The silent places

Dick was afoot after a few hours' sleep. He aroused Sam and went about the preparation of breakfast. May-may-gwán attempted to help, but both she and her efforts were disregarded. She brought wood, but Dick rustled a supply just the same, paying no attention to the girl's little pile; she put on fresh fuel, but Dick, without impatience,—indeed, as though he were merely rearranging the fire,—contrived to undo her work; she brought to hand the utensils, but Dick, in searching for them, always looked where they had originally been placed. His object seemed not so much to thwart the girl as to ignore her. When breakfast was ready he divided it into two portions, one of which he ate. After the meal he washed the few dishes. Once he took a cup from the girl's hand as she was drying it, much as he would have taken it from the top of a stump. He then proceeded to clean it as though it had just been used.

May-may-gwán made no sign that she noticed these things. After a little she helped Sam roll the blankets, strike the shelter, construct the packs. Here her assistance was accepted, though Sam did not address her. After a few moments the start was made.

The first few hours were spent as before, wading the stream. As she could do nothing in the water, May-may-gwán kept to the woods, walking stolidly onward, her face to the front, expressionless, hiding whatever pain she may have felt. This side of noon, however, the travellers came to a cataract falling over a fifty-foot ledge into a long, cliff-bordered pool.

It became necessary to portage. The hill pinched down steep and close. There existed no trails. Dick took the little camp axe to find a way. He clambered up one after the other three ravines—grown with brush and heavy ferns, damp with a trickle of water,—always to be stopped near the summit by a blank wall impossible to scale. At length he found a passage he thought might be practicable. Thereupon he cut a canoe trail back to the water-side.

In clearing this trail his attention turned to making room for a canoe on a man's back. Therefore the footing he bothered with not at all. Saplings he clipped down by bending them with the left hand, and striking at the strained fibres where they bowed. A single blow would thus fell treelets of some size. When he had finished his work there resulted a winding, cylindrical hole in the forest growth some three feet from the ground. Through this cylinder the canoe would be passed while its bearer picked a practised way among slippery rocks, old stubs, new sapling stumps, and undergrowth below. Men who might, in later years, wish to follow this Indian trail, would look not for footprints but for waist-high indications of the axe.

When the canoe had been carried to the top of the bluff that marked the water-fall, it was relaunched in a pool. In the meantime May-may-gwán, who had at last found a use for her willingness, carried the packs. Dick re-embarked. His companion perceived that he intended to shove off as soon as the other should have taken his place. Sam frustrated that, however, by holding fast to the gunwale. May-may-gwán stepped in amidships, with a half-deprecating glance at the young man's inscrutable back. At the end of the brief paddling the upper pool allowed them, she was first ashore.

Late that afternoon the travel for a half mile became exceedingly difficult. The stream took on the character of a mountain brook. It hardly paid to float the canoe in the tiny holes among the rocks, miniature cascades, and tortuous passages. The forest grew to the very banks, and arched over to exclude the sun. Every few feet was to be avoided a tree, half clinging to the bank, leaning at a perilous slant out over the creek. Fortunately the spring freshets in this country of the great snows were powerful enough to sweep out the timber actually fallen, so the course of the stream itself was clear of jams. At length the travellers reached a beaver-dam, and so to a little round lake among the hills. They had come to the head waters of the Mattawishguia.

In the lake stood two moose, old and young. Dick succeeded in killing the yearling, though it took two shots from his Winchester. It was decided to camp here over one day in order that the meat might be saved.

A circle of hills surrounded the little body of water. On them grew maples and birches, among which scattered a few hemlocks and an occasional pine. At the edge of the water were cedars leaning out to look at their reflections. A deep and solemn peace seemed to brood over the miniature lake. Such affairs as bird songs, the slap of a paddle, the shots from Dick's rifle could not break this strange stillness. They spoke hastily, and relapsed to silence, like the rare necessary voices in a room where one lies dead. The hush, calm and primal, with the infinity of the wilderness as its only measure of time, took no account of the shock of a second's interruption. Two loons swam like ghosts. Everywhere and nowhere among the trees, in the hills, over the water, the finer senses were almost uneasily conscious of a vast and awful presence. It was as yet aloof, unheeding, buddhistic, brooding in nirvanic calm, still unawakened to put forth the might of its displeasure. Under its dreaming eyes men might, fearfully and with reverence, carry on their affairs,—fearfully and with reverence, catching the breath, speaking low, growing silent and stern in the presence of the North.

