An-ina smoothed her brown hand over the superfine surface of the spread of buckskin where it lay on the counter in the store.  Her dark eyes were critically contemplating it, while she held ready a large pair of scissors.

A great contentment pervaded her life.  It was in her wide, wise eyes now as she considered the piece of material which was to provide a shirt for Steve.  The buckskin had been prepared by her own hands.  It was soft, and tawny with the perfect tint she desired.  It could not be too soft, or too good for Steve.  That was her thought as she prepared to hew it into shape for the sewing and beading which no other hands would be permitted to work.

Her contemplation was broken by the abrupt flinging open of the door of the store.  She turned quickly, expectantly, and the smiling content in her eyes, as they rested on the figure of Steve, left no doubt as to the welcome nature of the interruption.

“You mak your plan?” she demanded.

The manner of her question was that of poignant interest.  Her whole thought was centred on the life and well-being of this white man.  For the moment the buckskin was forgotten.

Steve closed the door.  He came over to the counter behind which were piled the stores of his trade.  He leant against it, and his steady eyes regarded the handsome, dusky woman, who had come to him at the moment of his life’s disaster, and had been his strong comfort and support ever since.

“Yes.”  He nodded, in the decided fashion that was always his.  “We can’t wait.”

“You go before Marcel come?”

There was no surprise in the woman’s reply.

“The outfit’s ready.  The dogs are hardened to the bone.  Every day, I guess, is a day lost.  The snow’s thick on the ground and the waters are frozen up.  Well?  We can’t guess the time it’ll take us this trip.  We can’t spare an hour.  If we get through, it don’t matter.  If we fail we need to make back here before the ‘Sleepers’ crawl out from under their dope.  If we wait for Marcel, and he don’t get right along quick, it means losing time we can’t ever make good.  You get all that?”

The woman turned up the oil lamp.  The day was dark for all the lolling sun in the horizon.  She passed across to the stove, roaring comfortingly under its open draft.  She closed the damper and stood over it with hands outstretched to the warmth.  It was a favourite attitude of hers.

“An-ina know,” she said.  “An’ Marcel?  What it keep him so much long?  All time he come before snow.  Now?  No.  Why is it?”

A shadow of anxiety descended upon her placid face.  A pucker drew her brows together.  Her heart was troubled.

Steve shook his head.  He showed no sign of sharing her concern.

“He’ll be along,” he said confidently.  “I’m not worried a thing.  I’d trust Marcel to beat the game more than I would myself.  You needn’t to be scared.  No.  It’s not that.”

“What it then?”

An-ina’s eyes were full of a concern she had no desire to conceal.  She had nothing to conceal from this man who was the god of her woman’s life.

“I just can’t say,” Steve said.  “But I’m not worried.  The thing is we’d fixed it that I didn’t quit till Marcel got to home.”

“Why?”

Steve shrugged, but his eyes were smiling.

“Oh, I guess we don’t fancy leaving you without men folk around.  It isn’t that things are likely to worry any.  But you see you’re all we’ve got.  You’re a sort of anchor that holds us fast to things.  You see, I guess Marcel reckons you his mother, and I, why it don’t need me to say how I feel.”

The look in the woman’s dark eyes deepened.  She knew the feelings prompting Steve.  Oh, yes.  She knew.  And she thanked the God she had learned to believe in, and to worship, for the happiness which he had permitted her in the midst of the terrors of this desolate Northern country.  Her answer came at once.  It came full of her generosity.

“Ah,” she cried quickly.  “You think all this thing you men!  An’ what An-ina think?  Oh, An-ina think much.  So much.  Listen.  She tell.  Marcel him big feller.  Him mak’ summer trail.  Far far.  An-ina not know.  Him wolf all come around.  Him river with much water rapids rocks.  Him muskeg.  Him everything bad, an’ much danger.  An-ina she not say, ’An-ina come too, so no harm come by Marcel.’  She say, ‘no.’  Marcel big man.  Marcel brave.  Him fight big.  So him God of white man kill Marcel all up, then An-ina heart all break, but she say it all His will.  So she not say nothing.  Steve him go by Unaga, where all him devil men.  They get him.  They kill him.  Then An-ina all mak’ big weep inside.  She say nothing.  She not say ’An-ina come, too, so she frighten all devil men away.’  Oh, no.  An-ina woman.  She not scare any more as Steve an’ Marcel.  She sit by fire.  She mak’ Steve him shirt.  She have gun, plenty.  No man come.  Oh, no.  She not scare for nothing.  An-ina brave woman, too.  Steve, Marcel mak’ her coward.  Oh, no.  Outfit ready Julyman Oolak all him dogs.  Yes.  Steve him go right away.  Bimeby Marcel him come.  So.”

