Bruce laughed a little grimly.

"Fortunes o' war, Jimmy," he said. "You don't go hunting grizzlies with a pack of lapdogs, an' you've got to expect to lose some of them sooner or later. We've tackled the wrong bear, that's all. He's beat us."

"Beat us?"

"I mean he's beat us in a square game, an' we dealt a raw hand at that in using dogs at all. Do you want that bear bad enough to go after him my way?"

Langdon nodded.

"What's your scheme?"

"You've got to drop pretty idees when you go grizzly hunting," began Bruce. "And especially when you run up against a 'killer.' There won't be any hour between now an' denning-up time that this grizzly doesn't get the wind from all directions. How? He'll make detours. I'll bet if there was snow on the ground you'd find him back-tracking two miles out of every six, so he can get the wind of anything that's following him. An' he'll travel mostly nights, layin' high up in the rocks an' shale during the day. If you want any more shootin', there's just two things to do, an' the best of them two things is to move on and find other bears."

"Which I won't do, Bruce. What's your scheme for getting this one?"

Bruce was silent for several moments before he replied.

"We've got his range mapped out to a mile," he said then. "It begins up at the first break we crossed, an' it ends down here where we came into this valley. It's about twenty-five miles up an' down. He don't touch the mount'ins west of this valley nor the mount'ins east of the other valleys an' he's dead certain to keep on makin' circles so long as we're after him. He's hikin' southward now on the other side of the range.

"We'll lay here for a few days an' not move. Then we'll start Metoosin through the valley over there with the dogs, if there's any left, and we'll start south through this valley at the same time. One of us will keep to the slopes an' the other to the bottom, an' we'll travel slow. Get the idee?

"That grizzly won't leave his country, an' Metoosin is pretty near bound to drive him around to us. We'll let him do the open hunting an' we'll skulk. The bear can't get past us both without giving one of us shooting."

"It sounds good," agreed Langdon. "And I've got a lame knee that I'm not unwilling to nurse for a few days."

Scarcely were the words out of Langdon's mouth when a sudden rattle of hobble-chains and the startled snort of a grazing horse out in the meadow brought them both to their feet.

"Utim!" whispered Metoosin, his dark face aglow in the firelight.

"You're right—the dogs," said Bruce, and he whistled softly.

They heard a movement in the brush near them, and a moment later two of the dogs came into the firelight. They slunk in, half on their bellies, and as they prostrated themselves at the hunters' feet a third and a fourth joined them.

They were not like the pack that had gone out that morning. There were deep hollows in their sides; their wiry crests were flat; they were hard run, and they knew that they were beaten. Their aggressiveness was gone, and they had the appearance of whipped curs.

A fifth came in out of the night. He was limping, and dragging a torn foreleg. The head and throat of one of the others was red with blood. They all lay flat on their bellies, as if expecting condemnation.

"We have failed," their attitude said; "we are beaten, and this is all of us that are left."

Mutely Bruce and Langdon stared at them. They listened—waited. No other came. And then they looked at each other.

"Two more of them gone," said Langdon.

Bruce turned to a pile of panniers and canvases and pulled out the dog-leashes. Up in his tree Muskwa was all atremble. Within a few yards of him he saw again the white-fanged horde that had chased Thor and had driven him into the rock-crevice. Of the men he was no longer greatly afraid. They had attempted him no harm, and he had ceased to quake and snarl when one of them passed near. But the dogs were monsters. They had given battle to Thor. They must have beaten him, for Thor had run away.

The tree to which Muskwa was fastened was not much more than a sapling, and he lay in the saddle of a crotch five feet from the ground when Metoosin led one of the dogs past him. The Airedale saw him and made a sudden spring that tore the leash from the Indian's hand. His leap carried him almost up to Muskwa. He was about to make another spring when Langdon rushed forward with a fierce cry, caught the dog by his collar, and with the end of the leash gave him a sound beating. Then he led him away.

This act puzzled Muskwa more than ever. The man had saved him. He had beaten the monster with the red mouth and the white fangs, and all of those monsters were now being taken away at the end of ropes.

When Langdon returned he stopped close to Muskwa's tree and talked to him. Muskwa allowed Langdon's hand to approach within six inches of him, and did not snap at it. Then a strange and sudden thrill shot through him. While his head was turned a little Langdon had boldly put his hand on his furry back. And in the touch there was not hurt! His mother had never put her paw on him as gently as that!

Half a dozen times in the next ten minutes Langdon touched him. For the first three or four times Muskwa bared his two rows of shining teeth, but he made no sound. Gradually he ceased even to bare his teeth.

Langdon left him then, and in a few moments he returned with a chunk of raw caribou meat. He held this close to Muskwa's nose. Muskwa could smell it, but he backed away from it, and at last Langdon placed it beside the basin at the foot of the tree and returned to where Bruce was smoking.

"Inside of two days he'll be eating out of my hand," he said.

It was not long before the camp became very quiet. Langdon, Bruce, and the Indian rolled themselves in their blankets and were soon asleep. The fire burned lower and lower. Soon there was only a single smouldering log. An owl hooted a little deeper in the timber. The drone of the valley and the mountains filled the peaceful night. The stars grew brighter. Far away Muskwa heard the rumbling of a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain.

There was nothing to fear now. Everything was still and asleep but himself, and very cautiously he began to back down the tree. He reached the foot of it, loosed his hold, and half fell into the basin of condensed milk, a part of it slopping up over his face. Involuntarily he shot out his tongue and licked his chops, and the sweet, sticky stuff that it gathered filled him with a sudden and entirely unexpected pleasure. For a quarter of an hour he licked himself. And then, as if the secret of this delightful ambrosia had just dawned upon him, his bright little eyes fixed themselves covetously upon the tin basin. He approached it with commendable strategy and caution, circling first on one side of it and then on the other, every muscle in his body prepared for a quick spring backward if it should make a jump for him. At last his nose touched the thick, luscious feast in the basin, and he did not raise his head again until the last drop of it was gone.

The condensed milk was the one biggest factor in the civilizing of Muskwa. It was the missing link that connected certain things in his lively little mind. He knew that the same hand that had touched him so gently had also placed this strange and wonderful feast at the foot of his tree, and that same hand had also offered him meat. He did not eat the meat, but he licked the interior of the basin until it shone like a mirror in the starlight.

In spite of the milk, he was still filled with a desire to escape, though his efforts were not as frantic and unreasoning as they had been. Experience had taught him that it was futile to jump and tug at the end of his leash, and now he fell to chewing at the rope. Had he gnawed in one place he would probably have won freedom before morning, but when his jaws became tired he rested, and when he resumed his work it was usually at a fresh place in the rope. By midnight his gums were sore, and he gave up his exertions entirely.

Humped close to the tree, ready to climb up it at the first sign of danger, the cub waited for morning. Not a wink did he sleep. Even though he was less afraid than he had been, he was terribly lonesome. He missed Thor, and he whimpered so softly that the men a few yards away could not have heard him had they been awake. If Pipoonaskoos had come into the camp then he would have welcomed him joyfully.

Morning came, and Metoosin was the first out of his blankets. He built a fire, and this roused Bruce and Langdon. The latter, after he had dressed himself, paid a visit to Muskwa, and when he found the basin licked clean he showed his pleasure by calling the others' attention to what had happened.

Muskwa had climbed to his crotch in the tree, and again he tolerated the stroking touch of Langdon's hand. Then Langdon brought forth another can from a cowhide pannier and opened it directly under Muskwa, so that he could see the creamy white fluid as it was turned into the basin. He held the basin up to Muskwa, so close that the milk touched the cub's nose, and for the life of him Muskwa could not keep his tongue in his mouth. Inside of five minutes he was eating from the basin in Langdon's hand! But when Bruce came up to watch the proceedings the cub bared all his teeth and snarled.

"Bears make better pets than dogs," affirmed Bruce a little later, when they were eating breakfast. "He'll be following you around like a puppy in a few days, Jimmy."

"I'm getting fond of the little cuss already," replied Langdon. "What was that you were telling me about Jameson's bears, Bruce?"

"Jameson lived up in the Kootenay country," said Bruce. "Reg'lar hermit, I guess you'd call him. Came out of the mountains only twice a year to get grub. He made pets of grizzlies. For years he had one as big as this fellow we're chasing. He got 'im when a cub, an 'when I saw him he weighed a thousand pounds an' followed Jameson wherever he went like a dog. Even went on his hunts with him, an 'they slept beside the same campfire. Jameson loved bears, an' he'd never kill one."

Langdon was silent. After a moment he said: "And I'm beginning to love them, Bruce. I don't know just why, but there's something about bears that makes you love them. I'm not going to shoot many more—perhaps none after we get this dog-killer we're after. I almost believe he will be my last bear." Suddenly he clenched his hands, and added angrily: "And to think there isn't a province in the Dominion or a state south of the Border that has a 'closed season' for bear! It's an outrage, Bruce. They're classed with vermin, and can be exterminated at all seasons. They can even be dug out of their dens with their young—and—so help me Heaven!—I've helped to dig them out! We're beasts, Bruce. Sometimes I almost think it's a crime for a man to carry a gun. And yet—I go on killing."

"It's in our blood," laughed Bruce, unmoved. "Did you ever know a man, Jimmy, that didn't like to see things die? Wouldn't every mother's soul of 'em go to a hanging if they had the chance? Won't they crowd like buzzards round a dead horse to get a look at a man crushed to a pulp under a rock or a locomotive engine? Why, Jimmie, if there weren't no law to be afraid of, we humans'd be killing one another for the fun of it! We would. It's born in us to want to kill."

