dreamed of. Her parka, the hood thrown back, was of some strange fur of palest silver. The mukluks, with walrus- hide soles, were composed of the silver-padded feet of many lynxes. The long-gauntleted mittens, the tassels at the knees, all the varied furs of the costume, were pale silver that shimmered in the frosty light; and out of this shimmering silver, poised on slender, delicate neck, lifted her head, the rosy face blonde as the eyes were blue, the ears like two pink shells, the light chestnut hair touched with frost-dust and coruscating frost-glints.
All this and more, as in a dream, Smoke saw; then, recollecting himself, his hand fumbled for his cap. At the same moment the wonder-stare in the girl's eyes passed into a smile, and, with movements quick and vital, she slipped a mitten and extended her hand.
'How do you do,' she murmured gravely, with a queer, delightful accent, her voice, silvery as the furs she wore, coming with a shock to Smoke's ears, attuned as they were to the harsh voices of the camp squaws.
Smoke could only mumble phrases that were awkwardly reminiscent of his best society manner.
'I am glad to see you,' she went on slowly and gropingly, her face a ripple of smiles. 'My English you will please excuse. It is not good. I am English like you,' she gravely assured him. 'My father he is Scotch. My mother she is dead. She is French, and English, and a little Indian, too. Her father was a great man in the Hudson Bay Company. Brrr! It is cold.' She slipped on her mitten and rubbed her ears, the pink of which had already turned to white. 'Let us go to the fire and talk. My name is Labiskwee. What is your name?'
And so Smoke came to know Labiskwee, the daughter of Snass, whom Snass called Margaret.
'Snass is not my father's name,' she informed Smoke. 'Snass is only an Indian name.'
Much Smoke learned that day, and in the days that followed, as the hunting-camp moved on in the trail of the caribou. These were real wild Indians — the ones Anton had encountered and escaped from long years before. This was nearly the western limit of their territory, and in the summer they ranged north to the tundra shores of the Arctic , and eastward as far as the Luskwa. What river the Luskwa was Smoke could not make out, nor could Labiskwee tell him, nor could McCan. On occasion Snass, with parties of strong hunters, pushed east across the Rockies , on past the lakes and the Mackenzie and into the Barrens. It was on the last traverse in that direction that the silk tent occupied by Labiskwee had been found.
'It belonged to the Millicent-Adbury expedition,' Snass told Smoke.
'Oh! I remember. They went after musk-oxen. The rescue expedition never found a trace of them.'
'I found them,' Snass said. 'But both were dead.'
'The world still doesn't know. The word never got out.'
'The word never gets out,' Snass assured him pleasantly.
'You mean if they had been alive when you found them — ?'
Snass nodded. 'They would have lived on with me and my people.'
'Anton got out,' Smoke challenged.
'I do not remember the name. How long ago?'
'Fourteen or fifteen years,' Smoke answered.
'So he pulled through, after all. Do you know, I've wondered about him. We called him Long Tooth. He was a strong man, a strong man.'
'La Perle came through here ten years ago.'
Snass shook his head.
'He found traces of your camps. It was summer time.'
'That explains it,' Snass answered. 'We are hundreds of miles to the north in the summer.'
But, strive as he would, Smoke could get no clew to Snass's history in the days before he came to live in the northern wilds. Educated he was, yet in all the intervening years he had read no books, no newspapers. What had happened in the world he knew not, nor did he show desire to know. He had heard of the miners on the Yukon , and of the Klondike strike. Gold-miners had never invaded his territory, for which he was glad. But the outside world to him did not exist. He tolerated no mention of it.
Nor could Labiskwee help Smoke with earlier information. She had been born on the hunting-grounds. Her mother had lived for six years after. Her mother had been very beautiful — the only white woman Labiskwee had ever seen. She said this wistfully, and wistfully, in a thousand ways, she showed that she knew of the great outside world on which her father had closed the door. But this knowledge was secret. She had early learned that mention of it threw her father into a rage.
