"Mamook tipshin," he remarked briefly; and by that laconic order to sew his moccasin, Skulking Brave virtually took possession of Genesee's cabin and Genesee's squaw.
Through the gray shadows of that morning Rachel and Jim rode almost in silence down the mountain trail. The memory of the girl was too busy for speech, and the frequent yawns of Jim showed that a longer sleep would have been appreciated by him.
"Say," he remarked at last, as the trail grew wide enough for them to ride abreast, "everything was jolly back here at Mr. Jack's last night, but I'm blest if it was this morning. The breakfast wasn't anything to brag of, an' the fire was no good, an' the fog made the cabin as damp as rain when the door was open, an' he was glum an' quiet, an' you wasn't much better. Say, was it that Injun cook o' his you was afeared to eat after?"
"Not exactly," she answered with a little laugh; "what an observer you are, Jim! I suppose the atmosphere of the cabin was the effect of the storm last night."
"What? Well, the storm wasn't much worse to plow through last night than the wet timber this morning," he answered morosely; "but say, here's the sun coming out at last—by George! How the wind lifts the fog when it gets started. Look at it!" And then, as the sunlight really crept in a great shimmer through the pines, he added: "It might just as well have come earlier, or else kept away altogether, for we're as wet now as we can get."
"Be thankful that it shines at all, Jim."
"Oh, the shine's all right, but it shines too late."
"Yes," agreed the girl, with a memory of shamed, despairing eyes flitting through her brain. "Yes, it always shines too late—for someone."
"It's for two of us this time," replied grumbling Jim, taking her speech literally. "We've had a Nick of a time anyway this trip. Why that storm had to wait until just the day we got lost, so as we'd get wet, an' straggle home dead beat—an' without the sheep—I can't see."
"No, we can't see," said Rachel, with a queer little smile. "Perhaps—perhaps it's all because this is the end instead of the beginning of a cultus corrie."