“I don’t count—­now,” he said.  “Since you’ve made up your mind not to trade me the girl for your life I’ve sort of dropped out of the game.  I guess you’re thinking I can hold Upi’s tribe back.  Well, I can’t—­not when you’re getting this far up in their country.  If we split the difference, and you gave me her, Upi would meet me half way.  God, but you’ve spoiled a nice dream!”

“A dream?”

Blake uttered a command to the dogs.

“Yes—­more’n that.  I’ve got an igloo up there even finer than Upi’s—­all built of whalebone and ships’ timbers.  Think of her in that, Raine—­with me!  That’s the dream you smashed!”

“And her father—­and the others—­”

This time there was a ferocious undercurrent in Blake’s guttural laugh, as though Philip had by accident reminded him of something that both amused and enraged him.

“Don’t you know how these Kogmollock heathen look on a father-in-law?” he asked.  “He’s sort of walkin’ delegate over the whole bloomin’ family.  A god with two legs.  The others?  Why, we killed them.  But Upi and his heathen wouldn’t see anything happen to the old man when they found I was going to take the girl.  That’s why he’s alive up there in the cabin now.  Lord, what a mess you’re heading into, Raine!  And I’m wondering, after you kill me, and they kill you, who’ll have the girl?  There’s a half-breed in the tribe an’ she’ll probably go to him.  The heathen themselves don’t give a flip for women, you know.  So it’s certain to be the half-breed.”

He surged on ahead, cracking his whip, and crying out to the dogs.  Philip believed that in those few moments he had spoken much that was truth.  He had, without hesitation and of his own volition, confessed the murder of the companions of Celie’s father, and he had explained in a reasonable way why Armin himself had been spared.  These facts alone increased his apprehension.  Unless Blake was utterly confident of the final outcome he would not so openly expose himself.  He was even more on his guard after this.

For several hours after his brief fit of talking Blake made no effort to resume the conversation nor any desire to answer Philip when the latter spoke to him.  A number of times it struck Philip that he was going the pace that would tire out both man and beast before night.  He knew that in Blake’s shaggy head there was a brain keenly and dangerously alive, and he noted the extreme effort he was making to cover distance with a satisfaction that was not unmixed of suspicion.  By three o’clock in the afternoon they were thirty-five miles from the cabin in which Blake had become a prisoner.  All that distance they had traveled through a treeless barren without a sign of life.  It was between three and four when they began to strike timber once more, and Philip asked himself if it had been Blake’s scheme to reach this timber before dusk.  In places the