"Manikawan has carried much tobacco and tea and other stores to the place where the potagan reaches up from the river. These things are for the men of the South. Let them bring their canoe. Manikawan will show them the things and they will take them."
The Indians did not deign to reply at once, but presently one of them said:
"Let Manikawan bring the things to the lodge of the men of the South. She is a maiden, and it is a maiden's work. It is not the work of a hunter."
"Manikawan is not of the lodge of the men of the South, and she will not do this. She will wait at the place where the potagan rises from the river until the sun is there;" and Manikawan pointed to the zenith. "If the men of the South do not come, she will go, for she will believe the men of the South do not need tea and tobacco."
"Let the maiden return to the place where the potagan rises from the river. Let her wait there. The men of the South will come," said the spokesman.
Manikawan turned away, down the river bank, by the route she had ascended. Her progress was dignified and unhurried so long as she might still be seen by the Indians, but was quickly changed to a run the moment she was beyond their view.
Glibly she had lied to them and her conscience was not troubled. She was not a Christian. The savage teaching upheld subterfuge in dealing with the enemy, and she deemed these Indians her enemies, for had they not destroyed White Brother of the Snow? And was he not of her people by adoption.
Immediately Manikawan arrived at the portage trail she looked sharply about to make certain she was not observed. Then she examined the rifle behind the bowlder, and, quite satisfied with her inspection, returned it to its resting place and waited.
She knew that the two Indians, with due attention to their dignity, would make no haste in their coming, and would doubtless keep her waiting until the noonday hour which she had designated, but nevertheless her lookout up the river was never for a moment relinquished. She watched as a cat watches a hole--from which it expects the mouse to emerge--ready to pounce upon the unwary prey.
At last she was rewarded. A birch-bark canoe containing the two Indians came leisurely gliding down the river some hundred yards from shore. Manikawan, like a beautiful statue, stood tall and straight at the end of the portage trail. Two paces from her the rifle lay behind the bowlder.