Keeko's fears had passed like a summer storm and the sun of her smile had returned again to her eyes.
"I'm just glad," she said. Then she became serious. "Say, do you believe in omens?" She was gazing out at the great antlers. "I don't guess you do. Only Indians worry with omens. Not folks of sense. Still, I kind of fancy that feller set up that way is our omen. He's going to hand us good luck in plenty. We'll get a great 'catch' where we're going, and we'll get back-safe. Do you think that?"
"Sure. Guess I think a heap more than that, though." Marcel's smile was good to see. "That's not the limit of our luck," he went on. "Not by a lot. Say, I was raised by a feller who handed me a whole heap of wisdom. Guess there's more wisdom in him than ever I could get a grip on. He always guessed that luck was real in the folk who understood that way. He said a feller made his luck by faith. The darn fool who squealed because things went wrong queered his own luck, and just chased it out of sight. Get a notion and hammer it through so long as you've a breath in your body, and, if you act that way, luck'll pour itself all over you till you're kind of floating around on a sea of desire fulfilled. That's been his way, and I reckon it's good. I'm out to act as he said, so I don't reckon that hollow-eyed feller out there is the whole meaning of things. I've got all my notions and I'm going to push 'em plumb through."
Keeko nodded.
"That's the grit a man needs," she said. "Maybe a woman does, too, only—she's kind of different."
"Is she?" Marcel shook his head, and his eyes were full of a boyish humour. "She isn't—when it comes to grit. Say, there's only one woman I know except you, and those poor folks you see in Seal Bay, who—who don't know better. But that other woman and you have taught me things about grit most fellers don't ever learn. Most all the time a feller who's built strong can fight to the limit of his muscles. A gal isn't born with muscles worth speaking about, and she spends her life mostly fighting beyond the limit. Say, she's born to troubles and worries all the time. And she mostly gets through all the time. Why? Grit! She doesn't just care a darn. She's going to get through—and she does. Say, let's get along down and leave that wall-eyed old figurehead keeping guard. Come on."
For days the journey continued through the ever deepening gorge. The stern grey walls remained unbroken, except for occasional sentry trees which had survived the years of storm and flood. Carpets of Arctic lichen sometimes clothed their nakedness, and even wide wastes of noisome fungus. But these things had no power to depress Marcel and Keeko; the Indians, too, passed them all unheeded. They were concerned alone with the perils of the waters which were often almost overwhelming.
The journey northward was one continuous struggle by day, and the daylit night was passed in the profound slumbers of exhausted bodies, with the canoes beached on some low foreshore dank with an atmosphere of hideous decay.
For Keeko and the Indians it seemed as if the land was rising ever higher and higher, and the endless waterway was cutting its course deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth. But there was no question. Marcel was piloting them to a hunting ground of his own, and this passage was the highway to it.
Only once did Keeko protest. It was a protest that was natural enough. But Marcel swept it aside without scruple.
"I call this 'Hell's Gate,'" he said, with a ready laugh. "Sounds rotten? But I always figger you need to pass through 'some' hell to make Paradise. We're in a mighty big country, and a-top of us are hundreds, and maybe thousands, of miles of forests that never heard tell of man. Wait. There's a break soon, just beyond the big rapids. That's where these darn old walls of rock fade right out, and make way for a lake that's like a sea."
It was his undisturbed confidence that broke the constant threat of imagination. This north country was Marcel's home. He knew no other. So they drove on, and on, to the goal that he had set.
The great rapids came at them as he had promised. And, in turn, they were passed on that narrow margin which is the line drawn between safety and destruction. Then came the mouth of the gorge, and the stretch of open river where it debouched upon the "lake that was like a sea."
For Keeko it was all like some wonderful dream with Marcel the magician who inspired it.
Two days later they had landed in a country whose relation to that which Keeko knew was only in the swarming flies and mosquitoes, and the keen air, which, even in the height of the open season, warned her of the terrors which must reign when the aurora lit the night of winter.
"Guess this is Paradise," Marcel explained, in answer to Keeko's expressed delight at the wide openness of it all, and at the sight of the sparse, lean Arctic grass which replaced the monotony of the shadowed river. "Guess it's a matter of contrasts," he went on. "It's kind of light, I guess, and it makes you think it's green. There's bush, or scrub, and bluffs of timber. But there's other things. It's mostly a sort of tundra and muskeg. There's more flies to the square inch than you'd reckon there's room for. But it's the home of the silver fox that's never been hunted."
His words were lost upon the girl. Her whole attention had become absorbed with her first glance out across the lake. She was staring at a range of tremendous hills far away to the north-east, and her wonder-lit eyes were held by a strange phenomenon that filled the sky.
It was a blaze of ruddy light tinting a world of frothing cloud. To her it looked like a stormy oasis in the steely blue of an almost cloudless sky. It might have been the splendid light of an angry sunset, only that the sun was shining directly behind her. She pointed at it.
"That!" she cried, in a startled, hushed voice. "What's that?"
Marcel regarded the scene for some silent moments. It was a spectacle that stirred him. He was closer to Nature than he knew. The primitive was deeply rooted in him for all the pains at which Uncle Steve had been to widen his outlook through the learning which his dead father had left behind. Here was a caldron of fire playing its reflection upon a tumult of cloud. The cloud itself stood unaccounted in a perfect sky.
But the answer came readily. Marcel knew those streaks of red and gold, those rosy tints in contrast against the threatening cloud. They were the lights of Unaga. The lights from the Heart of Unaga, the dread Heart that haunted the Indian mind, and the secret of which Uncle Steve had so recently disclosed to him.
What could he say to this girl to whom he could not lie?
Doubt and hesitancy passed. These things could not long exist in a nature such as his.
"Guess I haven't seen it ever like that before," he said. Then he corrected himself. "Not in my recollection. But I know what it is. That's the Heart of Unaga. It's a heart always afire. It's real red-hot fire that no man's ever had the nerve to get near. The Eskimo know it. And it scares them to death. They sort of reckon it's the world where the devil reigns. The hell that some folks reckon is real, and hot—and—hellish. But the feller that banks on learning and isn't worried by superstition'll just hand you the plain truth. It's a volcano, a real, live volcano which they reckon is the heart of Unaga."
The awe in Keeko's eyes only deepened.
"It's—it's just amazing," she cried. Then she added with a deep breath, "It's—dreadful."
From the moment of their landing on the shores of the lake Marcel and Keeko became absorbed in the work that had brought them thither.
The wonder of the fiery Heart of Unaga swiftly passed, and only in the brief moments over the camp-fire its fascination claimed them. At such moments neither was quite free from the superstition they derided. For Keeko it was a mystery of the unknown. For Marcel it was, perhaps, the key to the whole life effort of the man who was his second father.
But the fur hunt was theirs, and with this no mystery of Unaga was permitted to interfere. Marcel was determined on a result such as he had never desired before. He dreamed of silver fox, he thought of silver fox. Silver and black fox had become the sole purpose of his life.
So they beat this great, wide, half-created valley with trap and gun. They beat it up with all the skill of a life of experience, and reward came plentifully. It came rapidly, too. Sometimes it was almost overwhelming.
