The time came when the last food was gone. The high peaks receded, the
divides became lower, and the way opened promisingly to the west.
But their reserves of strength were gone, and, without food, the time
quickly followed when they lay down at night and in the morning did not
arise. Smoke weakly gained his feet, collapsed, and on hands and knees
crawled about the building of a fire. But try as she would Labiskwee
sank back each time in an extremity of weakness. And Smoke sank down
beside her, a wan sneer on his face for the automatism that had made him
struggle for an unneeded fire. There was nothing to cook, and the
day was warm. A gentle breeze sighed in the spruce-trees, and from
everywhere, under the disappearing snow, came the trickling music of
unseen streamlets.

Labiskwee lay in a stupor, her breathing so imperceptible that often
Smoke thought her dead. In the afternoon the chattering of a squirrel
aroused him. Dragging the heavy rifle, he wallowed through the crust
that had become slush. He crept on hands and knees, or stood upright and
fell forward in the direction of the squirrel that chattered its wrath
and fled slowly and tantalizingly before him. He had not the strength
for a quick shot, and the squirrel was never still. At times Smoke
sprawled in the wet snow-melt and cried out of weakness. Other times the
flame of his life flickered, and blackness smote him. How long he lay in
the last faint he did not know, but he came to, shivering in the
chill of evening, his wet clothing frozen to the re-forming crust. The
squirrel was gone, and after a weary struggle he won back to the side
of Labiskwee. So profound was his weakness that he lay like a dead man
through the night, nor did dreams disturb him.

The sun was in the sky, the same squirrel chattering through the trees,
when Labiskwee's hand on Smoke's cheek awakened him.

"Put your hand on my heart, lover," she said, her voice clear but faint
and very far away. "My heart is my love, and you hold it in your hand."

A long time seemed to go by, ere she spoke again.

"Remember always, there is no way south. That is well known to the
Caribou People. West--that is the way--and you are almost there--and you
will make it."

And Smoke drowsed in the numbness that is near to death, until once more
she aroused him.

"Put your lips on mine," she said. "I will die so."

"We will die together, sweetheart," was his answer.

"No." A feeble flutter of her