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130 handle him. Was that true? She laid her hand on Ducane's arm.

"Sit down and tell me all you can about it, Harry," she said gently.

To Tempest, driving Florestine back to the barracks, came a sudden glimpse of that tragedy which is often wound up with the simplest of lives. In the woods where the mist drove now on the snowy wind, his pony shied from a trapper who had dragged his hand-sled off the trail, standing to watch them pass. At Tempest's side Florestine gave a little cry and pulled her shawl over her face. Then the pony sprang past, snorting and fighting the bit, and Tempest looked down at the girl.

"Who was it?" he asked. "Not your husband, Florestine?"

"Tommy Joseph," breathed Florestine through her shawl. But the name being unfamiliar to Tempest, he thought no more of it until Kennedy ushered Tommy Joseph into the office where he made up his reports a half hour later.

Tempest pushed aside his papers and looked up, remembering the man vaguely as one of the many sturdy trappers who came in each spring for the Hudson Bay tracking.

"You wanted to see me?" he asked.

Tommy Joseph nodded. He had spent three days at Grey Wolf at the New Year. Then he had gone again for the spring hunt, and now he had come back, hauling his loaded sled of furs a hundred miles and over for the prospect of regular meals and regular work when he and the men of last season would sail the big scows north behind the outgoing ice to bring again the furs of fall. He was thin with starvation and hard work in the woods, and all the cheer was out of his gaunt, dark face. His clothes were ragged utterly, and he gripped his fur cap in both hands as he spoke with a struggle to find his English.

"You say to me where est l'homme de Florestine?" he began, and Tempest saw the muscles working in his strong throat.

"I do not know," said Tempest. "He went trapping last fall. She has not heard of him since."

"Urrrh!" said Tommy Joseph. Then he shifted on