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Updated: June 16, 2025
It was not Jessie McRae, but a man, an Indian, the Blackfoot who had ridden out with the girl once to spoil his triumph over the red-coat Beresford. For a moment he stood, stupefied, jaw fallen and mouth open. "Whad you doin' here?" he asked at last. "No food my camp. I hunt," Onistah said. "Tha's a lie. Where's the McRae girl?" The slim Indian said nothing.
In a dozen sentences the girl poured out her story, the words tumbling pell-mell over each other in headlong haste. Matapi-Koma waddled out to the sled. "Onistah stay here," she said, and beamed on him. "Blackfoot all same Cree to Matapi-Koma when he friend Jessie. Angus send word nurse him till he well again." Tom carried the Indian into the house so that his feet would not touch the ground.
It carried him to a trap from which she had taken prey, for it was newly baited and the snow was sprinkled with blood. Before he reached the second gin, the excitement in him quickened. Some one in snowshoes had cut her path and had deflected to pursue. Onistah knew that the one following was a white man. The points of the shoes toed out. Crees toed in, just the same on webs as in moccasins.
Jessie opened, to let in Onistah and his mother. Stokimatis and the girl gravitated into each other's arms, as is the way with women who are fond of each other. The Indian is stolid, but Jessie had the habit of impetuosity, of letting her feelings sweep her into demonstration. Even the native women she loved were not proof against it. McRae questioned Stokimatis.
For she knew that if it came on to snow before Onistah took the trail or even before he reached the place to which West was taking her, the chances of a rescue would be very much diminished. A storm would wipe out the tracks they had made. "Swing back o' the rock and into the brush," West growled.
"Bully West's after you. He's sworn to kill you," the girl called to the constable. "How do you know?" "Onistah heard him." She indicated with a wave of her hand the lithe-limbed youth beside her. "Onistah was passing the stable behind it, back of the corral. This West was gathering a mob to follow you said he was going to hang you for destroying his whiskey." "He is, eh?"
Best man wins." The red-coat assented at once. "Right you are, I'll get some one else." He rose to go. "See you later maybe." Tom nodded. "Sorry I can't oblige, but you see how it is." "Quite. I oughtn't to have asked you." Beresford strode briskly out of the store. Through the window Morse saw him a moment later in whispered conversation with Onistah.
"I'll have a Cree along as a guide." "A Cree," she scoffed. "What good will he be if you find West? He'll not help you against him at all." "Not what he's with me for. I'm not supposed to need any help to bring back one man." "It's it's just suicide to go after him alone," she persisted. "Look what he did to the guard at the prison, to Mr. Whaley, to Onistah! He's just awful hardly human."
But West had become such a horrible obsession with her that the sight of him even at a distance had put her in a panic. From the end of the lake she followed the trail Onistah had made. It took into the woods, veering sharply to the right. The timber was open. Even where the snow was deep, the crust was firm enough to hold. In her anxiety it seemed that hours passed.
For any expression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah and Stokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father. None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meant that she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that she had before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitations imposed upon her by race.
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