f up short. "Unfortunately there's the force," he
said lightly. "If I don't go back and report they'll come after me."

"What is this place we are going to, Martin?"

"Fort Enterprise."

"I am like a person hanging suspended in space. I neither know where I
came from, nor where I am going. What is Fort Enterprise like?"

"A trading-post."

"Your home?"

"Such as it is."

"Why 'such as it is'?"

"Well, it's a bit of a hole."

"No society?"

"Society!" He laughed grimly.

"Aren't there any girls there?"

"Devil a one!--except Miss Pringle, the parson's sister, and she's
considerable oldish."

"Don't you know any real girls, Martin?"

"None but you, Clare."

She bent an odd, happy glance on him. It meant: "Is it possible that I
am the first with him?"

"Why do you look at me like that?" he asked.

"Oh, you're rather nice to look at," she said airily.

"Thanks," he said, blushing. He was modest, but that sort of thing
doesn't exactly hurt the most modest of men. "Same to you!"

* * * * *

They camped that night on a little plateau of sweet grass, and after
supper Mary told tales by the fire. Mary, bland and uncensorious, was a
perfect chaperon. What she thought of the present situation Stonor never
knew. He left it to Clare to come to an understanding with her. That
they shared many a secret from which he was excluded, he knew. Mary had
soon recovered from her terror of Clare's seeming illness.

"This the story of the Wolf-Man," she began. "Once on a tam there was a
man had two bad wives. They had no shame. That man think maybe if he go
away where there were no other people he can teach those women to be
good, so he move his lodge away off on the prairie. Near where they camp
was a high hill, and every evenin' when the sun go under the man go up
on top of the hill, and look all over the country to see where the
buffalo was feeding, and see if any enemies come. There was a
buffalo-skull on that hill which he sit on.

"In the daytime while he hunt the women talk. 'This is ver' lonesome,'
one say. 'We got nobody talk to, nobody to visit.'

"Other woman say: 'Let us kill our husband. Then we go back to our
relations, and have good time.'

"Early in the morning the man go out to hunt. When he gone his wives go
up the hill. Dig deep pit, and cover it with sticks and grass and dirt.
And put buffalo-skull on top.

"When the shadows grow long they see their husband com