One day something happened. Cummins' wife came into the company's
store; and a quick flush shot into her cheeks, and the glitter of blue
diamonds into her eyes, when she saw the stranger standing there. The
man's red face grew redder, and he shifted his gaze. When Cummins'
wife passed him, she drew her skirt close to her; and there was the
poise of a queen in her head, the glory of wife and womanhood, the
living, breathing essence of all that was beautiful in her people's
honor of the big snows.
That night Mukee, the half-Cree, slunk around in the edge of the
forest to see that all was well in Cummins' little home. Once Mukee
had suffered a lynx-bite that went clear to the bone, and the woman
had saved his hand. After that, the savage in him was enslaved to her
like an invisible spirit.
He crouched for a few minutes in the snow, looking at the pale filter
of light that came through a hole in the curtain of the woman's
window; and as he looked something came between him and the light.
Against the cabin he saw the shadow of a sneaking human form; and as
silently as the steely flash of the aurora over his head, as swiftly
as a lean deer, he sped through the gloom of the forest's edge and
came up behind the woman's home.
With the caution of a lynx, his head close to the snow, he peered
around the logs.
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