Gradually, the women of the Slave Lake Indians taking the cue from their northern sisters, began to show an appreciation of the girl’s efforts in their behalf.  An appreciation that manifested itself in little tokens of friendship, exquisitely beaded moccasins, shyly presented, and a pair of quill-embroidered leggings laid upon her desk by a squaw who slipped hurriedly away.  Thus the way was paved for a closer intimacy which quickly grew into an eager willingness among the Indians to help her in the mastering of their own language.

As this intimacy grew, the barrier which is the chief stumbling-block of missionaries and teachers who seek to carry enlightenment into the lean lone land, gradually dissolved.  The women with whom Chloe came in contact ceased to be Indians en masse; they became people—­personalities—­each with her own capability and propensity for the working of good or harm.  With this realization vanished the last vestige of aloofness and reserve.  And, thereafter, many of the women broke bread by invitation at Chloe’s own table.

The one thing that remained incomprehensible to the girl was the idolatrous regard in which MacNair was held by his own Indians.  To them he was a superman—­the one great man among all white men.  His word was accepted without question.  Upon leaving for the southward MacNair had told the men to work, therefore they worked unceasingly.  Also he had told the women and the children to obey without question the words of the white kloochman, and therefore they absorbed her teaching with painstaking care.

Time and again the girl tried to obtain the admission that MacNair was in the habit of supplying his Indians with whiskey, and always she received the same answer.  “MacNair sells no whiskey.  He hates whiskey.  And many times has he killed men for selling whiskey to his people.”

At first these replies exasperated the girl beyond measure.  She set them down as stereotyped answers in which they had been carefully coached.  But as time went on and the women, whose word she had come to hold in regard, remained unshaken in their statements, an uncomfortable doubt assailed her—­a doubt that, despite herself, she fostered.  A doubt that caused her to ponder long of nights as she lay in her little room listening to the droning voices of LeFroy and Big Lena as they talked by the stove in the kitchen.

Strange fancies and pictures the girl built up as she lay, half waking, half dreaming between her blankets.  Pictures in which MacNair, misjudged, hated, fighting against fearful odds, came clean through the ruck and muck with which his enemies had endeavoured to smother him, and proved himself the man he might have been; fancies and pictures that dulled into a pain that was very like a heartache, as the vivid picture—­the real picture—­which she herself had seen with her own eyes that night on Snare Lake, arose always to her mind.