Snowdrift

Book excerpt: Murdo MacFarlane, the Hudson's Bay Company's trader at Lashing Water post, laid aside his book and glanced across the stove at his wife who had paused in her sewing to hold up for inspection a very tiny shirt of soft wool. "I tell you it's there! It's bound to be there," he announced with conviction. "Just waitin' for the man that's man enough to go an' get it." Margot nodded abstractedly and deftly snipped a thread that dangled from a seam of a little sleeve. She had heard this same statement many times during the three years of their married life, and she smiled to herself as Molaire, her father, who was the Company's factor at Lashing Water, laid aside his well thumbed invoice with a snort of disgust. She knew her two men well, did Margot, and she could anticipate almost word for word the heated argument that was bound to follow. Without rising she motioned to Tom Shirts, the Company Indian, to light the great swinging lamp. And as the yellow light flooded the long, low trading room, she resumed her sewing, while Molaire hitched his chair nearer the stove and whittled a pipeful of tobacco from a plug. "There ye go again with ye're tomrot an' ye're foolishness!" exploded the old Frenchman, as he threw away his match and crowded the swelling tobacco back into the bowl of his pipe. "Always babblin' about the gold. Always wantin' to go an' find out for ye'reself it ain't there."