For an hour after the others had wrapped themselves in their blankets Rod sat alone beside the fire, listening, and thinking.  And after that he went to the edge of the plateau, and watched the great spring moon as it floated slowly over the vast, still wilderness.  How wonderful these solitudes were, how little the teeming millions of civilization knew about them!  Somehow, in those moments, as he watched the shivering Northern Lights playing far beyond the farthest footstep of man, there came to Roderick Drew the thought that God must be nearer to earth here than anywhere else in the world.  For the first time his soul was filled with something that was almost love for the red man’s Great Spirit.  And why not?  For was not that Great Spirit his own God?  Sad, lonely, silent, mysterious, a whole world lay before him, a world that was the Indian Bible, that contained for the red man of the North the teachings and the voice of the Creator of all things.  A wind had risen and was whispering over the plains; he heard the hushed voices of the quivering poplar boughs, and there came from far below him the soft, chuckling, mating hoot of an owl.  Gradually his eyes closed, and he leaned more heavily upon the rock against which he had seated himself.  After that he dreamed of what he had looked upon, while the fire at the camp died away, and Mukoki and Wabigoon slumbered, oblivious of his absence.

Of how long he slept Rod had no idea.  He was suddenly brought back into wakefulness by a sound that startled him to the marrow of his bones, a terrible scream close to his ears.  He sat bolt upright, quaking in every limb.  For a moment he tried to cry out, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.  What had happened?  Was it Wabi, or Mukoki?

A dozen paces away was a huge rock and as he looked he saw something move upon it, a long, lithe object that shone a silvery white in the moonlight, and he knew that it was a lynx.  Stealthily Rod reached for his rifle, which had slipped between his knees, and as he did so the lynx sent forth another of its blood-curdling screams.  Even now the white youth shivered at the sound, so much like the terrible cry of some person in dying agony.  He leveled his gun.  There was a flash in the moonlight, a sharp report, and a shout from the direction of the camp.  In another moment Rod was upon his feet, and sorry that he had shot.  It flashed upon him that he might have watched the lynx, one of the night pirates of all this strange wilderness, and that its pelt, at this season, would be worthless.  He went to the rock cautiously.  The lynx was not there.  He walked around it, holding his rifle in readiness for attack.  The lynx was gone.  He had made a clean miss!

Both Mukoki and Wabigoon met him on the opposite side of the rock.

“’Nother heap big Woonga,” grinned the old pathfinder remembering Rod’s former adventure on this same plateau.  “Kill?”

“Missed!” said Rod shortly.  “What a scream that was!  Ugh!”