Early the following day Snowdrift piloted a dozen squaws with their sleds and dog teams to the place of the kill. One of Brent's three caribou was gone, and the girl's eyes lighted with approval as she saw that his trail was partially covered with new-fallen snow. "He came back yesterday—he and his Indian, and they got the meat. He is strong," she breathed to herself, "Stronger than I, for I was tired from walking in the loose snow, and I did not come back."
Leaving the squaws to bring in the meat, the girl shouldered her rifle and struck into the timber, her footsteps carrying her unerringly toward the patch of scrub in which she and Brent had sought shelter from the storm. She halted beside the little wikiup, snow-buried, now—even the hole through which they had crawled was sealed with the new-fallen snow. For a long time she stood looking down at the little white mound. As she turned to go, her glance fell upon a trough-like depression, only half
filled with snow. The depression was a snowshoe trail, and it ended just beyond the little mound.
"It is his trail," she whispered, to a Canada jay that chattered and jabbered at her from the limb of a dead spruce. "He came here, as I came, to look at our little wikiup. And he went away and left it just as it was." Above her head the jay flitted nervously from limb to limb with his incessant scolding. "Why did he come?" she breathed, "And why did I come?" And, as she had done upon the river, she drew her hand from her mitten and passed it slowly across her cheek. Then she turned, and striking into the half-buried trail, followed it till it merged into another trail, the trail of a man with a dog-sled, and then she followed the broader trail to the northwestward.
At nine o'clock that same morning Brent threw the last shovelful of the eight-inch thawing of gravel from the shallow shaft, and leaving Joe Pete to build and tend the new fire, he picked up his rifle, and under pretense of another hunt, struck off up the river in the direction of the Indian camp.
Joe Pete watched with a puzzled frown until he had disappeared. Then he carried his wood and lighted the fire in the bottom of the shaft.
An hour and a half later Brent knocked at the door of the cabin from which Snowdrift had stepped, rifle in hand, upon the occasion of their first meeting. The door was opened by a wrinkled squaw, who looked straight into his eyes as she waited for
him to speak. There was unveiled hostility in the stare of those beady black eyes, and it was with a conscious effort that Brent smiled: "Is Snowdrift in?" he inquired.
"No," the squaw answered, and as an after-thought, "She has gone with the women to bring in the meat."
The man was surprised that the woman spoke perfect English. The Indians who had come to trade, had known only the word "hooch." His smile broadened, though he noticed that the glare of hostility had not faded from the eyes: "She told you about our hunt, then? It was great sport. She is a wonder with a rifle."