I nodded, took food, and went alone to eat.  I sat there a long time.  Cadillac came toward me once as if to speak, but looked at me and turned away.

At last I had made up my mind, and I went to the hut where I had left Pemaou.  It had taken time to fight down my longing for even combat with him, but I knew that I must not risk that, for I needed to keep my life for a time.  So I would try for speech with him first, and then he should die.  And since he must die helpless, he must die as painlessly as possible.  Physical revenge had become abominable to me.  It was inadequate.

I entered the hut.  Pemaou’s figure lay, face downward, on the floor.  It had a rigidity that did not come from the thongs that bound it.  I turned it over.  The Indian’s throat was cut.  Life had flowed out of the red, horrible opening.

I think that I cursed at the dead man.  Corpse that he was, he had tricked me again, for I had hoped, against reason, to force information from him.  Death had not dignified his wolfish face.  He had died, as he had lived, a snarling animal, whose sagacity was that of the brute.  And I had lost with him this time, as I had lost before, by taking thought, and so losing time.  An animal does not hesitate, and he is a fool who deliberates in dealing with him.  I tasted desolation as I stood there.

A moccasin stepped behind me.  “I killed him,” said Singing Arrow’s voice.

I turned.  She was terrible to look at.  Life had given this savage woman strength of will and soul without training to balance it.  She was Nemesis incarnate.  Yet blood-stained and tragic as was her face, her words were calm.

“He killed my man.”

What was there to say?  It was only her look that showed she had been through tempests; in mind she seemed as numbed as I. I took her by the arm and led her outside.  I turned away from the blood-soaked camp, and took her to the beach where the water was yellow-white and rippled on the sand.  I motioned her to wash away the blood stains on her face and arms.  Then I spoke.

“Singing Arrow, do you intend to kill yourself and follow Pierre?”

She drew her blanket high and folded her arms.  “Yes, if he calls me.  When I dream of him twice I shall know that he is crying for me and cannot rest, so I shall go after him.  I have dreamed once already,—­after I killed the Huron.  When I dream once more I can go.”

I touched her arm.  “Look at me.  Singing Arrow, Pierre is not calling you to follow him.  He is calling you to pick up his work where he had to drop it.  He died trying to save me.  He wants you to help me now.  My wife is in the woods.  You are to help me find her.  Will you help me, Singing Arrow?”

She shook her head.  As she looked at me, scornful and sorrowful and absolutely unmoved, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.  I knew this remotely, as an unblest ghost might know a warmth he could not feel.