d to like it as
it licked off the delectable grease.

Later on in the morning Smoke went for a stroll through the camp, busy
with its primitive pursuits. A big body of hunters had just returned,
and the men were scattering to their various fires. Women and children
were departing with dogs harnessed to empty toboggan-sleds, and women
and children and dogs were hauling sleds heavy with meat fresh from the
killing and already frozen. An early spring cold-snap was on, and the
wildness of the scene was painted in a temperature of thirty below zero.
Woven cloth was not in evidence. Furs and soft-tanned leather clad all
alike. Boys passed with bows in their hands, and quivers of bone-barbed
arrows; and many a skinning-knife of bone or stone Smoke saw in belts or
neck-hung sheaths. Women toiled over the fires, smoke-curing the meat,
on their backs infants that stared round-eyed and sucked at lumps of
tallow. Dogs, full-kin to wolves, bristled up to Smoke to endure the
menace of the short club he carried and to whiff the odor of this
newcomer whom they must accept by virtue of the club.

Segregated in the heart of the camp, Smoke came upon what was evidently
Snass's fire. Though temporary in every detail, it was solidly
constructed and was on a large scale. A great heap of bales of skins and
outfit was piled on a scaffold out of reach of the dogs. A large canvas
fly, almost half-tent, sheltered the sleeping- and living-quarters.
To one side was a silk tent--the sort favored by explorers and wealthy
big-game hunters. Smoke had never seen such a tent, and stepped closer.
As he stood looking, the flaps parted and a young woman came out. So
quickly did she move, so abruptly did she appear, that the effect on
Smoke was as that of an apparition. He seemed to have the same effect on
her, and for a long moment they gazed at each other.

She was dressed entirely in skins, but such skins and such magnificently
beautiful fur-work Smoke had never dreamed of. Her parka, the hood
thrown back, was of some strange fur of palest silver. The mukluks,
with walrus-hide soles, were composed of the silver-padded feet of many
lynxes. The long-gauntleted mittens, the tassels at the knees, all
the varied furs of the costume, were pale silver that shimmered in the
frosty light; and out of this shimmering silver, poised on slender,
delicate neck, lifted her head, the rosy face blonde as the eyes were
blue, the ears like two pink shells, the light chest