e. No spur could have
stirred Marcel to swifter movement. He was erect in a moment, and turned
about, towering in his generous height over the slim creature smiling up
into his bewildered eyes. A white girl, wide-eyed, beautiful, was
standing before him.

"Now?"

Marcel echoed the stranger's final word stupidly.

"Yes. I'm grieved all to death--now," the girl said, with a composure in
striking contrast to Marcel's obvious confusion. "I just am. I hadn't
right. But I was scared--scared to death. You don't understand that.
Why, sure you don't. How could you? You're a man. I'm only a girl. And I
had to stand around, just waiting, with another feller within a yard or
so of sheer death, while all the time I had means in my hand of fixing
things right for him. That's how it was when I saw that moose breaking
for you. And you--why, you just looked like two cents standing there
while that feller's hoofs and horns wanted to leave you feed for the
timber wolves. I couldn't stand it. My nerve broke. I drew on him. I had
to. I loosed off. Then, I s'pose, I woke up. When I saw him drop I knew
just what I'd done. I'd stolen your beast, and--I'm sorry to death."

A girl. A white girl. Oh, yes, there was no mistake, for all the
mannishness of her clothing. Marcel stared. He had listened to her words
of regret barely comprehending their drift. He was absorbed by that
which he beheld, wondering, amazed.

A white girl here, alone in the primordial world of--Unaga.

From the pretty, fair hair peeping from under her beaver cap to the
moccasined feet, so absurdly small, under the wide-cut buckskin chapps
or trousers that clad her nether limbs, he searched stupidly for the
answer to the thousand questions which flooded his brain. Who was she?
How came she there? That amazing shot?

He noted her eyes, so wide and deep-fringed, and of a blue such as he
had never yet beheld in the Northern skies. Their dazzling light left
him almost dizzy with intoxication. Her cheeks, perfect, with the bloom
of health acquired in a life of exposure to the elements. Then her sweet
lips parted in a smile that revealed a hint of even teeth of pearly
whiteness. But these things were not all. No. There was her tall, slim
figure under its buckskin clothing. The effect was superlative.

What a vision for passionate youthful eyes to gaze upon in the shadowed
world of the Northern forests, where life and death rub shoulders every
moment of time. The youth in Ma