a lot of
craven Indians? Have I been dreaming of musk-oxen for forty years, to
slink south now, when I begin to feel the north? Not I."

Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat in
the hunter's face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated the
outrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool voice,
addressed the interpreter.

"Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in council.
Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they are not even
squaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn my back on
them. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs, fierce, bold, like
eagles, and he turns his back on dogs. Tell them he is the one who
could teach them to raise the musk-oxen and the reindeer, and to keep
out the cold and the wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them the hunter
goes north."

Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter, as of gathering thunder.

True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he brushed by,
his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the hunter's
stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run. He had stolen
a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its owner but for an
unforeseen obstacle, as striking as it was unexpected.

A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thief's passage, and
laid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel flew from the Indian,
and he spun in the air to fall into the river with a sounding splash.
Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by this unexpected
incident. The Indian frantically swam to the shore. Whereupon the
champion of the stranger in a strange land lifted a bag, which gave
forth a musical clink of steel, and throwing it with the camp articles
on the grassy bench, he extended a huge, friendly hand.

"My name is Rea," he said, in deep, cavernous tones.

"Mine is Jones," replied the hunter, and right quickly did he grip the
proffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was but a stunted
shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide shoulders, a
hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head rested on a bull
neck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its close-shut mastiff
under jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel as those of a jaguar,
marked him a man of terrible brute force.

"Free-trader!" called the commandant "Better think twice before you
join fortunes with the musk-ox hunter."

"To hel