"You could—! Say," she cried with a sudden vehemence in sharp contrast to her appealing manner. "Do you think I made trail from Fort Duggan for a fancy, after months of winter to Seal Bay and back, on the day I'd just made home? Do you think I wouldn't have waited for the river? Do you think I'd have done this if it wasn't all—real? Oh, man, man," she cried in protest, "I'm no fool girl to see things that just aren't. I guess David Nicol has located your post, and he's right on his way there now—for murder. There's——"
"On his way there now?" Marcel broke in sharply, fiercely. "How? How d'you mean? He's located—Who's—this David Nicol? God! An-ina alone! Tell me! Tell me quick. An-ina, my second mother, she's alone at the post. A woman! God in heaven! Tell me quick."
The change was supreme. No tone the girl had used could compare with the force of Marcel's demand. There was no laugh on his lips now, no smile in his eyes. A deadly fear, such as Keeko had never beheld in them before, had taken possession of them. He was stirred to the depths of his very soul.
Keeko's reply came at once.
"Yes. Nicol's the man I believed my step-father. He's a murderer. He's the man who sent my mother to her grave before I made home last summer. He's the man who Lorson Harris is going to hand a hundred thousand dollars for the murder of your outfit, and to steal your trade. He's the man who asked me to share with him the price of his crime, and would have held me prisoner to obey his will if I hadn't just had the means right there to help myself. Oh, my dear, my dear. I'm scared. I'm scared to death now for the folks you love. That's why I struck out on a chance for this old moose head, with my boys and dogs. I hoped, I prayed—oh, God, how I prayed!—that I could get around and find you, and hand you warning."
Marcel was no longer seated. He was standing, his great height towering over the girl who was gazing up at him with tears of emotion shining in her pretty eyes. He did not realize them. He was no longer thinking of her. He was no longer thinking of his love, and the happiness that was so newly born. His thought was far back over the trail of ice and snow over which he had so recently passed. He was contemplating a dusky face with eyes of velvet softness, carrying out her patient labours for the men she loved. He was contemplating the stealing approach of the would-be murderer. He saw in fancy the dawn of horror in the mother woman's eyes as she awoke to realization——
Suddenly he flung out his clenched fists in a gesture of superlative determination and threat.
"Say!" he cried, his eyes hot with a fire such as Keeko had never thought to see in them. "It's two hundred miles of hell's own territory with the thaw coming. I'm going right back—now. I'm going just as quick as I can load my outfit. She's alone—do you get it? An-ina! She raised me—she's my Indian mother woman. God help the swine that harms her body!"
He turned and moved abruptly away. Keeko had come to him with her love. She had faced everything the north country could show her to bring him the warning. He had forgotten her. He had forgotten everything, but the gentle creature whose dark-eyed terror haunted him.
Keeko understood. She had no feeling other than a great, unvoiced joy in the splendid manhood of it all. She stood up. She moved after the man as he made towards his camp. She overtook him.