Stane looked at Helen, then he said: "We will accompany you, Anderton. You represent the law, and in your company we are much more likely to receive attention and get what we want than if we go alone, whilst further, if the mysterious visits we have had were hostile in intention, the fact that we are known to you will tend to check them."
"Something in that!" agreed the policeman.
When Anderton had harnessed his dogs they started off, making directly up the lake, and within two hours sighted about half a score of winter tepees pitched near the store, and with sheltering woods on three sides of them. As they came into view, with the smoke of the fires curling upward in the still air, the policeman nodded.
"The end of a journey of two hundred miles; or the beginning of one that may take me into the Barrens, and up to the Arctic. Lord, what a life this is!"
He laughed as he spoke, and both those who heard him, knew that he found the life a good one, and was without regret for the choice he had made.
As they drew nearer the camp, two or three men, and perhaps a dozen women, with twice that number of children came from the tepees to look at them, and when the dogs came to a halt, one of the men stepped forward. He was an old man, and withered-looking, but with a light of cunning in his bleared eyes.
"What want," he asked. "Me, Chief George."
The policeman looked at the bent figure clothed in mangy-looking furs, with a dirty capote over all, and then gave a swift glance at his companions, the eyelid nearest to them fluttering down in a slow wink. A second later he was addressing the chief in his own tongue.
"I come," he said, "from the Great White Chief, to take away one who is a slayer of women. It is said that he has refuge in thy lodges."
The Indian's dirty face gave no sign of any resentment. "There is no such man in my lodges."