Several of these she appropriated, and dropping them into a leathern pouch at her belt, restored the remaining contents of the tilt to the position in which she had found them. Then taking the rifle in its case, she blew out the candle, and passed out of the tilt, carefully closing the door behind her.
The moon was now sufficiently risen to light the trail, and the blazes which Ungava Bob had made were so clear that Manikawan's progress was rapid.
Spectral shadows lay all about her, flitting here and there across her trail as she sped onward and onward through the dark forests that intervened between the lakes. In the distance she heard the voices of the evil spirits so dreaded by her people, speaking in dull, monotonous undertones, like ceaseless, rolling thunder far away, threatening destruction and death to all who fell within their reach. Even to her, whose home was the wilderness, the situation was weird and uncanny.
At length she passed another tilt near the end of a lake, but she did not pause to enter it. A little beyond the tilt the trail crossed a rise of ground, and upon reaching the summit she beheld in the distance a long, wide, silvery streak glistening in the moonlight. It was the river, and with a sense of relief she lowered the canoe from her shoulders and concealed it carefully amongst the underbrush.
She glanced at the stars and calculated the time until dawn. The region into which she had come was wholly unfamiliar to her, and she must have daylight to reconnoitre and locate the camp of her enemies.
There was still ample time for rest, for this was the season of lengthening nights and shortening days, and Manikawan was in much need of rest and food. For nearly thirty-six hours she had been exerting herself to the utmost of her strength. At the river tilt she had made a fire in the stove and brewed herself some tea, but she had eaten nothing. Now, with the moment's relaxation, a feeling of great fatigue came upon her, and for the first time she realised the length of her fast and the extent of her weariness.
Slowly she retraced her steps to the tilt which she had passed on the lake shore a little way back. Entering it she struck a match and lighted a candle, as she had done at the other tilt, and with its assistance found the flour, pork, and tea, together with a frying pan and kettle which Ungava Bob had left there the day that he and Shad Trowbridge were attacked by the Indians.
She went to the lake for a kettle of water, and returning gathered a handful of birch bark. Using the bark for tinder and appropriating wood which she found split and neatly piled near the stove for ready use, she lighted a fire in the stove, and set the kettle on to heat for tea. This done she cut several thick slices of fat pork, which she fried in the pan, and mixing a quantity of flour and water into dough, browned the dough in the pork grease.
It was with a keen appetite that she sat down to her long-deferred banquet; and with vast relief she drank the tea and ate the pork and dough cake. Then, wearied to the last degree, she fell back upon one of the bunks, the rifle by her side; and with the distant rumble of the falls in her ears, fell immediately asleep.
It was broad day when Manikawan opened her eyes. She seized the kettle, and hastening to the lake laved her face and head in the cooling water. Then, from a buckskin pouch at her belt, she drew a neat birch-bark case, decorated with porcupine quills, and from the case a rudely fashioned comb, from which dangled by a buckskin thong a tuft of porcupine tail. The lake was her mirror, as she smoothed and rebraided her hair. This done, she ran the comb several times through the tuft of porcupine tail before returning it to its case.