Detroit with you. Do you suppose she would care?"

"Care!" shouted Rod, bringing his free hand down upon Wabi's arm with a
force that hurt. "Care! Why, she thinks as much of you as she does of
me, Wabi! She'd be tickled to death! Do you mean it?"

Wabi's bronzed face flushed a deeper red at his friend's enthusiasm.

"I won't promise--for sure," he said. "But I'd like to see her--almost
as much as you, I guess. If I can, I'll go."

Rod's face was suffused with a joyful glow.

"And I'll come back with you early in the summer and we'll start out for
the gold," he cried. He jumped to his feet and slapped Mukoki on the
back in the happy turn his mind had taken. "Will you come, too, Mukoki?
I'll give you the biggest 'city time' you ever had in your life!"

The old Indian grinned and chuckled and grunted, but did not reply in
words. Wabi laughed, and answered for him.

"He is too anxious to become Minnetaki's slave again, Rod. No, Muky
won't go, I'll wager that. He will stay at the Post to see that she
doesn't get lost, or hurt, or stolen by the Woongas. Eh, Mukoki?" Mukoki
nodded, grinning good-humoredly. He went to the door, opened it and
looked out.

"Devil--she snow!" he cried. "She snow like twent' t'ousand--like
devil!"

This was the strongest English in the old warrior's vocabulary, and it
meant something more than usual. Wabi and Rod quickly joined him. Never
in his life had the city youth seen a snow-storm like that which he now
gazed out into. The great north storm had arrived--a storm which comes
just once each year in the endless Arctic desolation. For days and weeks
the Indians had expected it and wondered at its lateness. It fell
softly, silently, without a breath of air to stir it; a smothering,
voiceless sea of white, impenetrable to human vision, so thick that it
seemed as though it might stifle one's breath. Rod held out the palm of
his hand and in an instant it was covered with a film of white. He
walked out into it, and a dozen yards away he became a ghostly, almost
invisible shadow.

When he came back a minute later he brought a load of snow into the
cabin with him.

All that afternoon the snow fell like this, and all that night the storm
continued. When he awoke in the morning Rod heard the wind whistling and
howling through the trees and around the ends of the cabin. He rose and
built the fire while the others were still sleeping. He attempted to
open the door, but it was blocked. He lowered