An-ina’s voice was low and soft.  But for all her halting use of the white man’s tongue, with which she found so much difficulty, there was decision and earnest in every word she uttered.  There was the force, too, of a brave, clear-thinking mind in it.  And it left Steve with difficulty in answering her.  Besides for all his desire to protest, he knew he must go, or sacrifice that thing which had brought him to Unaga.

With characteristic decision he accepted her protest.  He knew her generosity and courage.  But a sense of shame was not lacking at the thought that the very position he had used to convince Marcel could not be allowed to stand where his purpose was threatened.

“I’ve got to go,” he said almost doggedly.  “But I hate the thought of leaving you, An-ina.  If Marcel would only get around now, I’d feel easy.  But there’s not a sign of him.  He’s late late and Psha!  It’s no sort of use.  I must pull out right away.”

He stood up from the counter and came over to the stove.  An-ina’s dark eyes watched him.  Even in her untutored mind she understood the strength of character which overrode his every scruple, his every sentiment.  Her regard for him was something of idolatry, and deep in her soul she knew that the gleanings in his heart left by that white woman were hers.  Maybe they were only gleanings, but she asked no more.  She was content.  She knew no distinction between mistress and wife.  The natural laws were sufficient.  He was the joy of her savage heart, and she was the only woman in his life.  It was as she would have it.

He came up to her and stood gazing down at the long, thin hands outspread to the warmth.  Then with an unaccustomed display of feeling he thrust one arm through hers, and his strong hand clasped itself over both of hers.

“Say, An-ina, I’m going a hell of a long trail.  It’s so long we just can’t figure the end.  It’s a winter trail northward, and I don’t need to tell you a thing of what that means.  I’d say anyone but you and Marcel would guess I’m crazy.  Well, I’m not.  But it’s a mighty desperate chance we’re taking.  If we win through, and get what we’re chasing, it means the end of this country for all of us.  Maybe you’ll be glad.  I don’t know.  If we fail well, I can’t just figure on failure.  I never have and I don’t reckon to start that way now.  But I got to hand you ‘good-bye’ this time.  It’s not that way with us usually.  But this time I sort of feel I want to.  You’re just a great woman, and you’ve been mostly the whole meaning of things to me since since Anyway, I’ve done the best I know to hand you all the happiness lying around in a territory there’s nothing much to in that way.  But all that’s nothing to what you’ve been to me.  Well, my dear, I don’t guess it’s our way talking these things, but I got that inside me makes me want to say a whole heap about how I feel and what I think.  Guess I’m not going to try though.  It wouldn’t amount to anything if I talked a day through.  I wouldn’t have said half I needed to.  You and Marcel are all I’ve got, and you two dear folk’ll be the last thought I have in life.  You’ll help him, my dear, won’t you?  You’re just Marcel’s mother, and if I don’t get back you’ll need to be his father, too.  Good-bye.”

An-ina made no reply.  She had listened to him with a heart that was overflowing.  As he said “good-bye” she turned her head, and the speechlessness of their farewell was deep with simple human passion.

A moment later they had moved apart.  It was Steve’s initiative.

“Now?  You go now?”

An-ina’s voice was heroic in its steadiness.  There was not a sign of tears in her shining eyes.  She followed him to the door as though his going were an ordinary incident in their day’s routine, and stood there, while he passed out, the very embodiment of that stoicism for which her race is so renowned.

An-ina was alone.  Only the skeleton of her life at the fort remained to keep her company.  The flesh was shorn from the bone.  That flesh which had made her life an existence of joy which the greatest terror of Unaga was powerless to rob her of.  It is true there were a few of the trail dogs left behind, and some of the reindeer.  But what were these half wild creatures in exchange for a human companionship in which her whole soul was bound up?

But An-ina was free of the vain imaginings which curse the lives of those who boast the culture of civilization.  She was content in her woman’s memory, in her looking forward, and the present was full of an hundred and one occupations which held her mind to the exclusion of everything but the contemplation of the coming joy of reunion.

She had claimed to herself a bravery equal to that of her men folk.  She might well have claimed more.  She possessed, in addition to that active courage which belongs to the adventurer, the passive, courageous endurance of the woman.  So, with an unruffled calm, she set about the daily “chores” that were hers, and added to them all those labours which were necessary that this outland home should lack nothing in its welcome to her men.

For the moment the world about her was still and silent.  It was as though Nature remained suspended in doubt between the seasons.  The open season was passed, when the earth lay bare to the lukewarm sun of summer.  A white shroud covered the nakedness of the world, and already ice was spread out over the waters.  But winter had not yet made its great onslaught.