It was a land teeming with game of every description known to the regions north of 60°. The neighbourhood of the lake was alive with feather. Geese swarmed in their thousands, and there were moments when the sky was black with their legions. Duck, too, of every description had winged up from the south to the virgin waters of the North as Nature reluctantly released these hunting-grounds from the bonds of winter. Beaver and musk-ox, caribou and black-tail, reindeer and all the legions of lesser furs abounded. Thus, in consequence, it was the normal hunting-ground of the pariah of the beast world. Fox swarmed to the feast that was spread out. And it was the fox alone that needed to fear the coming of the fur hunter.
The slaughter of fox was immense, but selection was discriminate. Only the silver or black were troubled about, and these were collected with a care and skill that ensured the perfection of the pelts. Marcel was better than his word. He lived on the trail, and the Indians were given no rest. Keeko, borne on the uplift of success, knew no weariness when the effort promised treasure. They were working against time. Each of them knew it. And Marcel had the whole season mapped out almost to the hour.
So the days drew out into weeks, and the sun dropped lower and lower towards the horizon. Steadily the nights grew longer, and the working hours less. With each passing day the store of perfect pelts mounted. They were pegged out and dried, and set ready for storing at the moment the frost should bite through the air and hold them imperishable against their journey down to Keeko's home.
Life was almost uneventful in the monotony of success. Rains came, and gales blew down off the distant hills to the north-east. There were times when the great lake justified Marcel's description of it. It raged like a storm-swept sea, and white capped waves broke upon its bosom. But with the passing of the storm and the flattening influence of the rain, or under the breaking forth of the chilly Northern sunshine, peace was restored, and the calm looked never to have been broken.
But for all the vagaries of climate, for all the unvarying nature of their labours, there was no monotony in the hearts of Marcel and Keeko. With every passing hour they came nearer and nearer to each other. The youth in them was driving them to that splendid ultimate, which is the horizon of all things between man and woman. There were no doubts. And their only fear was the nearing of that dreaded day when parting must come, and each would be forced to pursue the journey alone.
The parting was in the back of their minds almost from the moment of their arrival at the valley of the lake. Each day that passed was marked off in Keeko's mind. It was always one step nearer to the time when she would be forced to bid farewell to the glad light of Marcel's happy eyes, and the sound of his deep-toned, cheerful voice.
She knew. She had known it from those first happy days of their preparations for this northward adventure. And she admitted it without shame. She had learned to love the boy with a depth and strength she had never thought to yield to any man.
Love? It had seemed so far removed from her life, and from those with whom her life had been associated. She had thought a thousand times of those men with whom she had been brought into contact. And the very idea of love had only filled her with nausea. Her experience, from her step-father down to the loafing "sharps" of Seal Bay, had firmly planted in her mind the conviction that the men who haunted the shadows north of 60° were only creatures whose quality of soul dared not display itself in the sunlight of truth and honesty.
Yet here, here where the world's dark secrets were more deeply hidden than anywhere else, even with Marcel's simple confession of a hidden purpose, secret movements, she had found a man before whom her woman's heart had at once prostrated itself. It was amazing even to her. She found no explanation even in her moments of heart searching. More than that she had no desire to explain or excuse. The wonderful dream of life had come true. She had yielded unbidden, and nothing she could think of in life could undo the work that had been accomplished almost in the first moments of their meeting.
So it was she watched the store of pelts mount up, she watched the growing laze of the sun as it rose less and less above the horizon, and she noted with dread the steady lengthening of the brief summer night. Soon, far too soon, must come that parting which would rob her life of the light which had so suddenly broken through its shadows.
And Marcel was no less troubled. But his nature refused to admit the end which Keeko saw ahead. His was a splendid optimism that refused defeat. He had the tryst he had established in his mind. And far back behind his ingenuous eyes the purpose lurked that should necessity arise he would cut every tie that bound his life, no matter at what cost, and pursue to its logical end the wonderful dream that had been vouchsafed to him.
With determination such as this Marcel delayed the start of the return journey to the last possible moment. And Keeko set no obstacle in the way. She asked no margin of time for accident by the way. She was prepared to accept all chances. The last moments before the permanent freeze up must see her back at her home. For the rest this wild, uncouth land was a radiant garden of delight to her.
But time waits no more for lovers than it waits for those whose hope is dying with the years. In the Northern wilderness time must be calculated almost to the second, and so the limit of safety was reached in a dalliance that had nothing to do with the necessities of their trade. The moment had come when the return must begin, or the disaster of winter would terminate for ever their youthful dream. The night frosts had done their work upon the pelts. The day was no longer sufficiently warm to seriously undo it. So the canoes floated laden at their moorings as Keeko had dreamed they would, and the last night on the shores of the lake was already closing down.
The camp-fire of driftwood and peat was glowing ruddily. The Indians were already deep within their fur-lined bags, and slumbering with the utter indifference engendered of complete weariness of body. Marcel and Keeko were squatting beside each other over the cheering warmth which kept the night chills at bay. Marcel was smoking. Keeko had no such comfort.
"I'd say Lorson Harris'll need to hand you something a heap better than five thousand dollars," Marcel observed with a laugh of genuine satisfaction and without turning from his contemplation of the fire. "Where'll you keep it so——?"
Keeko looked up with a start. Her thoughts had been far removed from the profit of her trade.
"At the bank at Seal Bay," she said hastily, lest her abstraction should be noticed.
"You keep it all—there?"
"No." Keeko shook her head. "But I'll have to—this. It's just too big. I'd be scared to carry it with me."
Marcel laughed again.
"That 'scare' again," he said. Then he turned, and for a moment gazed at the perfect profile which showed up against the growing dusk. "Say, you make me laff. Scare? You don't know what it means."
Keeko's eyes lit responsively as she turned and looked into his strong, fire-lit face.
"Not now," she said quietly. "When I'm down there alone it's—different."
"Alone?" Marcel removed his pipe from between his strong teeth. Then he nodded. "Yes," he agreed, "maybe it's different then."
Just for a moment the impulse was strong in him to fling all responsibility to the winds. He wanted to crush her in his great arms and tell her all those things which life ordains that woman shall yearn to hear. But the impulse was resisted. He knew it had to be.
"But you don't ever need to be alone again," he said simply. "You're forgetting. There's that darn old moose. That's a sign. You've only to send word, or come right along up. You see, the folks who're alone are the folks who've got no one to go to when things get awry. I guess you can't ever feel just alone now—whatever happens."
Keeko's eyes were very soft, very tender as she looked up into Marcel's face.
"It's good to hear that. It's good to feel that," she said gently. "And I do feel it," she added with a deep sigh. "I've a whole heap to thank God for, and, if it's not wrong to put it that way, still more to thank you for. I just don't know how to say it all. But just as long as I live I——"
"Cut it right out, Keeko. Cut it right out."
Marcel spoke hastily. He spoke almost roughly. He was in no frame of mind to listen complacently to any words of thanks from this girl. Thanks? If thanks were due it was from him. She had given him her trust and confidence. She had given him moments in his life such as he had never dreamed could fall to the lot of any man. In the firelight he flushed deeply at the thought, and again impulse stirred and nearly overwhelmed him.
