ow with his inscrutable gaze, was hatching new schemes
of villainy perhaps. Clare sat as far as possible from him, and with her
back turned. All day she maintained the fiction that she and Stonor were
alone in the dug-out. In the reaction from the terrors of the last few
days her speech bubbled like a child's. She pitched her voice low to
keep it from carrying forward. All her thoughts looked to the future.

"Three or four days to the village at Swan Lake, you say. We won't have
to wait there, will we?"

"My horses are waiting."

"Then four days more to Fort Enterprise. You said there was a white
woman there. How I long to see one of my own kind! She'll be my
first--in this incarnation. Then we'll go right out on the steamboat,
won't we?"

"We'll have to wait a few days for her August trip."

"You'll come with me, of course."

"Yes, I'll have to take my prisoners out to headquarters at Miwasa
landing--perhaps all the way to town if it is so ordered."

"And when we get to town, what shall I do? Adrift on the world!"

"Before that I am sure we will meet with anxious inquiries for you."

"Yes, I have a comfortable feeling at the back of my head that I have
people somewhere. Poor things, what a state they must be in! It will be
part of your duty to take me home, won't it? Surely the authorities
wouldn't let me travel alone."

"Surely not!" said Stonor assuming more confidence than he felt.

"Isn't it strange and thrilling to think of a civilized land where
trolley cars clang in the streets, and electric lights shine at night;
where people, crowds and crowds of people, do exactly the same things at
the same hours every day of their lives except Sundays, and never dream
of any other kind of life! Think of sauntering down-town in a pretty
summer dress and a becoming hat, and chatting with scores of people you
know, and looking at things in the stores and buying useless
trifles--where have I done all that, I wonder? Think of pulling up one's
chair to a snowy tablecloth--and, oh, Martin! the taste of good food!
Funny, isn't it, when I have forgotten so much, that I should remember
_things_ so well!"

Clare insisted that Stonor had overtired himself the last few days, and
made him loaf at the paddle with many a pause to fill and light his
pipe. Even so their progress was faster than in the other direction.
Shortly after midday she told him that they were nearing the spot where
Mary had been shot the day before. They