At the little camp under the cedars, Dick Herron and Sam Bolton, assisted by the Ojibway girl, May-may-gwán, cut the moose-meat into thin strips, salted, and dried it in the bright sun. And since the presence of loons argued fish, they set their nets and lines. Several days thus passed.

In their relations the three promptly settled back into a species of routine. Men who travel in the Silent Places speedily take on the colour of their surroundings. They become silent also. A band of voyageurs of sufficient strength may chatter and sing; they have by the very force of numbers created an atmosphere of their own. But two are not enough for this. They have little to say, for their souls are laved by the great natural forces.

Dick Herron, even in ordinary circumstances, withdrew rather grimly into himself. He looked out at things from beneath knit brows; he held his elbows close to his sides, his fists clenched, his whole spiritual being self-contained and apart, watchful for enmity in what he felt but could not understand. But to this, his normal habit, now was added a sullenness almost equally instinctive. In some way he felt himself aggrieved by the girl's presence. At first it was merely the natural revolt of a very young man against assuming responsibility he had not invited. The resulting discomfort of mind, however, he speedily assigned to the girl's account. He continued, as at first, to ignore her. But in the slow rumination of the forest he became more and more irritably sensible of her presence. Sam's taciturnity was contrastedly sunny and open. He looked on things about him with the placid receptivity of an old man, and said nothing because there was nothing to say. The Ojibway girl remained inscrutable, helping where she could, apparently desirous of neither praise nor blame.

At the end of three days the provisions were ready. There had resulted perhaps sixty pounds of "jerky." It now became necessary to leave the water-way, and to strike directly through the forest, over the hills, and into the country of the Kabinikágam.

Dick shouldered a thirty-pound pack and the canoe. Sam Bolton and the girl managed the remainder. Every twenty minutes or so they would rest, sinking back against the trunks of trees, mossy stones, or a bank of new ferns. The forest was open and inexpressibly lofty. Moose maples, young birches, and beeches threw their coolness across the face, then above them the columns of the trunks, then far up in green distance the leaves again, like the gold-set roof of a church. The hill mounted always before them. Ancient rocks hoary with moss, redolent of dampness, stood like abandoned altars given over to decay. A strange, sweet wind freighted with stray bird-notes wandered aimlessly.

Nothing was said. Dick led the way and set the intervals of the carrying. When he swung the canoe from his shoulders the others slipped their tump-lines. Then all rubbed their faces with the broad caribou-leaf to keep off the early flies, and lay back, arms extended, breathing deep, resting like boxers between the rounds. Once at the top of the ridge Dick climbed a tree. He did this, not so much in expectation of seeing the water-courses themselves, as to judge by the general lay of the country where they might be found.

In a bare open space under hemlocks Sam indicated a narrow, high, little pen, perhaps three feet long by six inches wide, made of cut saplings. Dick examined it.

"Marten deadfall," he pronounced. "Made last winter. Somebody's been trapping through here."

After a time a blaze on a tree was similarly remarked. Then the travellers came to a tiny creek, which, being followed, soon debouched into a larger. This in turn became navigable, after the north-country fashion. That is to say, the canoe with its load could much of the time be floated down by the men wading in the bed of the creek. Finally Sam, who was in the lead, jerked his head toward the left bank.

"Their winter camp," said he, briefly.

A dim trail led from the water to a sheltered knoll. There stood the framework of a pointed tepee, the long poles spread like fingers above their crossing point. A little pile of gnawed white skulls of various sizes represented at least a portion of the season's catch. Dick turned them over with his foot, identifying them idly. From the sheltered branches of a near-by spruce hung four pairs of snow-shoes cached there until the next winter. Sam gave his first attention to these.

"A man, a woman, and two well-grown children," he pronounced. He ran his hand over the bulging raquette with the long tail and the slightly up-curved end. "Ojibway pattern," he concluded. "Dick, we're in the first hunting district. Here's where we get down to business."

He went over the ground twice carefully, examining the state of the offal, the indications of the last fire.

"They've been gone about six weeks," he surmised. "If they ain't gone visiting, they must be down-stream somewheres. These fellows don't get in to trade their fur 'till along about August."

Two days subsequent, late in the afternoon, Dick pointed out what looked to be a dark streak beneath a bowlder that lay some distance from the banks on a shale bar.

"What's that animal?" he asked.

"Can't make her out," said Bolton, after inspection.

