Daylight found him one morning headed homeward on a course paralleling the river and nearly opposite Moncrossen's camp. Steadily he plodded onward, and a smile came to his lips as he formulated his plans for the summer, which included the removal of Jeanne from her dangerous proximity to Moncrossen.
He would change his hunting-ground, move his lodge up the river, and next season he would supply the camp of M's'u' Bill, whose heart was good, and who would see that no harm came to the girl.
He swung onto the marshy arm of a small lake, whose surface was profusely dotted with conical muskrat houses which reared their brown domes above the broken rice-straw and cattail stalks.
He had nearly reached the center when suddenly he halted, whirled half around, and clutched frantically at the breast of his shirt. It was as though some unseen hand had dealt him a sharp blow, and a dull, scorching pain shot through his chest.
He drew away his hand, red and dripping, glanced wildly about, staggered a few steps, and crashed headlong, with a rustling sound, into the thick growth of dry cattail stalks.
On the bank of the marsh a thin puff of vapory smoke drifted across the face of a blackened stump and dissolved in the crisp air, and the sharp crack of a high-power rifle of small caliber raised scarcely an echo against the wall of the opposite shore.
A man stepped from behind the stump, glanced sharply about him, and grinned as he leisurely pumped another cartridge into the chamber.
He bit the corner from a thick plug of tobacco, and gazed out over the marsh, which showed only the light yellow of the dry stalks and the brown domes of the rat-houses.
"That ain't so bad fer two hundred yards—plugged him square in the middle, too. God! I'd hate to die!" he muttered, and, turning, followed the shore of the lake and struck into the timber in the direction in which the other had been going.
An hour later he slipped silently behind the trunk of a tree at the edge of a tiny clearing in the center of which stood a single, smoke-blackened tepee.