The Rev. Jackson Brown delighted in that deep bass voice, and because of his sterling qualities deemed him the most promising convert.  Macklewrath doubted this.  He did not believe in the efficacy of the conversion of the heathen, and he was not slow in speaking his mind.  But Mr. Brown was a large man, in his way, and he argued it out with such convincingness, all of one long fall night, that the trader, driven from position after position, finally announced in desperation, “Knock out my brains with apples, Brown, if I don’t become a convert myself, if Keesh holds fast, true blue, for two years!” Mr. Brown never lost an opportunity, so he clinched the matter on the spot with a virile hand-grip, and thenceforth the conduct of Keesh was to determine the ultimate abiding-place of Macklewrath’s soul.

But there came news one day, after the winter’s rime had settled down over the land sufficiently for travel.  A Tana-naw man arrived at the St. George Mission in quest of ammunition and bringing information that Su-Su had set eyes on Nee-Koo, a nervy young hunter who had bid brilliantly for her by old Gnob’s fire.  It was at about this time that the Rev. Jackson Brown came upon Keesh by the wood-trail which leads down to the river.  Keesh had his best dogs in the harness, and shoved under the sled-lashings was his largest and finest pair of snow-shoes.

“Where goest thou, O Keesh?  Hunting?” Mr. Brown asked, falling into the Indian manner.

Keesh looked him steadily in the eyes for a full minute, then started up his dogs.  Then again, turning his deliberate gaze upon the missionary, he answered, “No; I go to hell.”

* * * * *

In an open space, striving to burrow into the snow as though for shelter from the appalling desolateness, huddled three dreary lodges.  Ringed all about, a dozen paces away, was the sombre forest.  Overhead there was no keen, blue sky of naked space, but a vague, misty curtain, pregnant with snow, which had drawn between.  There was no wind, no sound, nothing but the snow and silence.  Nor was there even the general stir of life about the camp; for the hunting party had run upon the flank of the caribou herd and the kill had been large.  Thus, after the period of fasting had come the plenitude of feasting, and thus, in broad daylight, they slept heavily under their roofs of moosehide.

By a fire, before one of the lodges, five pairs of snow-shoes stood on end in their element, and by the fire sat Su-Su.  The hood of her squirrel-skin parka was about her hair, and well drawn up around her throat; but her hands were unmittened and nimbly at work with needle and sinew, completing the last fantastic design on a belt of leather faced with bright scarlet cloth.  A dog, somewhere at the rear of one of the lodges, raised a short, sharp bark, then ceased as abruptly as it had begun.  Once, her father, in the lodge at her back, gurgled and grunted in his sleep.  “Bad dreams,” she smiled to herself.  “He grows old, and that last joint was too much.”