"Ninny-moosh," said the Indian girl, indifferently. It was the first word she had spoken since her talk with the older man.

"It's a dog, all right," conceded Sam. "She has sharp eyes."

The animal rose and began to bark. Two more crashed toward him through the bushes. A thin stream of smoke disengaged itself from the tops of the forest trees. As they swept around the bend, the travellers saw a man contemplating them stolidly through a screen of leaves.

The canoe floated on. About an hundred yards below the Indians Sam ordered a landing. Camp was made as usual. Supper was cooked. The fire replenished. Then, just before the late sunset of the Far North, the bushes crackled.

"Now let me do the talking," warned Sam.

"All right. I'll just keep my eye on this," Dick nodded toward the girl. "She's Ojibway, too, you know. She may give us away."

"She can't only guess," Sam reminded. "But there ain't any danger, anyway."

The leaves parted. The Indian appeared, sauntering with elaborate carelessness, his beady eyes shifting here and there in an attempt to gather what these people might be about.

"Bo' jou', bo' jou'," he greeted them.

The Indian advanced silently to the fireside, where he squatted on his heels. He filled a pipe, scraping the tobacco from the square plug Sam extended to him. While he did this, and while he stuffed it into the bowl, his keen eyes shifted here and there, gathering the material for conclusions.

Sam, watchful but also silent, could almost follow his mental processes. The canoe meant travel, the meagreness of the outfits either rapid or short travel, the two steel traps travel beyond the sources of supply. Then inspection passed lightly over the girl and from her to the younger man. With a flash of illumination Sam Bolton saw how valuable in allaying suspicion this evidence of a peaceful errand might prove to be. Men did not bring their women on important missions involving speed and danger.

Abruptly the Indian spoke, going directly to the heart of the matter, after the Indian fashion.

"Where you from?"

"Winnipeg," replied Sam, naming the headquarters of the Company.

The direction of travel was toward Winnipeg. Sam was perfectly aware of the discrepancy, but he knew better than to offer gratuitous explanation. The Indian smoked.

"Where you come from now?" he inquired, finally.

Sam Bolton gauged perfectly the spirit in his comrade, but paid it little attention. He knew it as a chemical reaction of a certain phase of forest travel. It argued energy, determination, dogged pluck when the need should arise, and so far it was good. The woods life affects various men in various ways, but all in a manner peculiar to itself. It is a reagent unlike any to be found in other modes of life. The moment its influence reaches the spirit, in that moment does the man change utterly from the person he has been in other and ordinary surroundings; and the instant he emerges from its control he reverts to his accustomed bearing. But in the dwelling of the woods he becomes silent. It may be the silence of a self-contained sufficiency; the silence of an equable mind; the silence variously of awe, even of fear; it may be the silence of sullenness. This, as much as the vast stillness of the wilderness, has earned for the region its designation of the Silent Places.

Nor did the older woodsman fear any direct results from the younger's very real, though baseless, anger. These men were bound together by something stronger than any part of themselves. Over them stood the Company, and to its commands all other things gave way. No matter how rebellious might be Dick Herron's heart, how ruffled the surface of his daily manner, Bolton knew perfectly well he would never for a single instant swerve in his loyalty to the main object of the expedition. Serene in this consciousness, the old woodsman dwelt in a certain sweet and gentle rumination of his own. Among the finer instincts of his being many subtle mysteries of the forest found their correspondences. The feeling of these satisfied him entirely, though of course he was incapable of their intellectualisation.

The days succeeded one another. The camps by the rivers or in the woods were in essential all alike. The shelter, the shape, and size of the tiny clearing, the fire, the cooking utensils scattered about, the little articles of personal belonging were the same. Only certain details of surrounding differed, and they were not of importance,—birch-trees for poplars, cedar for both, a river bend to the northwest instead of the southwest, still water for swift, a low bank for a high; but always trees, water, bank, and the sky brilliant with stars. After a little the day's progress became a myth, to be accepted only by the exercise of faith. The forest was a great treadmill in which men toiled all day, only to be surrounded at night by the same grandeurs and littlenesses they had that morning left. In the face of this apparent futility time blew vast. Years were as nothing measured by the task of breaking through the enchanted web that enmeshed them.

And yet all knew by experience, though no one of them could rise to a realisation of the fact, that some day their canoe would round the bend and they would find themselves somewhere. Then they could say to themselves that they had arrived, and could tell themselves that between here and their starting-point lay so many hundred miles. Yet in their secret hearts they would not believe it. They would know that in reality it lay but just around the corner. Only between were dream-days of the shifting forest heavy with toil.

