She
turned, still smiling, and pointed far to the west.
"And some day--the Valley of Silent Men will awaken," she said, and
reentered her father's tepee.
Out of the camp staggered Roscoe Cummins behind his Indian guide, a
blinding heat in his eyes. Once or twice a gulping sob rose in his throat,
and he clutched hard at his heart to beat himself into submission to the
great law of life as it had been made for him.
An hour later the two came to a stream where there was a canoe. Because of
rapids and the fierceness of the spring floods, portages were many, and
progress slow during the whole of that day. They had made twenty miles when
the sun began sinking in the west, and they struck camp. After their supper
of meat the Cree rolled himself in his blanket and slept. But for long
hours Roscoe sat beside their fire. Night dropped about him, a splendid
night filled with sweet breaths and stars and a new moon, and with strange
sounds which came to him now in a language which he was beginning to
understand. From far away there floated faintly to his ears the lonely cry
of a wolf, and it no longer made him shudder, but filled him with the
mysterious longing of the cry itself. It was the mate-song of the beast of
prey, sending up its message to the stars--crying out to all the
wilderness for a response to its loneliness.
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