Sooner or later
she would fail, and then would come the last orgy of the rites of a
Skin for a Skin. He thought of the whimsical fate which so oddly gave
the "Pro pelle cutem" of the H. B. C. to this unknown tribe of the
North, and flayed one with the other.
This night was the last wherein there lay one chance of help for the
two men and this woman who had so strangely followed from the post, and
he lay in the darkness of the death-lodge watching the hushing of the
camp, the loosing of the captives, the carrying of his factor, a limp
figure, to the lodge of captives on the edge, the leading thither of De
Courtenay and Maren.
"Fool woman!" he said in his heart; "sweet, brave, loving fool with the
woman's heart and the man's simple courage!"
CHAPTER XXIV THE STONE TO THE FOOT OF LOVE
Long Ridgar lay in the darkness listening to the hushed sounds that
came from lodge and dying fire--vague, awed sounds, that presently died
into silence as night took toll of humanity and sleep settled among the
savages.
Here and there low gutturals droned into the stillness, and at the west
there was oath and whispered comment where the Bois-Brules camped
together.
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