This is the enchantment the North lays on her children, so that when the toil oppresses them and death seems to win, they may not care greatly to struggle, knowing that the struggle is vain.

In the country of the Kabinikágam they visited thus many hunting districts. The travel neither hastened nor lagged. From time to time it was necessary to kill, and then the meat must be cared for. Berries and wild rice were to be gathered. July drew near its end.

Sam Bolton, knowing now the men with whom he had to deal, found no difficulty in the exercise of his simple diplomacy. The Ojibway defaulter was not to be heard of, but every nook searched without result narrowed the remaining possibilities. Everything went well enough until late one afternoon.

The portage happened to lead above a narrow gorge over a rapids. To accomplish it the travellers had first to scale a steep little hill, then to skirt a huge rounded rock that overhung the gorge. The roughness of the surface and the adhesive power of their moccasins alone held them to the slant. These were well sufficient. Unfortunately, however, Dick, without noticing it, had stepped into a little pool of water on disembarking. Buckskin while dry is very adhesive; when wet very slippery. As he followed Sam out on the curving cheek of the rock his foot slid, he lost his equilibrium, was on the edge of falling, overbalanced by the top-heavy pack he was carrying. Luckily Sam himself was portaging the canoe. Dick, with marvellous quickness, ducked loose from the tump-line. The pack bounded down the slant, fell with a splash, and was whirled away. With the impetus of the same motion the young man twisted himself as violently as possible to regain his footing. He would probably have succeeded had it not been for the Indian girl. She had been following the two, a few steps in the rear. As Dick's foot turned, she slipped her own pack and sprang forward, reaching out her arm in the hope of steadying him. Unfortunately she did this only in time to get in the way of the strong twist Dick made for recovery. The young man tottered for an instant on the very brink of saving himself, then gave it up, and fell as loosely as possible into the current.

May-may-gwán, aghast at what she had done, stood paralyzed, staring into the gorge. Sam swung the canoe from his shoulders and ran on over the hill and down the other side.

The Indian girl saw the inert body of the woodsman dashed down through the moil and water, now showing an arm, now a leg, only once, for a single instant, the head. Twice it hit obstacles, limp as a sack of flour. Then it disappeared.

Immediately she regained the use of her legs, and scrambled over the hill after Sam, her breath strangling her. She found below the rapids a pool, and half in the water at its edge Dick seated, bruised and cut, spitting water, and talking excitedly to his companion. Instantly she understood. The young woods runner, with the rare quickness of expedient peculiar to these people, had allowed himself to be carried through the rapids muscle-loose, as an inanimate object would be carried, without an attempt to help himself in any way. It was a desperate chance, but it was the only chance. The slightest stiffening of the muscles, the least struggle would have thrown him out of the water's natural channel against the bowlders; and then a rigidly held body would have offered only too good a resistance to the shock. By a miracle of fortune he had been carried through, bruised and injured, to be sure, but conscious. Sam had dragged him to the bush-grown bank. There he sat up in the water and cleared his lungs. He was wildly excited.

"She did it!" he burst Out, as soon as he could speak. "She did it a purpose! She reached out and pushed me! By God, there she is now!"

With the instinct of the hunter he had managed to cling to his rifle. He wrenched at the magazine lever, throwing the muzzle forward for a shot, but it had been jammed, and he was unable to move it. "She reached out and pushed me! I felt her do it!" he cried. He attempted to rise, but fell back, groaning with a pain that kept him quiet for several moments.

"Sam!" he muttered, "she's there yet. Kill her. Damn it, didn't you see! I had my balance again, and she pushed me! She had it in for me!" His face whitened for an instant as he moved, then flooded with a red anger. "My God!" he cried, in the anguish of a strong man laid low, "she's busted me all over!" He wrenched loose his shoulders from Sam's support, struggled to his knees, and fell back, a groan of pain seeming fairly to burst from his heart. His head hit sharply against a stone. He lay still.

"May-may-gwán!" called Sam Bolton, sharply.

