The wind swung her braids and she shivered. Snowchild. Dearest Snowchild. The trapper who had returned for his evil contraption that summer had been surprised to see their camp, and devastated to know the truth of what prey he had caught. A tall, white-haired man from the north lands across the sea with eyes as blue as ice. He had wept. She remembered that. But none could bear to look at him or speak with him and he had left, leaving behind the pelts of mink and otter and wolf as his offering. She had burned them. That her child’s life could be bought for a few pelts sickened her.

They found his body half-eaten by animals in a small lonely camp that fall when they dismantled the tipis and headed back to their cabins. He had been drunk and taken his own life, had blown his head apart with his gun. An earthenware jug lay by his side, the evidence of some foul brew he had fermented himself and drunk in his loneliness and guilt.

The men wanted to take his gun and belongings, but Hunting Wolf would not allow it. He said the evil spirits had already visited this man, attracted by the act of his suicide and despair, and he was defiled now. He said he could smell them on his body, as though the dark ones had been examining, searching, studying.

She was glad. How could she have stood the pain, to have that man’s things about her as a reminder of what his trapping had done? She often had nightmares about the man, and Hunting Wolf had too. He told her. It was as though he were setting his traps for them. Singing Tree was not afraid of this man’s spirit. He was a sad man whom the wilderness had broken. She had seen many such white men. But she was sometimes afraid of what had been with him after he died, the things that had visited, that made Hunting Wolf shout those crisp, angry warnings not to touch him. She prayed often that they would never encounter such dark things when they were abroad on the night air, and that there would be no such despair for those fiends to feed upon in their simple lives.

And of course she prayed for her tiny girl of shining hair and sparkling eyes.

She sighed. Oh Snowchild. Where are you now, my love? she thought.

Singing Tree put her head on her knees and wept.

‘Mr Sitconski thinks we should act now.’

The tall man nodded sagely at Henderson, his blue eyes looking sincere and concerned. His voice was odd, strangely stilted, yet correct in its language. ‘I was telling Mr Muir and the men that I have seen these savages turn this murderous way before. It must be stopped.’