A quarter of an hour later MacDougall and Jeanne set out over the river trail, leaving Philip standing behind, watching them until they were hidden in the night.  It was fully an hour later before the St. Pierres returned.  Philip was uneasy until the two dark-faced hunters came into the little office and leaned their rifles against the wall.  He had feared that Sachigo might have left some trace of his ambush behind.  But the St. Pierres had discovered nothing, and could give only one reason for the burning pine on the summit of the mountain.  They agreed that Indians had fired it to frighten moose from a thick cover to the south and west, and that their hunt had been a failure.

It was midnight before Philip relaxed his caution, which he maintained until then in spite of his belief that Thorpe’s men, under Blake, had met a quick finish at the hands of Sachigo and his ambushed braves.  His men left for their cabins, with the exception of Cassidy, whom he asked to spend the remainder of the night in one of the office bunks.  Alone he went in to prepare Pierre for his last journey to Fort o’ God.

A lamp was burning low beside the bunk in which Pierre lay.  Philip approached and turned the wick higher, and then he gazed in wonder upon the transfiguration in the half-breed’s face.  Pierre had died with a smile on his lips; and with a curious thickening in his throat Philip thought that those lips, even in death, were craved in the act of whispering Jeanne’s name.  It seemed to him, as he stood in silence for many moments, that Pierre was not dead, but that he was sleeping a quiet, unbreathing sleep, in which there came to him visions of the great love for which he had offered up his life and his soul.  Jeanne’s hands, in his last moments, had stilled all pain.  Peace slumbered in the pale shadows of his closed eyes.  The Great God of his faith had come to him in his hour of greatest need on earth, and he had passed away into the Valley of Silent Men on the sweet breath of Jeanne’s prayers.  The girl had crossed his hands upon his breast.  She had brushed back his long hair.  Philip knew that she had imprinted a kiss upon the silent lips before the soul had fled, and in the warmth and knowledge of that kiss Pierre had died happy.

And Philip, brokenly, said aloud: 

“God bless you, Pierre, old man!”

He lifted the cold hands back, and gently drew the covers which had hidden the telltale stains of death from Jeanne’s eyes.  He turned down Pierre’s shirt, and in the lamp-glow there glistened the golden locket.  For the first time he noticed it closely.  It was half as large as the palm of his hand, and very thin, and he saw that it was bent and twisted.  A shudder ran through him when he understood what had happened.  The bullet that had killed Pierre had first struck the locket, and had burst it partly open.  He took it in his hand.  And then he saw that through the broken side there protruded the end of a bit of paper.  For a brief space the discovery made him almost forget the presence of death.  Pierre had never opened the locket, because it was of the old-fashioned kind that locked with a key, and the key was gone.  And the locket had been about Jeanne’s neck when he found her out in the snows!  Was it possible that this bit of paper had something to do with the girl he loved?