Marcel and Keeko were standing at the dawn of a new life.  The man had looked into a woman’s wide, blue eyes.  He had gazed upon softly rounded cheeks, as perfect as physical well-being could make them.  He had contemplated rich, ripe lips that tempted him well-nigh to distraction.  Thus it was that the passionless life of the outworld had no longer power before the stirring of a soul at last awakened from its pristine slumbers.

The meaning of their encounter was no less for Keeko.  She was less of the wilderness, perhaps, than Marcel.  She had not been so wholly bred to it as he.  Her child’s eyes had looked upon some measure of civilization, and her mind had gathered a brief training amongst the youth of her own sex.  But the result was no less.  The grey shadows, which, as far back as she could remember, had overhung her home life seemed suddenly to have been lifted, and the rugged desolation of the Northland had been transformed into a veritable Eden of hope and delight.

It was his new inspiration that lent wings to the feet of Marcel when he hastened to collect his personal outfit.  It was under the same inspiration that he flung himself into the task of preparing for the fulfilment of his pledge.  And from the moment he joined the girl’s outfit on the banks of the river that came up out of the south he became the acknowledged leader, whose will was absolute.

And Keeko’s spirit was swift to respond.  She displayed a readiness that must have astonished the Indians who were accustomed to implicit acknowledgment of her rule.  Or, perhaps, in their savage hearts, they understood something of the change that had been wrought.  Here was a great white man, a man whose power and abilities they were quick to recognize and appreciate, whose body was great, and whose eye was clear and commanding.  Here was a white girl, fairer than any they had ever known, and whose spirit had served them in a hundred ways.  Well?  What then?  They were all men of maturing years these Indians.  They had had many squaws of their own.  Perhaps?  Who could tell?  It seemed natural that Keeko should choose her man from those of her own colour.  And if this man were to be the chosen one they were ready to yield him the same fidelity they would yield to her.

So the night before the morning of departure came round.  In three days Marcel had completed every preparation, and all was in readiness for the earliest possible start.

By the time supper was finished the summer daylight showed no sign of giving way to the two-hour night.  Marcel had that in his mind which he was determined to do before their well-earned rest beside the camp-fire was taken.  And he pointed at the iron-bound cliff which frowned down upon the waters of the river.

“Say, Keeko, I’ve a notion to set it up before we quit,” he said, with a laugh.  “Do you feel like passing me a hand?”

Keeko turned from the sluggish waters, black with the reflection of the barren walls of the gorge.

“What are you going to set up?” she questioned like one dragged back from the contemplation of happy dreams.

“Oh, it’s just a notion,” Marcel laughed, in a boyish, half shamefaced fashion as he lit his pipe with a firebrand.  “Will you come along?”

Keeko was on her feet in a moment.  For all the days of labour there was no weariness in her body.  Besides

“Guess you’re handing me a mystery,” she cried happily.  “Seeing I’m a woman I can’t just miss it.”

So they passed up the rugged foreshore to the foot of the path that cut a perilous ascent to the fringe of the primordial forest above.  It was the man who led, and Keeko had no desire that it should be otherwise.

In a few minutes they were standing beside the fallen tree-trunk where Marcel had first gazed down upon the scant encampment over which his sovereignty was now absolute.  He drew a deep breath as he gazed again upon that first scene of the new life that had come to him.

“Gee!” he said, “I’m kind of glad.”

“Glad?”

Keeko was regarding him amusedly.  In those first three days of their life together, in her woman’s way, she had been studying him.  And that which she had learned filled her with a tender, almost motherly amusement.  He was transparent in his simplicity.  His singleness of purpose was almost amazing.  But under it all she had become aware of a strength and latent force that could only be guessed at.  Their talks had been less intimate during the time of their preparations, and she understood that it was the result of the purpose that preoccupied him.  Now she speculated as to that which was in his mind.  What was the boyish whim that had brought them to the place he had selected as their tryst?  What was it that had made him express such gladness?

“I was thinking of that darn old moose,” Marcel explained with eyes alight and whimsical.

The girl waited and he went on.

“Say, I guess life’s a pretty queer thing,” he observed profoundly.  “It’s a mighty small piece between content and discontent, isn’t it?  It’s so small you’d think anyone of sense could fix it so we couldn’t be discontented ever.  Yet we either can’t or won’t fix it.  One leads to good and the other leads to bad and only time can say how bad.  I was getting mighty near discontent.  Why?  Because I’d got most everything I wanted except the things I wanted.”  He laughed.  “I was crazy for something, and I didn’t quite know what.  There was something in me crying out, hollering help, and I couldn’t hand that help.  Well, I guess there isn’t a sound like that going on in me now.  I’m just crazy with content.”

“Why?”

The girl’s question was instant, but, in a moment, she regretted it.

The man’s eyes regarded her steadily for a moment, and Keeko hastily turned away.  Promptly the echoes of the canyon were awakened by the youth’s laughter.

