'Now we can talk,' she said, when the last fire had been left half a mile behind.
And now, in the starlight, facing him, Smoke noted for the first time that her arms were burdened, and, on feeling, discovered she carried his snowshoes, a rifle, two belts of ammunition, and his sleeping-robes.
'I have everything fixed,' she said, with a happy little laugh. 'I have been two days making the cache. There is meat, even flour, matches, and skees, which go best on the hard crust and, when they break through, the webs will hold up longer. Oh, I do know snow-travel, and we shall go fast, my lover.'
Smoke checked his speech. That she had been arranging his escape was surprise enough, but that she had planned to go with him was more than he was prepared for. Unable to think immediate action, he gently, one by one, took her burdens from her. He put his arm around her and pressed her close, and still he could not think what to do.
'God is good,' she whispered. 'He sent me a lover.'
Yet Smoke was brave enough not to suggest his going alone. And before he spoke again he saw all his memory of the bright world and the sun-lands reel and fade.
'We will go back, Labiskwee,' he said. 'You will be my wife, and we shall live always with the Caribou People.'
'No! no!' She shook her head; and her body, in the circle of his arm, resented his proposal. 'I know. I have thought much. The hunger for the world would come upon you, and in the long nights it would devour your heart. Four Eyes died of hunger for the world. So would you die. All men from the world hunger for it. And I will not have you die. We will go on across the snow mountains on the south traverse.'
'Dear, listen,' he urged. 'We must go back.'
She pressed her mitten against his lips to prevent further speech. 'You love me. Say that you love me.'
'I do love you, Labiskwee. You are my wonderful sweetheart.'
Again the mitten was a caressing obstacle to utterance.
'We shall go on to the cache,' she said with decision. 'It is three miles from here. Come.'
He held back, and her pull on his arm could not move him. Almost was he tempted to tell her of the other woman beyond the south traverse.
'It would be a great wrong to you to go back,' she said. 'I — I am only a wild girl, and I am afraid of the world; but I am more afraid for you. You see, it is as you told me. I love you more than anybody else in the world. I love you more than myself. The Indian language is not a good language. The English language is not a good language. The thoughts in my heart for you, as bright and as many as the stars — there is no language for them. How can I tell you them? They are there — see?'
As she spoke she slipped the mitten from his hand and thrust the hand inside the warmth of her parka until it rested against her heart. Tightly and steadily she pressed his hand in its position. And in the long silence he felt the beat, beat of her heart, and knew that every beat of it was love. And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, still holding his hand, her body began to incline away from his and toward the direction of the cache. Nor could he resist. It was as if he were drawn by her heart itself that so nearly lay in the hollow of his hand.
So firm was the crust, frozen during the night after the previous day's surface-thaw, that they slid along rapidly on their skees.
'Just here, in the trees, is the cache,' Labiskwee told Smoke.
The next moment she caught his arm with a startle of surprise. The flames of a small fire were dancing merrily, and crouched by the fire was McCan. Labiskwee muttered something in Indian, and so lashlike was the sound that Smoke remembered she had been called 'cheetah' by Four Eyes.
'I was minded you'd run without me,' McCan explained when they came up, his small peering eyes glimmering with cunning. 'So I kept an eye on the girl, an' when I seen her caching skees an' grub, I was on. I've brought my own skees an' webs an' grub. The fire? Sure, an' it was no danger. The camp's asleep an' snorin', an' the waitin' was cold. Will we be startin' now?'
Labiskwee looked swift consternation at Smoke, as swiftly achieved a judgement on the matter, and spoke. And in the speaking she showed, child-woman though she was in love, the quick decisiveness of one who in other affairs of life would be no clinging vine.
'McCan, you are a dog,' she hissed, and her eyes were savage with anger. 'I know it is in your heart to raise the camp if we do not take you. Very well. We must take you. But you know my father. I am like my father. You will do your share of the work. You will obey. And if you play one dirty trick, it would be better for you if you had never run.'
McCan looked up at her, his small pig-eyes hating and cringing, while in her eyes, turned to Smoke, the anger melted into luminous softness.
'Is it right, what I have said?' she queried.
Daylight found them in the belt of foothills that lay between the rolling country and the mountains. McCan suggested breakfast, but they held on. Not until the afternoon thaw softened the crust and prevented travel would they eat.
The foothills quickly grew rugged, and the stream, up whose frozen bed they journeyed, began to thread deeper and deeper canyons. The signs of spring were less frequent, though in one canyon they found foaming bits of open water, and twice they came upon clumps of dwarf willow upon which were the first hints of swelling buds.
Labiskwee explained to Smoke her knowledge of the country and the way she planned to baffle pursuit. There were but two ways out, one west, the other south. Snass would immediately dispatch parties of young men to guard the two trails. But there was another way south. True, it did no more than penetrate half-way into the high mountains, then, twisting to the west and crossing three divides, it joined the regular trail. When the young men found no traces on the regular trail they would turn back in the belief that the escape had been made by the west traverse, never dreaming that the runaways had ventured the harder and longer way around.
Glancing back at McCan, in the rear, Labiskwee spoke in an undertone to Smoke. 'He is eating,' she said. 'It is not good.'
Smoke looked. The Irishman was secretly munching caribou suet from the pocketful he carried.
'No eating between meals, McCan,' he commanded. 'There's no game in the country ahead, and the grub will have to be whacked in equal rations from the start. The only way you can travel with us is by playing fair.'
By one o'clock the crust had thawed so that the skees broke through, and before two o'clock the web-shoes were breaking through. Camp was made and the first meal eaten. Smoke took stock of the food. McCan's supply was a disappointment. So many silver fox-skins had he stuffed in the bottom of the meat bag that there was little space left for meat.
'Sure an' I didn't know there was so many,' he explained. 'I done it in the dark. But they're worth good money. An' with all this ammunition we'll be gettin' game a-plenty.'
'The wolves will eat you a-plenty,' was Smoke's hopeless comment, while Labiskwee's eyes flashed their anger.
Enough food for a month, with careful husbanding and appetites that never blunted their edge, was Smoke's and Labiskwee's judgment. Smoke apportioned the weight and bulk of the packs, yielding in the end to Labiskwee's insistence that she, too, should carry a pack.
Next day the stream shallowed out in a wide mountain valley, and they were already breaking through the crust on the flats when they gained the harder surface of the slope of the divide.
'Ten minutes later and we wouldn't have got across the flats,' Smoke said, when they paused for breath on the bald crest of the summit. 'We must be a thousand feet higher here.'
But Labiskwee, without speaking, pointed down to an open flat among the trees. In the midst of it, scattered abreast, were five dark specks that scarcely moved.
'The young men,' said Labiskwee.
'They are wallowing to their hips,' Smoke said. 'They will never gain the hard footing this day. We have hours the start of them. Come on, McCan. Buck up. We don't eat till we can't travel.'
McCan groaned, but there was no caribou suet in his pocket, and he doggedly brought up the rear.
In the higher valley in which they now found themselves, the crust did not break till three in the afternoon, at which time they managed to gain the shadow of a mountain where the crust was already freezing again. Once only they paused to get out McCan's confiscated suet, which they ate as they walked. The meat was frozen solid, and could be eaten only after thawing over a fire. But the suet crumbled in their mouths and eased the palpitating
