It was Henri Paquette, master
of the day's ceremonies, and appointed auctioneer of the great wakao. A
man of many tongues was Paquette. To his lips he raised a great megaphone
of birchbark, and sonorously his call rang out--in French, in Cree, in
Chippewan, and the packed throng about the caribou-fires heaved like a
living billow, and to a man and a woman and a child it moved toward the
appointed place.
"The time has come," said Reese Beaudin. "And all Lac Bain shall see!"
Behind them--watching, always watching--followed the bronze-faced
stranger in his close-drawn hood.
For an hour the men of Lac Bain gathered close-wedged about the log
platform on which stood Henri Paquette and his Indian helper. Behind the
men were the women and children, and through the cordon there ran a
babiche-roped pathway along which the dogs were brought.
The platform was twenty feet square, with the floor side of the logs hewn
flat, and there was no lack of space for the gesticulation and wild
pantomime of Paquette. In one hand he held a notebook, and in the other a
pencil. In the notebook the sales of twenty dogs were already tabulated,
and the prices paid.
Anxiously, Reese Beaudin was waiting. Each time that a new dog came up he
looked at Joe Delesse, but, as yet Joe had failed to give the signal.
On the platform the Indian was holding two malamutes in leash now and
Paquette was crying, in a well simulated fit of great fury:
"What, you cheap kimootisks, will you let this pair of malamutes go for
seven mink and a cross fox.
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