“I ain’t built to be frightened,” he said, taking his time about it.  “I know your little games an’ I’ve throwed a good many bluffs of my own in my time.  You’re lyin’ when you say you’ll shoot, an’ you know you are.  I may talk and I may not.  Before I make up my mind I’m going to give you a bit of brotherly advice.  Take that team out there and hit across the Barren—­alone.  Understand?  Alone.  Leave the girl here.  It’s your one chance of missing what happened to—­”

He grinned and shrugged his huge shoulders.

“You mean Anderson—­Olaf Anderson—­and the others up at Bathurst Inlet?” questioned Philip chokingly.

Blake nodded.

Philip wondered if the other could hear the pounding of his heart.  He had discovered in this moment what the Department had been trying to learn for two years.  It was this man—­Blake—­who was the mysterious white leader of the Kogmollocks, and responsible for the growing criminal record of the natives along Coronation Gulf.  And he had just confessed himself the murderer of Olaf Anderson!  His finger trembled for an instant against the trigger of his revolver.  Then, staring into Blake’s face, he slowly lowered the weapon until it hung at his side.  Blake’s eyes gleamed as he saw what he thought was his triumph.

“It’s your one chance,” he urged.  “And there ain’t no time to lose.”

Philip had judged his man, and now he prayed for the precious minutes in which to play out his game.  The Kogmollocks who had taken up their trail could not be far from the cabin now.

“Maybe you’re right, Blake,” he said hesitatingly.  “I think, after her experience with Bram Johnson that she is about willing to return to her father.  Where is he?”

Blake made no effort to disguise his eagerness.  In the droop of Philip’s shoulder, the laxness of the hand that held the revolver and the change in his voice Blake saw in his captor an apparent desire to get out of the mess he was in.  A glimpse of Celie’s frightened face turned for an instant from the door gave weight to his conviction.

“He’s down the Coppermine—­about a hundred miles.  So, Bram Johnson—­”

His eyes were a sudden blaze of fire.

“Took care of her until your little rats waylaid him on the trail and murdered him,” interrupted Philip.  “See here, Blake.  You be square with me and I’ll be square with you.  I haven’t been able to understand a word of her lingo and I’m curious to know a thing or two before I go.  Tell me who she is, and why you haven’t killed her father, and what you’re going to do with her and I won’t waste another minute.”

Blake leaned forward until Philip felt the heat of his breath.

“What do I want of her?” he demanded slowly.  “Why, if you’d been five years without sight of a white woman, an’ then you woke up one morning to meet an angel like her on the trail two thousand miles up in nowhere what would you want of her?  I was stunned, plumb stunned, or I’d had her then.  And after that, if it hadn’t been for that devil with his wolves—­”