She came at once, running eagerly, the paralysis of her distress broken by his voice. Sam directed her by nods of the head. With some difficulty they carried the unconscious man to the flat and laid him down, his head on Sam's rolled coat. Then, while May-may-gwán, under his curtly delivered directions, built a fire, heated water, carried down the two remaining packs and opened them, Sam tenderly removed Dick's clothes, and examined him from head to foot. The cuts on the head were nothing to a strong man; the bruises less. Manipulation discovered nothing wrong with the collar-bone and ribs. But at last Sam uttered a quick exclamation of discovery.

Dick's right ankle was twisted strongly outward and back.

An inexperienced man would have pronounced it a dislocation, but Sam knew better. He knew better because just once, nearly fifteen years before, he had assisted Dr. Cockburn at Conjuror's House in the caring for exactly such an accident. Now he stood for some moments in silence recalling painfully each little detail of what he had observed and of what the physician had told him.

Rapidly by means of twigs and a tracing on the wet sand he explained to May-may-gwán what was the matter and what was to be done. The fibula, or outer bone of the leg, had been snapped at its lower end just above the ankle, the foot had been dislocated to one side, and either the inner ligament of the ankle had given way, or—what would be more serious—one of the ankle-bones itself had been torn. Sam Bolton realised fully that it was advisable to work with the utmost rapidity, before the young man should regain consciousness, in order that the reduction of the fracture might be made while the muscles were relaxed. Nevertheless, he took time both to settle his own ideas, and to explain them to the girl. It was the luckiest chance of Dick Herron's life that he happened to be travelling with the one man who had assisted in the skilled treatment of such a case. Otherwise he would most certainly have been crippled.

Sam first of all pried from the inner construction of the canoe two or three of the flat cedar strips used to reinforce the bottom. These he laid in several thicknesses to make a board of some strength. On the board he folded a blanket in wedge form, the thick end terminating abruptly three or four inches from the bottom. He laid aside several buckskin thongs, and set May-may-gwán to ripping bandages of such articles of clothing as might suit.

Then he bent the injured leg at the knee. May-may-gwán held it in that position, while Sam manipulated the foot into what he judged to be the proper position. Especially did he turn the foot strongly inward that the inner ankle-bone might fall to its place. As to the final result he confessed himself almost painfully in doubt, but did the best he knew. He remembered the post-surgeon's cunning comments, and tried to assure himself that the fractured ends of the bones met each other fairly, without the intervention of tendons or muscle-covering, and that there was no obstruction to the movements of the ankle. When he had finished, his brow was wrinkled with anxiety, but he was satisfied that he had done to the limit of his knowledge.

May-may-gwán now held the cedar board, with its pad, against the inside of the leg. Sam bound the thin end of the wedge-shaped blanket to the knee. Thus the thick end of the pad pressed against the calf just above the ankle, leaving the foot and the injured bone free of the board. Sam passed a broad buckskin thong about the ankle and foot in such a manner as to hold the foot from again turning out. Thus the fracture was fixed in place. The bandages were wound smoothly to hold everything secure.

The two then, with the utmost precaution, carried their patient up the bank to a level space suitable for a camp, where he was laid as flat as possible. The main business was done, although still there remained certain cuts and contusions, especially that on the forehead, which had stunned him.

After the reduction of the fracture,—which was actually consummated before Dick regained his consciousness,—and the carrying of the young man to the upper flat, Sam curtly instructed May-may-gwán to gather balsam for the dressing of the various severer bruises. She obtained the gum, a little at a time, from a number of trees. Here and there, where the bark had cracked or been abraded, hard-skinned blisters had exuded. These, when pricked, yielded a liquid gum, potent in healing. While she was collecting this in a quickly fashioned birch-bark receptacle, Sam made camp.

He realised fully that the affair was one of many weeks, if not of months. On the flat tongue overlooking the river he cleared a wide space, and with the back of his axe he knocked the hummocks flat. A score or so of sapling poles he trimmed. Three he tied together tripod-wise, using for the purpose a strip of the inner bark of cedar. The rest he leaned against these three. He postponed, until later, the stripping of birch-bark to cover this frame, and gave his attention to laying a soft couch for Dick's convalescence. The foundation he made of caribou-moss, gathered dry from the heights; the top of balsam boughs cleverly thatched so that the ends curved down and in, away from the recumbent body. Over all he laid what remained of his own half blanket. Above the bed he made a framework from which a sling would be hung to suspend the injured leg.

All this consumed not over twenty minutes. At the end of that time he glanced up to meet Dick's eyes.

"Leg broke," he answered the inquiry in them. "That's all."

"That girl—," began Dick.

"Shut up!" said Sam.