"I just can't stand thanks from you, Keeko," he said impulsively. "Thanks only need to come from folks whom you help feeling you don't fancy doing it. You've handed me the sort of happiness that makes a feller feel like getting onto his hands and knees and thanking God for. Say, I can't talk to you same as I fancy to, and I guess it's not my fault. You don't know who I am, or a thing about me. And you can't hand me much more about yourself. Still, I sort of feel the time'll come when we can open out things. What I want to say is, you've handed me a trust that isn't hardly natural. You've chased this country with a feller who might be any old thing from a 'hold-up' to a 'gun-artist,' and they're around in plenty north of 60°. And it's the big white heart inside you made you act that way, and I sort of feel that big white heart is still my care, even after we've made good-bye at that old moose head. I wish to death I could say the things I fancy right, but I just can't, and it's no use in talking. But don't you ever dare to hand me thanks, or I'll have to get right up and break things."
Keeko's reply was a low thrilling laugh, full of a gentle gladness which she cared not if he read.
"Maybe you haven't said the things the way you fancy saying them," she said, in her gentle fashion. "But you've said them the way I'd have you say them. But you're right. There's folks in a person's life you can't thank, you haven't a right to thank, and maybe that's how we're fixed. You've jumped right into my life with your big body and generous heart, and I—well, I guess you haven't found things easier because I've butted into yours. Still, the thing's happened, and it makes me kind of glad. Some day—But there—what's the use?"
The temptation was irresistible. Marcel flung out one great hand and closed it over the hands the girl was holding out to the fire.
"That's it," he said hoarsely, while his body thrilled at the girl's warm clasp in his. "What's the use? Neither you nor I can say the things we feel. That's so. There's a great big God of this Northland looking on and fixing things the way He sees. As you say 'Some day'! Meanwhile there's the start back to-morrow morning. Just get right along and sleep, and dream good, and be sure you're aren't alone in the world—ever again."
A burden of grey hung depressingly over the world. A bleak north wind came down the river gorge. The sun's power had weakened before the advance of the Arctic night. Beaten, dismayed, it lived only just above the skyline.
The sightless sockets of the old moose stared wide-eyed down the river. They were fulfilling the task that had been set them. The howling of the gale, the polar cold, the blinding storm of snow; these things would have no power to turn them from their vigil. The wide-antlered, bleaching skull was the guardian of the tryst, and its sole concern was its watch and ward.
The chill and cheerlessness of it all was reaching at the hearts of the boy and girl who were at the moment of parting. Marcel was silently whittling a stout twig of tamarack, whose toughness threatened to dull the keen edge of his sheath-knife. Keeko was standing a few feet from him, within a yard or so of the precipice which dropped sheer to the waters below. Her eyes were following the direction of the gaze of the old moose, and the picture her mind was dwelling upon was far removed from what she beheld.
It was of the long, lonesome winter, with her mother dying by inches, while she, herself, spent her days in the avoidance of her step-father whom she had learned to fear as well as to hate. Marcel had no such bitterness to look out upon. But he was none the less weighted down that the farewell must be spoken.
The hot blood of youth was surging through his veins. Manhood's reckless passion was beating in heart and brain. A desperate desire to yield to the call of Nature was urging him mercilessly. Yet, through it all, he knew that the farewell must be said now, for both their sakes, for the sake of honour, of loyalty, for the sake of Love itself.
Oh, yes. He knew how easy it would be to sweep along on the tide of passion. But he loved Keeko. Loved her with all his simple heart and body, and his love was bound up with an honour which he had no power to outrage.
Time and again in the madness of the moment he thought to urge Keeko to abandon all and return with him to the home which he knew would hold nothing but welcome for her. He thought of all that happiness which might be hers in the kindly associations of Uncle Steve and An-ina. He thought of all the wretchednesses of soul he would save her from, the dread of that step-father, whom she had declared to be a murderer at heart. Then he remembered the dying mother whose one care was the child of her heart, and he realized that his own desire must not be. The farewell must be taken now.
Once he thought to continue the journey with her to help her complete her final task of trading her pelts. But he remembered in time, and thrust temptation from him. There was An-ina demanding his protection in Uncle Steve's absence during the winter. There was his pledge to that man who never questioned his given word.
Looking up his ardent gaze rested on the figure poised so near the brink of the gorge.
"Keeko!"
His voice was deep with feeling. Its tone was imperative, too.
"Yes—Marcel?"
Keeko's reply was low-voiced and almost humble. She felt his gaze even before he spoke. Had she not intercepted it a hundred times in their work together? Oh, yes. She knew it. And that which she had seen, and read, had been the answer she most desired to all the yearnings of her woman's heart. Now she knew that the moment she most dreaded had come at last. And she wondered and feared as she had never feared in her life before.
Marcel drove his knife deeply in a diagonal cut into the hard wood of the tamarack.
"You've a month to the freeze up," he said. "It's the limit you need. I've figgered it. I've talked it out with Little One Man."
"Yes. I can make home in a month."
Keeko drew a sharp breath. She could make home. Never in her life had she felt as she felt now. Home!
Marcel ripped his knife in an opposite diagonal on the reverse of the wood. The force he applied seemed almost vicious.
"Are—you glad?"
"I—s'pose so."
"You—s'pose so? Of course you are. There's your poor sick mother."
"Yes."
The girl's reply was almost inaudible. Marcel wrenched the wood in half with his powerful hands. It snapped, and he examined the pronged ends critically.
With an effort Keeko bestirred herself from her despondency.
"Yes," she cried desperately. "I must get home. I want to. I love my mother, Marcel. She's suffered. Oh, how she suffers. Yet through it all she thinks only of me. She schemes and hopes only for me. Maybe I can't hope to save her life, but I can tell her the things that'll let her die almost happy. It's the best I can do, and I—I'm glad to do it."
Marcel nodded over his two pieces of wood.
"That's how I feel about it," he said. "It seems to me we haven't any sort of right to set up the things that 'ud please us against the happiness of those who've been good to us. I'd thought of beating down this river with you, to see things through for you. Then I remembered a sort of mother woman who looks to me for the help of a son. Then I thought of asking you to cut the home with a step-father, who's a murderer at heart, and come along where you'd find only love and friendship. Then I remembered your sick mother. I'm guessing the self of things is mighty big, but there's something bigger. Still—Say, come and sit right here!"
He was smiling. But his eyes were full of a deep tenderness.
Keeko obeyed. She had no desire to deny him. He seemed to have robbed her of all will of her own. His will had become wholly her desire. She took her seat on the tree-trunk, just removed from his side by a rift in the great log which was hidden under a growth of lichen.
Marcel's eyes sought hers. But she had turned from him. She was gazing out at the moose head set up over the gorge.
"How am I to hear if you're needing my help?" he demanded. "I can't make here till the first break of spring. There's just one hell of a long winter before that."
Marcel was endeavouring to smother his feeling. Keeko shook her head. Had she not thought and thought over this very thing?
