“But are we?” interjected Joy.
“Well, the open trail without dogs is a risk that few men would care to undertake. I’ve been at it on one or two occasions, carrying my own stores, and it’s not a course to be recommended. The trail——”
“But we’ve very few stores to pack!” said Joy obstinately, “and if we stay here we shall be driven out by hunger. Do you know of any tribe of Indians in the neighborhood?”
Bracknell nodded. “There’s an encampment thirty or forty miles to the North on the Wolverine. Joe was talking to me about them the other day, and we considered once over whether we’d pay them a call or not. In the end we decided against it.”
“Why?”
“Well,” was the reply, “they’re rather a pagan lot, and not over scrupulous. Joe was telling me that in times of scarcity they sometimes offer sacrifices——”
“Sacrifices! What kind of sacrifices?”’
“Well, the most barbaric sort—human. There are some queer things done North of the Barrens, I can tell you. The world up here is still a primitive world, and the police patrol up the Mackenzie to Herschell Island can’t possibly take note of anything that doesn’t come right under its nose.”
“But the Indians cannot possibly be worse than Adrian Rayner!”