Only, when the tribesmen had been left behind, he leaned forward and began to talk to the girl in low-voiced Ojibway, comforting her with many assurances, as one would comfort a child.  After a time she ceased trembling and looked up.  But her glance made no account of the steady, old man who had so gently led her from her slough of despond, but rested on the straight, indignant back of the glorious youth who had cast her into it.  And Sam Bolton, knowing the ways of a maid, merely sighed, and resumed his methodical paddling.

At the noon stop and on portage it was impossible to gauge the feeling of the savages in regard to the matter, but at night the sentiment was strongly enough marked.  May-may-gwan herself, much to her surprise, was no further censured, and was permitted to escape with merely the slights and sneers the women were able to inflict on her.  Perhaps her masters, possessed of an accurate sense of justice, realised that the latter affair had not been her fault.  Or, what is more likely, their race antagonism, always ready in these fierce men of the Silent Places, seized instinctively on this excuse to burst into a definite unfriendliness.  The younger men drew frankly apart.  The older made it a point to sit by the white men’s fire, but they conversed formally and with many pauses.  Day by day the feeling intensified.  A strong wind had followed from the north for nearly a week, and so, of course, they had seen no big game, for the wary animals scented them long before they came in sight.  Meat began to run low.  So large a community could not subsist on the nightly spoils of the net and traps.  The continued ill-luck was attributed to the visitors.  Finally camp was made for a day while Crooked Nose, the best trailer and hunter of them all, went out to get a caribou.  Dick, hoping thus to win a little good will, lent his Winchester for the occasion.

The Indian walked very carefully through the mossy woods until he came upon a caribou trail still comparatively fresh.  Nobody but Crooked Nose could have followed the faint indications, but he did so, at first rapidly, then more warily, finally at a very snail’s pace.  His progress was noiseless.  Such a difficult result was accomplished primarily by his quickness of eye in selecting the spots on which to place his feet, and also to a great extent by the fact that he held his muscles so pliantly tense that the weight of his body came down not all at once, but in increasing pressure until the whole was supported ready for the next step.  He flowed through the woods.

When the trail became fresh he often paused to scrutinise closely, to smell, even to taste the herbage broken by the animal’s hoofs.  Once he startled a jay, but froze into immobility before that watchman of the woods had sprung his alarm.  For full ten minutes the savage poised motionless.  Then the bird flitted away, and he resumed his careful stalk.

It was already nearly noon.  The caribou had been feeding slowly forward.  Now he would lie down.  And Crooked Nose knew very well that the animal would make a little detour to right or left so as to be able to watch his back track.