who was not a priest, or a factor, or a policeman—and even they do not give the Indians meat." With a swift movement she slipped her hand from the mitten and once more placed it within his, and this time there was nothing unconscious in the pressure of Brent's clasp. He fancied that he felt the slender hand tremble ever so lightly within his own, and glanced swiftly into the girl's face. For an instant their eyes met, and then the dark eyes dropped slowly before his gaze, and very gently he released her hand.
"May I come and see you, soon?" he asked.
"Why, yes, of course! Why did you ask me that?" she inquired, wonderingly, "You know the way to our camp, and you know that now I know you are not a hooch trader."
"Why," smiled Brent, "I asked because—why, just because it seemed the thing to do—a sort of formality, I reckon."
The girl's smile met his own: "I do not understand, I guess. Formality—what is that? A custom of the land of the white man? But I have not read of that in books. Here in the North if anybody wants to go a place, he goes, unless he has been warned to stay away for some reason, and then if he goes he will get shot. I will shoot the hooch traders if they come to the camp. The first time I will tell them to go—and if they come back I will kill them."
"You wouldn't kill them—really?" smiled Brent,
amazed at the matter of fact statement coming from this slip of a girl, whose face rimmed in its snow-covered parka hood was, he told himself, the most beautiful face he had ever looked upon. "Didn't they teach you in the mission that it is wrong to kill?"
"It is wrong to kill in anger, or for revenge for a wrong, or so that you may steal a man's goods. But it is not wrong to kill one who is working harm in the world. You, too, know that this is true, because in the books I have read of many such killings, and in some books it was openly approved, and other books were so written that the approval was made plain."
"But, there is the law," ventured Brent.
"Yes, there is the law. But the law is no good up here. By the time the policemen would get here the hooch trader would be many miles away. And even if they should catch him, the Indians would not say that he traded them hooch. They would be afraid. No, it is much better to kill them. They take all the fur in trade for hooch, and then the women have nothing to eat, and the little babies die."