It was coming.  Oh, yes.  It was near.  The brief hours of daylight warned that.  So did the mock-suns which hovered in the sky, chained by the radiant circle which held the dying sun prisoned.  Then in the north the heavy clouds were gathering.  They gathered and dispersed.  Then they gathered again.  And always they banked deeper and darker.  The wind was rising.  That fitful, patchy wind which is so full of threat, and which bears in its breath the cutting slash of a whip.

There were moments in her solitude when An-ina read these warnings with some misgivings.  They were not for herself.  They were not even for Steve.  The winter trail was no new thing to her great man.  Besides, he was equipped against anything the Northern winter could display.  Accident alone could hurt him.  That was her creed.  Marcel was different.  He was only equipped for summer, and he should have returned before that first snowfall.  How could his canoes make the waters of the river when they were already frozen?

Thus it was she speculated as each dawn she sought the sign of his return, and at the close of each day, with the last of the vanishing light.

For a week she went on with her endless labours in that cheerful spirit of confidence which never seemed to fail her.  Then there came a change.  She sought the gates of the fort more often, and stood gazing out longer, and with eyes that were not quite easy.  Her unease was growing.  She spurned it, she refused to admit her fears.  And, in her defence, she redoubled her labours.

Thus ten days from the moment of Steve’s going passed.  It was the evening of the tenth day.

With a desperate resolve she had refused to allow herself her last evening vigil.  Snow was in the air and had already begun to fall.  So she sat over the great stove in the store, and plied her needle, threaded with gut, upon the shirt that was some day to cover Steve’s body.  Not once did she look up.  It was almost as if she dared not.  She was fighting a little battle with herself in which hope and confidence were hard pressed.

It was in the midst of this that the door was thrust open wide, and, with the opening, a flurry of snow swept in upon the warm atmosphere.  But that which caused her to start to her feet, and drop the treasured garment perilously near to the stove, was the figure that appeared in the white cloud that blew about it.  It was Marcel, with snow and ice about his mouth and chin, and upon his eye-lashes, and with his thick pea-jacket changed from its faded hue to the virgin whiteness of the elements through which he had succeeded in battling his way.

“An-ina!”

It was the glad cry of greeting she had yearned for in the big voice of a man whose delight is unmeasured.

“Marcel!” The woman’s reply was full of joy.  Then, with a sigh that was a deep expression of relief:  “An-ina glad so glad!”

Marcel turned and closed the outer storm door.  Then he shut the inner door securely.  A moment later he was freeing himself from icicles and snow at the stove.

“Say, I had to beat it like hell,” he declared with a great laugh, while An-ina gathered up her sewing and laid it aside.  Her mother mind was running upon a hot supper for her boy.  “I was just worried to death at you folks sitting around guessing.  Winter got me beat by just two weeks, and now the snow’s falling in lumps, and it’s mighty near down to zero.  Where’s Uncle Steve?”

“Gone.”  An-ina had forgotten the supper.  “Him gone where you know.  Him gone days.  Maybe ten.  No wait.  Oh, no.  Him guess you come soon.  So him go.”

“And Julyman?  And Oolak?”

“All gone.  All him gone by land of fire.  Oh, yes.”

An-ina sighed.  It was her only means of expressing the feelings she could not deny.

Marcel’s eyes had sobered.  He flung off his pea-jacket and possessed himself of An-ina’s chair.  He sat there with his great hands spread out to the warmth, enduring the sharp cold-aches it inspired.  He was gazing steadily at the glowing patch where the side of the stove was red hot.  His mind was busy with thoughts which robbed him of half the joy of his return.

The thought of supper returned to the woman.

“So.  I mak’ him supper,” she said.  “Him boys.  They come too?”

“Oh, yes,” Marcel laughed shortly “Guess they’re back in the woods there, doping like hell so they shan’t lose any sleep.  They were kind of mad with me getting back late.  I had to rawhide two of them, or the whole darn lot would have bolted.  You see, I was held up.”

An-ina would have questioned further but there was no encouragement in Marcel’s tone or manner.  He had not turned to reply.  His attitude was one the squaw recognized.  He wanted to think.  So she moved silently away and passed to the old kitchen to prepare his food.

Marcel sat on.  He was thinking, thinking hard.  But not in any direction that An-ina would have guessed.  For once there was confusion of thought and feeling that was quite foreign to his nature.  He was thinking of Keeko, he was thinking of Uncle Steve, and he was thinking of An-ina.  He was angry with himself and as nearly angry with Uncle Steve as he could be.  He cursed himself that through his delay An-ina should have been left alone for two weeks.  He was troubled at the thought that Uncle Steve saw fit to leave her, and refused to await his return.  And towards An-ina he felt that contrition which his deep regard for her made so poignant.  But through all, above all, floated the spirit of Keeko, and he knew that whatever might have befallen nothing would have made him act differently.  He was troubled to realize that for the first time in his life Uncle Steve and An-ina had only second place in his thought.

