Then she went stealing back to her camp and crept shivering into the sleeping bag.
She slept very little that night. The camp of the mysterious strangers was too close; the perplexing problems that lay before her too serious to permit of that. She was glad enough when she caught the first faint flush of dawn in the east and knew that a new day was dawning.
“This day,” she told herself, “we make our own camp. There is comfort in that. Let the future take care of itself.”
She cast one glance toward the hill, but seeing no movement there, she began to search the ground for dry moss for kindling a fire.
Soon she had a little yellow flame glowing in her Yukon stove. The feeble flame soon grew to a bright red, and in a little while the coffee pot was singing its song of merry defiance to the Arctic chill.
CHAPTER III
MARIAN FACES A PROBLEM
Marian buried her hand in the thick warm coat of the spotted reindeer that stood by her side and, shading her eyes, gazed away at the distant hills. A brown spot had appeared at the crest of the third hill to her right.
“There’s another and another,” she said. “Reindeer or caribou? I wonder. If it’s caribou, perhaps Terogloona can get one of them with his rifle. It would help out our food supply. But if it’s reindeer—” her brow wrinkled at the thought, “reindeer might mean trouble.”
At that instant something happened that brought her hand to her side. Quickly unstrapping her field glasses, she put them to her eyes.
A fourth object had appeared on the crest. Even with the naked eye one might tell that this one was not like the other three. He was lighter in color and lacked the lace-like suggestion against the sky which meant broad spreading antlers.