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Her first thought was that Onistah had changed his mind and followed her, but as soon as the snowshoer came out of the thick timber, she saw that he was not an Indian. He was a huge man, and he bulked larger by reason of the heavy furs that enveloped him. His rate of travel was rapid enough, but there was about the gait an awkward slouch that reminded her of a grizzly.
And finally, with the tea, a brandy-flavored plum pudding that an old English lady at Winnipeg had taught Jessie how to make. Onistah ate lying on the couch. Afterward, filled to repletion, with the sense of perfect contentment a good dinner brings, the two young men stuffed their pipes and puffed strata of smoke toward the log rafters of the room.
It must have been only a few minutes after he completely collapsed that they found him. He was given a gulp or two of whiskey and put on the sled. Again the dogs buckled to the pull. A quarter of an hour later the party reached the cabin. Onistah was given first aid. Feet and face were rubbed with snow to restore circulation and to prevent frost-bite.
"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken..." It was less than half an hour later that four men and a dog-train moved up the main street of Faraway and disappeared in the forest. Morse broke trail and McRae drove the tandem. Onistah, who had already traveled many miles, brought up the rear. The trooper exchanged places with Morse after an hour's travel.
Among these boulders Morse found the party he had just left. The officer was still trying to persuade Jessie McRae to attempt escape. She refused, stubbornly. "There are three of us here. Onistah is a good shot. So am I. For that matter, if anybody is going to escape, it had better be you," she said. "Too late now," Morse said. "See, they've found the camp-fire."
"When I was a baby my own mother died. Stokimatis is her sister. I do not know who my father was, but I have heard he was an American. Stokimatis took me to her tepee and I lived there with her and Onistah till I was five or six. Then Angus McRae saw me one day. He liked me, so he bought me for three yards of tobacco, a looking-glass, and five wolf pelts."
She was tired, from the weight of the snow on her shoes, and her feet were blistered by reason of the lacings which cut into the duffle and the tender flesh inside. Onistah built a fire of poplar, which presently crackled like a battle front and shot red-hot coals at them in an irregular fusillade.
Without waste of words the mother of Onistah told the story she had traveled hundreds of miles to tell. Sleeping Dawn was not the child of her sister. When the attack had been made on the white trappers bound for Peace River, the mother of a baby had slipped the infant under an iron kettle. After the massacre her sister had found the wailing little atom of humanity.
The constable's life was at stake. It had been necessary to move swiftly and decisively. Sitting before the fire, Sleeping Dawn began to tell her story. She told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly a thing. "Onistah's mother is my mother," she said.
Very likely you've saved my life. Now you and Onistah had better slip away quietly. You mustn't be seen here." "Why mustn't I?" she asked quickly. "I don't care who sees me." She looked at Morse as she spoke, head up, with that little touch of scornful defiance in the quivering nostrils that seemed to express a spirit free and unafraid.
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