ARCTIC FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 



we were now separated by at least two hundred and fifty 

 miles of country difficult to travel. 



My situation seemed perilous. Powder was actually 

 frightened for his own life, for he knew the Hell Gate 

 Indians and feared them, and he begged me to return with 

 him that night. The situation had confronted me so sud- 

 denly that I scarcely knew what I could do, or what action 

 to take, but I replied to him that my property was in that 

 cache and that I should not desert it. That night a number 

 of Indians surrounded us and plied me with many ques- 

 tions, only a part of which I was able to interpret. 



My cache stood in the centre of a clearing on the river 

 bank of about one hundred yards in extent. Near the 

 cache were two pine trees. The snow had disappeared in 

 the opening, leaving the ground bare, and after getting 

 rid of the last of my callers, I prepared to sleep under- 

 neath these trees in the open, and did not erect any tent 

 or shelter of any kind, or put up anything that would form 

 a screen, behind which the devils of Hell Gate could ap- 

 proach me. I did not sleep much that night, though I 

 was very tired, having run about fifty miles the day before, 

 and I was up early the following morning. Breakfast was 

 soon finished, and in spite of all my protestations, Powder 

 and Mrs. Powder took their departure for the country of 

 the Kaskas. Murderer though I was aware that he was, 

 I knew him, after all. He was a companion in a way; he 

 did not belong to the renegade band, and I greatly re- 

 gretted to see him go. As I stood alone on the river bank 

 that frosty April morning and watched him, with his wife 

 and dogs, disappear around the bend of the river more 

 than a mile away, a feeling of loneliness came over me 

 unlike anything I had ever before experienced, and I could 

 almost have forgiven him the murder of the boy, had he 

 only remained with me. 



I was alone at Hell Gate, in the heart of the greatest 

 wilderness on the American continent; all my supplies and 

 equipage were awaiting some form of transportation to 

 regions further north; I was surrounded by the entire 

 band of red devils that constituted this renegade band, 

 about seventy-five people. 



It was really hard for me to think. But the first thought 



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