e and more
regularly from between his lips. But even as he rejoiced the other
fear grew heavier at his heart. What had happened to Minnetaki? He
found himself repeating the question again and again as he watched
Wabi slowly returning to life, and, so quickly that it had passed in a
minute or two, there flashed through his mind a vision of all that had
happened the last few months. For a few moments, as his mind traveled
back, he was again in Detroit with his widowed mother; he thought of
the day he had first met Wabigoon, the son of an English factor and a
beautiful Indian princess, who had come far down into civilization to
be educated; of the friendship that had followed, of their weeks and
months together in school, and then of those joyous days and nights in
which they had planned a winter of thrilling adventure at Wabi's home
in the far North.

And what adventures there had been, when, as the Wolf Hunters, he and
Wabi and Mukoki had braved the perils of the frozen solitudes! As
Wabigoon's breath came more and more regularly he thought of that
wonderful canoe trip from the last bit of civilization up into the
wilds; of his first sight of moose, the first bear he had killed, and
of his meeting with Minnetaki.

His eyes became blurred and his heart grew cold as he thought of what
might have happened to her. A vision of the girl swept between him and
Wabi's face, in which the glow of life was growing warmer and warmer,
a vision of the little half-Indian maiden as he had first seen her,
when she came out to meet them in her canoe from Wabinosh House, the
sun shining on her dark hair, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her
eyes and teeth sparkling in glad welcome to her beloved brother
and the white youth of whom she had heard so much--the boy from
civilization--Roderick Drew. He remembered how his cap had blown off
into the water, how she had rescued it for him. In a flash all that
passed after that came before him like a picture; the days that he and
Minnetaki had rambled together in the forest, the furious battle
in which, single-handed, he had saved her from those fierce outlaw
Indians of the North, the Woongas; and after that he thought of
the weeks of thrilling adventure they three--Mukoki, Wabigoon and
himself--had spent in the wilderness far from the Hudson Bay Post, of
their months of trapping, their desperate war with the Woongas, the
discovery of the century-old cabin and its ancient skeletons, and
their f