He moved here and there, constructing, by means of flat stones, a trough to be used as a cooking-range. At the edge of the clearing he met the Indian girl returning with her little birch-bark saucer.

"Little Sister," said he.

She raised her eyes to him.

"I want the truth."

"What truth, Little Father?"

He looked searchingly into her eyes.

"It does not matter; I have it," he replied.

She did not ask him further. If she had any curiosity, she did not betray it; if she had any suspicion of what he meant, she did not show it.

Sam returned to where Dick lay.

"Look here, Sam," said he, "this comes of—"

"Shut up!" said Sam again. "Look here, you, you've made trouble enough. Now you're laid up, and you're laid up for a good long while. This ain't any ordinary leg break. It means three months, and it may mean that you'll never walk straight again. It's got to be treated mighty careful, and you've got to do just what I tell you. You just behave yourself. It wasn't anybody's fault. That girl had nothing to do with it. If you weren't a great big fool you'd know it. We both got to take care of you. Now you treat her decent, and you treat me decent. It's time you came off."

He said it as though he meant it. Nevertheless it was with the most elaborate tenderness that he, assisted by May-may-gwán, carried Dick to his new quarters. But in spite of the utmost care, the transportation was painful. The young man was left with no strength. The rest of the afternoon he dozed in a species of torpor.

Sam's energy toward permanent establishment did not relax. He took a long tramp in search of canoe birches, from which at last he brought back huge rolls of thick bark. These he and the girl sewed together in overlapping seams, using white spruce-roots for the purpose. The result was a water-tight covering for the wigwam. A pile of firewood was the fruit of two hours' toil. In the meantime May-may-gwán had caught some fish with the hook and line and had gathered some berries. She made Dick a strong broth of dried meat. At evening the old man and the girl ate their meal together at the edge of the bluff overlooking the broil of the river. They said little, but somehow the meal was peaceful, with a content unknown in the presence of the impatient and terrible young man.

During the days that ensued a certain intimacy sprang up between Sam Bolton and the Indian girl. At first their talk was brief and confined to the necessities. Then matters of opinion, disjointed, fragmentary, began to creep in. Finally the two came to know each other, less by what was actually said, than by the attitude of mind such confidences presupposed. One topic they avoided. Sam, for all his shrewdness, could not determine to what degree had persisted the young man's initial attraction for the girl. Of her devotion there could be no question, but in how much it depended on the necessity of the moment lay the puzzle. Her demeanor was inscrutable. Yet Sam came gradually to trust to her loyalty.

In the soft, sweet open-air life the days passed stately in the manner of figures on an ancient tapestry. Certain things were each morning to be done,—the dressing of Dick's cuts and contusions with the healing balsam, the rebandaging and adjusting of the splints and steadying buckskin strap; the necessary cooking and cleaning; the cutting of wood; the fishing below the rapids; the tending of traps; the occasional hunting of larger game; the setting of snares for rabbits. From certain good skins of the latter May-may-gwán was engaged in weaving a blanket, braiding the long strips after a fashion of her own. She smoked tanned buckskin, and with it repaired thoroughly both the men's garments and her own. These things were to be done, though leisurely, and with slow, ruminative pauses for the dreaming of forest dreams.

But inside the wigwam Dick Herron lay helpless, his hands clenched, his eyes glaring red with an impatience he seemed to hold his breath to repress. Time was to be passed. That was all he knew, all he thought about, all he cared. He seized the minutes grimly and flung them behind him. So absorbed was he in this, that he seemed to give grudgingly and hastily his attention to anything else. He never spoke except when absolutely necessary; it almost seemed that he never moved. Of Sam he appeared utterly unconscious. The older man performed the little services about him quite unnoticed. The Indian girl Dick would not suffer near him at all. Twice he broke silence for what might be called commentatorial speech.

"It'll be October before we can get started," he growled one evening.

"Yes," said Sam.

"You wait till I can get out!" he said on another occasion, in vague threat of determination.

At the beginning of the third week Sam took his seat by the moss and balsam pallet and began to fill his pipe in preparation for a serious talk.

"Dick," said he, "I've made up my mind we've wasted enough time here."

Herron made no reply.

"I'm going to leave you here and go to look over the other hunting districts by myself."

Still no reply.

"Well?" demanded Sam.

"What about me?" asked Dick.

"The girl will take care of you."

A long silence ensued. "She'll take everything we've got and get out," said Dick at last.