"And we take it all out on brute creation," mused Langdon. "After all, we can't have much sympathy for ourselves if a generation or two of us are killed in war, can we? Mebby you're right, Bruce. Inasmuch as we can't kill our neighbours legally whenever we have the inclination, it's possible the Chief Arbiter of things sends us a war now and then to relieve us temporarily of our blood-thirstiness. Hello, what in thunder is the cub up to now?"

Muskwa had fallen the wrong way out of his crotch and was dangling like the victim at the end of a hangman's rope. Langdon ran to him, caught him boldly in his bare hands, lifted him up over the limb and placed him on the ground. Muskwa did not snap at him or even growl.

Bruce and Metoosin were away from camp all of that day, spying over the range to the westward, and Langdon was left to doctor a knee which he had battered against a rock the previous day. He spent most of his time in company with Muskwa. He opened a can of their griddle-cake syrup and by noon he had the cub following him about the tree and straining to reach the dish which he held temptingly just out of reach. Then he would sit down, and Muskwa would climb half over his lap to reach the syrup.

At his present age Muskwa's affection and confidence were easily won. A baby black bear is very much like a human baby: he likes milk, he loves sweet things, and he wants to cuddle up close to any living thing that is good to him. He is the most lovable creature on four legs—round and soft and fluffy, and so funny that he is sure to keep every one about him in good humour. More than once that day Langdon laughed until the tears came, and especially when Muskwa made determined efforts to climb up his leg to reach the dish of syrup.

As for Muskwa, he had gone syrup mad. He could not remember that his mother had ever given him anything like it, and Thor had produced nothing better than fish.

Late in the afternoon Langdon untied Muskwa's rope and led him for a stroll down toward the creek. He carried the syrup dish and every few yards he would pause and let the cub have a taste of its contents. After half an hour of this manoeuvring he dropped his end of the leash entirely, and walked campward. And Muskwa followed! It was a triumph, and in Langdon's veins there pulsed a pleasurable thrill which his life in the open had never brought to him before.

It was late when Metoosin returned, and he was quite surprised that Bruce had not shown up. Darkness came, and they built up the fire. They were finishing supper an hour later when Bruce came in, carrying something swung over his shoulders. He tossed it close to where Muskwa was hidden behind his tree.

"A skin like velvet, and some meat for the dogs," he said. "I shot it with my pistol."

He sat down and began eating. After a little Muskwa cautiously approached the carcass that lay doubled up three or four feet from him. He smelled of it, and a curious thrill shot through him. Then he whimpered softly as he muzzled the soft fur, still warm with life. And for a time after that he was very still.

For the thing that Bruce had brought into camp and flung at the foot of his tree was the dead body of little Pipoonaskoos!



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

That night the big loneliness returned to Muskwa. Bruce and Metoosin were so tired after their hard climb over the range that they went to bed early, and Langdon followed them, leaving Pipoonaskoos where Bruce had first thrown him.

Scarcely a move had Muskwa made after the discovery that had set his heart beating a little faster. He did not know what death was, or what it meant, and as Pipoonaskoos was so warm and soft he was sure that he would move after a little. He had no inclination to fight him now.

Again it grew very, very still, and the stars filled the sky, and the fire burned low. But Pipoonaskoos did not move. Gently at first, Muskwa began nosing him and pulling at his silken hair, and as he did this he whimpered softly, as if saying, "I don't want to fight you any more, Pipoonaskoos! Wake up, and let's be friends!"

But still Pipoonaskoos did not stir, and at last Muskwa gave up all hope of waking him. And still whimpering to his fat little enemy of the green meadow how sorry he was that he had chased him, he snuggled close up to Pipoonaskoos and in time went to sleep.

Langdon was first up in the morning, and when he came over to see how Muskwa had fared during the night he suddenly stopped, and for a full minute he stood without moving, and then a low, strange cry broke from his lips. For Muskwa and Pipoonaskoos were snuggled as closely as they could have snuggled had both been living, and in some way Muskwa had arranged it so that one of the dead cub's little paws was embracing him.

Quietly Langdon returned to where Bruce was sleeping, and in a minute or two Bruce returned with him, rubbing his eyes. And then he, too, stared, and the men looked at each other.

"Dog meat," breathed Langdon. "You brought it home for dog meat, Bruce!"

Bruce did not answer, Langdon said nothing more, and neither talked very much for a full hour after that. During that hour Metoosin came and dragged Pipoonaskoos away, and instead of being skinned and fed to the dogs he was put into a hole down in the creek-bottom and covered with sand and stones. That much, at least, Bruce and Langdon did for Pipoonaskoos.

This day Metoosin and Bruce again went over the range. The mountaineer had brought back with him bits of quartz in which were unmistakable signs of gold, and they returned with an outfit for panning.

Langdon continued his education of Muskwa. Several times he took the cub near the dogs, and when they snarled and strained at the ends of their leashes he whipped them, until with quick understanding they gripped the fact that Muskwa, although a bear, must not be harmed.

In the afternoon of this second day he freed the cub entirely from the rope, and he had no difficulty in recapturing it when he wanted to tie it up again. The third and fourth days Bruce and the Indian explored the valley west of the range and convinced themselves finally that the "colours" they found were only a part of the flood-drifts, and would not lead to fortune.

On this fourth night, which happened to be thick with clouds, and chilly, Langdon experimented by taking Muskwa to bed with him. He expected trouble. But Muskwa was as quiet as a kitten, and once he found a proper nest for himself he scarcely made a move until morning. A part of the night Langdon slept with one of his hands resting on the cub's soft, warm body.

According to Bruce it was now time to continue the hunt for Thor, but a change for the worse in Langdon's knee broke in upon their plans. It was impossible for Langdon to walk more than a quarter of a mile at a time, and the position he was compelled to take in the saddle caused him so much pain that to prosecute the hunt even on horseback was out of the question.

"A few more days won't hurt any," consoled Bruce. "If we give the old fellow a longer rest he may get a bit careless."

The three days that followed were not without profit and pleasure for Langdon. Muskwa was teaching him more than he had ever known about bears, and especially bear cubs, and he made notes voluminously.

The dogs were now confined to a clump of trees fully three hundred yards from the camp, and gradually the cub was given his freedom. He made no effort to run away, and he soon discovered that Bruce and Metoosin were also his friends. But Langdon was the only one he would follow.

On the morning of the eighth day after their pursuit of Thor, Bruce and Metoosin rode over into the eastward valley with the dogs. Metoosin was to have a day's start, and Bruce planned to return to camp that afternoon so that he and Langdon could begin their hunt up the valley the next day.

It was a glorious morning. A cool breeze came from the north and west, and about nine o'clock Langdon fastened Muskwa to his tree, saddled a horse, and rode down the valley. He had no intention of hunting. It was a joy merely to ride and breathe in the face of that wind and gaze upon the wonders of the mountains.

He travelled northward for three or four miles, until he came to a broad, low slope that broke through the range to the westward. A desire seized upon him to look over into the other valley, and as his knee was giving him no trouble he cut a zigzag course upward that in half an hour brought him almost to the top.

Here he came to a short, steep slide that compelled him to dismount and continue on foot. At the summit he found himself on a level sweep of meadow, shut in on each side of him by the bare rock walls of the split mountains, and a quarter of a mile ahead he could see where the meadow broke suddenly into the slope that shelved downward into the valley he was seeking.

Halfway over this quarter of a mile of meadow there was a dip into which he could not see, and as he came to the edge of this he flung himself suddenly upon his face and for a minute or two lay as motionless as a rock. Then he slowly raised his head.

A hundred yards from him, gathered about a small water-hole in the hollow, was a herd of goats. There were thirty or more, most of them Nannies with young kids. Langdon could make out only two Billies in the lot. For half an hour he lay still and watched them. Then one of the Nannies struck out with her two kids for the side of the mountain; another followed, and seeing that the whole band was about to move, Langdon rose quickly to his feet and ran as fast as he could toward them.

For a moment Nannies, Billies, and little kids were paralyzed by his sudden appearance. They faced half about and stood as if without the power of flight until he had covered half the distance between t hem. Then their wits seemed to return all at once, and they broke in a wild panic for the side of the nearest mountain. Their hoofs soon began to clatter on boulder and shale, and for another half-hour Langdon heard the hollow booming of the rocks loosened by their feet high up among the crags and peaks. At the end of that time they were infinitesimal white dots on the sky-line.

He went on, and a few minutes later looked down into the other valley. Southward this valley was shut out from his vision by a huge shoulder of rock. It was not very high, and he began to climb it. He had almost reached the top when his toe caught in a piece of slate, and in falling he brought his rifle down with tremendous force on a boulder.

He was not hurt, except for a slight twinge in his lame knee. But his gun was a wreck. The stock was shattered close to the breech and a twist of his hand broke it off entirely.

As he carried two extra rifles in his outfit the mishap did not disturb Langdon as much as it might otherwise have done, and he continued to climb over the rocks until he came to what appeared to be a broad, smooth ledge leading around the sandstone spur of the mountain. A hundred feet farther on he found that the ledge ended in a perpendicular wall of rock. From this point, however, he had a splendid view of the broad sweep of country between the two ranges to the south. He sat down, pulled out his pipe, and prepared to enjoy the magnificent panorama under him while he was getting his wind.

Through his glasses he could see for miles, and what he looked upon was an unhunted country. Scarcely half a mile away a band of caribou was filing slowly across the bottom toward the green slopes to the west. He caught the glint of many ptarmigan wings in the sunlight below. After a time, fully two miles away, he saw sheep grazing on a thinly verdured slide.

He wondered how many valleys there were like this in the vast reaches of the Canadian mountains that stretched three hundred miles from sea to prairie and a thousand miles north and south. Hundreds, even thousands, he told himself, and each wonderful valley a world complete within itself; a world filled with its own life, its own lakes and streams and forests, its own joys and its own tragedies.

