across a stony ridge into a belt of drifting mist. Half an hour
afterward he threw himself down, exhausted, beside a fire in a
sheltered hollow.

Late at night they stopped a few minutes to listen and look about on
the outskirts of the Indian village. Thick willows stretched up to it,
with mist that moved before a light wind drifting past them; and the
blurred shapes of conical tepees showed dimly through the vapor. The
night was dark but still, and Harding knew that a sound would carry
some distance. He felt his heart beat tensely, but there was nothing
to be heard. He had seen dogs about the Indian encampments farther
south and he was afraid now of hearing a warning bark; but nothing
broke the silence, and he concluded that Clarke's friends were unable
to find food enough for sled-teams. This was reassuring, because the
odds against him were heavy enough, knowing, as he did, that the
Indian's sense of hearing is remarkably keen.

Making certain that his magazine pistol was loose, he motioned to his
guide and they moved cautiously forward. The ground was fortunately
clear, and their footsteps made little noise, though now and then tufts
of dry grass which Harding trod upon rustled with what seemed to him
alarming distinctness. Still, nobody challenged them, and creeping up
to the center of the village they stopped again. The nearest of the
tepees was only thirty or forty yards away, though others ran back into
the mist. As Harding stood listening, with tingling nerves, he clearly
recognized the difficulty of his enterprise. In the first place, there
was nothing to indicate which tent Clarke occupied; and it was highly
undesirable that Harding should choose the wrong one and rouse an
Indian from his slumbers. Then, it was possible that the man shared a
tepee with one of his hosts, in which case Harding would place himself
at the Indian's mercy by entering it. Clarke was a dangerous man, and
his Stony friends were people with rudimentary ideas and barbarous
habits. Harding glanced at his guide, but the man stood very still,
and he could judge nothing about his feelings from his attitude.

Fortune favored them, for as Harding made toward a tepee, without any
particular reason for doing so, except that it stood a little apart
from the others, he saw a faint streak of light shine out beneath the
curtain. This suggested that it was occupied by the white man; and it
was now an important question whether he