“What do you mean?
“That I must go to Sturgeon Lake and father, to-morrow. Of course, you have already decided to head that way.”
“Yes, but I feel that you ought to go on to the fort with Braithwaite's party, and not down into the danger zone, where anything may happen to you.”
“I know it, dear boy,” Jean answered, firmly. “But I can't leave father as sick as that to the tender care of a lot of fighting trappers. Can't you see my position? He's all alone there, and I'd like to know what kind of a daughter I'd be to turn my back and travel the other way!”
Donald ceased to resist, for he realized she was taking the only course open to a girl of courage and spirit.
“So, we travel southwest instead of northwest to-morrow,” she mused, after a while.
“Right into the deuce's own kettle of trouble,” prophesied Donald. “But now, princess, we had better turn in, for the going will be hard.”
Two hours before dawn, both camps were astir. Braithwaite and Donald, both in need of something, met by the former's camp-fire, and bargained. Because of fast traveling, the sick-train had no fresh meat; McTavish had no firearms. In ten minutes, a goodly supply of frozen rabbits had been packed on the north-bound train, and Donald once more caressed the butt of a revolver with one hand and the stock of a rifle with the other. He had promised to return them as soon as possible, along with the pocket compass that one man had yielded up.
The queer little sled that Mistisi hauled became the object of much wit, but it held the pack well, and, shortly before sunrise, the parties waved each other farewell, as they drew farther and farther apart. Just previous to starting the trains, McTavish had drawn Braithwaite aside, and requested silence for himself and men in regard to the secret he had discovered, out of regard to Jean.
“Everything will be all right in a few days, and when we reach Fort Severn again you can talk all you wish, for then we'll have been married,” Donald said. Braithwaite agreed without hesitation. He was a middle-aged man who, despite his roughness, had a great fondness for Jean; for a daughter of his, had she lived, would now have been the same age.