Anton had told a squaw of her mother, and that her mother had been a daughter of a high official in the Hudson Bay Company. Later, the squaw had told Labiskwee. But her mother's name she had never learned.
As a source of information, Danny McCan was impossible. He did not like adventure. Wild life was a horror, and he had had nine years of it. Shanghaied in San Francisco , he had deserted the whaleship at Point Barrow with three companions. Two had died, and the third had abandoned him on the terrible traverse south. Two years he had lived with the Eskimos before raising the courage to attempt the south traverse, and then, within several days of a Hudson Bay Company post, he had been gathered in by a party of Snass's young men. He was a small, stupid man, afflicted with sore eyes, and all he dreamed or could talk about was getting back to his beloved San Francisco and his blissful trade of bricklaying.
'You're the first intelligent man we've had,' Snass complimented Smoke one night by the fire. 'Except old Four Eyes. The Indians named him so. He wore glasses and was short-sighted. He was a professor of zoology.' (Smoke noted the correctness of the pronunciation of the word.) 'He died a year ago. My young men picked him up strayed from an expedition on the upper Porcupine. He was intelligent, yes; but he was also a fool. That was his weakness — straying. He knew geology, though, and working in metals. Over on the Luskwa, where there's coal, we have several creditable hand-forges he made. He repaired our guns and taught the young men how. He died last year, and we really missed him. Strayed — that's how it happened — froze to death within a mile of camp.'
It was on the same night that Snass said to Smoke:
'You'd better pick out a wife and have a fire of your own. You will be more comfortable than with those young bucks. The maidens' fires — a sort of feast of the virgins, you know — are not lighted until full summer and the salmon, but I can give orders earlier if you say the word.'
Smoke laughed and shook his head.
'Remember,' Snass concluded quietly, 'Anton is the only one that ever got away. He was lucky, unusually lucky.'
Her father had a will of iron, Labiskwee told Smoke.
'Four Eyes used to call him the Frozen Pirate — whatever that means — the Tyrant of the Frost, the Cave Bear, the Beast Primitive, the King of the Caribou, the Bearded Pard, and lots of such things. Four Eyes loved words like these. He taught me most of my English. He was always making fun. You could never tell. He called me his cheetah-chum after times when I was angry. What is cheetah? He always teased me with it.'
She chattered on with all the eager naivete of a child, which Smoke found hard to reconcile with the full womanhood of her form and face.
Yes, her father was very firm. Everybody feared him. He was terrible when angry. There were the Porcupines. It was through them, and through the Luskwas, that Snass traded his skins at the posts and got his supplies of ammunition and tobacco. He was always fair, but the chief of the Porcupines began to cheat. And after Snass had warned him twice, he burned his log village, and over a dozen of the Porcupines were killed in the fight. But there was no more cheating. Once, when she was a little girl, there was one white man killed while trying to escape. No, her father did not do it, but he gave the order to the young men. No Indian ever disobeyed her father.
And the more Smoke learned from her, the more the mystery of Snass deepened.
'And tell me if it is true,' the girl was saying, 'that there was a man and a woman whose names were Paolo and Francesca and who greatly loved each other?'
Smoke nodded.
'Four Eyes told me all about it,' she beamed happily. 'And so he did not make it up, after all. You see, I was not sure. I asked father, but, oh, he was angry. The Indians told me he gave poor Four Eyes an awful talking to. Then there were Tristan and Iseult — two Iseults. It was very sad. But I should like to love that way. Do all the young men and women in the world do that? They do not here. They just get married. They do not seem to have time. I am English, and I will never marry an Indian — would you? That is why I have not lighted my maiden's fire. Some of the young men are bothering father to make me do it. Libash is one of them. He is a great hunter. And Mahkook comes around singing songs. He is funny. To-night, if you come by my tent after dark, you will hear him singing out in the cold. But father says I can do as I please, and so I shall not light my fire. You see, when a girl
