Jessie wore a caribou-skin capote with the fur on as a protection against the cold wind.  Her moccasins were of smoked moose-skin decorated with the flower-pattern bead embroidery so much in use among the French half-breeds of the North.  The socks inside them were of duffle and the leggings of strouds, both materials manufactured for the Hudson’s Bay Company for its trappers.

The day was comparatively warm, but the snow was not slushy nor very deep.  None the less she was glad when they reached the trapping ground and Onistah called a halt for dinner.  She was tired, from the weight of the snow on her shoes, and her feet were blistered by reason of the lacings which cut into the duffle and the tender flesh inside.

Onistah built a fire of poplar, which presently crackled like a battle front and shot red-hot coals at them in an irregular fusillade.  Upon this they made tea, heated pemmican and bannocks, and thawed a jar of preserves Jessie had made the previous summer of service berries and wild raspberries.  Before it they dried their moccasins, socks, and leggings.

Afterward they separated to make a round of the traps, agreeing to meet an hour and a half later at the place of their dinner camp.

The Blackfoot found one of the small traps torn to pieces, probably by a bear, for he saw its tracks in the snow.  He rebuilt the snare and baited it with parts of a rabbit he had shot.  In one trap he discovered a skunk and in another a timber wolf.  When he came in sight of the rendezvous, he was late.

Jessie was not there.  He waited half an hour in growing anxiety before he went to meet her.  Night would fall soon.  He must find her while it was still light enough to follow her tracks.  The disasters that might have fallen upon her crowded his mind.  A bear might have attacked her.  She might be lost or tangled in the swampy muskeg.  Perhaps she had accidentally shot herself.

As swiftly as he could he snowshoed through the forest, following the plain trail she had left.  It carried him to a trap from which she had taken prey, for it was newly baited and the snow was sprinkled with blood.  Before he reached the second gin, the excitement in him quickened.  Some one in snowshoes had cut her path and had deflected to pursue.  Onistah knew that the one following was a white man.  The points of the shoes toed out.  Crees toed in, just the same on webs as in moccasins.

His imagination was active.  What white man had any business in these woods?  Why should he leave that business to overtake Jessie McRae?  Onistah did not quite know why he was worried, but involuntarily he quickened his pace.

Less than a quarter of a mile farther on, he read another chapter of the story written in the trampled snow.  There had been a struggle.  His mistress had been overpowered.  He could see where she had been flung into a white bank and dragged out of it.  She had tried to run and had got hardly a dozen yards before recapture.  From that point the tracks moved forward in a straight line, those of the smaller webs blotted out by the ones made by the larger.  The man was driving the girl before him.