James Henderson had lied to them. He was not entirely cured of his brain fever. For a moment, just then, when he had been reprimanding the blond man, he had sworn that it was not a human face he was regarding, but some badly-made mask that concealed a hideous blackness, a swirling thing that he felt he had been touched by once before. But the illusion was gone as quickly as it came. It was the fever reclaiming him in his agitation, and it was why he had ended the discussion.

Now he strode away from the canteen to his own abode, where he would have to think carefully and decide how best to proceed. He glanced up to the low hill above the cabins and knew that Hunting Wolf would still be there, crouching, waiting for a glimpse of this uninvited trapper. Madness. It was all madness. He pulled his coat around him and headed into the wind, the cloth that was not clutched flapping around him like birds caught by their wings.

Hunting Wolf was nearer than Henderson thought. He lay only a few yards away from the door behind a great spruce. He was practically invisible, having dug himself into the snow, and staying so still that the birds hopped over him as they foraged in the undergrowth. This was not magic. It was a basic and mundane skill of any warrior, any hunter. He had thought briefly of using his magic to seek out and watch what he feared was here, but how could he shift into an animal after the display of yesterday? His nerve could not stand it. And it would take too long to find the right animal and ask its permission.

So he waited like a hunter for what may not be his prey, but his tormentor. He did not have to wait long. After Henderson had emerged from the long building a group of men had followed. Hunting Wolf searched their faces, but they were merely the sad bitter faces of these northern men he had grown to know.

Then the man Muir had appeared, and with him, oh Great Spirit, was the nightmare. His heart beat like a caged animal in his breast as he saw that face and knew it. And it knew him.

The man, the thing that was not a man, that had inexpertly copied the form of one that would bedevil his keeper, stopped and looked directly at him. It smiled and behind that row of white teeth Hunting Wolf could see the jaws. The black, icy, yawning jaws that were hungry and rabid and yearning for more flesh to destroy. Muir saw Mr Sitconski smile with a merry twinkle at something behind a great Engelmann spruce, but he could see no reason for mirth. He looked at him quizzically.