It was close to noon when Perrot silently collapsed in his tracks. And now Crawford, aiding the Mohegan to cut pine boughs and make camp, felt his last hope gone. For days to come the old rover could only nurse back strength, and was out of the game. Even did Standing Bull send help, even did Frontin and Le Talon reach the Star Woman, what could be expected from them? Nothing. Crawford felt that in this vast wilderness three wandering men could not be located. The immensity of the country smote him and weighed him down. And meantime, he knew, Maclish was sweeping the war-party forward. So, when he had done what he could for Sieur Perrot, Crawford lighted his pipe and stared gloomily through the smoke, being tempted of the devil to leave his companions and plunge into the wilderness alone. He had no sympathy with Perrot’s ambitions. He wanted to be on his way to Frontin, pushing his quest for the Star Woman; to sit here doing nothing was maddening. The spur of freedom was goading him roughly. When he was playing a lone hand, dependent only on himself, he was happiest--there was his tragedy, if you like. Yet he could not gainsay the urge, and this news of Maclish was like a thorn in his flesh. Now, while Crawford smoked and pondered temptation, and the Mohegan picked over dry wood, and Perrot lay in exhausted coma, there came quavering up through the trees from far away a thin, queer cry. That high cry sent a shiver over Crawford, for it was foreign to his limited northland experience, with its uncanny cadence of shaking mirth, its hint of weird and unearthly laughter. He had never before heard the call of a loon. Black Kettle stood like a dog pointing birds, but for a very different reason; the Mohegan had never before heard the call of a loon at high twelve. “What was that?” asked Crawford. Black Kettle wrinkled up his nose. “That,” he said, putting hand to powder-horn, “was the cry of a bird, which came from the throat of a man.” Crawford saw that the redskin was puzzled and alarmed, so asked no more questions. He loaded and primed his gun, and came to his feet. Once again that strange cry reached them, and this time it was much closer. Crawford distinctly saw the Mohegan shiver to the sound of it, as though reading something singular and terrible in the cry. Black Kettle gestured. Crawford followed him out from camp among the trees. He soon realized that the other was retracing their trail of the morning; it was an easy one to follow, because of Perrot’s heavily plunging tracks. A third time lifted that quavering call, now so close upon them that Black Kettle made a startled gesture and vanished from sight among the trees. Crawford waited, peering through the dead brown masses of a fallen pine.