into a drizzling rain.

The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased
the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling
during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air
became sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from
the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the
rivulets became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents
which they had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them
away.

The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature. He was in
high glee. It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.

"We will make it all right!" he shouted to Little Thunder as they paused
for a few moments in a grassy glade. "Can we make the Forks before
dark?"

Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it
expressed doubt.

"On then!" he shouted. "We must make these brutes get a move on. They'll
feed when we camp."

So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies that
were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the chinook had
already melted the snow. Mercilessly and savagely the trader, with whip
and voice and charging stallion, hustled the wretched animals into the
trail once more. And through the long afternoon, with unceasing and
brutal ferocity, he belabored the faltering, stumbling, half-starved
creatures, till from sheer exhaustion they were like to fall upon the
trail. It was a weary business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of
Nighthawk seemed to have passed into his master, and with an insistence
that knew no mercy together they battered that wretched bunch up and
down the long slopes till at length the merciful night fell upon the
straggling, stumbling cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.

At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt, rode
to the rear and grunted something to his chief.

"What?" cried Raven in a startled voice. "Stonies! Where?"

Little Thunder pointed.

"Did they see you?" This insult Little Thunder disdained to notice.
"Good!" replied Raven. "Stay here, Cameron, we will take a look at
them."

In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an eager
gleam in his eyes.

"Stonies!" he exclaimed. "And a big camp. On their way back from their
winter's trapping. Old Macdougall himself in charge, I think. Do you
know him?"

"I have heard of him," said Cameron