ly and without movement. Warm small fingers touched
his cheek and slid gently to a pressure on his lips. Fur, with the
chill of frost clinging in it, next tingled his skin, and the one word,
"Come," was breathed in his ear. He sat up carefully and listened. The
hundreds of wolf-dogs in the camp had lifted their nocturnal song, but
under the volume of it, close at hand, he could distinguish the light,
regular breathing of Snass.

Labiskwee tugged gently at Smoke's sleeve, and he knew she wished him to
follow. He took his moccasins and German socks in his hand and crept out
into the snow in his sleeping moccasins. Beyond the glow from the dying
embers of the fire, she indicated to him to put on his outer foot-gear,
and while he obeyed, she went back under the fly where Snass slept.

Feeling the hands of his watch Smoke found it was one in the morning.
Quite warm it was, he decided, not more than ten below zero. Labiskwee
rejoined him and led him on through the dark runways of the sleeping
camp. Walk lightly as they could, the frost crunched crisply under their
moccasins, but the sound was drowned by the clamor of the dogs, too deep
in their howling to snarl at the man and woman who passed.

"Now we can talk," she said, when the last fire had been left half a
mile behind.

And now, in the starlight, facing him, Smoke noted for the first time
that her arms were burdened, and, on feeling, discovered she carried his
snowshoes, a rifle, two belts of ammunition, and his sleeping-robes.

"I have everything fixed," she said, with a happy little laugh. "I have
been two days making the cache. There is meat, even flour, matches, and
skees, which go best on the hard crust and, when they break through,
the webs will hold up longer. Oh, I do know snow-travel, and we shall go
fast, my lover."

Smoke checked his speech. That she had been arranging his escape was
surprise enough, but that she had planned to go with him was more than
he was prepared for. Unable to think immediate action, he gently, one
by one, took her burdens from her. He put his arm around her and pressed
her close, and still he could not think what to do.

"God is good," she whispered. "He sent me a lover."

Yet Smoke was brave enough not to suggest his going alone. And before he
spoke again he saw all his memory of the bright world and the sun-lands
reel and fade.

"We will go back, Labiskwee," he said. "You will be my wife, and we
shall live always with the