Oh! I remember. They went after musk-oxen. The rescue expedition never found a trace of them."
"I found them," Snass said. "But both were dead."
"The world still doesn't know. The word never got out."
"The word never gets out," Snass assured him pleasantly.
"You mean if they had been alive when you found them--?"
Snass nodded. "They would have lived on with me and my people."
"Anton got out," Smoke challenged.
"I do not remember the name. How long ago?"
"Fourteen or fifteen years," Smoke answered.
"So he pulled through, after all. Do you know, I've wondered about him. We called him Long Tooth. He was a strong man, a strong man."
"La Perle came through here ten years ago."
Snass shook his head.
"He found traces of your camps. It was summer time."
"That explains it," Snass answered. "We are hundreds of miles to the north in the summer."
But, strive as he would, Smoke could get no clew to Snass's history in the days before he came to live in the northern wilds. Educated he was, yet in all the intervening years he had read no books, no newspapers. What had happened in the world he knew not, nor did he show desire to know. He had heard of the miners on the Yukon, and of the Klondike strike. Gold-miners had never invaded his territory, for which he was glad. But the outside world to him did not exist. He tolerated no mention of it.