"I won't need help," she said. "Not now. You've helped me through my only worry. If mother lives, things'll just go on the same. If—she doesn't? She and I—we got it fixed. I hit right out for myself as we've planned it—that's all."
But the hot blood had mounted to Marcel's head. "It's not!" he cried with startling force. "D'you think you're going out of my life that way? You?" Suddenly he broke into a laugh that echoed down the gorge. He pointed out at the moose head. "Look at the old feller," he cried. "He's winking his old eyes and flapping the comic ears he hasn't got. I swear if you could only hear it he's busting his sides laffing at the joke of you reckoning to cut yourself out of my life that way. No, sir! I'm coming right along here at the first break of spring, and if I don't find you around, or a sign from you, I'm beating up this river to look for you, if I have to chase it sheer up to its source. Say, you can't hide yourself in a corner of this darnation territory I won't find you in. And I guess I'm just as obstinate as a she-wolf chasing a feed of human meat. It can't be done, Keeko. Not now. I tell you it can't be done."
The man's force was no less for all his smiling eyes. And Keeko made no pretence.
"But why?" she cried, with a gesture of her hands that made him desire to imprison them. "Why should you worry? You've helped me to the things that'll leave me free of—everything. I haven't a right. I haven't any sort of right to take you from your folks, and from those things it's your work to do for them. Besides, who said I figgered to cut myself out of your life?" She smiled up into his eyes with an almost child-like confidence. "I don't want to. I—I hadn't a thought that way. Say, if I thought I'd never see you again I'd feel like nothing in the world ever could matter. The thing I'm guessing to make plain is when we quit here you don't need to worry a thing. I'll get through, and next spring I'll come right along up and tell you how I'm fixed."
Marcel sat up, and, reaching out, caught and imprisoned the hands he desired.
"You'll do that?" he cried, while he drew her round so that she faced him. "Sure? Sure you mean that? You'll come right along up here with the break of winter, and we'll——"
"I certainly will."
Keeko's youth was no less than Marcel's. Her eyes were without any shyness. She looked into his fearlessly, and read without shame all that they expressed. She was glad. Her heart was full of a delight of which even parting could not rob her. The memory of that which she beheld now would be hers during the long, drear months of winter, a sheet anchor of hope, of joy, something to tell her always that, whatever might chance, life still held for her a priceless treasure of which it could never wholly rob her.
Marcel released her hands lingeringly.
"Here," he cried holding up the pieces of tamarack he had cut. "These darned bits of wood." Then he raised the lichen, which had been carefully loosened, and revealed the gaping rift in the tree-trunk beneath it. "Our cache," he added. "Say, maybe when spring breaks there's things might make it so you can't get along up here. You see, it's a chance. You can't just say. Maybe I'm scared. Anyway, I got a notion you might need me in a hurry. I'm scared for you. That's it. I'm scared for you. Well? You've got your boys. Either of 'em could make this place in the winter. Here, grab this little old stick. I'll keep the other. It's just a token. I've set your name on it. Well, send it along up, and cache it in this cache, and when I come along and find it here, instead of you, at the break of spring, I'll know you're held up and need me, and you can gamble your big white soul I'll beat the trail to your help like a cyclone in a hurry. Oh, I know. You'll guess nothing can happen that way. But it's just my notion, and you're going to kind of humour me. Git that? When I find that token set in this cache I'll make up the river just as hard as hell'll let me."
In spite of her confidence Keeko accepted the stick the boy passed to her and sat gazing at it. It was then that she discovered the lettering that had been cut on it. There were just two words in letters crudely formed: "LITTLE KEEKO."
For a while her eyes dwelt upon them absorbing all the tenderness they conveyed. Then, in a moment, all the truth in her, the woman, roused into active purpose. She handed it back to him.
"You've given me the wrong token," she said, with a laugh. "I need one with your name on it."
She held out her hand and Marcel passed her the other half of the stick. It was inscribed with the single word: "MARCEL." Instantly the girl rose from her seat and moved away.
"We best get back to camp," she said.
It was her woman's defence. Another few moments and Keeko knew she would have been powerless before her own passionate emotion.
She led the way to the head of the path which went down to the little camp on the foreshore below.
Marcel was standing beside the tree which had become the centre of all things for him. The grey night sky had remained. It had only deepened its threat with the dawn. But the reality of the moment was nothing to the desolate winter that had settled upon his heart.
The farewell lay behind him. He was alone, desperately alone, in a world where he had never realized loneliness before. And there, far out down on the broad bosom of the river, were the canoes carrying with them his every hope, his every desire.
The bitterness, the depression robbed him of all the buoyant manhood that was his. Keeko had gone. Keeko. Keeko with her wonderful eyes, and the grace and symmetry of a youthful goddess. Yes, she had gone, and between them now lay that long winter night with all its manifold chances of disaster. With the break of spring he might look for her coming again. Yes, he might look for it. But would she come? He wondered. And again and again he cursed himself that he had listened to other than the promptings of his desire.
The canoes reached the bend of the river driven by paddles in hands that were wonderfully skilled. They were about to pass out of view behind the grey wall of stone which lined the waterway. The figure of the girl in the prow of the hindmost boat was blurred and indistinct. Marcel had eyes for nothing else. He raised his fur cap and waved it slowly to and fro. And as he waved he thought he detected a similar movement in the boat. He could not be sure at the distance. But he believed. He hoped it was so. He wanted it to be.
He turned away. The boats had passed the grey barrier. There was nothing left but to set out to rejoin his outfit, and return——
His wandering gaze had fallen on the tree-trunk which held such happy memories for him. He was gazing upon the lichen covering their cache. The lichen was sadly, recklessly disturbed. He knew he had not left it in that condition. He was far too experienced, too old in the craft of the trail to leave a cache in such a state. He stepped over to it hurriedly, and raised the covering Nature had set. He peered down into the deep pocket beneath it.
The next moment a sharp exclamation broke from him. He plunged a hand into the pocket and drew out the token he had handed to Keeko over-night.
He stared at it. It was her demand for his help. She had placed it there—when? It must have been during the night. Why? What did she mean? Did she desire him to follow—now?
He turned it about in his big fingers, and in a moment discovered fresh characters cut roughly into the wood. It was a word prefixing the name which he had set there: "MY MARCEL."
"My Marcel!"
He was not dreaming. No—no! The little added word was there cut in by a hopelessly unskilled hand. But it was there, as plain as intent could make it. "My Marcel." It told him all—all that a man desires to know when a woman bares her heart to him. It was Keeko's farewell message that he was not intended to discover till the break of winter. It was her summons to him, not for mere help, but a summons to him telling him that her love was his.
He ran to the edge of the cliff. He searched the grey headland where the shadows had swallowed up the canoes. There remained nothing—nothing but the dull, cold prospect of the coming of winter—the relentless Arctic winter.
He stood there without sign or sound. He made no movement. But the heart of the man was shining in his eyes.
A shot rang out in the woods behind him. It was distant, but it split up the silence with a meaning that could not be denied.
