Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/103

Rh sought with swift eyes and fingers. There was no blood; no mark of the knife anywhere at all. And yet the boy lay there very truly as a sacrifice; offered up to the madness of man's beliefs as surely as though he had died by the steel on the wind-swept hill.

Dick stepped out again with his lips close and eyes dangerous. Any little mercy that might have been in him was dead, and he kicked in the brush-and-snow shelters with slight ceremony, unearthing the remaining children and all the women. The women cried, clamouring to Kennedy in an unknown tongue. They were drawn by his fresh cheeks and his young eyes, and Dick laughed, watching.

"Keep your head and keep your temper," he said. "I suppose Abraham and the other bucks have gone hunting. We'll wait for them."

Kennedy never forgot that hour when Dick inspected everything in the camp that would bear inspection and much that would not. The children followed him; dark-eyed little shaggy creatures, hopping from one foot to the other to warm their half-clad misery. The women stood apart with sullen mutterings, and their eyes were suspicious under the close-drawn shawls. Dick pushed his investigations through to the bitter end, unembarrassed. Then he came to Kennedy.

"They live like beasts," he said. "But they likely can make out. They have food and warmth. I guess I'll have to pluck the patriarch, though. His doings savour mildly of insanity." He flung up his head, with the listening look in his eyes. "Here they come," he said. "And—Lord, they've got a battle-chant like the South Sea Islanders."

Down the narrow trail that gave to the naked woods four men swung into the clearing with the white spray breaking from their snow-shoes. Moose-meat hung from their shoulders in great lumps; grey coarse stuff, dark with its blood. Two were weedy weaklings who shambled, looking sideways. The third walked like a hunter, with a Winchester crooked in his arm, and his keen eyes glancing. Abraham led, chanting what was probably an Old Testament war-song. His grey beard, stiffened by frost, blew into points over each shoulder; the moose-pelt girded about