self-consciousness. "Say," he went on, "I've hit the greatest trail ever
a feller struck in this queer darn country. Gee!" He breathed a profound
sigh. "It was queer. I was trailing an old bull moose. I followed it
days."

An-ina was watching him. She beheld the radiant light in his frank eyes.
She noted the almost feverish manner in which he was clouding the
tobacco smoke about him. She even thought she detected an unsteadiness
in the hand that held his pipe. She waited.

"Oh, yes," he went on. "I was in a territory I guess I've hunted plenty.
I kind of knew it all, as it's given to anyone to know this darn land. I
followed the trail right up to the end, but--I didn't make a kill. No."

His tone had dropped to a soft, deep note that thrilled with some
emotion An-ina had never before been aware of in him. A startled light
shone in her eyes, and her work lay unheeded in her lap.

"No. I didn't make a kill, but I came right up to the end of that trail,
and found----"

"A woman?"

Marcel sat up with a jolt. His wide, astonished eyes stared almost
foolishly into the dark native eyes smiling back into his.

"How d'you know--that?" he demanded sharply.

He planted his elbows on the table, resting his square chin upon his
hands.

An-ina laughed that almost silent laugh so peculiar to her.

"An-ina guess him. An-ina look and look. An-ina see Marcel all
smiling--inside. She hear him voice all soft, like--like--Ah, An-ina not
know what it like. So she think. She say, what mak' Marcel all like this?
Him find something. Him not scare. Oh, no. Marcel not scare nothing. No.
Him much please. Marcel boy? No. Him big man. What him mak' big man much
please. An-ina know. It woman. So she say."

Marcel wanted to laugh. He wanted to shout his delight. He wanted to
pour out the hot, passionate feelings of his heart to a woman who could
read and understand him like this. He did none of these things, however.

He simply smiled and nodded, while his whole face lit radiantly.

"That's a hell of a good guess," he cried. "Yes. I found a--woman. A
beautiful, blue-eyed white woman. And she called herself, 'Keeko.'"

An-ina swiftly rolled up the buckskin she was working. She laid it on
the supper table beside her. Then she drew up her chair, and she, too,
set her elbows on the table, and supported her handsome, smiling face in
her hands. Again it was the woman, the mother in her. It was her boy's
romance. The boy she had raised to ma