Marcel turned. The light in his eyes had changed. They were shadowed as not even the parting had shadowed them. Oh, yes, he knew. It was a signal to him. His own men were searching for him. It warned him that winter was fast approaching, that merciless winter of Unaga, and these men, these Sleepers, were eager to return to the warm comfort of their quarters and their winter's sleep.
An-ina smoothed her brown hand over the superfine surface of the spread of buckskin where it lay on the counter in the store. Her dark eyes were critically contemplating it, while she held ready a large pair of scissors.
A great contentment pervaded her life. It was in her wide, wise eyes now as she considered the piece of material which was to provide a shirt for Steve. The buckskin had been prepared by her own hands. It was soft, and tawny with the perfect tint she desired. It could not be too soft, or too good for Steve. That was her thought as she prepared to hew it into shape for the sewing and beading which no other hands would be permitted to work.
Her contemplation was broken by the abrupt flinging open of the door of the store. She turned quickly, expectantly, and the smiling content in her eyes, as they rested on the figure of Steve, left no doubt as to the welcome nature of the interruption.
"You mak your plan?" she demanded.
The manner of her question was that of poignant interest. Her whole thought was centred on the life and well-being of this white man. For the moment the buckskin was forgotten.
Steve closed the door. He came over to the counter behind which were piled the stores of his trade. He leant against it, and his steady eyes regarded the handsome, dusky woman, who had come to him at the moment of his life's disaster, and had been his strong comfort and support ever since.
"Yes." He nodded, in the decided fashion that was always his. "We can't wait."
"You go—before Marcel come?"
There was no surprise in the woman's reply.
"The outfit's ready. The dogs are hardened to the bone. Every day, I guess, is a day lost. The snow's thick on the ground and the waters are frozen up. Well? We can't guess the time it'll take us this trip. We can't spare an hour. If we get through, it don't matter. If we fail we need to make back here before the 'Sleepers' crawl out from under their dope. If we wait for Marcel, and he don't get right along quick, it means losing time we can't ever make good. You get all that?"
The woman turned up the oil lamp. The day was dark for all the lolling sun in the horizon. She passed across to the stove, roaring comfortingly under its open draft. She closed the damper and stood over it with hands outstretched to the warmth. It was a favourite attitude of hers.
"An-ina know," she said. "An' Marcel? What it keep him so much long? All time he come before snow. Now? No. Why is it?"
A shadow of anxiety descended upon her placid face. A pucker drew her brows together. Her heart was troubled.
Steve shook his head. He showed no sign of sharing her concern.
"He'll be along," he said confidently. "I'm not worried a thing. I'd trust Marcel to beat the game more than I would myself. You needn't to be scared. No. It's not that."
"What it—then?"
An-ina's eyes were full of a concern she had no desire to conceal. She had nothing to conceal from this man who was the god of her woman's life.
"I just can't say," Steve said. "But—I'm not worried. The thing is we'd fixed it that I didn't quit till Marcel got to home."
"Why?"
Steve shrugged, but his eyes were smiling.
"Oh, I guess we don't fancy leaving you without men folk around. It isn't that things are likely to worry any. But you see—you're all we've got. You're a sort of anchor that holds us fast to things. You see, I guess Marcel reckons you his mother, and I, why—it don't need me to say how I feel."
The look in the woman's dark eyes deepened. She knew the feelings prompting Steve. Oh, yes. She knew. And she thanked the God she had learned to believe in, and to worship, for the happiness which he had permitted her in the midst of the terrors of this desolate Northern country. Her answer came at once. It came full of her generosity.
"Ah," she cried quickly. "You think all this thing—you men! An' what An-ina think? Oh, An-ina think much. So much. Listen. She tell. Marcel him big feller. Him mak' summer trail. Far—far. An-ina not know. Him wolf all come around. Him river with much water—rapids—rocks. Him muskeg. Him everything bad, an' much danger. An-ina she not say, 'An-ina come too, so no harm come by Marcel.' She say, 'no.' Marcel big man. Marcel brave. Him fight big. So him God of white man kill Marcel all up, then An-ina heart all break, but she say it all His will. So she not say nothing. Steve him go by Unaga, where all him devil men. They get him. They kill him. Then An-ina all mak' big weep—inside. She say nothing. She not say 'An-ina come, too, so she frighten all devil men away.' Oh, no. An-ina woman. She not scare any more as Steve an' Marcel. She sit by fire. She mak' Steve him shirt. She have gun, plenty. No man come. Oh, no. She not scare for nothing. An-ina brave woman, too. Steve, Marcel mak' her coward. Oh, no. Outfit ready—Julyman—Oolak—all him dogs. Yes. Steve him go—right away. Bimeby Marcel him come. So."
An-ina's voice was low and soft. But for all her halting use of the white man's tongue, with which she found so much difficulty, there was decision and earnest in every word she uttered. There was the force, too, of a brave, clear-thinking mind in it. And it left Steve with difficulty in answering her. Besides for all his desire to protest, he knew he must go, or sacrifice that thing which had brought him to Unaga.
With characteristic decision he accepted her protest. He knew her generosity and courage. But a sense of shame was not lacking at the thought that the very position he had used to convince Marcel could not be allowed to stand where his purpose was threatened.
"I've got to go," he said almost doggedly. "But I hate the thought of leaving you, An-ina. If Marcel would only get around now, I'd feel easy. But there's not a sign of him. He's late—late and—Psha! It's no sort of use. I must pull out right away."
He stood up from the counter and came over to the stove. An-ina's dark eyes watched him. Even in her untutored mind she understood the strength of character which overrode his every scruple, his every sentiment. Her regard for him was something of idolatry, and deep in her soul she knew that the gleanings in his heart left by that white woman were hers. Maybe they were only gleanings, but she asked no more. She was content. She knew no distinction between mistress and wife. The natural laws were sufficient. He was the joy of her savage heart, and she was the only woman in his life. It was as she would have it.
He came up to her and stood gazing down at the long, thin hands outspread to the warmth. Then with an unaccustomed display of feeling he thrust one arm through hers, and his strong hand clasped itself over both of hers.
"Say, An-ina, I'm going a hell of a long trail. It's so long we just can't figure the end. It's a winter trail northward, and I don't need to tell you a thing of what that means. I'd say anyone but you and Marcel would guess I'm crazy. Well, I'm not. But it's a mighty desperate chance we're taking. If we win through, and get what we're chasing, it means the end of this country for all of us. Maybe you'll be glad. I don't know. If we fail—well, I can't just figure on failure. I never have and I don't reckon to start that way now. But I got to hand you 'good-bye' this time. It's not that way with us usually. But this time I sort of feel I want to. You're just a great woman, and you've been mostly the whole meaning of things to me since—since—Anyway, I've done the best I know to hand you all the happiness lying around in a territory there's nothing much to in that way. But all that's nothing to what you've been to me. Well, my dear, I don't guess it's our way talking these things, but I got that inside me makes me want to say a whole heap about how I feel and what I think. Guess I'm not going to try though. It wouldn't amount to anything if I talked a day through. I wouldn't have said half I needed to. You and Marcel are all I've got, and you two dear folk'll be the last thought I have in life. You'll help him, my dear, won't you? You're just Marcel's mother, and if I don't get back you'll need to be his father, too. Good-bye."
