, his eyes droll over this new
complication introduced by his thoughtless comrade.

"Well, we can't have her with us," objected Dick, obstinately. "She'd
hinder us, and bother us, and get in our way, and we'd have to feed
her--we may have to starve ourselves;--and she's no damn _use_ to us.
She can't go. I won't have it; I didn't bargain to lug a lot of squaws
around on this trip. She came; I didn't ask her to. Let her get out of
it the best way she can. She's an Injun. She can make it all right
through the woods. And if she has a hard time, she _ought_ to."

"Nice mess, isn't it, Dick?" grinned the other.

"No mess about it. I haven't anything to do with such a fool trick. What
did she expect to gain tagging us through the woods that way half a mile
to the rear? She was just waiting 'till we got so far away from th'
Crees that we couldn't send her back. I'll fool her on that, damn her!"
He kicked a log back into place, sending the sparks eddying.

"I wonder if she's had anything to eat lately?" said Bolton.

"I don't care a damn whether she has or not," said Dick.

"Keep your hair on, my son," advised Sam again. "You're hot because you
thought you'd got shut of th' whole affair, and now you find you
haven't."

"You make me sick," commented Dick.

"Mebbe," admitted the woodsman. He fell silent, staring straight before
him, emitting short puffs from his pipe. The girl stood where she had
been thrust.

"I'll start her back in the morning," proffered Dick after a few
moments. Then, as this elicited no remark, "We can stock her up with
jerky, and there's no reason she shouldn't make it." Sam remained grimly
silent. "Is there?" insisted Dick. He waited a minute for a reply.
Then, as none came, "Hell!" he exclaimed, disgustedly, and turned away
to sit on a log the other side of the fire with all the petulance of a
child.

"Now look here, Sam," he broke out, after an interval. "We might as well
get at this thing straight. We can't keep her with us, now, can we?"

Sam removed his pipe, blew a cloud straight before him, and replaced it.

Dick reddened slowly, got up with an incidental remark about damn fools,
and began to spread his blankets beneath the lean-to shelter. He
muttered to himself, angered at the dead opposition of circumstance
which he could not push aside. Suddenly he seized the girl again by the
arm.

"Why you come?" he demanded in Ojibway. "Where you get your blankets?
Where you get your grub? How