now, that thrilling day in the forest near Wabinosh House when he had stopped to look at Minnetaki’s footprints in the soft earth through which she had been driven by her Woonga abductors, and he remembered, too, that she was the only person at the Post who wore heels on her moccasins.  It was a queer coincidence!  Could Minnetaki have been here?  Had she made that footprint in the snow?  Impossible, declared the young hunter’s better sense.  And yet his blood ran a little faster as he touched the delicate impression with his bare fingers.  It reminded him of Minnetaki, anyway; her foot would have made just such a trail, and he wondered if the girl who had stepped there was as pretty as she.

He followed now a little faster than before, and ten minutes later he came to where a dozen snow-shoe trails had come in from the north and had joined the three.  After meeting, the two parties had evidently joined forces and had departed over the trail made by those who had appeared from the direction of the Post.

“Friends from Kenogami House came down to meet them,” mused Rod, and as he turned back in the direction of the camp he formed a picture of that meeting in the heart of the wilderness, of the glad embraces of husband and wife, and the joy of the pretty girl with the tiny feet as she kissed her father, and perhaps her big brother; for no girl could possess feet just like Minnetaki’s and not be pretty!

He found that Wabi had preceded him when he returned.  The young Indian had shot a small doe, and that noon witnessed a feast in camp.  For his lack of luck Rod had his story to tell of the people on the trail.  The passing of this party formed the chief topic of conversation during the rest of the day, for after weeks of isolation in the wilderness even this momentary nearness of living civilized men and women was a great event to them.  But there was one fact which Rod dwelt but slightly upon.  He did not emphasize the similarity of the pretty footprint and that made by Minnetaki’s moccasin, for he knew that a betrayal of his knowledge and admiration of the Indian maiden’s feet would furnish Wabi with fun-making ammunition for a week.  He did say, however, that the footprint in the snow struck him as being just about the size that Minnetaki would make.

All that day and night the hunters remained in camp, sleeping, eating and taking care of Mukoki’s wound, but the next morning saw them ready for their homeward journey with the coming of dawn.  They struck due westward now, satisfied that they were well beyond the range of the outlaw Woongas.

As the boys talked over their adventure on the long journey back toward the Post, Wabi thought with regret of the moose head which he had left buried in the “Indian ice-box,” and even wished, for a moment, to go home by the northern trail, despite the danger from the hostile Woongas, in order to recover the valuable antlers.  But Mukoki shook his head.