The caribou rested awhile, then faded away among the trees. Jules slept on, inert, on the boughs; the little sables cuddled closer together and were still.
More and more light came, and Verbaux awoke to another day. The weather remained the same, and he pulled his fur cap well down when he went out to the traps. Trees fell about him, broken branches dropped, rattling on the crust, great rents in the trunks of the hemlocks showed the fierce wrenching power of the wind. No living thing moved in the complaining, groaning forests, but Jules was happy in the chaos, and his loneliness and longing left him for a time. “By gar! Ah get beaucoup de poils!” he said. Every third trap held its dead prisoner. When he had finished the line, the load of furs on his back was heavy: eight sable, two lynx, three wolverine, four marten, and a gray fox.
He was on his way to the camp when suddenly, faint in the gale, he heard a voice calling “Holla, là-bas!” Then he saw coming toward him a short, broad figure on snow-shoes. The stranger came along easily, watching the trees that snapped and squeaked and bowed to their waists. Jules stopped and waited. “Bo’ jou’!” said the stranger in a friendly way. He was a French-Canadian, keen of eye, characteristic in face, strong in figure.
“Je suis Philippe Crevier. Ah comme two hunder’ mile’ look for un homme; you got fir’?”
“Oui; comme!” Jules said, and the two travelled across the timber-land to Verbaux’s camp.
Jules lighted the fire, then set food on the table. Crevier sat and watched him silently; with a nod, he ate a hearty meal.
“Ah-h, c’est bon!” and he sighed comfortably when he had finished, and ceremoniously drew out his quilled and beaded tobacco-bag and presented it to Jules. The latter filled his pipe; Crevier did the same; then Verbaux leaned back against the wall with legs firmly spread, the gray eyes fixed on the other, who was stretched on the green boughs. They smoked in silence for several minutes; the interior was redolent with the powerful reek of the black tobacco; the roof quivered with the sudden impacts of heavy wind, and there was the faint patter of millions of crust bits that, driven before the storm, struck the logs with all their minute weight and strength.