ea with Thomas and Margaret
he told Thomas of Indian Jake's call upon his father, of the shooting
and of the robbery which followed.

"Injun Jake turns back after leavin' and shoots Pop and takes the
silver," he concluded, "and I'm goin' to get the silver whatever, even
if I has to shoot Injun Jake to get un!"

"Is you sure, now, 'twere Injun Jake does un?" asked Thomas, unwilling
to believe his friend and partner capable of such treachery. By
disposition Thomas was naturally cautious of passing judgment or of
accusing anyone of misdeed without conclusive proof.

"There's no doubtin' that!" insisted Eli. "There was nobody else to do
un. 'Twere Injun Jake."

A shift of wind to the southward assisted Eli on his way. Early that
evening he reached the Hudson's Bay Company's post, twenty miles west
of The Jug. Here he stopped for supper and learned from Zeke Hodge,
the Post servant, that Indian Jake had passed up Grand Lake in his
canoe two days before. Zeke expressed doubt as to Eli's finding the
half-breed at the Nascaupee River. He stated it as his opinion that if
Indian Jake were guilty of the crime, as he had no doubt, he was
planning an escape and had in all probability immediately plunged into
the interior, in which case he was already hopelessly beyond pursuit
and had fled the Bay country for good and all. Like Eli, Zeke
convicted the half-breed at once.

The Eskimo Bay Post of the Hudson's Bay Company is the last inhabited
dwelling as the traveller enters the wilderness; he might go on and on
for a thousand miles to Hudson Bay and in the whole vast expanse of
distance no other human habitation will he find. His camps will be
pitched in the depths of forests or on desolate, naked barrens; and
always, in forests or on barrens, he will hear the rush and roar of
mighty rivers or the lapping waves of wide, far-reaching lakes. The
timber wolf will startle him from sleep in the dead of night with its
long, weird howl, rising and falling in dismal cadence, or the silence
will be broken perchance by the wild, uncanny laugh of the loon
falling upon the darkness as a token of ill omen, but in all the vast
land he will hear no human voice and he will find no human
companionship.

Indian Jake had told Thomas that he would camp above the mouth of the
Nascaupee River, a dozen miles beyond the point where the river enters
Grand Lake. It was a journey of sixty miles or more from the Post.

Eli set out at once. Five miles up