The slumber of the Crees awoke to a babel of many voices; it rose hoarsely on the night air, swelled hideously into a deafening roar that shook the earth.
In this din of confusion and terror when the Crees were lamenting the supposed death of Baroma and screaming in each other’s ears, “The Great Slave takes his freedom!” Siena ran to his people and, pointing to the north, drove them before him.
Single file, like a long line of flitting specters, they passed out of the fields into the forest. Siena kept close on their trail, ever looking backward, and ready with the shooting stick.
The roar of the stricken Crees softened in his ears and at last died away.
Under the black canopy of whispering leaves, over the gray, mist-shrouded muskeg flats, around the glimmering reed-bordered ponds, Siena drove his people.
All night Siena hurried them northward and with every stride his heart beat higher. Only he was troubled by a sound like the voice that came to him on the wind.
But the wind was now blowing in his face, and the sound appeared to be at his back. It followed on his trail as had the step of destiny. When he strained his ears he could not hear it, yet when he had gone on swiftly, persuaded it was only fancy, then the voice that was not a voice came haunting him.
In the gray dawn Siena halted on the far side of a gray flat and peered through the mists on his back trail. Something moved out among the shadows, a gray shape that crept slowly, uttering a mournful cry.
“Siena is trailed by a wolf,” muttered the chief.
Yet he waited, and saw that the wolf was an Indian. He raised the fatal shooting stick.