He did not permit himself to believe that she might have told him an untruth.

He was confident, if he lived until tomorrow, that Mercer would corroborate his faith in her.

He had never heard of a place called the Valley of Silent Men, but it was a big country, and Fort Simpson with its Hudson Bay Company's post and its half-dozen shacks was a thousand miles away.

He was not sure that such a place as that valley really existed.

It was easier to believe that the girl's home was at Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Fort Good Hope, or even at Fort McPherson.