“I wonder why he is there?” she said to herself, “I wonder why they are following us?”
“Oh,” she breathed as she walked toward camp, “it’s so tantalizing, that purple flame and all! I have half a notion to take Terogloona, as I did with that Indian, and march right up to them and demand the meaning of their mysterious actions!”
As if intending to turn this thought into action at once, she stopped and turned about. To her surprise, as she looked toward the crest of the hill, she saw the solitary watcher was gone.
“Oh, well,” she sighed, “we have no real reason for invading their camp. We’ve no proof that they’ve ever done us any harm; except, perhaps the time that Patsy saw the blood-trail and the antler marks in the snow. It seems that it must have been our deer, but we never could prove it.”
Glancing away at a more distant hill-crest, she was surprised at the picture revealed there.
The moon, just rising from behind the hill, threw out in bold relief the broad-spreading antlers of a magnificent creature of the wilderness.
“Old Omnap-puk!” said Marian. “What do you think of that? We have traveled five days, and yet we are still in the company of the mysterious camp-followers of the purple flame and old Omnap-puk, the caribou-reindeer who has haunted the outskirts of our camp so long.
“I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, “that I should tell Terogloona to have the Indians kill Omnap-puk. That would save one of our reindeers, and besides, if we let him live, who knows but that at some critical moment he may rush in and assume the leadership of our herd and lead them to disaster, or lose them to us forever. I have heard of that happening with horses and cattle. Why not with reindeer? And yet,” she sighed, “I can’t quite make up my mind to do it. He is such a wonderful fellow!”
The time was to come, and that very soon, when she was to rejoice because of this decision.