An-ina made no reply. She had listened to him with a heart that was overflowing. As he said "good-bye" she turned her head, and the speechlessness of their farewell was deep with simple human passion.
A moment later they had moved apart. It was Steve's initiative.
"Now? You go—now?"
An-ina's voice was heroic in its steadiness. There was not a sign of tears in her shining eyes. She followed him to the door as though his going were an ordinary incident in their day's routine, and stood there, while he passed out, the very embodiment of that stoicism for which her race is so renowned.
An-ina was alone. Only the skeleton of her life at the fort remained to keep her company. The flesh was shorn from the bone. That flesh which had made her life an existence of joy which the greatest terror of Unaga was powerless to rob her of. It is true there were a few of the trail dogs left behind, and some of the reindeer. But what were these half wild creatures in exchange for a human companionship in which her whole soul was bound up?
But An-ina was free of the vain imaginings which curse the lives of those who boast the culture of civilization. She was content in her woman's memory, in her looking forward, and the present was full of an hundred and one occupations which held her mind to the exclusion of everything but the contemplation of the coming joy of reunion.
She had claimed to herself a bravery equal to that of her men folk. She might well have claimed more. She possessed, in addition to that active courage which belongs to the adventurer, the passive, courageous endurance of the woman. So, with an unruffled calm, she set about the daily "chores" that were hers, and added to them all those labours which were necessary that this outland home should lack nothing in its welcome to her men.
For the moment the world about her was still and silent. It was as though Nature remained suspended in doubt between the seasons. The open season was passed, when the earth lay bare to the lukewarm sun of summer. A white shroud covered the nakedness of the world, and already ice was spread out over the waters. But winter had not yet made its great onslaught.
It was coming. Oh, yes. It was near. The brief hours of daylight warned that. So did the mock-suns which hovered in the sky, chained by the radiant circle which held the dying sun prisoned. Then in the north the heavy clouds were gathering. They gathered and dispersed. Then they gathered again. And always they banked deeper and darker. The wind was rising. That fitful, patchy wind which is so full of threat, and which bears in its breath the cutting slash of a whip.
There were moments in her solitude when An-ina read these warnings with some misgivings. They were not for herself. They were not even for Steve. The winter trail was no new thing to her great man. Besides, he was equipped against anything the Northern winter could display. Accident alone could hurt him. That was her creed. Marcel was different. He was only equipped for summer, and he should have returned before that first snowfall. How could his canoes make the waters of the river when they were already frozen?
Thus it was she speculated as each dawn she sought the sign of his return, and at the close of each day, with the last of the vanishing light.
For a week she went on with her endless labours in that cheerful spirit of confidence which never seemed to fail her. Then there came a change. She sought the gates of the fort more often, and stood gazing out longer, and with eyes that were not quite easy. Her unease was growing. She spurned it, she refused to admit her fears. And, in her defence, she redoubled her labours.
Thus ten days from the moment of Steve's going passed. It was the evening of the tenth day.
With a desperate resolve she had refused to allow herself her last evening vigil. Snow was in the air and had already begun to fall. So she sat over the great stove in the store, and plied her needle, threaded with gut, upon the shirt that was some day to cover Steve's body. Not once did she look up. It was almost as if she dared not. She was fighting a little battle with herself in which hope and confidence were hard pressed.
It was in the midst of this that the door was thrust open wide, and, with the opening, a flurry of snow swept in upon the warm atmosphere. But that which caused her to start to her feet, and drop the treasured garment perilously near to the stove, was the figure that appeared in the white cloud that blew about it. It was Marcel, with snow and ice about his mouth and chin, and upon his eye-lashes, and with his thick pea-jacket changed from its faded hue to the virgin whiteness of the elements through which he had succeeded in battling his way.
"An-ina!"
It was the glad cry of greeting she had yearned for in the big voice of a man whose delight is unmeasured.
"Marcel!" The woman's reply was full of joy. Then, with a sigh that was a deep expression of relief: "An-ina glad—so glad!"
Marcel turned and closed the outer storm door. Then he shut the inner door securely. A moment later he was freeing himself from icicles and snow at the stove.
"Say, I had to beat it like hell," he declared with a great laugh, while An-ina gathered up her sewing and laid it aside. Her mother mind was running upon a hot supper for her boy. "I was just worried to death at you folks sitting around guessing. Winter got me beat by just two weeks, and now the snow's falling in lumps, and it's mighty near down to zero. Where's Uncle Steve?"
"Gone." An-ina had forgotten the supper. "Him gone where you know. Him gone days. Maybe ten. No wait. Oh, no. Him guess you come soon. So him go."
"And Julyman? And Oolak?"
"All gone. All him gone by land of fire. Oh, yes."
An-ina sighed. It was her only means of expressing the feelings she could not deny.
Marcel's eyes had sobered. He flung off his pea-jacket and possessed himself of An-ina's chair. He sat there with his great hands spread out to the warmth, enduring the sharp cold-aches it inspired. He was gazing steadily at the glowing patch where the side of the stove was red hot. His mind was busy with thoughts which robbed him of half the joy of his return.
The thought of supper returned to the woman.
"So. I mak' him supper," she said. "Him boys. They come too?"
"Oh, yes," Marcel laughed shortly "Guess they're back in the woods there, doping like hell so they shan't lose any sleep. They were kind of mad with me getting back late. I had to rawhide two of them, or the whole darn lot would have bolted. You see, I was held up."
An-ina would have questioned further but there was no encouragement in Marcel's tone or manner. He had not turned to reply. His attitude was one the squaw recognized. He wanted to think. So she moved silently away and passed to the old kitchen to prepare his food.
Marcel sat on. He was thinking, thinking hard. But not in any direction that An-ina would have guessed. For once there was confusion of thought and feeling that was quite foreign to his nature. He was thinking of Keeko, he was thinking of Uncle Steve, and he was thinking of An-ina. He was angry with himself and as nearly angry with Uncle Steve as he could be. He cursed himself that through his delay An-ina should have been left alone for two weeks. He was troubled at the thought that Uncle Steve saw fit to leave her, and refused to await his return. And towards An-ina he felt that contrition which his deep regard for her made so poignant. But through all, above all, floated the spirit of Keeko, and he knew that whatever might have befallen nothing would have made him act differently. He was troubled to realize that for the first time in his life Uncle Steve and An-ina had only second place in his thought.
His reflections were broken by An-ina's quiet return.
"Supper—him all fixed. Marcel come?"
Marcel started up. And the shadows passed out of his handsome eyes. The gentle humility with which An-ina addressed him was irresistible. He was smiling again. His deep affection for this mother woman was shining in his eyes.
"Will I come?" he cried. "Say, you just see."
Marcel had eaten his fill. He had been well-nigh famishing when he arrived, and the simple cooking and wholesome food that An-ina set before him was like a banquet compared to the fare of the trail, on which he had subsisted all the open season.
