of the North. The Athabasca
is Grandmother, the Slave is Mother, the Mackenzie is Daughter, and
over them watches always the goddess Niska, the Gray Goose. And my
prayer was that I might go back to them. In Montreal there were people,
people everywhere, thousands and tens of thousands of them, so many
that I was lonely and heartsick and wanted to get away. For the Gray
Goose blood is in me, Jeems. I love the forests. And Niska's God
doesn't live in Montreal. Her sun doesn't rise there. Her moon isn't
the same there. The flowers are not hers. The winds tell different
stories. The air is another air. People, when they look at you, look in
another way. Away down the Three Rivers I had loved men. There I was
learning to hate them. Then, something happened. I came to Athabasca
Landing. I went to see you because--"

She clasped her two hands tightly in her lap. "Because, after those
four terrible years, you were the first man I found who was playing a
great, big, square game to the end. Don't ask me how I found it out.
Please don't ask me anything. I am telling you all you can know, all
you _shall_ know. But I did find it out. And then I learned that you were
not going to die. Kedsty told me that. And when I had talked with you I
knew that you would play any game square, and I made up my mind to help
you. That is why I am telling you all this--just to let you know that I
have faith in you, and that you must not break that faith. You must not
insist on knowing more about me. You must still play the game. I am
playing mine, and you must play yours. And to play yours clean, you
must go with Laselle's brigade and leave me with Kedsty. You must
forget what has happened. You must forget what MAY happen. You can not
help me. You can only harm me. And if--some day, a long time from
now--you should happen to find the Valley of Silent Men--"

He waited, his heart pounding like a fist.

"I may--be there," she finished, in a voice so low that it was scarcely
above a whisper.

It seemed to him that she was looking a long way off, and it was not in
his direction. And then she smiled, not at him, but in a half-hopeless
little way.

"I think I shall be disappointed if you don't find it," she said then,
and her eyes were pure as the blue flowers from which they had stolen
their color, as she looked at him. "You know the great Sulphur Country
beyond Fort Simpson, westward between the Two Nahannis?"

"Yes. That is where Kilbane and his p