Gray Goose blood is in me, Jeems.  I love the forests.  And Niska’s God doesn’t live in Montreal.  Her sun doesn’t rise there.  Her moon isn’t the same there.  The flowers are not hers.  The winds tell different stories.  The air is another air.  People, when they look at you, look in another way.  Away down the Three Rivers I had loved men.  There I was learning to hate them.  Then, something happened.  I came to Athabasca Landing.  I went to see you because—­”

She clasped her two hands tightly in her lap.  “Because, after those four terrible years, you were the first man I found who was playing a great, big, square game to the end.  Don’t ask me how I found it out.  Please don’t ask me anything.  I am telling you all you can know, all you shall know.  But I did find it out.  And then I learned that you were not going to die.  Kedsty told me that.  And when I had talked with you I knew that you would play any game square, and I made up my mind to help you.  That is why I am telling you all this—­just to let you know that I have faith in you, and that you must not break that faith.  You must not insist on knowing more about me.  You must still play the game.  I am playing mine, and you must play yours.  And to play yours clean, you must go with Laselle’s brigade and leave me with Kedsty.  You must forget what has happened.  You must forget what may happen.  You can not help me.  You can only harm me.  And if—­some day, a long time from now—­you should happen to find the Valley of Silent Men—­”

He waited, his heart pounding like a fist.

“I may—­be there,” she finished, in a voice so low that it was scarcely above a whisper.

It seemed to him that she was looking a long way off, and it was not in his direction.  And then she smiled, not at him, but in a half-hopeless little way.

“I think I shall be disappointed if you don’t find it,” she said then, and her eyes were pure as the blue flowers from which they had stolen their color, as she looked at him.  “You know the great Sulphur Country beyond Fort Simpson, westward between the Two Nahannis?”

“Yes.  That is where Kilbane and his patrol were lost.  The Indians call it the Devil Country.  Is that it?”

She nodded.  “They say no living thing has ever been through the Sulphur Country,” she said.  “But that is not true.  I have been through it.  It is beyond the Sulphur Country you must go to find the Valley of Silent Men, straight through that gap between the North and the South Nahanni.  That is the way you must go if you should ever find it, Jeems, for otherwise you would have to come down from Dawson or up from Skagway, and the country is so great that you would never come upon it in a thousand years.  The police will not find you there.  You will always be safe.  Perhaps I shall tell you more before the Brigade comes.  But that is all tonight.  I may never tell you anything more.  And you must not question me.”