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Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen, gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river Miles Morgan and Sergeant O'Hara had started. "Sergeant!" They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain.
He could see but one thing to do, and that was to follow Pierre's advice, accepting his promise that in the end everything would come out right. He had faith in Pierre. He rose to his feet and went to the tent-flap. An embarrassing thought came to him, and he stopped, a flush of feverish color suddenly mounting into his pale cheeks.
The big Dane he fastened to a sapling twenty yards from his small silk tent, but Kazan's chain he made fast to the butt of a stunted birch that held down the tent-flap. Before he went into the tent for the night McGill pulled out his automatic and examined it with care. For three days the journey continued without a mishap along the shore of Lake Athabasca.
Low words of an insane joy burst from his lips. His head was hot with a drunken fire. His heart beat madly, but scarcely more furiously than did Kazan's when the dog saw that McCready was returning with a club! The club he placed on end against a tree. Then he took a lantern from the sledge and lighted it. He approached Thorpe's tent-flap, the lantern in his hand. "Ho, Thorpe Thorpe!" he called.
No one answered, but I could see by the shadows on the cloth that the tent was inhabited. After shouting again without receiving an answer, I tied up the horse, lifted up the tent-flap, and asked my way to Kuhrud. "Cannot one sleep in peace in the middle of the night?" came a voice from inside. "I am a European and you must show me the way," I returned sharply.
So she submitted, with a sigh of appreciation, to being tucked away in the bed in the southeast enclosure of the tent, and soon was lying peacefully there, watching through her open tent-flap the moonlight as it lay on the open lawn, beyond the vista of trees.
Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen, gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river Miles Morgan and Sergeant O'Hara had started. "Sergeant!" They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain.
He began to whistle and draw the half-burned logs together, and as the fire blazed up afresh he shouted to awaken Thorp and Isobel. In a few minutes Thorpe appeared at the tent-flap and his wife followed him out. Her loose hair rippled in billows of gold about her shoulders and she sat down on the sledge, close to Kazan, and began brushing it.
He was not allowed to see her, to tend her fire or clean her kettle. When, on her removal, he had dared to stop at her tent-flap with a string of pike, Afraid-of-a-Fawn swooped down upon him, her long tushes clicking and frothing, snatched the wall-eyes from his hold and belaboured him with them. He had not gone back. But, in secret, he grieved over Brown Mink's suffering.
I'm going to pin down the tent-flap, and you mustn't cry. If I don't get that damned half-breed, dead or alive, my name ain't Billy MacVeigh." He fastened the tent-flap so that Isobel could not escape, and left her alone, quiet and wondering. Loneliness was not new to her.
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