You do?" Keeko was forced to a responsive laugh. "Yes. It means a whole
lot," she went on. "And--I don't guess we've taken five hundred dollars
yet--at his price. Last year I took three silver foxes, and a brace of
jet black beauties that didn't set him squealing at fifty dollars each.
No. They were jo-dandies," she sighed appreciatively. "But it hasn't
been that way this season," she continued, with pathetic regret. "It
seems like there isn't a single fox this side of the big north hills."

Marcel shook his head.

"But there is," he said very definitely.

"Is there?" Keeko shook her head. "Then I must have been looking the
other way most all the time."

A reply hovered upon Marcel's lips. But he seemed to change his mind. He
could not stand the obscuring of the sun of the girl's pretty eyes. He
turned away, and laid his rifle aside. Then he sprawled his big body at
the foot of an adjacent tree, and sat with his wide shoulders propped
against it for support.

"Say, Keeko," he cried, gazing up into the troubled eyes watching him,
and addressing the girl by name for the first time, "let's sit. We've
got to make a big talk. Anyway, I have. I feel like one of those fool
neches sitting in a war council, and handing out wisdom that wouldn't
fool a half-hatched skitter. Still, I reckon I've got one hell of a
notion, and notions worry me to death if I can't hand 'em on to some
feller who can't defend himself. I'm not often worried that way. Will
you listen awhile?"

Marcel's effort was not without effect. The girl's eyes cleared of their
shadows, swept away by a smiling amusement. She found him quite
irresistible in the gloom of her twilight surroundings, and forthwith
permitted herself to subside upon the ground opposite him, with legs
crossed, and her rifle lying across her knees.

"It's easy listening," she said with a laugh.

"Good!"

Marcel laughed, too.

"Now, it's this," he began, with a profound solemnity that delighted the
girl. "If I hand you anything you don't fancy listening to, why, say so
right away, and I'll quit. You see, I don't get much practice handing it
out to a girl, and I'm liable to make breaks--bad breaks. You see, we're
mostly a thousand miles outside the world, and you're a lone girl in a
hell of a lone land. I'd be thankful for you to get hold of it that I
was raised to reckon a girl needs all the help a decent man can hand
her. That's his duty. Plumb. And he hasn't a right on earth to fi