By the middle of the afternoon they had
covered about forty miles. The water from the rising river began to set
back into the ravines, forcing them to make long detours before daring
to chance a ford.

Darkness came as an added hardship, and as they toiled doggedly around
an abrupt bend they saw on a tiny plateau, high above the dark waters
of the river, a faint flicker of light.

The girl paused and regarded it curiously; then, hurrying to the point,
she peered up and down the river, striving for landmarks in the
gathering gloom.

"Vic Chenault's cabin!" she cried. "I missed it coming up. I knew it
was somewhere up the river. He is a friend of Jacques, and his father
was the good friend of Lacombie."

Drenched and weary, the two pushed toward the light, crossing
swift-rushing gullies whose icy waters threatened each moment to sweep
them from their feet.

Slipping and stumbling through the muck and slush, crashing through
dripping underbrush, they stood at length before the door of the
low-roofed log cabin.

Their knock was answered by a tousled-headed man who stood, lamp in
hand, and blinked owlishly at them from the shelter of the doorway.

"You are Vic Chenault?" asked the girl, and, without waiting for his
grunted assent, continued: "I am Jeanne Lacombie, and this is M's'u'
Bill, The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die."

At the mention of the names the door swung wide and the man smiled a
welcome. They entered amid a rabble of sled-dogs and puppies, which
rolled about the floor in a seemingly inextricable tangle, with
numerous dusky youngsters of various ages and conditions of nudity.

Chenault's Indian wife sat upon the edge of the bunk, a blackened
cob-pipe between her teeth, industriously beading a moccasin; and
seemed in no wise disturbed by the arrival of visitors, nor by the
babel of hubbub that arose from the floor, where dogs and babies howled
their protest against the cold draft from the open door and the pools
of ice-cold water that drained from the clothing of the strangers.

Chenault pronounced a few guttural syllables, and the stolid squaw
reached behind her and, removing a single garment of flaming red calico
from a nail, extended it toward Jeanne.

The girl accepted it with thanks, and her eyes roved about the cabin,
which, being a one-roomed affair, offered scant privacy. The woman
caught the corner of a blanket upon a projecting nail and another
corner upon a similar nail in the upright of the bunk,