Here in this valley into which he gazed was the same soft droning and the same warm sunshine that had filled all the other valleys; and yet here, also, was a different life. Other bears ranged the slopes that he could see dimly with his naked eyes far to the west and north. It was a new domain, filled with other promise and other mystery, and he forgot time and hunger as he sat lost in the enchantment of it.

It seemed to Langdon that these hundreds or thousands of valleys would never grow old for him; that he could wander on for all time, passing from one into another, and that each would possess its own charm, its own secrets to be solved, its own life to be learned. To him they were largely inscrutable; they were cryptic, as enigmatical as life itself, hiding their treasures as they droned through the centuries, giving birth to multitudes of the living, demanding in return other multitudes of the dead. As he looked off through the sunlit space he wondered what the story of this valley would be, and how many volumes it would fill, if the valley itself could tell it.

First of all, he knew, it would whisper of the creation of a world; it would tell of oceans torn and twisted and thrown aside—of those first strange eons of time when there was no night, but all was day; when weird and tremendous monsters stalked where he now saw the caribou drinking at the creek, and when huge winged creatures half bird and half beast swept the sky where he now saw an eagle soaring.

And then it would tell of The Change—of that terrific hour when the earth tilted on its axis, and night came, and a tropical world was turned into a frigid one, and new kinds of life were born to fill it.

It must have been long after that, thought Langdon, that the first bear came to replace the mammoth, the mastodon, and the monstrous beasts that had been their company. And that first bear was the forefather of the grizzly he and Bruce were setting forth to kill the next day!

So engrossed was Langdon in his thoughts that he did not hear a sound behind him. And then something roused him.

It was as if one of the monsters he had been picturing in his imagination had let out a great breath close to him. He turned slowly, and the next moment his heart seemed to stop its beating; his blood seemed to grow cold and lifeless in his veins.

Barring the ledge not more than fifteen feet from him, his great jaws agape, his head moving slowly from side to side as he regarded his trapped enemy, stood Thor, the King of the Mountains!

And in that space of a second or two Langdon's hands involuntarily gripped at his broken rifle, and he decided that he was doomed!



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A broken, choking breath—a stifled sound that was scarcely a cry—was all that came from Langdon's lips as he saw the monstrous grizzly looking at him. In the ten seconds that followed he lived hours.

His first thought was that he was powerless—utterly powerless. He could not even run, for the rock wall was behind him; he could not fling himself valleyward, for there was a sheer fall of a hundred feet on that side. He was face to face with death, a death as terrible as that which had overtaken the dogs.

And yet in these last moments Langdon did not lose himself in terror. He noted even the redness in the avenging grizzly's eyes. He saw the naked scat along his back where one of his bullets had plowed; he saw the bare spot where another of his bullets had torn its way through Thor's fore-shoulder. And he believed, as he observed these things, that Thor had deliberately trailed him, that the bear had followed him along the ledge and had cornered him here that he might repay in full measure what had been inflicted upon him.

Thor advanced—just one step; and then in that slow, graceful movement, reared himself to full height. Langdon, even then, thought that he was magnificent. On his part, the man did not move; he looked steadily up at Thor, and he had made up his mind what to do when the great beast lunged forward. He would fling himself over the edge. Down below there was one chance in a thousand for life. There might be a ledge or a projecting spur to catch him.

And Thor!

Suddenly—unexpectedly—he had come upon man! This was the creature that had hunted him, this was the creature that had hurt him—and it was so near that he could reach out with his paw and crush it! And how weak, and white, and shrinking it looked now! Where was its strange thunder? Where was its burning lightning? Why did it make no sound?

Even a dog would have done more than this creature, for the dog would have shown its fangs; it would have snarled, it would have fought. But this thing that was man did nothing. And a great, slow doubt swept through Thor's massive head. Was it really this shrinking, harmless, terrified thing that had hurt him? He smelled the man-smell. It was thick. And yet this time there came with it no hurt.

And then, slowly again, Thor came down to all fours. Steadily he looked at the man.

Had Langdon moved then he would have died. But Thor was not, like man, a murderer. For another half-minute he waited for a hurt, for some sign of menace. Neither came, and he was puzzled. His nose swept the ground, and Langdon saw the dust rise where the grizzly's hot breath stirred it. And after that, for another long and terrible thirty seconds, the bear and the man looked at each other.

Then very slowly—and doubtfully—Thor half turned. He growled. His lips drew partly back. Yet he saw no reason to fight, for that shrinking, white-faced pigmy crouching on the rock made no movement to offer him battle. He saw that he could not go on, for the ledge was blocked by the mountain wall. Had there been a trail the story might have been different for Langdon. As it was, Thor disappeared slowly in the direction from which he had come, his great head hung low, his long claws click, click, clicking like ivory castanets as he went.

Not until then did it seem to Langdon that he breathed again, and that his heart resumed its beating. He gave a great sobbing gasp. He rose to his feet, and his legs seemed weak. He waited—one minute, two, three; and then he stole cautiously to the twist in the ledge around which Thor had gone.

The rocks were clear, and he began to retrace his own steps toward the meadowy break, watching and listening, and still clutching the broken parts of his rifle. When he came to the edge of the plain he dropped down behind a huge boulder.

Three hundred yards away Thor was ambling slowly over the crest of the dip toward the eastward valley. Not until the bear reappeared on the farther ridge of the hollow, and then vanished again, did Langdon follow.

When he reached the slope on which he had hobbled his horse Thor was no longer in sight. The horse was where he had left it. Not until he was in the saddle did Langdon feel that he was completely safe. Then he laughed, a nervous, broken, joyous sort of laugh, and as he scanned the valley he filled his pipe with fresh tobacco.

"You great big god of a bear!" he whispered, and every fibre in him was trembling in a wonderful excitement as he found voice for the first time. "You—you monster with a heart bigger than man!" And then he added, under his breath, as if not conscious that he was speaking: "If I'd cornered you like that I'd have killed you! And you! You cornered me, and let me live!"

He rode toward camp, and as he went he knew that this day had given the final touch to the big change that had been working in him. He had met the King of the Mountains; he had stood face to face with death, and in the last moment the four-footed thing he had hunted and maimed had been merciful. He believed that Bruce would not understand; that Bruce could not understand; but unto himself the day and the hour had brought its meaning in a way that he would not forget so long as he lived, and he knew that hereafter and for all time he would not again hunt the life of Thor, or the lives of any of his kind.

Langdon reached the camp and prepared himself some dinner, and as he ate this, with Muskwa for company, he made new plans for the days and weeks that were to follow. He would send Bruce back to overtake Metoosin the next day, and they would no longer hunt the big grizzly. They would go on to the Skeena and possibly even up to the edge of the Yukon, and then swing eastward into the caribou country some time early in September, hitting back toward civilization on the prairie side of the Rockies. He would take Muskwa with them. Back in the land of men and cities they would be great friends. It did not occur to him just then what this would mean for Muskwa.

It was two o'clock, and he was still dreaming of new and unknown trails into the North when a sound came to rouse and disturb him. For a few minutes he paid no attention to it, for it seemed to be only a part of the droning murmur of the valley. But slowly and steadily it rose above this, and at last he got up from where he was lying with his back to a tree and walked out from the timber, where he could hear more plainly.

Muskwa followed him, and when Langdon stopped the tan-faced cub also stopped. His little ears shot out inquisitively. He turned his head to the north. From that direction the sound was coming.

In another moment Langdon had recognized it, and yet even then he told himself that his ears must be playing him false. It could not be the barking of dogs! By this time Bruce and Metoosin were far to the south with the pack; at least Metoosin should be, and Bruce was on his return to the camp! Quickly the sound grew more distinct, and at last he knew that he could not be mistaken. The dogs were coming up the valley. Something had turned Bruce and Metoosin northward instead of into the south. And the pack was giving tongue—that fierce, heated baying which told him they were again on the fresh spoor of game. A sudden thrill shot through him. There could be but one living thing in the length and breadth of the valley that Bruce would set the dogs after, and that was the big grizzly!

For a few moments longer Langdon stood and listened. Then he hurried back to camp, tied Muskwa to his tree, armed himself with another rifle, and resaddled his horse. Five minutes later he was riding swiftly in the direction of the range where a short time before Thor had given him his life.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Thor heard the dogs when they were a mile away. There were two reasons why he was even less in a mood to run from them now than a few days before. Of the dogs alone he had no more fear than if they had been so many badgers, or so many whistlers piping at him from the rocks. He had found them all mouth and little fang, and easy to kill. It was what followed close after them that disturbed him. But to-day he had stood face to face with the thing that had brought the strange scent into his valleys, and it had not offered to hurt him, and he had refused to kill it. Besides, he was again seeking Iskwao, the she-bear, and man is not the only animal that will risk his life for love.

After killing his last dog at dusk of that fatal day when they had pursued him over the mountain Thor had done just what Bruce thought that he would do, and instead of continuing southward had made a wider detour toward the north, and the third night after the fight and the loss of Muskwa he found Iskwao again. In the twilight of that same evening Pipoonaskoos had died, and Thor had heard the sharp cracking of Bruce's automatic. All that night and the next day and the night that followed he spent with Iskwao, and then he left her once more. A third time he was seeking her when he found Langdon in the trap on the ledge, and he had not yet got wind of her when he first heard the baying of the dogs on his trail.

He was travelling southward, which brought him nearer the hunters' camp. He was keeping to the high slopes where there were little dips and meadows, broken by patches of shale, deep coulees, and occasionally wild upheavals of rock. He was keeping the wind straight ahead so that he would not fail to catch the smell of Iskwao when he came near her, and with the baying of the dogs he caught no scent of the pursuing beasts, or of the two men who were riding behind them.

