Harold turned again to the door, and in a moment the Indians strode, blinking, into the candlelight. The brighter light did not reveal them at greater advantage. Virginia shot them a swift glance and was instinctively repelled: but at once she ascribed the evil savagery of their faces to racial traits. She went back to her work. Bill, sitting against the cabin wall, tried to make sense out of a confused jumble of thoughts and impressions and memories that flooded in one wave to his mind. His few hours of blindness had seemingly sharpened his other senses: and there was a quality of the half-breed's voice that was distinctly familiar. He had assumed at once that the two breeds were Joe and Pete whom he had encountered when he first found Harold. Why, then, had the latter made no sign of recognition? Why should he repeat a manifest lie,--that they had been over toward Bald Peak and were traveling toward the Yuga, and that they thought the cabin was unoccupied? He remembered that he had given these particular Indians definite orders to stay away from the district. Outwardly he was cool and at ease, his face impassive and grave; in his inner self he was deeply perturbed and suspicious. Of course, there was a possibility that he was mistaken in the voice. He resolved to know the truth. "It's Joe and Pete, isn't it?" he asked abruptly in the silence. There was no reply at first. Virginia did not glance around in time to see the lightning signal of warning from Harold to the Indians; yet she had an inner sense of drama and suspense. She had never heard quite this tone in Bill's voice before. It was hard, uncompromising, some way menacing. "I say," he repeated slowly, "are you Pete and Joe, or aren't you?" "Pete--Joe?" Joe answered at last, in a bewildered tune. Harold himself could not have given a better simulation of amazement. "Don't know 'em. I'm Wolfpaw Black--he's Jimmy--Jimmy DuBois." The names were convincing,--typical breed names, the latter with a touch of French. But Harold's admiration for the resourcefulness of his confederate really was not justified. Joe hadn't originated the two names. He had spoken the first two that had come to his mind,--the names of a pair of worthy breeds from a distant encampment. Except for a little lingering uneasiness, Bill was satisfied. It would be easy to mistake the voice. He had heard it only a few times in his life. Virginia went on with her supper preparations, and at last the three of them drew chairs around their crude little table. The two breeds took their lunch from their packs and munched it, sitting beside the stove. The night had fallen now, impenetrably dark, and the Northern Lights were flashing like aerial searchlights in the sky. The five of them were singularly quiet, deep in their own thoughts. Bill heard his watch ticking loudly in his pocket.