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With a white face he rubbed his hand over the deer-flap, and waited. Slowly it was drawn back, and Oachi came out. He had not seen her since the night he had driven her from him, and he had planned to say things in this last moment which he might have said then. But words stumbled on his lips. Oachi was changed. She seemed taller. Her beautiful eyes looked at him clearly and proudly.
For in the joy of her great love Oachi became more beautiful and her voice still sweeter. By the time the snows began running down from the mountains and the poplar buds began to swell she was telling him the most sacred of all sacred things, and one day she told him of the wonderful world far to the west, painted by the glow of the setting sun, wherein lay the Valley of Silent Men.
Oachi and her father were with him when, for the first time, he got out his comb and military brushes and began grooming his touselled hair. Oachi watched him, and suddenly, seeing the wondering pleasure in her eyes, he held out the brushes to her. "You may have them, Oachi," he said, and the girl accepted them with a soft little cry of delight.
In that moment he saw Oachi again at his feet; he heard the low, sweet note of love in her throat, so much like that of the bird over his head; he saw the soft lustre of her hair, the glory of her eyes, looking up at him from the half gloom of the tepee, telling him that they had found their god.
He won when alone and lost when Oachi was with him. In some ways she knew intuitively that he loved to see her with her splendid hair down, and she would sit at his feet and brush it, while he tried to hide his admiration and smother the passion which sprang up in his breast when she was near.
But even as she measured out their starvation her face was looking at him joyously. And then she added, with the gladness of a child, "Feesh, for you," and pointed to the simmering pot. "For ME!" Roscoe looked at the pot, and then back at her. "Oachi," he said gently, "go tell your father that I am ready to talk with him. Ask him to come now."
A fire burned low among the stones; over it simmered a pot. The earth floor of the tepee was covered with deer and caribou skins, and opposite him there was another bunk. He drew himself painfully to a sitting posture and found that it was his shoulder and hip that hurt him. He rose to his feet, and stood balancing himself feebly when the door to the tepee was drawn back and Oachi entered.
Oachi and her father were with him a great deal in the tepee which they had given up to him. On the third day Roscoe noticed that Oachi's little hands were bruised and red and he found that the chief's daughter had gone out to dig down through ice and snow with the other women after roots. The camp lived entirely on roots now wild flag and moose roots ground up and cooked in a batter.
"And that is Heaven your Heaven," breathed Roscoe. He was almost well now, but he was sitting on the edge of his bunk, and Oachi knelt in the old place upon the deer skin at his feet. As he spoke he stroked her hair. "Tell me," he said, "what sort of a place it is, Oachi." "It is beautiful," spoke Oachi softly.
On this morning of the third day Roscoe strode forth from his tepee, with his pack upon his back. An Indian guide waited for him outside. He had smoked his last pipe with the chief, and now he went from tepee to tepee, in the fashion of the Crees, and drew a single puff from the pipe of each master, until there was but one tepee left, and in that was Oachi.
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