At another time he would have played his favourite trick of detouring so that the danger would be ahead of him, with the wind in his favour. Caution had now become secondary to his desire to find his mate. The dogs were less than half a mile away when he stopped suddenly, sniffed the air for a moment, and then went on swiftly until he was halted by a narrow ravine.

Up that ravine Iskwao was coming from a dip lower down the mountain, and she was running. The yelping of the pack was fierce and close when Thor scrambled down in time to meet her as she rushed upward. Iskwao paused for a single moment, smelled noses with Thor, and then went on, her ears laid back flat and sullen and her throat filled with growling menace.

Thor followed her, and he also growled. He knew that his mate was fleeing from the dogs, and again that deadly and slowly increasing wrath swept through him as he climbed after her higher up the mountain.

In such an hour as this Thor was at his worst. He was a fighter when pursued as the dogs had pursued him a week before—but he was a demon, terrible and without mercy, when danger threatened his mate.

He fell farther and farther behind Iskwao, and twice lie turned, his fangs gleaming under drawn lips, and his defiance rolling back upon his enemies in low thunder.

When he came up out of the coulee he was in the shadow of the peak, and Iskwao had already disappeared in her skyward scramble. Where she had gone was a wild chaos of rock-slide and the piled-up debris of fallen and shattered masses of sandstone crag. The sky-line was not more than three hundred yards above him. He looked up. Iskwao was among the rocks, and here was the place to fight. The dogs were close upon him now. They were coming up the last stretch of the coulee, baying loudly. Thor turned about, and waited for them.

Half a mile to the south, looking through his glasses, Langdon saw Thor, and at almost the same instant the dogs appeared over the edge of the coulee. He had ridden halfway up the mountain; from that point he had climbed higher, and was following a well-beaten sheep trail at about the same altitude as Thor. From where he stood the valley lay under his glasses for miles. He did not have far to look to discover Bruce and the Indian. They were dismounting at the foot of the coulee, and as he gazed they ran quickly into it and disappeared.

Again Langdon swung back to Thor. The dogs were holding him now, and he knew there was no chance of the grizzly killing them in that open space. Then he saw movement among the rocks higher up, and a low cry of understanding broke from his lips as he made out Iskwao climbing steadily toward the ragged peak. He knew that this second bear was a female. The big grizzly—her mate—had stopped to fight. And there was no hope for him if the dogs succeeded in holding him for a matter of ten or fifteen minutes. Bruce and Metoosin would appear in that time over the rim of the coulee at a range of less than a hundred yards!

Langdon thrust his binoculars in their case and started at a run along the sheep trail. For two hundred yards his progress was easy, and then the patch broke into a thousand individual tracks on a slope of soft and slippery shale, and it took him five minutes to make the next fifty yards.

The trail hardened again. He ran on pantingly, and for another five minutes the shoulder of a ridge hid Thor and the dogs from him. When he came over that ridge and ran fifty yards, down the farther side of it, he stopped short. Further progress was barred by a steep ravine. He was five hundred yards from where Thor stood with his back to the rocks and his huge head to the pack.

Even as he looked, struggling to get breath enough to shout, Langdon expected to see Bruce and Metoosin appear out of the coulee. It flashed upon him then that even if he could make them hear it would be impossible for them to understand him. Bruce would not guess that he wanted to spare the beast they had been hunting for almost two weeks.

Thor had rushed the dogs a full twenty yards toward the coulee when Langdon dropped quickly behind a rock. There was only one way of saving him now, if he was not too late. The pack had retreated a few yards down the slope, and he aimed at the pack. One thought only filled his brain—he must sacrifice his dogs or let Thor die. And that day Thor had given him his life!

There was no hesitation as he pressed the trigger. It was a long shot, and the first bullet threw up a cloud of dust fifty feet short of the Airedales. He fired again, and missed. The third time his rifle cracked there answered it a sharp yelp of pain which Laagdon himself did not hear. One of the dogs rolled over and over down the slope.

The reports of the shots alone had not stirred Thor, but now when he saw one of his enemies crumple up and go rolling down the mountain he turned slowly toward the safety of the rocks. A fourth and then a fifth shot followed, and at the fifth the yelping dogs dropped back toward the coulee, one of them limping with a shattered fore-foot.

Langdon sprang upon the boulder over which he had rested his gun, and his eyes caught the sky-line. Iskwao had just reached the top. She paused for a moment and looked down. Then she disappeared.

Thor was now hidden among the boulders and broken masses of sandstone, following her trail. Within two minutes after the grizzly disappeared Bruce and Metoosin scrambled up over the edge of the coulee. From where they stood even the sky-line was within fairly good shooting distance, and Langdon suddenly began shouting excitedly, waving his arms, and pointing downward.

Bruce and Metoosin were caught by his ruse, in spite of the fact that the dogs were again giving fierce tongue close to the rocks among which Thor had gone. They believed that from where he stood Langdon could see the progress of the bear, and that it was running toward the valley. Not until they were another hundred yards down the slope did they stop and look back at Langdon to get further directions. From his rock Langdon was pointing to the sky-line.

Thor was just going over. He paused for a moment, as Iskwao had stopped, and took one last look at man.

And Langdon, as he saw the last of him, waved his hat and shouted, "Good luck to you, old man—good luck!"



CHAPTER NINETEEN

That night Langdon and Bruce made their new plans, while Metoosin sat aloof, smoking in stolid silence, and gazing now and then at Langdon as if he could not yet bring himself to the point of believing what had happened that afternoon. Thereafter through many moons Metoosin would never forget to relate to his children and his grandchildren and his friends of the tepee tribes how he had once hunted with a white man who had shot his own dogs to save the life of a grizzly bear. Langdon was no longer the same old Langdon to him, and after this hunt Metoosin knew that he would never hunt with him again. For Langdon was keskwao now. Something had gone wrong in his head. The Great Spirit had taken away his heart and had given it to a grizzly bear, and over his pipe Metoosin watched him cautiously. This suspicion was confirmed when he saw Bruce and Langdon making a cage out of a cowhide pannier and realized that the cub was to accompany them on their long journey. There was no doubt in his mind now. Langdon was "queer," and to an Indian that sort of queerness boded no good to man.

The next morning at sunrise the outfit was ready for its long trail into the northland. Bruce and Langdon led the way up the slope and over the divide into the valley where they had first encountered Thor, the train filing picturesquely behind them, with Metoosin bringing up the rear. In his cowhide pannier rode Muskwa.

Langdon was satisfied and happy.

"It was the best hunt of my life," he said to Bruce. "I'll never be sorry we let him live."

"You're the doctor," said Bruce rather irreverently. "If I had my way about it his hide would be back there on Dishpan. Almost any tourist down on the line of rail would jump for it at a hundred dollars."

"He's worth several thousand to me alive," replied Langdon, with which enigmatic retort he dropped behind to see how Muskwa was riding.

The cub was rolling and pitching about in his pannier like a raw amateur in a howdab on an elephant's back, and after contemplating him for a few moments Langdon caught up with Bruce again.

Half a dozen times during the next two or three hours he visited Muskwa, and each time that he returned to Bruce he was quieter, as if debating something with himself.

It was nine o'clock when they came to what was undoubtedly the end of Thor's valley. A mountain rose up squarely in the face of it, and the stream they were following swung sharply to the westward into a narrow canyon. On the east rose a green and undulating slope up which the horses could easily travel, and which would take the outfit into a new valley in the direction of the Driftwood. This course Bruce decided to pursue.

Halfway up the slope they stopped to give the horses a breathing spell. In his cowhide prison Muskwa whimpered pleadingly. Langdon heard, but he seemed to pay no attention. He was looking steadily back into the valley. It was glorious in the morning sun. He could see the peaks under which lay the cool, dark lake in which Thor had fished; for miles the slopes were like green velvet and there came to him as he looked the last droning music of Thor's world. It struck him in a curious way as a sort of anthem, a hymnal rejoicing that he was going, and that he was leaving things as they were before he came. And yet, was he leaving things as they had been? Did his ears not catch in that music of the mountains something of sadness, of grief, of plaintive prayer?

And again, close to him, Muskwa whimpered softly.

Then Langdon turned to Bruce.

"It's settled," he said, and his words had a decisive ring in them. "I've been trying to make up my mind all the morning, and it's made up now. You and Metoosin go on when the horses get their wind. I'm going to ride down there a mile or so and free the cub where he'll find his way back home!"

He did not wait for arguments or remarks, and Bruce made none. He took Muskwa in his arms and rode back into the south.

A mile up the valley Langdon came to a wide, open meadow dotted with clumps of spruce and willows and sweet with the perfume of flowers. Here he dismounted, and for ten minutes sat on the ground with Muskwa. From his pocket he drew forth a small paper bag and fed the cub its last sugar. A thick lump grew in his throat as Muskwa's soft little nose muzzled the palm of his hand, and when at last he jumped up and sprang into his saddle there was a mist in his eyes. He tried to laugh. Perhaps he was weak. But he loved Muskwa, and he knew that he was leaving more than a human friend in this mountain valley.

"Good-bye, old fellow," he said, and his voice was choking. "Good-bye, little Spitfire! Mebby some day I'll come back and see you, and you'll be a big, fierce bear—but I won't shoot—never—never—"

He rode fast into the north. Three hundred yards away he turned his head and looked back. Muskwa was following, but losing ground. Langdon waved his hand.

"Good-bye!" he called through the lump in his throat. "Good-bye!"

