had old acquaintance with the type of man that confronted him now.
One of them was Joe Robinson,--an Indian who had wintered in
Bradleyburg a few years before. Bill recognized him at once; he came of
a breed that outwardly, at least, changes little before the march of
time. There was nothing about him to indicate his age. He might be
thirty--perhaps ten years older. Bill felt fairly certain, however,
that he was not greatly older. In spite of legend to the contrary, a
forty-year old Indian is among the patriarchs, and pneumonia or some
other evil child of the northern winter, claims him quickly.

Joe's blood, he remembered, was about three-fourths pure. His mother
had been a full-blooded squaw, his father a breed from the lake region
to the east. He was slovenly as were most of his kind; unclean; and the
most distinguished traits about him were not to his credit,--a certain
quality of craft and treachery in his lupine face. His yellow eyes were
too close together; his mouth was brutal. His companion, a half-breed
with a dangerous mixture of French, was a man unknown to Bill,--but
the latter did not desire a closer acquaintance. He was a boon
companion and a mate for Joe.

Yet both of them possessed something of that strange aloofness and
dignity that is a quality of all their people. They showed no surprise
at Bill's appearance. In these mighty forests human beings were as rare
a sight as would be an aeroplane to African savages, yet they glanced at
him seemingly with little interest. It was true, however, that these
men knew of his residence in this immediate section of Clearwater. The
loss of his father's mine was a legend known all over that particular
part of the province; they knew that he sought it yearly, clear up to
the trapping season. When the snows were deep, they were well aware
that he ran trap lines down the Grizzly River. Human inhabitants of the
North are not so many but that they keep good track of one another's
business.

But they had a better reason still for knowing that he was near. The
prevailing winds blew down toward them from Bill's camp, and sometimes,
through the unfathomable silence of the snowy forest, they had heard the
faint report of his loud-mouthed gun.

It is doubtful that a white man--even a resident of the forest such as
Bill--could ever have heard as much. He was a woodsman, but he did
not inherit, straight from a thousand woodsman ancestors, perceptions
almost