Philip caught her glance, and took Adare by the arm.  Alone they went into the breakfast-room.  Adare laughed uneasily as he seated himself opposite Philip.

“I don’t like to see the little beggar like that,” he said, taking to shake off his own and Philip’s fears with a smile.  “It was Mignonne who scared me—­her face.  She has nursed so many sick babies that it frightened me to see her so white.  I thought he might be—­dying.”

“Cutting teeth, mebby,” volunteered Philip.

“Too young,” replied Adare.

“Or a touch of indigestion, That brings fever.”

“Whatever it is, Josephine will soon have him kicking and pulling my thumb again,” said Adare with confidence.  “Did she ever tell you about the little Indian baby she found in a tepee?”

“No.”

“It was in the dead of winter.  Mignonne was out with her dogs, ten miles to the south.  Captain scented the thing—­the Indian tepee.  It was abandoned—­banked high with snow—­and over it was the smallpox signal.  She was about to go on, but Captain made her go to the flap of the tepee.  The beast knew, I guess.  And Josephine—­ my God, I wouldn’t have let her do it for ten years of my life!  There had been smallpox in that tent; the smell of it was still warm.  Ugh!  And she looked in!  And she says she heard something that was no louder than the peep of a bird.  Into that death-hole she went—­and brought out a baby.  The parents, starving and half crazed after their sickness, had left it—­thinking it was dead.

“Josephine brought it to a cabin close to home, in two weeks she had that kid out rolling in the snow.  Then the mother and father heard something of what had happened, and came to us as fast as their legs could bring them.  You should have seen that Indian mother’s gratitude!  She didn’t think it so terrible to leave the baby unburied.  She thought it was dead.  Pasoo is the Indian father’s name.  Several times a year they come to see Josephine, and Pasoo brings her the choicest furs of his trap-line.  And each time he says:  ‘Nipa tu mo-wao,’ which means that some day he hopes to be able to kill for her.  Nice, isn’t it—­to have friends who’ll murder your enemies for you if you just give ’em the word?”

“One never can tell,” began Philip cautiously.  “A time might come when she would need friends.  If such a day should happen—­”

He paused, busying himself with his steak.  There was a note of triumph, of exultation, in Adare’s low laugh.

“Have you ever seen a fire run through a pitch-dry forest?” he asked.  “That is the way word that Josephine wanted friends would sweep through a thousand square miles of this Northland.  And the answer to it would be like the answer of stray wolves to the cry of the hunt-pack!”

All over Philip there surged a warm glow.

“You could not have friends like that down there, in the cities,” he said.

Adare’s face clouded.