"Yes, yes, I can manage. I can get to my sister in San Sabatano."
"Good. You'll go on then. I can trust Si-wash. He's been paid. You'll have food enough, and you'll travel light. If he fails you, and I survive, if I hunt the world over I'll kill him."
Audie's eyes lit. It was the one expression of feeling Leo had displayed which she could take to herself.
"Then afterwards—God knows when—I'll come and marry you. It's the best we can do. It's all I can promise. We're plumb up against it. Whatever happens, I'm going to marry you. That goes."
Audie breathed a deep sigh of heartfelt gratitude. The ice had been broken. She knew that Leo's mental balance was restored. It mattered nothing to her at that moment that she had to face the world alone with her burden of motherhood. It mattered nothing that the shame she had so dreaded was still to be hers. The future had no longer any terrors for her. How should it? The man she had always known had once more resumed sway in the mind so recently distracted to the verge of madness. Her lover was once more the ruthless, powerful creature she had followed into the wilderness, was ready to follow into the wilderness again if he would only permit her.
"Must I—must I go on to the coast? Is there need?" she said, in a low, pleading voice, after a moment's silence. "If you are going back, cannot I go back, too? There's the sled. Why go on foot? Let me return with you, Leo."
The man shook his head, and his negative was as irrevocable as any spoken words. If he understood the devotion prompting her he gave no sign.
"Your life shan't be risked that way," he said. "The child must be born where you can get help. That's—our duty. It's my duty that you reach the coast in safety as far as the matter is humanly possible. Si-wash'll have to fix that. After that I'm helpless—I haven't a cent in the world or I would give it you. You'll have to go on to the coast, and I—I return alone."
Audie bowed her head submissively. She knew he was right under the existing circumstances. Anyway, right or wrong, she was ready to submit to his will. More than that she was glad to do so. Her big eyes stared thoughtfully into the blaze of the fire. There was no more to be said. She was content to sit there in silence, dreaming her dreams; those dreams which the silent northern world so mysteriously fosters, to cover up its own nakedness and make life possible upon its sterile bosom.
Later on the shuffling of Si-wash's moccasins scrunching upon the pine-cones made itself heard. He came with a great load of firewood upon his broad back. Leo watched him deposit it and replenish the fire. Then Audie set about preparing a meal, and the dogs were fed from the store of frozen fish, which, by a trick of Fate, had been saved in preference to their precious store of gold. After that, as the twilit woods were swallowed up in the darkness of night, Audie vanished into the tent, and was seen no more.