At length he aroused himself and glanced toward Jeanne, who lay at his side, breathing the long, regular breaths of the deep sleep of utter weariness; and he noted the deep lines of the beautiful face and the hollow circles beneath the closed eyes that told of the terrible trail-strain.
"Sixty straight hours of that!" he exclaimed as his glance traveled over the precarious river trail. Curbing his patience, he waited an hour and then gently awoke the sleeping girl.
"Jeanne," he said as she gazed at him in bewilderment, "you need sleep. I will go alone to the camp of Moncrossen." At the words she sprang to her feet.
"No! No!" she cried; "I have slept. I am not tired. Come—to-day, and to-night—and in the morning we come to the camp."
"We must go then," said Bill, and added more to himself than to Jeanne: "I wonder if he would dare?"
"He would dare anything—that is not good!" the girl answered quickly. "He has the bad heart. But Wa-ha-ta-na-ta will not starve quickly. She is old and tough, and can go for many days without food; as in the time of the famine when she refused to eat that we, her children, might live.
"Even in times of plenty she eats but little, for she lives in the long ago with Lacombie—in the days of her youth and—and happiness. For she loved Lacombie, and—Lacombie—loved—her."
The girl's voice broke throatily, and she turned abruptly toward the river.
The fine, drizzling rain, which had fallen steadily all through the night, changed to a steady downpour that chilled them to the bone.
The stream of shallow water that flowed over the surface of the ice swelled to a torrent, forcing them again and again to abandon the river and slosh knee-deep through the saturated snow of the forest.