our affairs, you
will return to Conjuror's House. There I can enter the household of some
officer."

"But you cannot take the winter trail," objected Sam.

"I am strong; I can take the winter trail."

"And perhaps we may have to journey hard and fast."

"As when one pursues an enemy," said the girl, calmly. "Good. I am
fleet. I too can travel. And if it comes to that, I will leave you
without complaint when I can no longer tread your trail."

"But the food," objected Sam, still further.

"Consider, Little Father," said May-may-gwan; "of the food I have
prepared much; of the work, I have done much. I have tended the traps,
raised the nets, fashioned many things, attended Eagle-eye. If I had
not been here, then you, Little Father, could not have made your
journeys. So you have gained some time."

"That is true," conceded Sam.

"Listen, Little Father, take me with you. I will drive the dogs, make
the camp, cook the food. Never will I complain. If the food gets scarce,
I will not ask for my share. That I promise."

"Much of what you say is true," assented the woodsman, "but you forget
you came to us of your free will and unwelcomed. It would be better that
you go to Missinaibie."

"No," replied the girl.

"If you hope to become the squaw of Jibiwanisi," said Sam, bluntly, "you
may as well give it up."

The girl said nothing, but compressed her lips to a straight line. After
a moment she merely reiterated her original solution:

"At Conjuror's House I know the people."

"I will think of it," then concluded Sam.

Dick, however, could see no good in such an arrangement. He did not care
to discuss the matter at length, but preserved rather the attitude of a
man who has shaken himself free of all the responsibility of an affair,
and is mildly amused at the tribulations of another still involved in
it.

"You'll have a lot of trouble dragging a squaw all over the north," he
advised Sam, critically. "Of course, we can't turn her adrift here.
Wouldn't do that to a dog. But it strikes me it would even pay us to go
out of our way to Missinaibie to get rid of her. We could do that."

"Well, I don't know--" doubted Sam. "Of course--"

"Oh, bring her along if you want to," laughed Dick, "only it's your
funeral. You'll get into trouble, sure. And don't say I didn't tell
you."

It might have been imagined by the respective attitudes of the two men
that actually Sam had been responsible for the affair from the
begi