he wills it we shall live. And this was ever
so. It is in the tale of our people. One tribe ruled, and the others were
their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree of Life that the
white man rule us forever, then it shall be so, I have spoken. Now,
behold, I go."

Jim had conquered, and together they sped away with the dogs through the
sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white,
and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to
the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load
it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and
Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on their
snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the wide, white prairie.

* * * * *

A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at night in the open in
a trench dug in the snow, no fear in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in the
heart of the heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness, of
uncertainty, on Jim's part, the first few hours of the first night after
they left the Cree reservation; but the conviction speedily came to Jim
that all was well; for the chief slept soundly from the moment he lay down
in his blankets between the dogs. Then Jim went to sleep as in his own
bed, and, waking, found Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of
sticks from the sledges. And between murderer and captor there sprang up
the companionship of the open road which brings all men to a certain land
of faith and understanding, unless they are perverted and vile. There was
no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no handcuffs on his hands, no sign of
captivity; they two ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin,
broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead, the gallows waiting for
him, seemed very far away. They were only two silent travellers, sharing
the same hardship, helping to give material comfort to each other--in the
inevitable democracy of those far places, where small things are not great
nor great things small; where into men's hearts comes the knowledge of the
things that matter; where, from the wide, starry sky, from the august
loneliness, and the soul of the life which has brooded there for untold
generations, God teaches the values of this world and the next.

One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of bitter,
aching cold, with nights of