ail, back there on
the river that comes out of the east. We've got this territory cached
with food dumps and things, and we're out, scattered miles over the
country, beating it for pelts with trap and gun. Guess we figger to stop
right out till it starts in to freeze up. And just about the time the
old sun gets sick worrying to make Unaga a fit place for better than
skitters and things, and chases off for its winter sleep, why we're
hitting right back to--the place I come from. I've been making the
summer trail ever since I was a kid, which isn't a long way back, and I
allow this is the first time it's ever been my luck to find better than
the silences that's liable to set you plumb crazed if you don't happen
to have been born to 'em, the same as I was. Guess that's about all
there is to me I know of, except that secret I can't just hand you."

It was all said so frankly, so simply. It was not the story Marcel had
to tell that established confidence. It was the telling of it. And it
needed no words from the girl to admit her approval. It was shining in
her smiling eyes, while a wonderful feeling began to stir in a heart
that was only a shade less simple than the heart of the youth.

Keeko, woman-like, applied no reason where her feelings were concerned.
She liked the man, and she liked the name he called himself by. She
liked his great, height and breadth of shoulder, and she liked his
clear, handsome eyes with their ingenuous smile. That was sufficient.

She nodded with that intimate air of sympathy.

"I know," she said readily. "It's a land of secrets north of 60 deg.. That's
why folks live in a country that can't ever get out of its eternal
sleep, and only the nightmare of storm disturbs it. The secret isn't
usually ours. The secret mostly belongs to those who brought us here,
and though maybe we don't understand it right, why, the thing just grows
up in our minds, and we find we couldn't talk of it to strangers any
more than if it was our own. That's the way of it. It's a country that
starts in to break your kid's heart, and ends by making you love it--if
it doesn't kill you."

"Oh, yes. I love this old north," she went on with gentle warmth. "Maybe
you do, too. It's half-baked and dead-tough anyway. But it teaches even
a girl the things it doesn't hurt anyone to know. It's good for us all
to get up against Nature in the cold raw. Guess if I was back in a city
the biggest thing in my life would likely be squeezi