He helped her over the steeps, waited for her at bad crossings; and meanwhile his thoughts found easy expression in words.  He had to stop and remind himself that she was his foe.  Beatrice herself attempted no such remembrance; she was simply carrying out her resolve to make the best of a deplorable situation.

She could see, however, that he kept close watch of her.  He intended to give her no opportunity to strike back at him.  He carried his rifle unloaded, so that if she were able, in an unguarded moment, to wrest it from him she could not turn it against him.  But there was no joy for her in noticing these small precautions.  They only reminded her of her imprisonment; and she wisely resolved to ignore them.

They climbed to the ridge top, following it on to the plateau where patches of snow still gleamed white and the spruce grew in dark clumps, leaving open, lovely parks between.  Here they encountered their first caribou.

This animal, however, was not to their liking in the way of meat for the table.  A turn in the trail suddenly revealed him at the edge of the glade, his white mane gleaming and his graceful form aquiver with that unquenchable vitality that seems to be the particular property of northern wild animals; but Ben let him go his way.  He was an old bull, the monarch of his herd; he had ranged and mated and fought his rivals for nearly a score of years in the wild heart of Back There,—­and his flesh would be mostly sinew.

Ten minutes later, however, the girl touched his arm.  She pointed to a far glade, fully three hundred yards across the canyon.  Her quick eyes made out a tawny form against the thicket.

It was a young caribou—­a yearling buck—­and his flesh would be tender as a spring fowl.

“It’s just what we want, but there’s not much chance of getting him at that range,” he said.

“Try, anyway.  You’ve got a long-range rifle.  If you can hold true, he’s yours.”

This was one thing that Ben was skilled at,—­holding true.  He raised the weapon to his shoulder, drawing down finely on that little speck of brown across the gulch.  Few times in his life had he been more anxious to make a successful shot.  Yet he would never have admitted the true explanation:  that he simply desired to make good in the girl’s eyes.

He held his breath and pressed the trigger back.

Beatrice could not restrain a low, happy cry of triumph.  She had forgotten all things, for the moment, but her joy at his success.  And truly, Ben had made a remarkable shot.  Most hunters who boast of long-range hits do not step off the distance shot; fifty yards is called a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards three hundred; and to kill true at this range is not the accustomed thing on the trails of sport.  The bullet had gone true as a light-shaft, striking the animal through the shoulders, and he had never stirred out of his tracks.  With that joy of conquest known to all owners of rod and gun—­related darkly to the blood-lust of the beasts—­they raced across the gully toward the fallen.