he White Squaw
a vision so alluring that his uncultured brain was incapable of shutting
it out.

And thus it was, as he glided, ghost-like, through the forests or scaled
the snowy crags in the course of his daily work, the memory of the
mysterious creature remained with him. He thought of her as he set his
traps; he thought of her, as, hard on the trail of moose, or deer, or
wolf, or bear, he scoured the valleys and hills; in the shadow of the
trees at twilight, in fancy he saw her lurking; even amidst the black,
barren tree-trunks down by the river banks. His eyes and ears were ever
alert with the half-dread expectation of seeing her or hearing her
voice. The scene Victor had described of the white huntress leaning upon
her rifle was the most vivid in his imagination, and he told himself
that some day, in the chances of the chase, she might visit his valleys,
his hills.

At night he would talk of her to his brother, and together they would
chum the matter over, and slowly, in the more phlegmatic Ralph, Nick
kindled the flame with which he himself was consumed.

And so the days wore on; a fresh zest was added to their toil. Each
morning Ralph would set out with a vague but pleasurable anticipation of
adventure. And as his mind succumbed to the strange influence of the
White Squaw, it coloured for him what had been the commonplace events of
his daily life. If a buck was started and rushed crashing through the
forest growths, he would pause ere he raised his rifle to assure himself
that it was not a woman, garbed in the parti-coloured blanket of the
Moosefoot Indians, and with a face radiant as an angel's. His
slow-moving imagination was deeply stirred.

From the Beginning Nature has spoken in no uncertain language. "Man
shall not live alone," she says. Victor Gagnon had roused these two
simple creatures. There was a woman in the world, other than the mother
they had known, and they began to wonder why the mountains should be
peopled only by the forest beasts and solitary man.

As February came the time dragged more heavily than these men had ever
known it to drag before. They no longer sat and talked of the White
Squaw, and speculated as to her identity, and the phenomenon of her
birth, and her mission with regard to her tribe. Somehow the outspoken
enthusiasm of Nick had subsided into silent brooding; and Ralph needed
no longer the encouragement of his younger brother to urge him to think
of the strange white crea