“Where is your camp?” he asked abruptly.
“Down on the river, at the big rapid,” she said quietly, busying herself with the child.
“Who are there?”
“My father and two of his men.”
He continued gazing at her as if she were a stranger to him. He was wet to the skin. His hair was plastered in curls about his forehead.
“You must go home,” he said, his voice grating harshly. “Why did you come here?”
She continued her task of caring for the child. She too was trembling, but not with her mad chase after him. The hour’s strenuous exertion had hardly quickened her breathing. All day marches, carrying her bundle and her child, were to her nothing unusual. It was the passion in her that shook her like a palsy.
“Why did you come?” repeated the man. “What do you want?”
She set down the child. Her trembling hands suddenly grew steady. Her face settled into stern lines of calm. Her voice came in the quiet strength of a deep flowing river. She was past all fear, past desire, past hope. She was in full command of herself, of the situation, of him too.
“Two months ago I left my country because I had here,” she laid her hand on her breast, “a great pain to see your face again, to hear you speak, to touch your hand. That is gone, all gone, gone like the snow of last year from the mountains. Today my heart is dead. I have seen your woman. I have seen your face. You have no thought, no love for the Indian girl. To you she is like the dead leaves—nothing! nothing! You would kill her and her child. I saw death in your eyes just now. I go away, back to the Athabasca. You will never see my face again. But before I go I ask you one thing. This boy, this little boy”—for an instant the even calm of her voice was shaken—“he is my son, but first he is your son. What will he be, Indian or white man? The Indian is like the buffalo and the deer. The white man is hunting him from the plains and the woods. Soon he will be like the mountain sheep, only in the lonely valleys or the far mountain tops. What will your boy be? Where will he go? I wait for your voice.”