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He must meet her again when the winter broke, or he would know no happiness. Then he must go go now so that he should be there to greet her when her canoes came up out of the south. Self never entered into An-ina's calculations. So long as the path of life was made as smooth and pleasant for her men folk as the Northland would permit there was nothing else with which she need concern herself.
His every thought was wrapt up in the immensity of the striving. He had absorbed the teachings of Steve, and added to them his own natural instincts. And in all this he had raised himself to that ideal of manhood which nature had implanted in An-ina's Indian heart.
He showed no sign of sharing her concern. "He'll be along," he said confidently. "I'm not worried a thing. I'd trust Marcel to beat the game more than I would myself. You needn't to be scared. No. It's not that." "What it then?" An-ina's eyes were full of a concern she had no desire to conceal. She had nothing to conceal from this man who was the god of her woman's life.
Bimeby Marcel him come. So." An-ina's voice was low and soft. But for all her halting use of the white man's tongue, with which she found so much difficulty, there was decision and earnest in every word she uttered. There was the force, too, of a brave, clear-thinking mind in it. And it left Steve with difficulty in answering her.
These Indians would take him to the place where the two white men had fought out the old, old battle for a woman. Yes, he was convinced now that An-ina's original story was the true one. His visit to these squalid creatures had served a double purpose. The old man's willingness to comply with his demands amply convinced him that the wife's belief had no foundation in the facts.
The sense of gladness was stirring, lifting the world upon a glorious pinacle of youthful hope. Gladness was in An-ina's heart as she moved over the dripping grass, bearing the water fresh dipped from the river whose banks were a-flood in every direction. Was not the darkness of winter swallowed up by the brilliant sunlight?
"Now? You go now?" An-ina's voice was heroic in its steadiness. There was not a sign of tears in her shining eyes. She followed him to the door as though his going were an ordinary incident in their day's routine, and stood there, while he passed out, the very embodiment of that stoicism for which her race is so renowned. An-ina was alone.
So him go." "And Julyman? And Oolak?" "All gone. All him gone by land of fire. Oh, yes." An-ina sighed. It was her only means of expressing the feelings she could not deny. Marcel's eyes had sobered. He flung off his pea-jacket and possessed himself of An-ina's chair. He sat there with his great hands spread out to the warmth, enduring the sharp cold-aches it inspired.
It was a game. In Marcel's child-mind there was nothing better in the world. And it was An-ina's invention. It was the gopher hunt. They often played it in the cool summer evenings. The gophers destroyed the crops of men, therefore men must destroy the gophers. It was the simple logic that satisfied the child-hunter's mind.
Tears were something of which her stoic Indian nature was incapable. But Steve knew well enough the weight of grief which lay behind the stricken expression which looked out of the enveloping hood of the woman's tunic of seal. For a moment he gazed into An-ina's face in helpless silence. For the moment the tragedy of the whole thing left him groping.
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