Brent hesitated. He had been quick to catch the flash of the eye that had accompanied the words, a flash more of defiance than of anger. It was upon his tongue to ask who was Murdo MacFarlane, but instead he bowed: "I must go now. I shall be coming here often. I hope I shall not be unwelcome."
The look of passive tolerance was once more in her eyes, and she shrugged so noncommittally that
Brent knew that for the present, if he had not gained an ally, he had at least, eliminated an enemy.
As the man plodded down the river, his thoughts were all of the girl. The stern implacability of her as she stood in the doorway of the cabin and ordered him from the encampment. The swift assurance with which she assumed leadership as the storm roared down upon them. The ingenuous announcement that they must spend the night—possibly several nights in the barrens. And the childlike naïvete of the words that unveiled her innermost thoughts. The compelling charm of her, her beauty of face and form, and the lithe, untiring play of her muscles as she tramped through the new-fallen snow. Her unerring sense of direction. Her simple code of morals regarding the killing of men. Her every look, and word and movement was projected with vivid distinctness upon his brain. And then his thoughts turned to the little cabin that was her home, and to the leathern skinned old woman who told him she was the girl's mother.
"The squaw lied!" he uttered fiercely. "Never in God's world is Snowdrift her daughter! But—who is she?"
He rounded the last bend of the river and brought up shortly. Joe Pete was stoking the fire with wood, and upon the gravel dump, sat the girl apparently very much interested in the operation.
Almost at the same instant she saw him, and Brent's heart leaped within him at the glad little cry
that came to him over the snow, as the girl scrambled to her feet and hurried toward him. "Where have you been?" she asked. "I came to hunt—and you were gone. So I waited for you to come, and I watched Joe Pete feed the fire in the hole."
Brent's fingers closed almost caressingly over the slender brown hand that was thrust into his and he smiled into the upraised eyes: "I, too, went to hunt. I went to your cabin, and your—mother," despite himself, the man's tongue hesitated upon the word, "told me that you had gone with the women to bring in the meat."
"Oh, you have seen Wananebish!" cried the girl, "And she was glad to see you?"