“I couldn’t just tell you easy,” he cried.  “But I’m about as content as a basking seal.  That’s all.  It’s easier telling you how I feel glad thinking of that old moose.  Oh, yes, that’s easy.  I owe him a debt I can’t repay easy, seeing he’s dead.  Still, I feel like doing the best I know to make him feel good about things.”

Marcel’s mood infected the girl.

“You’re you’re not reckoning to start in and bury him?” she cried.

Marcel shook his head.

“There’s only his bones left.  The rest of him is chasing around in the bellies of a pack of timber wolves.  No.  It’s his head and his antlers.  The wolves have cleaned his head sheer to the bone, as I reckoned they would, and I’ve toted their leavings right here, and I guess we’re going to set it up a monument.  Say, Keeko,” he went on, with real seriousness, “I couldn’t quit this camp here without setting up a monument.  Do you know why?”

Keeko sat herself on the old tree-trunk.  She made no reply.  She simply waited for whatever he had to say.

“It’s to commemorate something,” he went on quickly, gazing out over the canyon.  “I’ve found something I’ve been looking for years.  And I just didn’t know I was looking for it.  Well, that old moose found it for me.  So I’m going to set his skull up, with his proud antlers a-top of it, in the best and highest place I can set it, so his old dead eye sockets can just look out over the territory he reigned over till Fate reckoned it was time to set a human queen reigning in his stead.  I don’t guess he’ll worry about things.  He’ll just feel proud that it wasn’t a feller of his own sex ever beat him, and, if I know a thing, he’ll feel sort of content and pleased watching over things for us.”

The whim of the man, intended to be so light, was full of real feeling.  Keeko was torn between tears and laughter.  In the end she trusted herself only to a simple question.

“Where are you going to fix him up?” she demanded.

The spell was broken.  Marcel promptly became the man of action.  He pointed at the gnarled and broken head of a stunted tree growing at the very edge of the canyon, with its battered crest reaching out at a perilous angle over the abyss.

“At the head of that,” he said, “so he can watch for your coming up out of the south, and tell me about it.”

“But !”

A sickening apprehension had seized upon Keeko as she contemplated the overhang of the tree.  It was almost at right angles to the face of the cliff.  It projected out nearly thirty feet, and below Her woman’s heart could not repress a shudder at the thought of the three hundred feet drop to the rocky shoals in the waters below.

“You don’t mean that?” she demanded a little desperately.

Marcel nodded.

“It’s plumb easy.”

There was no showiness, no bravado.  Marcel had no thought to dazzle the girl.  His purpose was a simple, boyish act.

He moved off into the forest while Keeko looked after him.  From her heart she could have begged him to abandon, or modify his plan.  But she refrained, and, somehow, sick at the thought of his purpose, she still realized a thrill at the object of it all.  She looked at the roots of the overhanging tree and shuddered.  They were partly torn out of the ground.

Marcel returned with his trophy.  It was a burden of no mean weight.  And Keeko’s recognition of the fact only added to her fears.

“How ?” she began.  But her question remained unasked.

“It’s a cinch,” Marcel cried.  “Don’t worry a thing.  See those?” He pointed at two thongs of plaited rawhide, each secured to one of the horns.  “Guess I’ll tie them into a sling about the old trunk, and move the poor feller’s head up as I get out, leaving it hanging below.  Then, when I get to the end, I’ll just haul it up, and fix it in its place.  I’ve got it all figured.”

Keeko nodded.

“I can help you fix the slings,” she said eagerly.

“Sure.”

The approval had its effect.  Keeko set her teeth, and beat down her panic.

The minutes stretched out into the better part of half an hour before the sling was successfully adjusted about the tree-trunk.  But at last Marcel stood up from his task and regarded the moose head swinging just beyond the face of the cliff.  Then he followed Keeko’s gaze, which was in the direction of the upstanding roots of the tree where they had been partially torn from their hold in the ground.  It was only for a moment, however.  He had no misgivings.  Forthwith he divested himself of his pea-jacket and stood ready for the final task.

“What what can I do now?”

Keeko’s voice refused that steadiness which was its wont, and Marcel laughed.

“Do?  Why just sit around and act audience while I do the balancing act.  Guess that old moose is yearning for his place out there.  He didn’t figure on the honour, but he’s earned it.”

And, despite her fears Keeko smiled at the boyishness of it all.

In a moment her breath was drawn sharply.  Marcel was out on the log.  He had passed from the cliff edge and was sitting astride of the trunk with his feet and calves gripping tight about it like a horseman on a bucking broncho.  His progress was rapid.  He lifted the sling and set it out at the full reach of his powerful arms, and then drew himself out after it.

