And so the night ended to everybody’s satisfaction. Ralph was even more quiet than usual. Victor Gagnon felt that the stars were working in his best interests; and he blessed the lucky and innocent thought that had suggested to him the yarn of the White Squaw. As for Nick, his delight was boisterous and unrestrained. He revelled openly in the prospect of the morrow’s journey.
Nor had broad daylight power to shake the purpose of the night. Too long had the trappers brooded upon the story of the White Squaw. Victor knew his men so well too; while they breakfasted he used every effort to encourage them. He literally herded them on by dint of added detail and well-timed praise of the woman’s beauty.
And after the meal the sled was prepared. Victor was chief adviser. He made them take a supply of essences and “trade.” He told them of the disposition of Man-of-the-Snow-Hill, the Moosefoot chief, assuring them he would sell his soul for strong drink. No encouragement was left ungiven, and, well before noon, the dogs stood ready in the traces.
A hearty farewell; then out upon the white trail Nick strung the willing beasts, and the flurry of loose surface-snow that flew in their wake hid the sled as the train glided away to the far northeast.
Victor stood watching the receding figures till the hiss of the runners died down in the distance, and the driving voice of Nick became lost in the grey solitude. The northern trail held them and he felt safe. He moved out upon the trampled snow, and, passing round to the back of the store, disappeared within the pine wood which backed away up the slope of the valley.
Later he came to where three huts were hidden away amongst the vast tree-trunks. They were so placed, and so disguised, as to be almost hidden until the wanderer chanced right upon them. These habitations were a part of Victor’s secret life. There was a strange mushroom look about them; low walls of muck-daubed logs supported wide-stretching roofs of reeds, which, in their turn, supported a thick covering of soot-begrimed snow. He paused near by and uttered a low call, and presently a tall girl emerged from one of the doors. She walked slowly toward him with proud, erect carriage, while at her heels followed two fierce husky dogs, moving with all the large dignity of honoured guards. The woman was taller than the trader, and her beauty of figure was in no wise hidden by the blanket clothing she wore. They talked earnestly together for some time, and then, in answer to a further summons from Victor, they were joined by a tall, gaunt man, with the solemn cast of face of an Indian, and a pair of eyes as darkly brooding as those of a moose. Although he was very dark-skinned he was plainly of the bastard race of his companions, and a certain resemblance between himself and the woman spoke of relationship.
The three talked long and seriously, and finally Victor returned alone to the store. Again he took up his stand in the doorway and remained gazing out upon the valley of the Little Choyeuse Creek, and the more distant crags of the foothills beyond.
His face was serious; serious even for the wild, where all levity seems out of place, and laughter jars upon the solemnity of the life and death struggle for existence which is for ever being fought out there. On his brow was a pucker of deep thought, whilst his eyes shone with a look which seemed to have gathered from his surroundings much of the cunning which belongs to the creatures of the forest. His usual expression of good-fellowship had passed; and in its place appeared a hungry, avaricious look which, although always there, was generally hidden behind a superficial geniality. Victor had hitherto lived fairly honestly because there was little or no temptation to do otherwise where his trading-post was stationed. But it was not his nature to do so. And as he stood gazing out upon the rugged picture before him he knew he was quite unobserved; and so the rough soul within him was laid bare to the grey light of the world.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HOODED MAN
The mere suggestion of the possibility of a woman’s presence had rudely broken up the even calm of Ralph and Nick Westley’s lives. To turn back to the peace of their mountain home without an effort to discover so fair and strange a creature as this White Squaw would have been impossible.
These men had known no real youth. They had fought the battle of life from the earliest childhood, they had lived lives as dispassionate and cold as the glaciers of their mountain home. Recreation was almost unknown to them. Toil, unremitting, arduous, had been their lot. Thus Nature had been defied; and now she was coming back on them as inevitably as the sun rises and sets, and the seasons come and go. They failed to realize their danger; they had no understanding of the passions that moved them, and so they hurried headlong upon the trail that was to lead them they knew not whither, but which was shadowed by disaster every foot of the way. To them temptation was irresistible for they had never known the teaching of restraint; it was the passionate rending of the bonds which had all too long stifled their youth.
Even the dogs realized the change in their masters. Nick’s lash fell heavily and frequently, and the hardy brutes, who loved the toil of the trace, and the incessant song of the trailing sled, fell to wondering at the change, and the pace they were called upon to make. It was not their nature to complain; their pride was the stubborn, unbending pride of savage power, and their reply to the wealing thong was always the reply their driver sought. Faster and faster they journeyed as the uncooling ardour of their master’s spirits rose.
The snow lay thick and heavy, and every inch of the wild, unmeasured trail had to be broken. The Northland giants thronged about them, glistening in their impenetrable armour and crested by the silvery burnish of their glacial headpieces. They frowned vastly, yet with a sublime contempt, at the puny intrusion of their solitude. But the fiery spirit impelling the brothers was a power which defied the overwhelming grandeur of the mountain world, and rendered insignificant the trials they encountered. The cry was “On!” and the dogs laboured as only these burden-bearers of the North can labour.
The dark day ripened; and, as the dull sun crept out from behind the greyness, and revealed the frost in the air, the temperature dropped lower and lower. And the animal world peeped furtively out upon the strange sight of creatures like themselves toiling at the command of beings whose voices had not even the power to smite the mountainsides with boastful defiance as theirs were wont to do.
Then the daylight waned. The sky returned to its greyness as the night shades rose, and a bitter breeze shuddered through the woods and along the valleys. The sounds of the forest rose in mournful cadence, and, as the profundity of the mountain night settled heavily upon the world, the timber-wolf, the outlaw of the region, moved abroad, lifting his voice in a cry half-mournful, half-exultant.
Camp was pitched well clear of the forest and a large fire kindled; and the savage night-prowlers drew forth from the woodland shadows. The men proceeded silently with their various tasks. Ralph prepared their own food, and soon a savoury odour tickled the nostrils of those beyond the circle of the firelight. Nick thawed out the dogs’ evening meal and distributed it impartially, standing over the hungry beasts with a club to see that each got the full benefit of his portion. It was a strange sight for the furtive eyes that looked on, and a tantalizing one, but they dared not draw near, for the fire threatened them, and, besides, they possessed a keen instinct of caution.
After supper the men rested in spells, one always sitting up by the fire whilst the other slept in the comfort of his fur-lined “Arctic bag.” And presently the blackness about lightened, and the dark shadows prowling became visible to the eyes of the sentry. The moon had risen, but was still hidden somewhere behind the great mountains. Its light had effect, that was all. And as the night wore on the shadows grew bolder and their presence kept the sentry ever on the alert. For the most part he sat still, swathed to the eyes in his furs; he huddled down over the fire smoking, every now and then pausing to thaw the nicotine in the stem of his pipe. But his eyes seemed to be watching in every direction at once. Nor was the vaguest shadow lost to their quick flashing glances.
The dogs, sleeping in their snow-burrows, rested their muscles, dreaming peacefully of happy hunting-grounds. Their safety was assured under the watchful eyes of their masters; the forest world had no terrors for them.
Towards dawn Nick was on the watch. The aspect of the night had quite changed. The moon, large, full, brilliant, was directly overhead, and the stars, like magnificent dewdrops,