More than the woman herself, her attire excited Stonor’s wonder. It was a white woman’s get-up. Her dress, though of plain black cotton, was cut with a certain regard to the prevailing style. She wore corsets—strange phenomenon! Stonor had already discovered it before he got a look at her. Her hair had been done on top of her head in a white woman’s fashion, though it was pretty well down now. Strangest of all, she wore gold jewellery; rings on her fingers and drops in her ears; a showy gold locket hanging from a chain around her neck. On the whole a surprising apparition to find on the banks of the unexplored river.
Stonor, studying her, reflected that this was no doubt the woman he had seen with Imbrie at Carcajou Point two months before. The Indians had referred to her derisively as his “old woman.” But it was strange he had heard nothing of her from the Kakisas. She must have been concealed in the very tepee from which Imbrie had issued on the occasion of Stonor’s first visit to the village at Swan Lake. The Indians down the river had never mentioned her. He was sure she could not have lived with Imbrie down there. Where, then, had he picked her up? Where had she been while Imbrie was down there? How had she got into the country anyway? The more he thought of it the more puzzling it was. Certainly she had come from far; Stonor was well assured he would have heard of so striking a personage as this anywhere within his own bailiwick.
Another thought suddenly occurred to him. This of course would be the woman who had tried to decoy him out of his camp with her cries for help in English. At least she explained that bit of the all-enveloping mystery.
“Well, here’s a pretty how-de-do!” said Stonor with grim humour. “Who are you?”
She merely favoured him with a glance of inexpressible scorn.
“I know you talk English,” he said, “good English too. So there’s no use trying to bluff me that you don’t understand. What is your name, to begin with?”
Still no answer but the curling lip.
“What’s the idea of shooting at a policeman? Is it worth hanging for?”
She gave no sign.
He saw that it only gratified her to balk his curiosity, so he turned away with a shrug. “If you won’t talk, that’s your affair.”