sked, falling into
the Indian manner.

Keesh looked him steadily in the eyes for a full minute, then started
up his dogs. Then again, turning his deliberate gaze upon the
missionary, he answered, "No; I go to hell."

* * * * *

In an open space, striving to burrow into the snow as though for
shelter from the appalling desolateness, huddled three dreary lodges.
Ringed all about, a dozen paces away, was the sombre forest. Overhead
there was no keen, blue sky of naked space, but a vague, misty
curtain, pregnant with snow, which had drawn between. There was no
wind, no sound, nothing but the snow and silence. Nor was there even
the general stir of life about the camp; for the hunting party had run
upon the flank of the caribou herd and the kill had been large. Thus,
after the period of fasting had come the plenitude of feasting, and
thus, in broad daylight, they slept heavily under their roofs of
moosehide.

By a fire, before one of the lodges, five pairs of snow-shoes stood
on end in their element, and by the fire sat Su-Su. The hood of her
squirrel-skin parka was about her hair, and well drawn up around her
throat; but her hands were unmittened and nimbly at work with needle
and sinew, completing the last fantastic design on a belt of leather
faced with bright scarlet cloth. A dog, somewhere at the rear of one
of the lodges, raised a short, sharp bark, then ceased as abruptly as
it had begun. Once, her father, in the lodge at her back, gurgled and
grunted in his sleep. "Bad dreams," she smiled to herself. "He grows
old, and that last joint was too much."

She placed the last bead, knotted the sinew, and replenished the fire.
Then, after gazing long into the flames, she lifted her head to the
harsh _crunch-crunch_ of a moccasined foot against the flinty snow
granules. Keesh was at her side, bending slightly forward to a load
which he bore upon his back. This was wrapped loosely in a soft-tanned
moosehide, and he dropped it carelessly into the snow and sat down.
They looked at each other long and without speech.

"It is a far fetch, O Keesh," she said at last, "a far fetch from St.
George Mission by the Yukon."

"Ay," he made answer, absently, his eyes fixed keenly upon the belt
and taking note of its girth. "But where is the knife?" he demanded.

"Here." She drew it from inside her parka and flashed its naked length
in the firelight. "It is a good knife."

"Give it me!" he command