“We best pull out?” he said almost diffidently.
The Indian nodded. Then his dark eyes smiled again, and his powerful hands rubbed themselves together over the luxurious warmth.
“I wait for that,” he said quietly. “You my boss. My good white boss. Same lak the white-girl, Kid, an’ the good Marty. Sure we pull out. We mak him the farm this night. It good. Much good.”
He rose to his full height without effort, and turned at once to the waiting caribou.
The night was dark but the burden of cloud had completely dispersed. In its place was a velvet sky studded with myriads of starry jewels. Then away to the north the world was lit by a shadowy movement of northern lights. The night was typical of the fall of the northern year, chill, still, haunted, for all its perfect calm, by the fierce threat of the approach of winter.
The ice-cold waters of the river lay behind the outfit. They had just crossed the shallow ford where the stream played boisterously over the boulder-strewn gravel bed. The labouring caribou were moving slowly up the gentle incline of lichen-covered foreshore. And the Indian on the lead, and the white youth trailing behind the last of the three beasts of burden, knew that in less than two hours the last eight miles or so of their summer-long journey would be accomplished.
Usak dropped back from his lead and permitted the caribou to pass him, and took his place beside the leg-weary youth. For some time they paced on in silence each absorbed in his own thought.
It was a great looking forward for both. Both were contemplating that modest home they were approaching with feelings of something more than content. Clarence was yearning for the boisterous companionship of his brothers and sisters. The boy in him was crying out for the youth which the rigours of the northern trail had so long denied him. The ramshackle habitation which was his home possessed for him just now a splendour of comfort, and ease, and delight such as only a starving imagination could create about it. He was heart-sick and bodily weary with the interminable labour which the long trail demanded.
With the Indian it was different. The joy of return for him had no relation to any weariness of body or spirit. He was contemplating only the good news which was carefully packed up on the primitive carryalls to which the caribou were harnessed, and the happiness he looked to see shining in the eyes of the whitewoman it was his mission to serve.