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Smoke laughed and shook his head. "Remember," Snass concluded quietly, "Anton is the only one that ever got away. He was lucky, unusually lucky." Her father had a will of iron, Labiskwee told Smoke. "Four Eyes used to call him the Frozen Pirate whatever that means the Tyrant of the Frost, the Cave Bear, the Beast Primitive, the King of the Caribou, the Bearded Pard, and lots of such things.
On occasion Snass, with parties of strong hunters, pushed east across the Rockies, on past the lakes and the Mackenzie and into the Barrens. It was on the last traverse in that direction that the silk tent occupied by Labiskwee had been found. "It belonged to the Millicent-Adbury expedition," Snass told Smoke. "Oh! I remember. They went after musk-oxen.
Listen to that, Smoke!" Three ancient squaws had halted midway between the bachelors' camp and the camp of McCan, and the oldest was declaiming in shrill falsetto. Smoke recognized the names, but not all the words, and Shorty translated with melancholy glee. "Labiskwee, the daughter of Snass, the Rainmaker, the Great Chief, lights her first maiden's fire to-night.
"That is the way I feel it." "It is not of my senses," Smoke diagnosed. "I sense something, from without, that is tingling me with ice; it is a chill of my nerves." A quarter of an hour later they paused for breath. "I can no longer see the far peaks," Smoke said. "The air is getting thick and heavy," said Labiskwee. "It is hard to breathe."
"Just here, in the trees, is the cache," Labiskwee told Smoke. The next moment she caught his arm with a startle of surprise. The flames of a small fire were dancing merrily, and crouched by the fire was McCan. Labiskwee muttered something in Indian, and so lashlike was the sound that Smoke remembered she had been called "cheetah" by Four Eyes.
Which was true, for look where they would, half the circle of the sky dazzled and blazed with new suns forming. McCan yelped sharply with surprise and pain. "I'm stung!" he cried out, then yelped again. Then Labiskwee cried out, and Smoke felt a prickling stab on his cheek so cold that it burned like acid.
Labiskwee looked swift consternation at Smoke, as swiftly achieved a judgement on the matter, and spoke. And in the speaking she showed, child-woman though she was in love, the quick decisiveness of one who in other affairs of life would be no clinging vine. "McCan, you are a dog," she hissed, and her eyes were savage with anger. "I know it is in your heart to raise the camp if we do not take you.
I ain't squealed. You don't know nothing. Keep that in mind. Shorty went off on his own along with me." At Snass's fire Smoke found Labiskwee. She met him with eyes that shone with such softness and tenderness as to frighten him. "I'm glad you did not try to run away," she said. "You see, I " She hesitated, but her eyes didn't drop. They swam with a light unmistakable.
Now how do you like it?" "I don't get your drift, Shorty." "Don't, eh? Why, it's plain open and shut. They's a skirt after you, an' that skirt is goin' to light a fire, an' that skirt's name is Labiskwee. Oh, I've been watchin' her watch you when you ain't lookin'. She ain't never lighted her fire. Said she wouldn't marry a Indian.
"There be three suns," McCan muttered hoarsely, reeling as he clung to his staff for support. There was a mock sun on either side of the real sun. "There are five," said Labiskwee; and as they looked, new suns formed and flashed before their eyes. "By Heaven, the sky is filled with suns beyant all countin'," McCan cried in fear.
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