Now he was lounging back in the rawhide-seated chair with his pipe aglow. He was ready to talk, more than ready. And An-ina's soft eyes were observing him, and reading him in her own wise way.
"You tell me—now?" she said, in the fashion of one who knows the value of food to her men folk's mood.
Marcel nodded with a ready smile.
"Any old thing you fancy," he cried. "What'll I tell you? About the darn outfit, the pelts we got? The woods? The rivers? The skitters? The——"
An-ina shook her head. His mood was what she desired.
"No. Marcel say the thing that please him. An-ina listen."
Marcel laughed. He had come home with the treasure hugged tight to his bosom. He had promised himself that this was his secret, to be imparted to no one—not even to Uncle Steve. An-ina had demanded that he should speak as he desired, and he knew that his one desire was to talk of Keeko. Now, he asked himself, why—why, for all his resolve, should he withhold the story of this greatest of all joys from the woman who was his second mother?
His laugh was his yielding.
"Oh, yes," he cried impulsively. "I'll tell you the thing that pleases me. I'll tell you the reason I was held up. And—it's the greatest ever!"
An-ina rose quickly from her seat.
"You tell An-ina—sure. It long. Oh, yes. An-ina say this thing—'the greatest ever.'"
She was gone and had returned again before Marcel had dragged himself back from his contemplation of the things which he desired to talk of. It was a gentle hint from An-ina that roused him.
"Oh, yes? An-ina listen."
Marcel started. He stirred his great bulk, and re-lit the pipe he had failed to keep alight.
"I'd forgotten," he said, with another laugh that was not free from self-consciousness. "Say," he went on, "I've hit the greatest trail ever a feller struck in this queer darn country. Gee!" He breathed a profound sigh. "It was queer. I was trailing an old bull moose. I followed it days."
An-ina was watching him. She beheld the radiant light in his frank eyes. She noted the almost feverish manner in which he was clouding the tobacco smoke about him. She even thought she detected an unsteadiness in the hand that held his pipe. She waited.
"Oh, yes," he went on. "I was in a territory I guess I've hunted plenty. I kind of knew it all, as it's given to anyone to know this darn land. I followed the trail right up to the end, but—I didn't make a kill. No."
His tone had dropped to a soft, deep note that thrilled with some emotion An-ina had never before been aware of in him. A startled light shone in her eyes, and her work lay unheeded in her lap.
"No. I didn't make a kill, but I came right up to the end of that trail, and found——"
"A woman?"
Marcel sat up with a jolt. His wide, astonished eyes stared almost foolishly into the dark native eyes smiling back into his.
"How d'you know—that?" he demanded sharply.
He planted his elbows on the table, resting his square chin upon his hands.
An-ina laughed that almost silent laugh so peculiar to her.
"An-ina guess him. An-ina look and look. An-ina see Marcel all smiling—inside. She hear him voice all soft, like—like—Ah, An-ina not know what it like. So she think. She say, what mak' Marcel all like this? Him find something. Him not scare. Oh, no. Marcel not scare nothing. No. Him much please. Marcel boy? No. Him big man. What him mak' big man much please. An-ina know. It woman. So she say."
Marcel wanted to laugh. He wanted to shout his delight. He wanted to pour out the hot, passionate feelings of his heart to a woman who could read and understand him like this. He did none of these things, however.
He simply smiled and nodded, while his whole face lit radiantly.
"That's a hell of a good guess," he cried. "Yes. I found a—woman. A beautiful, blue-eyed white woman. And she called herself, 'Keeko.'"
An-ina swiftly rolled up the buckskin she was working. She laid it on the supper table beside her. Then she drew up her chair, and she, too, set her elbows on the table, and supported her handsome, smiling face in her hands. Again it was the woman, the mother in her. It was her boy's romance. The boy she had raised to manhood with so much love and devotion. And she was thirsting, as only a mother can, for the story of it.
"So. Marcel him say. An-ina listen."
Keeko had beaten the winter where Marcel had failed. But then Keeko's journey had been southward towards the sun, where the forest sheltered, and the river pursued a deep-cut course to the westward of the great hills supporting the wind-swept plateau of Unaga.
For all these easier conditions, however, the journey was a hard beat up against the sluggish flow of the river. It permitted no relaxation, and only a minimum of rest. Then the portages up the rapids had been rendered doubly laborious by reason of cargoes such as the girl and her Indians had never been called upon to deal with before.
It should have been a happy enough journey. Was it not in the nature of a procession of great triumph? Had not Keeko's summer labours been crowned far beyond her dreams? Surely this was so. The ardent little feminine scheme, worked out on a sick bed, and executed with great strength and courage had been brought to a complete and successful issue. Oh, yes. The shadows which had threatened Keeko's future had been completely confounded. She knew beyond a doubt that she was independent, as her mother desired her to be. When the moment came she knew she was in the privileged position of being free to cut the bonds which had hitherto held her to the man whose brutality was surely enough driving her suffering mother to the grave.
But depression weighed the girl down. Look forward as she might, hope would not rise at her bidding. Marcel had been snatched out of her life like a shadowy dream, and the future offered her little enough comfort. Then there was her mother, and all that might have happened at the post in her long absence.
It was in such a mood that she emerged into the horseshoe loop of the river and beheld the dark walls of the old Fort Duggan. Her pretty face and serious eyes reflected her feelings as she piloted her boat towards the landing in the cold, crisp air of the brief daylight. Furthermore it was with no easing of her mood that she beheld the figure of her step-father on the landing awaiting her approach.
Just for a moment she wondered. Just for a moment she asked herself if he had had warning from some stray Shaunekuk of her coming. She realized a spasm of fear that perhaps prying eyes had witnessed her caching of the great bulk of her furs, that part which represented her own personal fortune. But the fear passed. It could not be so. Her plans had been laid and executed far too carefully.
So she coldly awaited the man's greeting.
It came. And its tone was unusually modulated. It was almost gentle. The man's eyes were a reflection of his tone as he gazed down at her. The effect was startling, and a light of wonder crept into Keeko's eyes as she looked up into the bloated face with its beard and general air of brutishness.
"You've cut it fine, Keeko," he said, with a swift, calculating glance at the sky. "I was getting well-nigh scared. We'll be snowed under right away." Then he drew a deep breath as of relief. "I'm glad you got to home."
Keeko had her part to play and she never hesitated.
"I was held up, but—I've had a good catch," she said, without enthusiasm. She pointed at the bale of pelts in her canoe. "They're silver fox. There's two more bales in the other boat. Guess Lorson Harris'll hand you a thousand dollars."
"Silver fox?" The man's eyes lit with cupidity. For a moment his seriousness passed out of them. "Why, that's great! You haven't got beyond grey fox and beaver ever before. It was a new territory?"
Keeko nodded. She was yearning to ask one question. One question only. But she knew the value of her success with this creature whom she could not yet openly defy.
"Yes. It was that held me up. I made farther down the river. Right to its mouth. It's a great fox country. Next year——"
But Nicol was unable to restrain his impatience. He turned to Little One Man.