"She will not! She'd have done it before now."

"She'll quit me the first Injuns that come along."

Sam abandoned the point.

"You needn't take the risk unless you want to. If you say so, I'll wait."

"Oh, damn the risk," cried Dick, promptly. "Go ahead."

The woodsman smoked.

"Sam," said the younger man.

"What?"

"I know I'm hard to get along with just now. Don't mind me. It's hell to lie on your back and be able to do nothing. I've seemed to hinder the game from the first. Just wait till I'm up again!"

"That's all right, my boy," replied Sam. "I understand. Don't worry. Just take it easy. I'll look over the district, so we won't be losing any time. And, Dick, be decent to the girl."

"To hell with the girl," growled Dick, lapsing abruptly from his expansive mood. "She got me into this."

Not another word would he speak, but lay, staring upward, chewing the cud of resentment.

Promptly on the heels of his decision Sam Bolton had a long talk with May-may-gwán, then departed carrying a little pack. It was useless to think now of the canoe, and in any case the time of year favoured cross-country travel. The distances, thus measured, were not excessive, and from the Indian's descriptions, Sam's slow-brooding memory had etched into his mind an accurate map of the country.

At noon the girl brought Dick his meal. After he had eaten she removed the few utensils. Then she returned.

"The Little Father commanded that I care for your hurt," she said, simply.

"My leg's all right now," growled Dick. "I can bandage it myself."

May-may-gwán did not reply, but left the tent. In a moment she reappeared carrying forked switches, a square of white birch-bark, and a piece of charcoal.

"Thus it is," said she rapidly. "These be the leg bones and this the bone of the ankle. This bone is broken, so. Thus it is held in place by the skill of the Little Father. Thus it is healing, with stiffness of the muscles and the gristle, so that always Eagle eye will walk like wood, and never will he run. The Little Father has told May-may-gwán what there is to do. It is now the time. Fifteen suns have gone since the hurt."

She spoke simply. Dick, interested in spite of himself, stared at the switches and the hasty charcoal sketch. The dead silence hung for a full minute. Then the young man fell back from his elbow with an enigmatical snort. May-may-gwán assumed consent and set to work on the simple yet delicate manipulations, massages, and flexings, which, persisted in with due care lest the fracture slip, would ultimately restore the limb to its full usefulness.

Once a day she did this, thrice a day she brought food. The rest of the time she was busy about her own affairs; but never too occupied to loop up a section of the tepee covering for the purpose of admitting fresh air, to bring a cup of cold water, to readjust the sling which suspended the injured leg, or to perform an hundred other little services. She did these things with inscrutable demeanour. As Dick always accepted them in silence, she offered them equally in silence. No one could have guessed the thoughts that passed in her heart.

At the end of a week Dick raised himself suddenly on his elbow.

"Some one is coming!" he exclaimed, in English.

At the sound of his voice the girl started forward. Her mouth parted, her eyes sparkled, her nostrils quivered. Nothing could have been more pathetic than this sudden ecstatic delight, as suddenly extinguished when she perceived that the exclamation was involuntary and not addressed to her. In a moment Sam Bolton appeared, striding out of the forest.

He unslung his little pack, leaned his rifle against a tree, consigned to May-may-gwán a dog he was leading, and approached the wigwam. He seemed in high good humour.

"Well, how goes it?" he greeted.

But at the sight of the man striding in his strength Dick's dull anger had fallen on him again like a blanket. Unreasonably, as he himself well knew, he was irritated. Something held him back from the utterance of the hearty words of greeting that had been on his tongue. A dull, apathetic indifference to everything except the chains of his imprisonment enveloped his spirit.

"All right," he answered, grudgingly.

Sam deftly unwound the bandages, examining closely the condition of the foot.

"Bone's in place all right," he commented. "Has the girl rubbed it and moved it every day?"

"Yes."

"Any pain to amount to anything now?"

"Pretty dull work lying on your back all day with nothing to do."

"Yes."

"Took in the country to southeast. Didn't find anything. Picked up a pretty good dog. Part 'husky.'"

Dick had no comment to make on this. Sam found May-may-gwán making friends with the dog, feeding him little scraps, patting his head, above all wrinkling the end of his pointed nose in one hand and batting it softly with the palm of the other. This caused the dog to sneeze violently, but he exhibited every symptom of enjoyment. The animal had long, coarse hair, sharp ears set alertly forward, a bushy tail, and an expression of great but fierce intelligence.