the Yellowstone Basin. By the greatest good luck, an Indian was at Fort Sailor King who had come up that way. The officers recommended him. In a few days he had proven himself weather-wise, brave, devoted, cautious as Sandy Ferguson himself, and more ingenious than nine out of ten of his race.

Little by little he had risen in esteem till no one was hurt by his having charge of the patron and his precious daughter, for whom any man would gladly have died. If there were one exception to this universal homage to talent in the scorned aborigine, it was the English secretary of Sir Archie, and that distrust seemed to be caused by a kind of jealousy at being consigned to the other sailing sledge, remote from the charming girl. But then, had he exhaled any plaint, who would have listened to him—a raw Old Country sportsman, who carried his rifle slung across his shoulders when he went gunning?

There was one drawback to the full enjoyment of the fleet course: the immense and oppressive silence. All the deer were stripping the trees of bark and moss in secret coverts; even the Arctic fox kept secluded behind the tops of trees buried in the snow, so that they seemed mere topknots of Indians. The dogs wore no bells; the men talked in whispers.

Nevertheless, the complete desert offered no cause for alarm. But the illimitable white field, the ice-clad mountains, the mighty wind that hurried the two ponderous sledges onward as if they were feathers—these struck the rudest with awe as the short day closed in.

As darkness threatened the men brightened in their chat. Visions of hot tea made lips water, where, alas, the frost seized the moisture instantly.

For hours the uninterrupted rush had been maintained. Few obstacles cropped up which the Indian had not avoided with dexterity and warned his successor of by a sharp cry.

The wind strengthened with the dusk. A faint dark blue line at length revealed the limit of the snowy plateau. It was so swiftly "lifted" that in an hour or so all believed they would be camping down in shelter of a forest which would furnish the welcome fire.

The Indian himself relaxed his muscles, for they saw him faintly smile too.

All at once he began to murmur, and then to utter audibly a curious monotonous chant, which amused Miss Maclan. Her father had dozed off in the warm furs that muffled them both.

"Oh, the Chippeway is singing," she 

 Prev. P 5/181 next