The snow was beaten down in the form of an oblong, perhaps a
hundred feet in length and quarter as many across. Down the
center a long fire was built, while either side was carpeted with
spruce boughs. The lodges were forsaken, and the fivescore or so
members of the tribe gave tongue to their folk-chants in honor of
their guest.

'Scruff' Mackenzie's two years had taught him the not many
hundred words of their vocabulary, and he had likewise conquered
their deep gutturals, their Japanese idioms, constructions, and
honorific and agglutinative particles. So he made oration after
their manner, satisfying their instinctive poetry-love with crude
flights of eloquence and metaphorical contortions. After
Thling-Tinneh and the Shaman had responded in kind, he made
trifling presents to the menfolk, joined in their singing, and
proved an expert in their fifty-two-stick gambling game.

And they smoked his tobacco and were pleased. But among the
younger men there was a defiant attitude, a spirit of braggadocio,
easily understood by the raw insinuations of the toothless squaws
and the giggling of the maidens. They had known few white men,
'Sons of the Wolf,' but from those few they had learned strange
lessons.

Nor had 'Scruff' Mackenzie, for all his seeming carelessness,
failed to note these phenomena. In truth, rolled in his
sleeping-furs, he thought it all over, thought seriously, and
emptied many pipes in mapping out a campaign. One maiden only had
caught his fancy,--none other than Zarinska, daughter to the
chief. In features, form, and poise, answering more nearly to the