there won't be any message."

CHAPTER XV

THE HEART OF UNAGA

Alone in the great silence. Without even the cry of desolation wrung
from starving wolf, or the howl of depression which ever seems to haunt
the heart of the coyote world. Alone with groping thought, with burning
hope, and the undermining of doubt which the strongest cannot always
shake off. Steve had taken the plunge which robbed him of human
companionship.

It was the prompting of that spirit which borders so closely the line
where earthly sanity passes. It was the spirit which finds its
inspiration in the Great Purpose which drives on for the achievement of
the human task on earth. The dreamer of dreams is born to translate his
visions into reality, or to lie broken before the task. Steve was no
visionary. He was something more, something greater. His was the stern
heart of purpose selected for the translation of the dream of the
dreamer who had fallen by the way.

Steve permitted himself no reflection upon the spiritual appeal of his
purpose. These things might concern those of a wider, deeper
intelligence. Or, perhaps, those whose weakness unfitted them for the
battle of the strong. It was for him to claim issue in the battle he
sought. And come life and victory, or death and defeat, he was prepared
to accept the verdict without complaint.

The twinkling eyes of the heavens searched down upon the infinitesimal
moving figure. Their cold smile was steely, perhaps with the irony the
sight inspired. Their world was so coldly indifferent to human survival.

The snowless breasts of the valley rose up miles away to the north and
south. And between their swelling contours lay a country of lesser hills
and valleys, equally snowless, and whose heart was the flood of a great
river.

Sterility had passed. Here were no barren hill-crests with a hundred
weatherworn facets. Here were no fields of snow, driven by the fierce
gales of the polar seas. Here were no glacial fields bound in an iron
grip throughout the ages. The fires in the heart of Unaga were burning.
Their warming was in the breath of the breeze. It was in the very earth,
yielding its fruit with the freedom of the temperate world.

A wood-clad country of almost luxurious vegetation, there was in it a
suggestion of the sub-tropical. But under the twilight of Arctic winter
it had lost the happy hues of a sunlit season. True, the conifers
retained their dull, dark foliage, but, for the rest