Half an hour later he looked down from the top of the slope through his glasses. He saw Muskwa, a black dot. The cub had stopped, and was waiting confidently for him to return.

And trying to laugh again, but failing dismally, Langdon rode over the divide and out of Muskwa's life.



CHAPTER TWENTY

For a good half-mile Muskwa followed over the trail of Langdon. He ran at first; then he walked; finally he stopped entirely and sat down like a dog, facing the distant slope. Had Langdon been afoot he would not have halted until he was tired. But the cub had not liked his pannier prison. He had been tremendously jostled and bounced about, and twice the horse that carried him had shaken himself, and those shakings had been like earthquakes to Muskwa. He knew that the cage as well as Langdon was ahead of him. He sat for a time and whimpered wistfully, but he went no farther. He was sure that the friend he had grown to love would return after a little. He always came back. He had never failed him. So he began to hunt about for a spring beauty or a dog-tooth violet, and for some time he was careful not to stray very far away from where the outfit had passed.

All that day the cub remained in the flower-strewn meadows under the slope; it was very pleasant in the sunshine, and he found more than one patch of the bulbous roots he liked. He dug, and he filled himself, and he took a nap in the afternoon; but when the sun began to go down and the heavy shadows of the mountain darkened the valley he began to grow afraid.

He was still a very small baby of a cub, and only that one dreadful night after his mother had died had he spent entirely alone. Thor had replaced mother, and Langdon had taken the place of Thor, so that until now he had never felt the loneliness and emptiness of darkness. He crawled under a clump of thorn close to the trail, and continued to wait, and listen, and sniff expectantly. The stars came out clear and brilliant, but to-night their lure was not strong enough to call him forth. Not until dawn did he steal out cautiously from his shelter of thorn.

The sun gave him courage and confidence again and he began wandering back through the valley, the scent of the horse-trail growing fainter and fainter until at last it disappeared entirely. That day Muskwa ate some grass and a few dog-tooth violet roots, and when the second night came he was abreast of the slope over which the outfit had come from the valley in which were Thor and Iskwao. He was tired and hungry, and he was utterly lost.

That night he slept in the end of a hollow log. The next day he went on, and for many days and many nights after that he was alone in the big valley. He passed close to the pool where Thor and he had met the old bear, and he nosed hungrily among the fishbones; he skirted the edge of the dark, deep lake; he saw the shadowy things fluttering in the gloom of the forest again; he passed over the beaver dam, and he slept for two nights close to the log-jam from which he had watched Thor throw out their first fish. He was almost forgetting Langdon now, and was thinking more and more about Thor and his mother. He wanted them. He wanted them more than he had ever wanted the companionship of man, for Muskwa was fast becoming a creature of the wild again.

It was the beginning of August before the cub came to the break in the valley and climbed up the slope where Thor had first heard the thunder and had first felt the sting of the white men's guns. In these two weeks Muskwa had grown rapidly, in spite of the fact that he often went to bed on an empty stomach; and he was no longer afraid of the dark. Through the deep, sunless canyon above the clay wallow he went, and as there was only one way out he came at last to the summit of the break over which Thor had gone, and over which Langdon and Bruce had followed in close pursuit. And the other valley—his home—lay under Muskwa.

Of course he did not recognize it. He saw and smelled in it nothing that was familiar. But it was such a beautiful valley, and so abundantly filled with plenty and sunshine, that he did not hurry through it. He found whole gardens of spring beauties and dog-tooth violets. And on the third day he made his first real kill. He almost stumbled over a baby whistler no larger than a red squirrel, and before the little creature could escape he was upon it. It made him a splendid feast.

It was fully a week before he passed along the creek-bottom close under the slope where his mother had died. If he had been travelling along the crest of the slope he would have found her bones, picked clean by the wild things. It was another week before he came to the little meadow where Thor had killed the bull caribou and the big black bear.

And now Muskwa knew that he was home!

For two days he did not travel two hundred yards from the scene of feast and battle, and night and day he was on the watch for Thor. Then he had to seek farther for food, but each afternoon when the mountains began to throw out long shadows he would return to the clump of trees in which they had made the cache that the black bear robber had despoiled.

One day he went farther than usual in his quest for roots. He was a good half-mile from the place he had made home, and he was sniffing about the end of a rock when a great shadow fell suddenly upon him. He looked up, and for a full half-minute he stood transfixed, his heart pounding and jumping as it had never pounded and jumped before in his life. Within five feet of him stood Thor! The big grizzly was as motionless as he, looking at him steadily. And then Muskwa gave a puppy-like whine of joy and ran forward. Thor lowered his huge head, and for another half-minute they stood without moving, with Thor's nose buried in the hair on Muskwa's back. After that Thor went up the slope as if the cub had never been lost at all, and Muskwa followed him happily.

Many days of wonderful travel and of glorious feasting came after this, and Thor led Muskwa into a thousand new places in the two valleys and the mountains between. There were great fishing days, and there was another caribou killed over the range, and Muskwa grew fatter and fatter and heavier and heavier until by the middle of September he was as large as a good-sized dog.

Then came the berries, and Thor knew where they all grew low down in the valleys—first the wild red raspberries, then the soap berries, and after those the delicious black currants which grew in the cool depths of the forests and were almost as large as cherries and nearly as sweet as the sugar which Langdon had fed Muskwa. Muskwa liked the black currants best of all. They grew in thick, rich clusters; there were no leaves on the bushes that were loaded with them, and he could pick and eat a quart in five minutes.

But at last the time came when there were no berries. This was in October. The nights were very cold, and for whole days at a time the sun would not shine, and the skies were dark and heavy with clouds. On the peaks the snow was growing deeper and deeper, and it never thawed now up near the sky-line. Snow fell in the valley, too—at first just enough to make a white carpet that chilled Muskwa's feet, but it quickly disappeared. Raw winds began to come out of the north, and in place of the droning music of the valley in summertime there were now shrill wailings and screechings at night, and the trees made mournful sounds.

To Muskwa the whole world seemed changing. He wondered in these chill and dark days why Thor kept to the windswept slopes when he might have found shelter in the bottoms. And Thor, if he explained to him at all, told him that winter was very near, and that these slopes were their last feeding grounds. In the valleys the berries were gone; grass and roots alone were no longer nourishing enough for their bodies; they could no longer waste time in seeking ants and grubs; the fish were in deep water. It was the season when the caribou were keen-scented as foxes and swift as the wind. Only along the slopes lay the dinners they were sure of—famine-day dinners of whistlers and gophers. Thor dug for them now, and in this digging Muskwa helped as much as he could. More than once they turned out wagonloads of earth to get at the cozy winter sleeping quarters of a whistler family, and sometimes they dug for hours to capture three or four little gophers no larger than red squirrels, but lusciously fat.

Thus they lived through the last days of October into November. And now the snow and the cold winds and the fierce blizzards from the north came in earnest, and the ponds and lakes began to freeze over. Still Thor hung to the slopes, and Muskwa shivered with the cold at night and wondered if the sun was never going to shine again.

One day about the middle of November Thor stopped in the very act of digging out a family of whistlers, went straight down into the valley, and struck southward in a most businesslike way. They were ten miles from the clay-wallow canyon when they started, but so lively was the pace set by the big grizzly that they reached it before dark that same afternoon.

For two days after this Thor seemed to have no object in life at all. There was nothing in the canyon to eat, and he wandered about among the rocks, smelling and listening and deporting himself generally in a fashion that was altogether mystifying to Muskwa. In the afternoon of the second day Thor stopped in a dump of jackpines under which the ground was strewn with fallen needles. He began to eat these needles. They did not look good to Muskwa, but something told the cub that he should do as Thor was doing; so he licked them up and swallowed them, not knowing that it was nature's last preparation for his long sleep.

It was four o'clock when they came to the mouth of the deep cavern in which Thor was born, and here again Thor paused, sniffing up and down the wind, and waiting for nothing in particular.

It was growing dark. A wailing storm hung over the canyon. Biting winds swept down from the peaks, and the sky was black and full of snow.

For a minute the grizzly stood with his head and shoulders in the cavern door. Then he entered. Muskwa followed. Deep back they went through a pitch-black gloom, and it grew warmer and warmer, and the wailing of the wind died away until it was only a murmur.

It took Thor at least half an hour to arrange himself just as he wanted to sleep. Then Muskwa curled up beside him. The cub was very warm and very comfortable.

That night the storm raged, and the snow fell deep. It came up the canyon in clouds, and it drifted down through the canyon roof in still thicker clouds, and all the world was buried deep. When morning came there was no cavern door, there were no rocks, and no black and purple of tree and shrub. All was white and still, and there was no longer the droning music in the valley.

Deep back in the cavern Muskwa moved restlessly. Thor heaved a deep sigh. After that long and soundly they slept. And it may be that they dreamed.



THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN

"You are going up from among a people who have many gods to a people who have but one," said Ransom quietly, looking across at the other. "It would be better for you if you turned back. I've spent four years in the Government service, mostly north of Fifty-three, and I know what I'm talking about. I've read all of your books carefully, and I tell you now—go back. If you strike up into the Bay country, as you say you're going to, every dream of socialism you ever had will be shattered, and you will laugh at your own books. Go back!"

Roscoe's fine young face lighted up with a laugh at his old college chum's seriousness.

"You're mistaken, Ranny," he said. "I'm not a socialist but a sociologist. There's a distinction, isn't there? I don't believe that my series of books will be at all complete without a study of socialism as it exists in its crudest form, and as it must exist up here in the North. My material for this last book will show what tremendous progress the civilization of two centuries on this continent has made over the lowest and wildest forms of human brotherhood. That's my idea, Ranny. I'm an optimist. I believe that every invention we make, that every step we take in the advancement of science, of mental and physical uplift, brings us just so much nearer to the Nirvana of universal love. This trip of mine among your wild people of the North will give me a good picture of what civilization has gained."

