam. The girl uttered a wild cry at the sight of her brother lying motionless upon the robe and dropped to her knees at his side. "Moncrossen," grunted the Indian, and watched in silent wonder as the girl leaped to her feet and, seizing an empty pack-sack, began stuffing it with food. Snatching a light blanket from the floor, she swung the pack to her shoulders and without a word dashed again into the forest. CHAPTER XLVIII THE WEDDING The events incident to the wedding of Bill Carmody and Ethel Manton are indelibly stamped upon the memory of every person present. The day was warmer than any preceding one, with a lowering, overcast sky. The dark, soggy snow melted rapidly, and the swollen surface stream gnawed and tore at the honeycombed ice of the river. In the cook-shack Daddy Dunnigan superintended the labors of half a dozen flunkies in the preparation of the Gargantuan wedding feast which was to follow the ceremony, and each man of the crew worked feverishly in the staging of the great event. The table, which extended the full length of the grub-shack, was scrubbed until it shone and was moved to one side to make room for the heavy benches arranged transversely, one behind the other. The wide aisle between the table and the ends of the benches, leading from the door to the improvised altar at the farther end of the room, was carpeted with blankets from the bunk-house, and suspended from the ceiling immediately in front of the altar swung the massive horseshoe, fresh and green with sprouting grain. During the afternoon a warm drizzle set in and the men completed the preparations amid a muttered cursing of the weather. An ominous booming and cracking now and then reached their ears from the direction of the river where the sullen, pent-up waters threatened momentarily to break their ice bonds, and the men knew that the logs must go out on the flood though the heavens fell.