* * * * *

Finding no trace of the trail-makers, the Belle faced the rising sun and
sought the camp of the Crees.

The mysterious shadow with the muffled tread, that had followed her
from the engineer's camp, shrank back into the bush as she passed down
the trail. That was Jaquis. He watched her as she strode by him,
uncertain as to whether he loved or hated her, for well he knew why she
walked the wilderness all night alone. Now the Gitche in his unhappy
heart made him long to lift her in his arms and carry her to camp, and
then the bad god, Mitche, would assert himself and say to the savage
that was in him, "Go, kill her. She despises her race and flings herself
at the white man's feet." And so, impelled by passion and stayed by
love, he followed her. The white man within him made him ashamed of his
skulking, and the Indian that was in him guided him around her and home
by a shorter trail.

That night the engineers returned, and when Smith saw the Cree in the
camp he jumped on Jaquis furiously.

"Why do you keep this woman here?" he demanded.

"I--keep? Me?" quoth Jaquis, blinking as bewildered as the black bear
had blinked at the Belle.

"Who but you?--you heathen!" hissed the engineer.

Now Jaquis, calling up the ghosts of his dead sires, asserted that it
was the engineer himself who was "keeping" the Cree. "You bought