Keeko watched.  She watched with wide, apprehensive eyes.  It was a fear quite new to her.  A vivid imagination possessed her.  She saw the great body of this man lying crushed and broken upon the rocks below, and the terror of it left her with nerves and muscles straining.  She did not pause to consider the reason of her fears.  She knew it, and acknowledged it to herself.  In the battle of life which she had been forced to fight a champion had suddenly appeared.  A champion such as she had sometimes dreamed of.  And with perfect trust and simple faith she had yielded her soul to him.

Foot by foot Marcel moved out, always thrusting his trophy ahead of him.  There was a growing vibration in the leaning tree.  It laboured under his weight.  He pressed on, his whole mind and purpose concentrated.  Keeko watched the roots for a sign of the strain.  There was none.  She glanced out at the distance he yet had to go.  And the length of it prompted a warning cry she dared not utter.  Farther and farther he passed on.  Then came a pause that suggested uncertainty.

Keeko’s heart leapt.  Was he dizzy?  Had he suddenly become aware of the perilous depth below him?  Was his nerve ?

The moment passed.  He was moving on again.  The far off head of the tree was coming nearer, but the vibration had increased with his movements.  Would the roots hold?  Could they be expected to with the balance so heavily against them?  Keeko could look no longer, and, in the agony of the moment, she seized hold of the upstanding roots and clung to them in a ridiculously impotent frenzy of hope that the weight of her own light body might help him.

The vibrations of the tree ceased and Keeko raised her terrified eyes for the meaning.

A wave of partial relief swept over her.  Marcel had reached his goal.  He had swung up the great moose head to set it in position.  It was a breathless moment.  She understood that his greatest difficulties had begun, and again she withdrew her gaze.  But she clung to the roots of the tree, desperately determined that if the tree fell it should drag her to the disaster waiting upon him.

The suspense seemed endless.  But at last there was renewed vibration in the tree.  Keeko raised her eyes again.  Marcel was moving backwards, and there, right at the broken head of the tree, the fleshless skull with its magnificent antlers was set up in its place.

The girl was still clinging to the upstanding roots when Marcel leapt from his seat on the trunk and stood confronting her.  His quick, smiling eyes took in the meaning of the situation at once.  He reached out and removed the hands from their task, and, in doing so, he retained them longer than was necessary.

“You guessed you could hold that up if it fell?” he asked.

And Keeko’s reply was full of confusion.

“I didn’t think,” she stammered.  “I didn’t know what to do.  It was shaking, and I thought I thought ”

“You didn’t want me to get smashed on the rocks below.  Well say !” Marcel turned abruptly and pointed at the splendid antlers.  “There he is,” he laughed.  “Isn’t he a dandy?  You could see him miles.  And he’s feeling good.  He just told me that before I quit him.  And he said he’d stop right there and see no harm came along your way.  So I patted his darn old head, and told him I’d come along each year and see the rawhide was sound, and, if necessary, I’d fix him up again.  Well?”

Keeko’s fears had passed like a summer storm and the sun of her smile had returned again to her eyes.

“I’m just glad,” she said.  Then she became serious.  “Say, do you believe in omens?” She was gazing out at the great antlers.  “I don’t guess you do.  Only Indians worry with omens.  Not folks of sense.  Still, I kind of fancy that feller set up that way is our omen.  He’s going to hand us good luck in plenty.  We’ll get a great ‘catch’ where we’re going, and we’ll get back-safe.  Do you think that?”

“Sure.  Guess I think a heap more than that, though.”  Marcel’s smile was good to see.  “That’s not the limit of our luck,” he went on.  “Not by a lot.  Say, I was raised by a feller who handed me a whole heap of wisdom.  Guess there’s more wisdom in him than ever I could get a grip on.  He always guessed that luck was real in the folk who understood that way.  He said a feller made his luck by faith.  The darn fool who squealed because things went wrong queered his own luck, and just chased it out of sight.  Get a notion and hammer it through so long as you’ve a breath in your body, and, if you act that way, luck’ll pour itself all over you till you’re kind of floating around on a sea of desire fulfilled.  That’s been his way, and I reckon it’s good.  I’m out to act as he said, so I don’t reckon that hollow-eyed feller out there is the whole meaning of things.  I’ve got all my notions and I’m going to push ’em plumb through.”

Keeko nodded.

“That’s the grit a man needs,” she said.  “Maybe a woman does, too, only she’s kind of different.”

“Is she?” Marcel shook his head, and his eyes were full of a boyish humour.  “She isn’t when it comes to grit.  Say, there’s only one woman I know except you, and those poor folks you see in Seal Bay, who who don’t know better.  But that other woman and you have taught me things about grit most fellers don’t ever learn.  Most all the time a feller who’s built strong can fight to the limit of his muscles.  A gal isn’t born with muscles worth speaking about, and she spends her life mostly fighting beyond the limit.  Say, she’s born to troubles and worries all the time.  And she mostly gets through all the time.  Why?  Grit!  She doesn’t just care a darn.  She’s going to get through and she does.  Say, let’s get along down and leave that wall-eyed old figurehead keeping guard.  Come on.”