A Mating in the Wilds | Page 9

is other men
who carry them--the men of the wilds who bring the furs to the posts,
and the traders who live in isolation from year's end to year's end. You
must not take my uncle quite so seriously as he takes himself, Mr.
Ainley."
Gerald Ainley smiled. "You forget, Miss Yardely, he can make or
break a man who is in the Company's service."
"Perhaps!" laughed the girl. "Though if I were a man I should not so
easily be made or broken by another. I should make myself and see that
none broke me." She paused as if waiting for an answer, then as her
companion continued silent, abruptly changed the topic. "By the by, I
see that your acquaintance of other days has removed himself!"
"Yes," answered Ainley, "I noticed that."
"He must have gone in the night."
"Yes," was the reply. "I suppose he folded his tent like the Arabs and as
silently stole away."
"I daresay the meeting with an old acquaintance was distasteful to
him."
"That is possible," answered Ainley. "When a man has deliberately
buried himself in this wild land he will hardly wish to be resurrected."
"And yet he did not appear to avoid you yesterday?" said the girl
thoughtfully.
"A momentary impulse, I suppose," replied her companion easily. "I
daresay he thought I might fraternise and forget the past."

"And you couldn't?"
"Well, scarcely. One does not fraternise with gaol-birds even for old
time's sake."
They had now arrived at the tepees and as they halted, the flap of one
was thrown aside, and Miskodeed emerged. She did not see them, as
the moment she stepped into the open air her eyes turned towards the
willows where Stane's camp had been. A look of sadness clouded the
wild beauty of her face, and there was a poignant light in her eyes.
"Ah!" whispered Helen Yardely. "She knows that he has gone."
"Perhaps it is just as well for her that he has," answered Ainley
carelessly. "These marriages of the country are not always happy--for
the woman."
Miskodeed caught the sound of his voice, and, turning suddenly,
became aware of their presence. In an instant a swift change came over
her face. Its sadness vanished instantly, and as her eyes flashing
fiercely fixed themselves upon Ainley, a look of scorn came on her face
intensifying its bizarre beauty. She took a step forward as if she would
speak to the white man, then apparently changed her mind, and
swinging abruptly on her heel, re-entered the tent. Helen Yardely
glanced swiftly at her companion, and surprised a look of something
very like consternation in his eyes.
"That was very queer!" she said quickly.
"What was very queer?" asked Ainley.
"That girl's action. Did you see how she looked at you? She was going
to speak to you and changed her mind."
Ainley laughed a trifle uneasily. "Possibly she blames me for the
disappearance of her lover!"
"But why should she do that? She can hardly know of your previous

acquaintance with him."
"You forget--she saw him speak to me yesterday!"
"Ah yes," was the girl's reply. "I had forgotten that." The notes of a
bugle, clear and silvery in the still air, floated across the meadow at that
moment, and Gerald Ainley laughed.
"The breakfast bell! We must hurry, Miss Yardely. It will scarcely do
to keep your uncle waiting."
They turned and hurried back to the Post, nothing more being said in
reference to Miskodeed and Hubert Stane. And an hour later, in the
bustle of the departure, the whole matter was brushed aside by Helen
Yardely, though now and again through the day, it recurred to her mind
as a rather unpleasant episode; and she found herself wondering how so
fine a man as Stane could stoop to the folly of which many men in the
North were guilty.
At the end of that day her uncle ordered the camp to be pitched on a
little meadow backed by a sombre forest of spruce. And after the
evening meal, in company with Gerald Ainley, she walked towards the
timber where an owl was hooting dismally. The air was perfectly still,
the sky above crystal clear, and the Northern horizon filled with a
golden glow. As they reached the shadow of the spruce, and seated
themselves on a fallen trunk, a fox barked somewhere in the recess of
the wood, and from afar came the long-drawn melancholy howl of a
wolf. Helen Yardely looked down the long reach of the river and her
eyes fixed themselves on a tall bluff crowned with spruce, distant
perhaps a mile and a half away.
"I like the Wild," she said suddenly, breaking the silence that had been
between them.
"It is all right," laughed Ainley, "when you