"And how goes it, Sipsu?" he asked, talking, after her fashion, in broken
English and bastard Chinook. "Is the hunger still mighty in the camp?
and has the witch doctor yet found the cause wherefore game is scarce and
no moose in the land?"

"Yes; even so. There is little game, and we prepare to eat the dogs.
Also has the witch doctor found the cause of all this evil, and to-morrow
will he make sacrifice and cleanse the camp."

"And what does the sacrifice chance to be?--a new-born babe or some poor
devil of a squaw, old and shaky, who is a care to the tribe and better
out of the way?"

"It chanced not that wise; for the need was great, and he chose none
other than the chief's daughter; none other than I, Sipsu."

"Hell!" The word rose slowly to Hitchcock's lips, and brimmed over full
and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and consideration.

"Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I," she went on
calmly, "and I have come that we may look once more upon each other, and
once more only."

She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her traditions
and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human sacrifice as part
of the natural order. The powers which ruled the day-light and the dark,
the flood and the frost, the bursting of the bud and the withering of the
leaf, were angry and in need of propitiation. This they exacted in many
ways,--death in the bad water, through the treacherous ice-crust, by the