"I won't do any more," Ducane looked up defiantly. "I won't go up to Chipewyan. I——"

"Yes, you will, too." Robison thrust his hairy face close. "You don't go back on me if I know it," he said.

"I won't go to Chipewyan," cried Ducane. "I'm going to clear out of Grey Wolf right away. I'm not fool enough to be caught——"

"You'll go to Chipewyan," said Robison. "An' you'll stay on here till we're through with our little corner. See? I'm goin' to make enough out o' my pickin's to set me up. You've scooped more than your share so far. But you'll give me fair dues now, an' you won't pull out till I'm ready."

His rough voice was lowered and he scarcely moved. But Ducane recognised the enormous brute force which will fight for what it wants, regardless of consequences. If he played false with Robison the man would kill him. He had known that for some time, but he shivered and cowered under the knowledge again.

"Heriot is a dog after cunning work," he said. "He'll get me——"

"We'll light out before that. He doesn't know much or he'd have been on to us before now. This picture is near five months old. Never you mind how I know that. And you keep your mouth shut. You don't tell your wife things? You swore you didn't."

"I don't. No. But——"

"You'll do as I say," said Robison quietly, "or I guess you'll likely get hurt, Mr. Ducane."

Ducane fingered the sketch aimlessly, and Jennifer, passing the window with the gladness of the spring day in her eyes and her feet, wondered at the sullen fear on his face. But she pushed thought of him and of Robison from her as she climbed the hill where an old Indian woman was beating the frost from some fish-nets as she laid them in the sun. By the Indian burying-ground the spirit-offerings of old hardware were beginning to take shape again below the ridge-pole coverings, and all the grey tender branches of the birchwood along the hillside were blushing with new life. Jennifer knocked the snow from a brown saskatoon branch and laughed at it.