"I wonder if she's had anything to eat lately?" said Bolton.
"I don't care a damn whether she has or not," said Dick.
"Keep your hair on, my son," advised Sam again. "You're hot because you thought you'd got shut of th' whole affair, and now you find you haven't."
"You make me sick," commented Dick.
"Mebbe," admitted the woodsman. He fell silent, staring straight before him, emitting short puffs from his pipe. The girl stood where she had been thrust.
"I'll start her back in the morning," proffered Dick after a few moments. Then, as this elicited no remark, "We can stock her up with jerky, and there's no reason she shouldn't make it." Sam remained grimly silent. "Is there?" insisted Dick. He waited a minute for a reply. Then, as none came, "Hell!" he exclaimed, disgustedly, and turned away to sit on a log the other side of the fire with all the petulance of a child.
"Now look here, Sam," he broke out, after an interval. "We might as well get at this thing straight. We can't keep her with us, now, can we?"
Sam removed his pipe, blew a cloud straight before him, and replaced it.
Dick reddened slowly, got up with an incidental remark about damn fools, and began to spread his blankets beneath the lean-to shelter. He muttered to himself, angered at the dead opposition of circumstance which he could not push aside. Suddenly he seized the girl again by the arm.
"Why you come?" he demanded in Ojibway. "Where you get your blankets? Where you get your grub? How you make the Long Trail? What you do when we go far and fast? What we do with you now?" Then meeting nothing but the stolidity with which the Indian always conceals pain, he flung her aside. "Stupid owl!" he growled.