For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over
inferior mind and matter. Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never
been crossed by his own people, and to master that will by a superior
will, to hold back the destructive force which, to the ignorant minds
of the braves, was only a natural force of defence, meant a task needing
more than authority behind it. For the very fear of that authority put
in motion was an incentive to present resistance to stave off the day of
trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim were thin with hunger, and the
murder that had been committed by the chief had, as its origin, the
foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's man to their demand for
supplies. Arrowhead had killed him with his own hand.
But Jim Templeton was of a different calibre. Although he had not been
told it, he realised that, indirectly, hunger was the cause of the crime
and might easily become the cause of another; for their tempers were
sharper even than their appetites. Upon this he played; upon this he
made an exhortation to the chief.
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