He held back, and her pull on his arm could not move him.  Almost was he tempted to tell her of the other woman beyond the south traverse.

“It would be a great wrong to you to go back,” she said.  “I—­I am only a wild girl, and I am afraid of the world; but I am more afraid for you.  You see, it is as you told me.  I love you more than anybody else in the world.  I love you more than myself.  The Indian language is not a good language.  The English language is not a good language.  The thoughts in my heart for you, as bright and as many as the stars—­there is no language for them.  How can I tell you them?  They are there—­see?”

As she spoke she slipped the mitten from his hand and thrust the hand inside the warmth of her parka until it rested against her heart.  Tightly and steadily she pressed his hand in its position.  And in the long silence he felt the beat, beat of her heart, and knew that every beat of it was love.  And then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, still holding his hand, her body began to incline away from his and toward the direction of the cache.  Nor could he resist.  It was as if he were drawn by her heart itself that so nearly lay in the hollow of his hand.

So firm was the crust, frozen during the night after the previous day’s surface-thaw, that they slid along rapidly on their skees.

“Just here, in the trees, is the cache,” Labiskwee told Smoke.

The next moment she caught his arm with a startle of surprise.  The flames of a small fire were dancing merrily, and crouched by the fire was McCan.  Labiskwee muttered something in Indian, and so lashlike was the sound that Smoke remembered she had been called “cheetah” by Four Eyes.

“I was minded you’d run without me,” McCan explained when they came up, his small peering eyes glimmering with cunning.  “So I kept an eye on the girl, an’ when I seen her caching skees an’ grub, I was on.  I’ve brought my own skees an’ webs an’ grub.  The fire?  Sure, an’ it was no danger.  The camp’s asleep an’ snorin’, an’ the waitin’ was cold.  Will we be startin’ now?”

Labiskwee looked swift consternation at Smoke, as swiftly achieved a judgement on the matter, and spoke.  And in the speaking she showed, child-woman though she was in love, the quick decisiveness of one who in other affairs of life would be no clinging vine.

“McCan, you are a dog,” she hissed, and her eyes were savage with anger.  “I know it is in your heart to raise the camp if we do not take you.  Very well.  We must take you.  But you know my father.  I am like my father.  You will do your share of the work.  You will obey.  And if you play one dirty trick, it would be better for you if you had never run.”

McCan looked up at her, his small pig-eyes hating and cringing, while in her eyes, turned to Smoke, the anger melted into luminous softness.

“Is it right, what I have said?” she queried.