"What it has lost, you will say a little later," replied Ransom. "See here, Roscoe—has it ever occurred to you that brotherly love, as you call it—the real thing—ended when civilization began? Has it ever occurred to you that somewhere away back in the darkest ages your socialistic Nirvana may have existed, and that you sociologists might still find traces of it, if you would? Has the idea ever come to you that there has been a time when the world has been better than it is to-day, and better than it ever will be again? Will you, as a student of life, concede that the savage can teach you a lesson? Will any of your kind? No, for you are self-appointed civilizers, working according to a certain code."

Ransom's weather-tanned face had taken on a deeper flush, and there was a questioning look in Roscoe's eyes, as though he were striving to look through a veil of clouds to a picture just beyond his vision.

"If most of us believed as you believe," he said at last, "civilization would end. We would progress no farther."

"And this civilization," said Ransom, "can there not be too much of it? Was it any worse for God's first men to set forth and slay twenty thousand other men, than it is for civilization's sweat-shops to slay twenty thousand men, women, and children each year in the making of your cigars and the things you wear? Civilization means the uplifting of man, doesn't it, and when it ceases to uplift when it kills, robs, and disrupts in the name of progress; when the dollar-fight for commercial and industrial supremacy kills more people in a day than God's first people killed in a year; when not only people, but nations, are sparring for throat-grips, can we call it civilization any longer? This talk may all be bally rot, Roscoe. Ninety-nine out of every hundred people will think that it is. There are very few these days who stoop to the thought that the human soul is the greatest of all creations, and that it is the development of the soul, and not of engines and flying machines and warships, that measures progress as God meant progress to be. I am saying this because I want you to be honest when you go up among the savages, as you call them. You may find up there the last chapter in life, as it was largely intended that life should be in the beginning of things. And I want you to understand it, because in your books you possess a power which should be well directed. When I received your last letter I hunted up the best man I knew as guide and companion for you—old Rameses, down at the Mission. He is called Rameses because he looks like the old boy himself. You said you wanted to learn Cree, and he'll teach it to you. He will teach you a lot of other things, and when you look at him, especially at night beside the campfire, you will find something in his face which will recall what I have said, and make you think of the first people."

Roscoe, at thirty-two, had not lost his boy's enthusiasm in life, in spite of the fact that he had studied too deeply, and had seen too much, and had begun fighting for existence while still in bare feet. From the beginning it seemed as though some grim monster of fate had hovered about him, making his path as rough as it could, and striking him down whenever the opportunity came. His own tremendous energy and ambition had carried him to the top.

He worked himself through college, and became a success in his way. But at no time could he remember real happiness. It had almost come to him, he thought, a year before—in the form of a girl; but this promise had passed like the others because, of a sudden, he found that she had shattered the most precious of all his ideals. So he picked himself up, and, encouraged by his virile optimism, began looking forward again. Bad luck had so worked its hand in the moulding of him that he had come to live chiefly in anticipation, and though this bad luck had played battledore and shuttlecock with him, the things which he anticipated were pleasant and beautiful. He believed that the human race was growing better, and that each year was bringing his ideals just so much nearer to realization. More than once he had told himself that he was living two or three centuries too soon. Ransom, his old college chum, had been the first to suggest that he was living some thousands of years too late.

He thought of this a great deal during the first pleasant weeks of the autumn, which he and old Rameses spent up in the Lac la Ronge and Reindeer Lake country. During this time he devoted himself almost entirely to the study of Cree under Rameses' tutelage, and the more he learned of it the more he saw the truth of what Ransom had told him once upon a time, that the Cree language was the most beautiful in the world. At the upper end of the Reindeer they spent a week at a Cree village, and one day Roscoe stood unobserved and listened to the conversation of three young Cree women, who were weaving reed baskets. They talked so quickly that he could understand but little of what they said, but their low, soft voices were like music. He had learned French in Paris, and had heard Italian in Rome, but never in his life had he heard words or voices so beautiful as those which fell from the red, full lips of the Cree girls. He thought more seriously than ever of what Ransom had said about the first people, and the beginning of things.

Late in October they swung westward through the Sissipuk and Burntwood water ways to Nelson House, and at this point Rameses returned homeward. Roscoe struck north, with two new guides, and on the eighteenth of November the first of the two great storms which made the year of 1907 one of the most tragic in the history of the far Northern people overtook them on Split Lake, thirty miles from a Hudson's Bay post. It was two weeks later before they reached this post, and here Roscoe was given the first of several warnings.

"This has been the worst autumn we've had for years," said the factor to him. "The Indians haven't caught half enough fish to carry them through, and this storm has ruined the early-snow hunting in which they usually get enough meat to last them until spring. We're stinting ourselves on our own supplies now, and farther north the Company will soon be on famine rations if the cold doesn't let up—and it won't. They won't want an extra mouth up there, so you'd better turn back. It's going to be a starvation winter."

But Roscoe, knowing as little as the rest of man-kind of the terrible famines of the northern people, which keep an area one-half as large as the whole of Europe down to a population of thirty thousand, went on. A famine, he argued, would give him greater opportunity for study.

Two weeks later he was at York Factory, and from there he continued to Fort Churchill, farther up on Hudson's Bay. By the time he reached this point, early in January, the famine of those few terrible weeks during which more than fifteen hundred people died of starvation had begun. From the Barren Lands to the edge of the southern watershed the earth lay under from four to six feet of snow, and from the middle of December until late in February the temperature did not rise above thirty degrees below zero, and remained for the most of the time between fifty and sixty. From all points in the wilderness reports of starvation came to the Company's posts. Traplines could not be followed because of the intense cold. Moose, caribou, and even the furred animals had buried themselves under the snow. Indians and halfbreeds dragged themselves into the posts. Twice Roscoe saw mothers who brought dead babies in their arms. One day a white trapper came in with his dogs and sledge, and on the sledge, wrapped in a bear skin, was his wife, who had died fifty miles back in the forest.

Late in January there came a sudden rise in the temperature, and Roscoe prepared to take advantage of the change to strike south and westward again, toward Nelson House. Dogs could not be had for love or money, so on the first of February he set out on snowshoes with an Indian guide and two weeks' supply of provisions. The fifth night, in the wild, Barren country west of the Etawney, his Indian failed to keep up the fire, and when Roscoe investigated he found him half dead with a strange sickness. Roscoe thought of smallpox, the terrible plague that usually follows northern famine, and a shiver ran through him. He made the Indian's balsam shelter snow and wind proof, cut wood, and waited. The temperature fell again, and the cold became intense. Each day the provisions grew less, and at last the time came when Roscoe knew that he was standing face to face with the Great Peril. He went farther and farther from camp in his search for game. But there was no life. Even the brush sparrows and snow hawks were gone. Once the thought came to him that he might take what food was left, and accept the little chance that remained of saving himself. But the idea never got further than a first thought. He kept to his post, and each day spent half an hour in writing. On the twelfth day the Indian died. It was a terrible day, the beginning of the second great storm of that winter. There was food for another twenty-four hours, and Roscoe packed it, together with his blankets and a little tinware. He wondered if the Indian had died of a contagious disease. Anyway, he made up his mind to put out the warning for others if they came that way, and over the dead Indian's balsam shelter he planted a sapling, and at the end of the sapling he fastened a strip of red cotton cloth—the plague-signal of the North.

Then he struck out through the deep snows and the twisting storm, knowing that there was no more than one chance in a thousand ahead of him, and that his one chance was to keep the wind at his back.

* * * * *

This was the beginning of the wonderful experience which Roscoe Cummins afterward described in his book "The First People and the Valley of Silent Men." He prepared another manuscript which for personal reasons was never published, the story of a dark-eyed girl of the First People—but this is to come. It has to do with the last tragic weeks of this winter of 1907, in which it was a toss-up between all things of flesh and blood in the Northland to see which would win—life or death—and in which a pair of dark eyes and a voice from the First People turned a sociologist into a possible Member of Parliament.

* * * * *

At the end of his first day's struggle Roscoe built himself a camp in a bit of scrub timber, which was not much more than brush. If he had been an older hand he would have observed that this bit of timber, and every tree and bush that he had passed since noon, was stripped and dead on the side that faced the north. It was a sign of the Great Barrens, and of the fierce storms that swept over them, destroying even the life of the trees. He cooked and ate his last food the following day, and went on. The small timber turned to scrub, and the scrub, in time, to vast snow wastes over which the storm swept mercilessly. All this day he looked for game, for a flutter of bird life; he chewed bark, and in the afternoon got a mouthful of Fox-bite, which made his throat swell until he could scarcely breathe. At night he made tea, but had nothing to eat. His hunger was acute and painful. It was torture the next day—the third—for the process of starvation is a rapid one in this country where only the fittest survive on four meals a day. He camped, built a small bush fire at night, and slept. He almost failed to rouse himself on the morning that followed, and when he staggered to his feet and felt the cutting sting of the storm still in his face, and heard the swishing wail of it over the Barren, he knew that at last the moment had come when he was standing face to face with the Almighty.

