is benefit.

"You're a damn scoundrel, Julyman," he said, and there was less than the
usual tolerance in his tone.

The Indian shrugged under his furs.

"Julyman wise man," he protested. "All the time white man say, 'one
squaw.' It good! So! It fine! Indian man say one--two--five--ten squaw.
Then him not care little dam!"

Steve made no reply. The man's cynicism was sufficiently brutal to make
it impossible to reply without heat. And Steve had no desire to quarrel
with his chief lieutenant. Besides, he was deeply attached to the
rascal. So they swung up the last sharp incline in the voiceless manner
in which so much of their work was done.

It was Steve who reached the brow first, and it was his arm, and his
voice that indicated the discoveries beyond.

"Right!" he exclaimed. "Look, Julyman," he went on pointing. "A lodge. A
lodge of neches. And--see! What's that?" There was excitement in the
tone of his question. "It's--a fort!" he cried, his eyes reflecting the
excitement he could no longer restrain. "A--post! A white man's trading
post! What in hell! Come on!"

He moved on impetuously, and in a moment the two men were speeding down
the last incline.

The last recollection of the Indian's deplorable philosophy had passed
from Steve's mind. His eyes were on the distant encampment. He had been
prepared for some discovery. But never, in his wildest dreaming, had he
anticipated a white man's trading post.

It was something amazing. As far as Steve could reckon they were
somewhere within a hundred miles of the great inland sea. It might be
thirty miles. It might be sixty. He could not tell. Far as the eye could
see there was little change from what they had been travelling over for
weeks. Appalling wastes of snow, and hill, and forest, with every here
and there a loftier rise supporting a glacial bed. There were
watercourses. Oh, yes, rivers abounded in that wide, unknown land. But
they were frozen deeply, and later would, freeze doubtless to their very
beds.

But here was a wide shallow valley with a high range of hill country
densely forest clad forming its northeastern boundary. The hither side
was formed by the low rising ground over which they had just passed. The
hollow passed away, narrowing more deeply to the southeast, and lost
itself in the dark depths of a forest. To the north-west the valley
seemed to wander on amidst a labyrinth of sharp hills, which, in the
distance, seemed to grow loftier and mo