Page:Silversheene (1924).djvu/15



HALF dozen bent figures crouched over the bright campfire seeking to shield themselves from the late November cold. It was not so much the cold that they felt as it was the biting wind, which drove the cold through them and numbed their fingers. They were not clad in cloth garments but in skins, and their figures were not those of civilization, but those of savagery. They were stouter of build, and without those lines and curves that cultivation and breeding are supposed to give to the finer races of men. Their faces as seen in the light of the campfire were dark copper color, or light brown. The wind and cold, the frost and the storm, had all played a part in this coloring. Their faces were