"At the call of the wolf, rush to the stockade with the ladders, and
those who have guns shall follow. Then up the ladders and over the
walls! After that, fight, every man for himself, but mind you well,
that you take Lapierre alive, for Lapierre is mine!"

The laddermen stationed themselves at the edge of the timber, and the
men who carried guns scattered along the whole width of the clearing.
Then from the depths of the forest suddenly boomed the cry of the
hoot-owl. Heads appeared over the edge of Lapierre's stockade, and
from the shelter of the black spruce swamp came the crash of rifles.
The heads disappeared, and of Lapierre's men many tumbled backward into
the snow, while others crouched upon the firing ledge which Lapierre
had constructed near the top of his log stockade and answered the
volley, shooting at random into the timber. But only as a man's head
appeared, or as his body showed between the spaces of the logs, were
their shots returned. MacNair's Indians were biding their time.

For an hour this ineffectual and abortive sniping kept up, and then
from the walls of the stockade appeared that for which MacNair had been
waiting--a white flag fluttering from the end of a sapling. Raising
his head, MacNair imitated the call of the loon, and the firing ceased
in the timber. Having no white rag, MacNair waved a spruce bough and
stepped boldly out into the clearing.

The head and shoulders of Lapierre appeared above the wall of the
barricade, and for several moments the two faced each other in silence.
MacNair grim, determined, scowling--Lapierre defiant, crafty, with his
thin lips twisted into a mocking smile. The quarter-breed was the
first to speak.

"So," he drawled, "my good friend has come to visit his neighbour!
Come right in, I assure you a hearty welcome, but you must come alone!
Your retainers are too numerous and entirely too _bourgeois_ to eat at
a gentleman's table."

"But not to drink from his bottle," retorted MacNair. "I am coming
in--but not alone!"

Lapierre laughed derisively. "O-ho, you would come by force--by force
of arms, eh! Well, come along, but I warn you, you do so at your
peril. My men are all armed, and the walls are thick and high.
Rather, I choose to think you will listen to reason."

"Reason!" roared MacNair. "I will reason with you when we come to
hands' grips!"

Lapierre shrugged. "As you please," he answered: "I was only thinking
of your own welfare, an