For some strange reason he was not frightened at the situation. He found that even over the level spaces he could scarcely drag his snow shoes, but this had ceased to alarm him as he had been alarmed at first. He went on, hour after hour, weaker and weaker. Within himself there was still life which reasoned that if death were to come it could not come in a better way. It at least promised to be painless—even pleasant. The sharp, stinging pains of hunger, like little electrical knives piercing him, were gone; he no longer experienced a sensation of intense cold; he almost felt that he could lie down in the drifted snow and sleep peacefully. He knew what it would be—a sleep without end—with the arctic foxes to pick his bones, and so he resisted the temptation and forced himself onward. The storm still swept straight west from Hudson's Bay, bringing with it endless volleys of snow, round and hard as fine shot; snow that had at first seemed to pierce his flesh, and which swished past his feet, as if trying to trip him, and tossed itself in windrows and mountains in his path. If he could only find timber—shelter! That was what he worked for now. When he had last looked at his watch it was nine o'clock in the morning; now it was late in the afternoon. It might as well have been night. The storm had long since half blinded him. He could not see a dozen paces ahead. But the little life in him still reasoned bravely. It was a heroic spark of life, a fighting spark, and hard to put out. It told him that when he came to shelter be would at least feel it, and that he must fight until the last. And all this time, for ages and ages it seemed to him, he kept mumbling over and over again Ransom's words:

"Go back—Go back—Go back—-"

They rang in his brain. He tried to keep step with their monotone. The storm could not drown them. They were meaningless words to him now, but they kept him company. Also, his rifle was meaningless, but he clung to it. The pack on his back held no significance and no weight for him. He might have travelled a mile or ten miles an hour and he would not have sensed the difference. Most men would have buried themselves in the snow, and died in comfort, dreaming the pleasant dreams which come as a sort of recompense to the unfortunate who die of starvation and cold. But the fighting spark commanded Roscoe to die upon his feet, if he died at all. It was this spark which brought him at last to a bit of timber thick enough to give him shelter from wind and snow. It burned a little more warmly then. It flared up, and gave him new vision. And, for the first time, he realized that it must be night. For a light was burning ahead of him, and all else was gloom. His first thought was that it was a campfire, miles and miles away. Then it drew nearer—until he knew that it was a light in a cabin window. He dragged himself toward it, and when he came to the door he tried to shout. But no sound fell from his swollen lips. It seemed an hour before he could twist his feet out of his snowshoes. Then he groped for a latch, pressed against the door, and plunged in.

What he saw was like a picture suddenly revealed for an instant by a flashlight. In the cabin there were four men. Two sat at a table, directly in front of him. One held a dice box poised in the air, and had turned a rough, bearded face toward him. The other was a younger man, and in this moment of lapsing consciousness it struck Roscoe as strange that he should be clutching a can of beans between his hands. A third man stared from where he had been looking down upon the dice-play of the other two. As Roscoe came in he was in the act of lowering a half-filled bottle from his lips. The fourth man sat on the edge of a bunk, with a face so white and thin that he might have been taken for a corpse if it had not been for a dark glare in his sunken eyes. Roscoe smelled the odor of whisky; he smelled food. He saw no sign of welcome in the faces turned toward him, but he advanced upon them, mumbling incoherently. And then the spark—the fighting spark in him—gave out, and he crumpled down on the floor. He heard a voice, which came to him—as if from a great distance, and which said, "Who the h—l is this?" And then, after what seemed to be a long time, he heard another voice say, "Pitch him back into the snow."

After that he lost consciousness.

* * * * *

A long time before he awoke he knew that he was not in the snow, and that hot stuff was running down his throat. When he opened his eyes there was no longer a light burning in the cabin. It was day. He felt strangely comfortable, but there was something in the cabin that stirred him from his rest. It was the odour of frying bacon. He raised himself upon his elbow, prepared to thank his deliverers, and to eat. All of his hunger had come back. The joy of life, of anticipation, shone in his thin face as he pulled himself up. Another face—the bearded face—red-eyed, almost animal-like in its fierce questioning, bent over him.

"Where's your grub, pardner?"

The question was like a stab. Roscoe did not hear his own voice as he explained.

"Got none!" The bearded man's voice was like a bellow as he turned upon the others.

"He's got no grub!"

"We'll divvy up, Jack," came a weak voice. It was from the thin, white-faced man who had sat corpse-like on the edge of his bunk the night before.

"Divvy h—l!" growled the bearded man. "It's up to you—you and Scotty. You're to blame!"

You're to blame!

The words struck upon Roscoe's ears with a chill of horror. He recalled the voice that had suggested throwing him back into the snow. Starvation was in the cabin. He had fallen among animals instead of men, and his body grew cold with a chill that was more horrible than that of the snow and the wind. He saw the thin-faced man who had spoken for him sitting again on the edge of his bunk. Mutely he looked to the others to see which was Scotty. He was the young man who had clutched the can of beans. It was he who was frying bacon over the sheet iron stove.

"We'll divvy—Henry and I," he said. "I told you that last night." He looked over at Roscoe. "Glad you're better," he greeted. "You see—you've struck us at a bad time. We're on our last legs for grub. Our two Indians went out to hunt a week ago and never came back. They're dead—or gone, and we're as good as dead if the storm doesn't let up pretty soon. You can have some of our grub—Henry's and mine."

It was a cold invitation, lacking warmth or sympathy, and Roscoe felt that even this man wished that he had died before he reached the cabin. But the man was human; he at least had not cast his voice with those who had wanted to throw him back into the snow, and Roscoe tried to voice his gratitude, and at the same time to hide his hunger. He saw that there were three thin slices of bacon in the frying pan, and it struck him that it would be bad taste to reveal a starvation appetite in the face of such famine. He came up, limping, and stood on the other side of the stove from Scotty.

"You saved my life," he said, holding out a hand. "Will you shake?"

Scotty shook hands limply.

"It's h—l," he said in a low voice. "We'd have had beans this morning if I hadn't shook dice with him last night." He nodded toward the bearded man, who was cutting open the top of a can. "He won!"

"My God!" began Roscoe.

He didn't finish. Scotty turned the meat, and added:

"He won a square meal off me yesterday—a quarter of a pound of bacon. Day before that he won Henry's last can of beans. He's got his share under his blanket over there, and swears he'll shoot any one who goes to monkeying with his bed—so you'd better fight shy of it. Thompson—he isn't up yet—chose the whisky for his share, so you'd better fight shy of him, too. Henry and I'll divvy up with you."

"Thanks," said Roscoe, the one word choking him.

Henry came from his bunk, bent and wobbling. He looked like a dying man, and for the first time Roscoe saw that his hair was gray. He was a little man, and his thin hands shook as he held them out over the stove, and nodded at Roscoe. The bearded man had opened his can, and approached the stove with a pan of water, coming in beside Roscoe without noticing him. He brought with him a foul odour of stale tobacco smoke and whisky. After he had put his water over the fire he turned to one of the bunks and with half a dozen coarse epithets roused Thompson, who sat up stupidly, still half drunk. Henry had gone to a small table, and Scotty followed him with the bacon. But Roscoe did not move. He forgot his hunger. His pulse was beating quickly. Sensations filled him which he had never known or imagined before. He had known tragedy; he had investigated to what he had supposed to be the depths of human vileness—but this that he was experiencing now stunned him. Was it possible that these were people of his own kind? Had a madness of some sort driven all human instincts from them? He saw Thompson's red eyes fastened upon him, and he turned his face to escape their questioning, stupid leer. The bearded man was turning out the can of beans he had won from Scotty. Beyond the bearded man the door creaked, and Roscoe heard the wail of the storm. It came to him now as a friendly sort of sound.

"Better draw up, pardner," he heard Scotty say. "Here's your share."

One of the thin slices of bacon and a hard biscuit were waiting for him on a tin plate. He ate as ravenously as Henry and Scotty, and drank a cup of hot tea. In two minutes the meal was over. It was terribly inadequate. The few mouthfuls of food stirred up all his craving, and he found it impossible to keep his eyes from the bearded man and his beans. The bearded man, whom Scotty called Croker, was the only one who seemed well fed, and his horror increased when Henry bent over and said to him in a low whisper: "He didn't get my beans fair. I had three aces and a pair of deuces, an' he took it on three fives and two sixes. When I objected he called me a liar an' hit me. Them's my beans, or Scotty's!" There was something almost like murder in the little man's red eyes.

Roscoe remained silent. He did not care to talk, or question. No one had asked him who he was or whence he came, and he felt no inclination to know more of the men he had fallen among. Croker finished, wiped his mouth with his hand, and looked across at Roscoe.

"How about going out with me to get some wood?" he demanded.

"I'm ready," replied Roscoe.

For the first time he took notice of himself. He was lame, and sickeningly weak, but apparently sound in other ways. The intense cold had not frozen his ears or feet. He put on his heavy moccasins, his thick coat and fur cap, and Croker pointed to his rifle.

"Better take that along," he said. "Can't tell what you might see."

Roscoe picked it up and the pack which lay beside it. He did not catch the ugly leer which the bearded man turned upon Thompson. But Henry did, and his little eyes grew smaller and blacker. On snowshoes the two men went out into the storm, Croker carrying an axe. He led the way through the bit of thin timber, and across a wide open over which the storm swept so fiercely that their trail was covered behind them as they travelled. Roscoe figured that they had gone a quarter of a mile when they came to another clump of trees, and Croker gave him the axe.

"You can cut down some of this," he said. "It's better burning than that back there. I'm going on for a dry log that I know of. You wait until I come back."

Roscoe set to work upon a spruce, but he could scarcely strike out a chip. After a little he was compelled to drop his axe, and lean against the tree, exhausted. At intervals he resumed his cutting. It was half an hour before the small tree fell. Then he waited for Croker. Behind him his trail was already obliterated. After a little he raised his voice and called for Croker. There was no reply. The wind moaned above him in the spruce tops. It made a noise like the wash of the sea out on the open Barren. He shouted again. And again. The truth dawned upon him slowly—but it came. Croker had brought him out purposely—to lose him. He was saving the bacon and the cold biscuits back in the cabin. Roscoe's hands clenched tightly, and then they relaxed. At last he had found what he was after—his book! It would be a terrible book, if he carried out the idea that flashed upon him now in the wailing and twisting of the storm. And then he laughed, for it occurred to him quickly that the idea would die—with himself. He might find the cabin, but he would not make the effort. Once more he would fight alone and for himself. The Spark returned to him, loyally. He buttoned himself up closely, saw that his snowshoes were securely fastened, and struck out once more with his back to the storm. He was at least a trifle better off for meeting with the flesh and blood of his kind.

