you make the Long Trail? What you do when
we go far and fast? What we do with you now?" Then meeting nothing but
the stolidity with which the Indian always conceals pain, he flung her
aside. "Stupid owl!" he growled.

He sat on the ground and began to take off his moccasins with
ostentatious deliberation, abruptly indifferent to it all. Slowly he
prepared for the night, yawning often, looking at the sky, arranging the
fire, emphasising and delaying each of his movements as though to prove
to himself that he acknowledged only the habitual. At last he turned in,
his shoulder thrust aggressively toward the two motionless figures by
the fire.

It was by now close to midnight. The big moon had long since slipped
from behind the solitary wolf on the hill. Yet Sam Bolton made no move
toward his blankets, and the girl did not stir from the downcast
attitude into which she had first fallen. The old woodsman looked at the
situation with steady eyes. He realised to the full what Dick Herron's
thoughtlessness had brought on them. A woman, even a savage woman inured
to the wilderness, was a hindrance. She could not travel as fast nor as
far; she could not bear the same burdens, endure the same hardship; she
would consume her share of the provisions. And before this expedition
into the Silent Places should be finished the journeying might require
the speed of a course after quarry, the packing would come finally to
the men's back, the winter would have to be met in the open, and the
North, lavish during these summer months, sold her sustenance dear when
the snows fell. The time might come when these men would have to arm for
the struggle. Cruelty, harshness, relentlessness, selfishness,
singleness of purpose, hardness of heart they would have perforce to
assume. And when they stripped for such a struggle, Sam Bolton knew that
among other things this woman would have to go. If the need arose, she
would have to die; for this quest was greater than the life of any woman
or any man. Would it not be better to send her back through certain
hardship now, rather than carry her on to a possible death in the White
Silence. For the North as yet but skirmished. Her true power lay behind
the snows and the ice.

The girl stood in the same attitude. Sam Bolton spoke to her.

"May-may-gwan."

"Little Father."

"Why have you followed us?"

The girl did not reply.

"Sister," said the woodsman, kindly, "I am an old man. You have called
me F