Jaquis not only refused to tell her where the engineer was operating, but promised to strangle her if she mentioned his master’s name again.

At last the long day died, the sunset was less golden, and the stars sang sadder than they sang the day before.  She watched the west, into which he had gone and out of which she hoped he might return to her.  Another round of dusk and dawn and there came another day, with its hours that hung like ages.  When she sighed her mother scolded and Jaquis swore.  When at last night came to curtain the hills, she stole out under the stars and walked and walked until the next day dawned.  A lone wolf howled to his kith, but they were not hungry and refused to answer his call.  Often, in the dark, she fancied she heard faint, feline footsteps behind her.  Once a big black bear blocked her trail, staring at her with lifted muzzle wet with dew and stained with berry juice.  She did not faint nor scream nor stay her steps, but strode on.  Now nearer and nearer came the muffled footsteps behind her.  The black bear backed from the trail and kept backing, pivoting slowly, like a locomotive on a turntable, and as she passed on, stood staring after her, his small eyes blinking in babylike bewilderment.  And so through the dusk and dark and dawn this love-mad maiden walked the wilderness, innocent of arms, and with no one near to protect her save the little barefooted bowman whom the white man calls the God of Love.

Meanwhile away to the west, high in the hills, where the Findlay flowing into the Pine makes the Peace, then cutting through the crest of the continent makes a path for the Peace, Smith and his little army, isolated, remote, with no cable connecting them with the great cities of civilization, out of touch with the telegraph, away from the war correspondent, with only the music of God’s rills for a regimental band, were battling bravely in a war that can end only with the conquest of a wilderness.  Ah, these be the great generals—­these unheralded heroes who, while the smoke of slaughter smudges the skies and shadows the sun, wage a war in which they kill only time and space, and in the end, without despoiling the rest of the world, win homes for the homeless.  These are the heroes of the Anglo-Saxon race.

* * * * *

Finding no trace of the trail-makers, the Belle faced the rising sun and sought the camp of the Crees.

The mysterious shadow with the muffled tread, that had followed her from the engineer’s camp, shrank back into the bush as she passed down the trail.  That was Jaquis.  He watched her as she strode by him, uncertain as to whether he loved or hated her, for well he knew why she walked the wilderness all night alone.  Now the Gitche in his unhappy heart made him long to lift her in his arms and carry her to camp, and then the bad god, Mitche, would assert himself and say to the savage that was in him, “Go, kill her.  She despises her race and flings herself at the white man’s feet.”  And so, impelled by passion and stayed by love, he followed her.  The white man within him made him ashamed of his skulking, and the Indian that was in him guided him around her and home by a shorter trail.