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Keesh looked him steadily in the eyes for a full minute, then started up his dogs. Then again, turning his deliberate gaze upon the missionary, he answered, “No; I go to hell.”

* * * * *

In an open space, striving to burrow into the snow as though for shelter from the appalling desolateness, huddled three dreary lodges. Ringed all about, a dozen paces away, was the sombre forest. Overhead there was no keen, blue sky of naked space, but a vague, misty curtain, pregnant with snow, which had drawn between. There was no wind, no sound, nothing but the snow and silence. Nor was there even the general stir of life about the camp; for the hunting party had run upon the flank of the caribou herd and the kill had been large. Thus, after the period of fasting had come the plenitude of feasting, and thus, in broad daylight, they slept heavily under their roofs of moosehide.

By a fire, before one of the lodges, five pairs of snow-shoes stood on end in their element, and by the fire sat Su-Su. The hood of her squirrel-skin parka was about her hair, and well drawn up around her throat; but her hands were unmittened and nimbly at work with needle and sinew, completing the last fantastic design on a belt of leather faced with bright scarlet cloth. A dog, somewhere at the rear of one of the lodges, raised a short, sharp bark, then ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Once, her father, in the lodge at her back, gurgled and grunted in his sleep. “Bad dreams,” she smiled to herself. “He grows old, and that last joint was too much.”

She placed the last bead, knotted the sinew, and replenished the fire. Then, after gazing long into the flames, she lifted her head to the harsh crunch-crunch of a moccasined foot against the flinty snow granules. Keesh was at her side, bending slightly forward to a load which he bore upon his back. This was wrapped loosely in a soft-tanned moosehide, and he dropped it carelessly into the snow and sat down. They looked at each other long and without speech.

“It is a far fetch, O Keesh,” she said at last, “a far fetch from St. George Mission by the Yukon.”

“Ay,” he made answer, absently, his eyes fixed keenly upon the belt and taking note of its girth. “But where is the knife?” he demanded.

“Here.” She drew it from inside her parka and flashed its naked length in the firelight. “It is a good knife.”

“Give it me!” he commanded.

“Nay, O Keesh,” she laughed. “It may be that thou wast not born to wear it.”

“Give it me!” he reiterated, without change of tone. “I was so born.”

But her eyes, glancing coquettishly past him to the moosehide, saw the snow about it slowly reddening. “It is blood, Keesh?” she asked.

“Ay, it is blood. But give me the belt and the long Russian knife.”

She felt suddenly afraid, but thrilled when he took the belt roughly from her, thrilled to the roughness. She looked at him softly, and was aware of a pain at the breast and of small hands clutching her throat.

“It was made for a smaller man,” he remarked grimly, drawing in his abdomen and clasping the buckle at the first hole.

Su-Su smiled, and her eyes were yet softer. Again she felt the soft hands at her throat. He was good to look upon, and the belt was indeed small, made for a smaller man; but what did it matter? She could make many belts.

“But the blood?” she asked, urged on by a hope new-born and growing. “The blood, Keesh? Is it … are they … heads?”

“Ay.”

“They must be very fresh, else would the blood be frozen.”

“Ay, it is not cold, and they be fresh, quite fresh.”