The girl was about to protest, but at that moment the canoe shot swiftly out into the lake, and Lapierre disappeared into the bush.

There was small need for the quarter-breed’s parting injunction.  The four Indian canoemen evidently keenly alive to the desirability of placing distance between themselves and MacNair’s retainers, bent to their paddles with a unanimity of purpose that fairly lifted the big canoe through the water and sent the white foam curling from its bow in tiny ripples of protest.

Hour after hour, as the craft drove southward, Chloe sat with the wounded man’s head supported in her lap and pondered deeply the things he had told her.  Now and again she gazed into the bearded face, calm, masklike in its repose of unconsciousness, as if to penetrate behind the mask and read the real nature of him.  She realized with a feeling almost of fear, that here was no weakling—­no plastic irresolute—­whose will could be dominated by the will of a stronger; but a man, virile, indomitable; a man of iron will who, though he scorned to stoop to defend his position, was unashamed to vindicate it.  A man whose words carried conviction, and whose eyes compelled attention, even respect, though the uncouth boorishness of him repelled.

Yet she knew that somewhere deep behind that rough exterior lay a finer sensitiveness, a gentleness of feeling, and a sympathy that had impelled him to a deed of unconscious chivalry of which no man need be ashamed.  And in her heart Chloe knew that had she not witnessed with her own eyes the destruction of his whiskey, she would have been convinced of his sincerity, if not of his postulates.  “He is bad, but not all bad,” she murmured to herself.  “A man who will fight hard, but fairly.  At all events, my journey to Snare Lake has not been entirely in vain.  He knows, now, that I have come into the North to stay; that I am not afraid of him, and will fight him.  He knows that I am honest——­”

Suddenly the very last words she had spoken to him flashed into her mind—­“Mr. Lapierre is far to the Southward”—­and then Chloe closed her eyes as if to shut out that look of mingled contempt and reproach with which the wounded man had sunk into unconsciousness.  “He thinks I lied to him—­that the whole thing was planned,” she muttered, and was conscious of a swift anger against Lapierre.  Her eyes swept backward to the brown spot in the distance which was Lapierre’s canoe.

“He came up here because he thought I was in danger,” she mused.  “And MacNair would have killed him.  Oh, it is terrible,” she moaned.  “This wild, hard wilderness, where human life is cheap; where men hate, and kill, and maim, and break all the laws of God and man; it is all wrong!  Brutal, and savage, and wrong!”

The shadows lengthened, the canoe slipped into the river that leads to Reindeer Lake, and still the tireless canoemen bent unceasingly to their paddles.  Reindeer Lake was crossed by moonlight, and a late camp was made a mile to the westward of the portage.  The camp was fireless, and the men talked in whispers.  Later Lapierre joined them, and at the first grey hint of dawn the outfit was again astir.  By noon the five-mile portage had been negotiated, and the canoes headed down Carp Lake, which is the northmost reach of the Yellow Knife.