The clump of timber thinned out, and Roscoe struck out boldly into the low bush. As he went, he wondered what would happen in the cabin. He believed that Henry, of the four, would not pull through alive, and that Croker would come out best. It was not until the following summer that he learned the facts of Henry's madness, and of the terrible manner in which he avenged himself on Croker by sticking a knife under the latter's ribs.

For the first time in his life Roscoe found himself in a position to measure accurately the amount of energy contained in a slice of bacon and a cold biscuit. It was not much. Long before noon his old weakness was upon him again. He found even greater difficulty in dragging his feet over the snow, and it seemed now as though all ambition had left him, and that even the fighting spark was becoming disheartened. He made up his mind to go on until the arctic gloom of night began mingling with the storm; then he would stop, build a fire, and go to sleep in its warmth. He would never wake up, and there would be no sensation of discomfort in his dying.

During the afternoon he passed out of the scrub into a rougher country. His progress was slower, but more comfortable, for at times he found himself protected from the wind. A gloom darker and more sombre than that of the storm was falling about him when he came to what appeared to be the end of the Barren. The earth dropped away from under his feet, and far below him, in a ravine shut out from wind and storm, he saw the black tops of thick spruce. What life was left in him leaped joyously, and he began to scramble downward. His eyes were no longer fit to judge distance or chance, and he slipped. He slipped a dozen times in the first five minutes, and then there came the time when he did not make a recovery, but plunged down the side of the mountain like a rock. He stopped with a terrific jar, and for the first time during the fall he wanted to cry out with pain. But the voice that he heard did not come from his own lips. It was another voice—and then two, three, many of them. His dazed eyes caught glimpses of dark objects floundering in the deep snow about him, and just beyond these objects were four or five tall mounds of snow, like tents, arranged in a circle. A number of times that winter Roscoe had seen mounds of snow like these, and he knew what they meant. He had fallen into an Indian village. He tried to call out the words of greeting that Rameses had taught him, but he had no tongue. Then the floundering figures caught him up, and he was carried to the circle of snow-mounds. The last that he knew was that warmth was entering his lungs, and that once again there came to him the low, sweet music of a Cree girl's voice.

It was a face that he first saw after that, a face that seemed to come to him slowly from out of night, approaching nearer and nearer until he knew that it was a girl's face, with great, dark, shining eyes whose lustre suffused him with warmth and a strange happiness. It was a face of wonderful beauty, he thought—of a wild sort of beauty, yet with something so gentle in the shining eyes that he sighed restfully. In these first moments of his returning consciousness the whimsical thought came to him that he was dying, and the face was a part of a pleasant dream. If that were not so he had fallen at last among friends. His eyes opened wider, he moved, and the face drew back. Movement stimulated returning life, and reason rehabilitated itself in great bounds. In a dozen flashes he went over all that had happened up to the point where he had fallen down the mountain and into the Cree camp. Straight above him he saw a funnel-like peak through which there drifted a blue film of smoke. He was in a wigwam. It was warm and exceedingly comfortable. Wondering if he was hurt, he moved. The movement drew a sharp exclamation of pain from him. It was the first real sound he had made, and in an instant the face was over him again. He saw it plainly this time, with its dark eyes and oval cheeks framed between two great braids of black hair. A hand touched his brow cool and gentle, and a sweet voice soothed him in half a dozen musical words. The girl was a Cree.

At the sound of her voice an Indian woman came up beside her, looked down at Roscoe for a moment, and then went to the door of the wigwam, speaking in a low voice to some one who was outside. When she returned a man followed in after her. He was old and bent, and his face was thin. His cheek-bones shone, so tightly was the skin drawn over them. And behind him came a younger man, as straight as a tree, with strong shoulders, and a head set like a piece of bronze sculpture. Roscoe thought of Ransom and of his words about old Rameses:

"You will find something in his face which will recall what I have said, and make you think of the First People."

The second man carried in his hand a frozen fish, which he gave to the woman. And as he gave it to her he spoke words in Cree which Roscoe understood.

"It is the last fish."

For a moment some terrible hand gripped at Roscoe's heart and stopped its beating. He saw the woman take the fish and cut it into two equal parts with a knife, and one of these parts he saw her drop into a pot of boiling water which hung over the stone fireplace built under the vent in the wall. The girl went up and stood beside the older woman, with her back turned to him. He opened his eyes wide, and stared. The girl was tall and slender, as lithely and as beautifully formed as one of the northern lilies that thrust their slender stems from between the mountain rocks. Her two heavy braids fell down her back almost to her knees. And this girl, the woman, the two men were dividing with him their last fish!

He made an effort and sat up. The younger man came to him, and put a bear skin at his back. He had picked up some of the patois of half-blood French and English.

"You seek," he said, "you hurt—you hungr'. You have eat soon."

He motioned with his hand to the boiling pot. There was not a ficker of animation in his splendid face. There was something godlike in his immobility, something that was awesome in the way he moved and breathed. His voice, too, it seemed to Roscoe, was filled with the old, old mystery of the beginning of things, of history that was long dead and lost for all time. And it came upon Roscoe now, like a flood of rare knowledge descending from a mysterious source, that he had at last discovered the key to new life, and that through the blindness of reason, through starvation and death, fate had led him to the Great Truth that was dying with the last sons of the First People. For the half of the last fish was brought to him, and he ate; and when the knowledge that he was eating life away from these people choked him, and he thrust a part of it back, the girl herself urged him to continue, and he finished, with her dark, glorious eyes fixed upon him and sending warm floods through his veins. And after that the men bolstered him up with the bear skin, and the two went out again into the storm. The woman sat hunched before the fire, and after a little the girl joined her and piled fresh fagots on the blaze. Then she sat beside her, with her chin resting in the little brown palms of her hands, the fire lighting up a half profile of her face and painting rich colour in her deep-black hair.

For a long time there was silence, and Roscoe lay as if he were asleep. It was not an ordinary silence, the silence of a still room, or of emptiness—but a silence that throbbed and palpitated with an unheard life, a silence which was thrilling because it spoke a language which Roscoe was just beginning to understand. The fire grew redder, and the cone-shaped vacancy at the top of the tepee grew duskier, so Roscoe knew that night was falling outside. Far above he could hear the storm wailing over the top of the mountain. Redder and redder grew the birch flame that lighted up the profile of the girl's face. Once she turned, so that he caught the lustrous darkness of her eyes upon him. He could not hear the breath of the two in front of the fire. He heard no sound outside except that of the wind and the trees, and all grew as dark as it was silent in the snow-covered tepee, except in front of the fire. And then, as he lay with wide-open eyes, it seemed to Roscoe as though the stillness was broken by a sob that was scarcely more than a sigh, and he saw the girl's head droop a little lower in her hands, and fancied that a shuddering tremor ran through her slender shoulders. The fire burned low, and she reached out for more fagots. Then she rose slowly, and turned toward him. She could not see his face in the gloom, but the deep breathing which he feigned drew her to him, and through his half-closed eyes he could see her face bending over him, until one of her heavy braids slipped over her shoulder and fell upon his breast. After a moment she sat down silently beside him, and he felt her fingers brush gently through his tangled hair. Something in their light, soft touch thrilled him, and he moved his hand in the darkness until it came in contact with the big, soft braid that still lay where it had fallen across him. He was on the point of speaking, but the fingers left his hair and stroked as gentle as velvet over his storm-beaten face. She believed that he was asleep, and a warm flood of shame swept through him at the thought of his hypocrisy. The birch flared up suddenly, and he saw the glisten of her hair, the glow of her eyes, and the startled change that came into them when she saw that his own eyes were wide open, and looking up at her. Before she could move he had caught her hand, and was holding it tighter to his face—against his lips. The birch bark died as suddenly as it had flared up; he heard her breathing quickly, he saw her great eyes melt away like lustrous stars into the returning gloom, and a wild, irresistible impulse moved him. He raised his free hand to the dark head, and drew it down to him, holding it against his feverish face while he whispered Rameses's prayer of thankfulness in Cree:

"The spirits bless you forever, Meeani."

The nearness of her, the touch of her heavy hair, the caress of her breath stirred him still more deeply with the strange, new emotion that was born in him, and in the darkness he found and kissed a pair of lips, soft and warm.

The woman stirred before the fire. The girl drew back, her breath coming almost sobbingly. And then the thought of what he had done rushed in a flood of horror upon Roscoe. These wild people had saved his life; they had given him to eat of their last fish; they were nursing him back from the very threshold of death—and he had already repaid them by offering to the Cree maiden next to the greatest insult that could come to her people. He remembered what Rameses had told him—that the Cree girl's first kiss was her betrothal kiss; that it was the white garment of her purity, the pledge of her fealty forever. He lifted himself upon his elbow, but the girl had run to the door. Voices came from outside, and the two men reentered the tepee. He understood enough of what was said to learn that the camp had been holding council, and that two men were about to make an effort to reach the nearest post. Each tepee was to furnish these two men a bit of food to keep them alive on their terrible hazard, and the woman brought forth the half of a fish. She cut it into quarters, and with one of the pieces the elder man went out again into the night. The younger man spoke to the girl. He called her Oachi, and to Roscoe's astonishment spoke in French.