"Haul 'em ashore an' open 'em out. We need to see the quality."
Little One Man looked at Keeko.
The girl nodded at once. Nicol saw the look and understood, and, for a moment, his eyes flashed with that ungovernable temper which was part of him. But the danger passed as swiftly as it came. Little One Man had flung the bundle ashore as Keeko stepped from the boat, and, in another moment, Nicol's sheath knife was ripping the thongs of rawhide which held it.
Keeko stood looking on watching the man's hands as he ran his fingers through the silken mass. He caressed the steely blue fur with the appreciation of a real pelt hunter, and presently stood up with a look in his eyes such as Keeko had never before beheld.
"How many?" he demanded.
"Sixty."
Nicol blew a faint whistle of astonished delight.
"You said a thousand dollars," he exclaimed. "Lorson Harris'll need to pay more than sixteen dollars for those pelts. We'll need twenty. Say, gal, you've done well. You surely have."
Keeko desired none of his praise. One thought only was in her mind. Up to that moment she had been playing the game she knew to be necessary. Now she reckoned she could safely abandon tactics in favour of her own desire.
"How's—mother?" she demanded.
Nicol stood up. His movement was a little precipitate. Nevertheless a moment passed before he withdrew his gaze from the treasure he coveted. When he finally did so it was not to look in the girl's direction. He was gazing out at the forest backing the fort.
Keeko became impatient. She was alarmed, too.
"How is she?" she cried urgently.
Nicol shook his head. He turned to the waiting Indians.
"We'll have them up at the store, and fix 'em ready for transport," he ordered. Then he sought to take the girl's arm while his hard eyes assumed a regret that utterly ill-suited them. "Come along up to the fort while I tell you."
But Keeko avoided him. Panic had seized her.
"No," she cried, in a tone she rarely permitted herself. "Tell me here—right now. Is—is she dead?"
She would take no denial. There was something in her clear, fearless eyes finely compelling. The man nodded.
"Dead?"
The girl spoke in a low, heart-broken whisper. She had forgotten the man. Dead! Her mother was dead. That poor suffering creature who had clung so long to life in her frantic desire to safeguard her child. Dead! And she would never know the success of the plans she had laboured so ardently to work out.
Stunning as was the blow Keeko promptly reacted.
"When did she die?" she demanded, in a tone that no longer needed disguise.
"I'd say a month after you quit."
"And where—where's she buried?"
The man nodded in the direction of the woods at the back of the fort.
"Back there," he said. Then his manner became urgent. "Say, once we saw the end was coming ther' wasn't a thing left undone to make her easy. Lu-cana'll tell you that. We sat with her the whole time, and did all we knew. And we buried her deep down wher' the wolves couldn't reach her, and I set up a cross I fixed myself, and cut her name deep on it so it'll take years to lose."
Keeko recognized a sort of defence in the man's words and in his manner. It seemed to be his paramount purpose. She saw in him not a sign of real sorrow, real regret. Contempt and bitterness rose and robbed her of all discretion.
"When you saw the end coming!" she replied scornfully.
But Nicol ignored the tone.
"Yes," he said deliberately. "She didn't go short of a thing we could do—Lu-cana and me. We did our best-I don't guess you could have done a thing more. Will you come along up, an'—I'll show you."
"No!"
The reply was fierce. Keeko was at the extremity of restraint. She could no longer endure the man's presence. She could no longer listen to him.
"There's the pelts," she cried, pointing. "See to them. That's your work." Then she looked him squarely in the eyes. "The other is for me—alone."
Nicol submitted. He had no alternative. And Keeko hurried away up to the fort.
There was unutterable grief in Keeko's attitude. At her feet lay the low, long mound which marked her mother's grave. Beyond, at the head of it, was a rough wooden cross, hewn from stout logs of spruce. And deeply cut on the cross-bar was her mother's name prefixed by words of endearment. Just behind the girl stood the heavily blanketed figure of Lu-cana, whose eyes were shadowed by a grief which her lips lacked the power to express.
All about them reigned the living silence of the forest with its threat of hidden dangers. It was a silence where the breaking of a twig, the rustle of the soft, rotting vegetation, inches deep upon the ground, might indicate the prowling approach of famished wolf or scavenging coyote, the stealing of wildcat or even of the deadly puma.
The minutes passed as the two women stood voicelessly at the grave side. That which was passing in their minds was their own. Both, in their different fashions, had loved the woman laid so deep in the ground at their feet. And both knew, and perfectly understood, the life she had endured at the hands of the man who had set up the monument to her memory.
After a long time Keeko stirred. She drew a deep breath. It was the sign of passing from thought to activity. She turned to the woman behind her.
"How did she die, Lu-cana?" she asked, in a low voice.
Lu-cana drew near. She spoke in a tone as if in fear of being overheard. And as she spoke she looked this way and that.
"She weep—weep all time when you go," she said brokenly. "She big with much fear. Oh, yes. She scare all to death. So. Days come—she live. She not eat. Oh, no. Days come many. An' all time she weep inside. She not speak. No. Her eye—it all time look around. Oh, much fear. Then one day she not wake. She die all up."
"And he?"
"Oh, him come all time. Him sit and mak' talk to her. I not know. Only him talk. Him go—she weep. Him go—she watch all scare. So it come she die all up."
Keeko pointed at the cross at the head of the grave.
"He set that up? Yes?"
"Him mak' him totem."
Keeko stood staring at the cross for some moments. Then she moved over to it and grasped it. It stirred in its setting. Then she left it, and returned to Lu-cana.
"He dared to set that up," she cried bitterly. "'In loving memory.'" She read the words before the name of her mother. "He dared to set up—that?"
Her eyes shone with a fierce light as she turned and looked into the squaw's face.
"Yes. Him set 'em up."
Lu-cana failed to understand that which lay at the back of Keeko's eyes. She could not read the words on the totem. She did not know their meaning when she heard them. All she knew was that the white man had done this thing.
Keeko pointed at it.
"Guess I'll make a new—totem," she said, in a tone that was only cold and hard. "And we'll set it up. You and me, Lu-cana. And that one—that one," she repeated with bitter emphasis, "we'll break it, we'll smash it, and we'll burn it in the cook stove till there's nothing left."
Keeko remained for two months at the fort. And the length of her stay was the result of careful calculation, and the necessity which her final break from association with her step-father demanded. Then, too, there was the season to consider. Before she set out on her journey to Seal Bay the fierce winter of Unaga must have completely closed down. No storm or cold had terror for her. All she required was the case-hardening of the world, which would leave an iron surface upon which the dog trains could travel.
During those two months the force of Keeko's character developed with giant strides. She was alone, utterly alone. Her whole life depended upon her own powers to carry out the plans which had seemed almost simple while her mother was still alive. Now everything had suddenly changed. Inevitably, had there been a shadow of weakness in the girl it must have found her out, and tripped her into some pitfall, floundering. But there was no such weakness.
From the first moment the enormous change wrought by her mother's death left her keenly understanding. Until the final break, her step-father must be humoured, conciliated. The thought was humiliating, but necessity urged. And she accepted the inevitable with simple courage.