Six weeks later the
Indian messenger brought back a reply. It was characteristic:
"Hell. Both feet frozen. Need him myself--Prentiss."
To make matters worse, most of the Toyaats were in the back country
on the flanks of a caribou herd, and Jees Uck was with them.
Removing to a distance seemed to bring her closer than ever, and
Neil Bonner found himself picturing her, day by day, in camp and on
trail. It is not good to be alone. Often he went out of the quiet
store, bare-headed and frantic, and shook his fist at the blink of
day that came over the southern sky-line. And on still, cold
nights he left his bed and stumbled into the frost, where he
assaulted the silence at the top of his lungs, as though it were
some tangible, sentiment thing that he might arouse; or he shouted
at the sleeping dogs till they howled and howled again. One shaggy
brute he brought into the post, playing that it was the new man
sent by Prentiss. He strove to make it sleep decently under
blankets at nights and to sit at table and eat as a man should; but
the beast, mere domesticated wolf that it was, rebelled, and sought
out dark corners and snarled and bit him in the leg, and was
finally beaten and driven forth.
Then the trick of personification seized upon Neil Bonner and
mastered him.
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