"Mingens!" exclaimed Dick.
"They told him," she continued, not heeding the interruption, "that five suns back they had found a lodge built where the big river broadens. The lodge was newly made. It was a white man's lodge, for it was built of trees. The men of the South waited in hiding at the end of the portage that was once used by my people. It is above the place where evil spirits dwell."
"How many of the men of the South were there?" asked Dick, again interrupting.
"Six," she answered promptly. "While they waited two white men passed with a painted canoe and much provisions. Then, while they still waited, the white men returned with the canoe empty.
"They fired their guns at the white men. Then the evil spirits that dwell where the river falls reached up for the canoe and dragged it down to the place of thunder.
"I have come to tell you this, and to ask if White Brother of the Snow and his friend are here. All night and all day have I travelled, for I am afraid for White Brother of the Snow. He has lived in the lodge of Sishetakushin, my father. He is one of my people, and I am afraid for him."
Her rapid speech, her dramatic pose and gestures, and her intensely earnest manner left no doubt in Dick Blake's mind that she spoke the truth. Neither had he any doubt that she referred to Ungava Bob and Shad Trowbridge as the two white men, for no other white men were in the region, or, he was sure, within several hundred miles of the place, at the time to which she referred.
"No," said he, after a moment's pause, "White Brother of the Snow and his friend are not with us."
"They are not here!" she wailed, lifting her arms in a gesture of despair. "Where is he? Tell me! It was not White Brother of the Snow sent to the torment of evil spirits?"
"I'm afraid, Manikawan, it was. There were no other white men here than White Brother of the Snow and his friend."