His reflections were broken by An-ina’s quiet return.

“Supper him all fixed.  Marcel come?”

Marcel started up.  And the shadows passed out of his handsome eyes.  The gentle humility with which An-ina addressed him was irresistible.  He was smiling again.  His deep affection for this mother woman was shining in his eyes.

“Will I come?” he cried.  “Say, you just see.”

Marcel had eaten his fill.  He had been well-nigh famishing when he arrived, and the simple cooking and wholesome food that An-ina set before him was like a banquet compared to the fare of the trail, on which he had subsisted all the open season.

Now he was lounging back in the rawhide-seated chair with his pipe aglow.  He was ready to talk, more than ready.  And An-ina’s soft eyes were observing him, and reading him in her own wise way.

“You tell me now?” she said, in the fashion of one who knows the value of food to her men folk’s mood.

Marcel nodded with a ready smile.

“Any old thing you fancy,” he cried.  “What’ll I tell you?  About the darn outfit, the pelts we got?  The woods?  The rivers?  The skitters?  The ”

An-ina shook her head.  His mood was what she desired.

“No.  Marcel say the thing that please him.  An-ina listen.”

Marcel laughed.  He had come home with the treasure hugged tight to his bosom.  He had promised himself that this was his secret, to be imparted to no one not even to Uncle Steve.  An-ina had demanded that he should speak as he desired, and he knew that his one desire was to talk of Keeko.  Now, he asked himself, why why, for all his resolve, should he withhold the story of this greatest of all joys from the woman who was his second mother?

His laugh was his yielding.

“Oh, yes,” he cried impulsively.  “I’ll tell you the thing that pleases me.  I’ll tell you the reason I was held up.  And it’s the greatest ever!”

An-ina rose quickly from her seat.

“You tell An-ina sure.  It long.  Oh, yes.  An-ina say this thing ’the greatest ever.’”

She was gone and had returned again before Marcel had dragged himself back from his contemplation of the things which he desired to talk of.  It was a gentle hint from An-ina that roused him.

“Oh, yes?  An-ina listen.”

Marcel started.  He stirred his great bulk, and re-lit the pipe he had failed to keep alight.

“I’d forgotten,” he said, with another laugh that was not free from self-consciousness.  “Say,” he went on, “I’ve hit the greatest trail ever a feller struck in this queer darn country.  Gee!” He breathed a profound sigh.  “It was queer.  I was trailing an old bull moose.  I followed it days.”

An-ina was watching him.  She beheld the radiant light in his frank eyes.  She noted the almost feverish manner in which he was clouding the tobacco smoke about him.  She even thought she detected an unsteadiness in the hand that held his pipe.  She waited.

“Oh, yes,” he went on.  “I was in a territory I guess I’ve hunted plenty.  I kind of knew it all, as it’s given to anyone to know this darn land.  I followed the trail right up to the end, but I didn’t make a kill.  No.”

His tone had dropped to a soft, deep note that thrilled with some emotion An-ina had never before been aware of in him.  A startled light shone in her eyes, and her work lay unheeded in her lap.

“No.  I didn’t make a kill, but I came right up to the end of that trail, and found ”

“A woman?”

Marcel sat up with a jolt.  His wide, astonished eyes stared almost foolishly into the dark native eyes smiling back into his.

“How d’you know that?” he demanded sharply.

He planted his elbows on the table, resting his square chin upon his hands.

An-ina laughed that almost silent laugh so peculiar to her.

“An-ina guess him.  An-ina look and look.  An-ina see Marcel all smiling inside.  She hear him voice all soft, like like Ah, An-ina not know what it like.  So she think.  She say, what mak’ Marcel all like this?  Him find something.  Him not scare.  Oh, no.  Marcel not scare nothing.  No.  Him much please.  Marcel boy?  No.  Him big man.  What him mak’ big man much please.  An-ina know.  It woman.  So she say.”

Marcel wanted to laugh.  He wanted to shout his delight.  He wanted to pour out the hot, passionate feelings of his heart to a woman who could read and understand him like this.  He did none of these things, however.

He simply smiled and nodded, while his whole face lit radiantly.

“That’s a hell of a good guess,” he cried.  “Yes.  I found a woman.  A beautiful, blue-eyed white woman.  And she called herself, ‘Keeko.’”

An-ina swiftly rolled up the buckskin she was working.  She laid it on the supper table beside her.  Then she drew up her chair, and she, too, set her elbows on the table, and supported her handsome, smiling face in her hands.  Again it was the woman, the mother in her.  It was her boy’s romance.  The boy she had raised to manhood with so much love and devotion.  And she was thirsting, as only a mother can, for the story of it.

“So.  Marcel him say.  An-ina listen.”