Steve searched the child's face anxiously as he made the announcement. He was half afraid of a lingering memory that might jeopardize his plans, or, at least make their fulfilment more difficult. But he need have had no fear. The child remembered, but only with delight. And again the man recognized the guiding hand of the squaw.
"Oo-o, Uncle! Soon? We go soon?" Marcel cried, his eyes shining. "The forests where the wolves are. And the Sleepers. And the snow comes down, and we dig ourselves out. And the dogs, and sleds, and—we go soon—very soon! Can't we go now? Oo-o!"
"Not now, but—soon."
Steve's satisfaction was in the glance of thanks which he flashed into An-ina's watching eyes.
"But now I must really go along to the house, old fellow," he said, with a sigh. "Guess boy'll come, too, or maybe he'll go on with his game?"
The question was superfluous. Gopher hunting was a glorious sport, but walking hand in hand with Uncle Steve back to the house, even though bed and a bath were awaiting him, was a delight Marcel had no idea of renouncing.
The plump figure of Millie Ross half filled the doorway, while the sunset sought out the obscure corners of the comfortably furnished hall place behind her.
The doctor's great figure was supported on the table on which he had flung his hat while he welcomed Steve. The latter's arrival had been quite unheralded, completely unexpected. So long was it since his going that husband and wife had almost abandoned the thought that some day they would be called upon to render an account of their stewardship with regard to young Marcel, and hand over the little human "capital" originally entrusted to them. It was not to be wondered at. They loved the boy. They had their two girls, but they had no son. And Marcel—well, Steve was so long overdue, and his absence had been one long, unbroken silence. So, all unconsciously, they had come to think that something had happened, something which had caused him to change his mind, or which had made it physically impossible for him to return. Now, after the first warmth and delight of the meeting had passed, a certain pre-occupation restrained the buoyancy so natural to the warm-hearted pair.
Steve was seated in the chair beside the table, the chair which the doctor was wont to adopt when the mosquitoes outside made the veranda impossible. Perhaps he understood the preoccupation which more particularly looked out of Millie's eyes. He felt the burden of his debt to these people, a debt he could never repay; he understood the feelings which his return must inspire if the child, left in their care, had become to them a tithe of that which he had become to him. He knew it was his purpose to tear the child out of their lives. And the wrench would be no less for the thought that he purposed carrying him off to those regions of desolation which had already come very near to costing the child's helpless little life.