"That one," Yellow Cloud said finally, wiping his eyes. "That one will be ogimaa someday, and I hope I am dead, because he will make me look like an old fool." He sobered. "You understand, it may not matter. Even if Ingle's men are wrong, they are the government's men now. The agent may not listen. And even if he listens, even if it all comes out right in the book, Ingle has money and friends in Madison. There will be another survey. There is always another survey."
"I know."
"And you understand that when you tell the agent about the pins and the creek and your brother, you will not be able to take it back. It will be in their book with your name. Every surveyor in the north will know Dace was the drunk on the Ajijaak line."
"I know that too."
Yellow Cloud studied him.
"Why?" he said. "I told you why I need you. I did not tell you why you should come. I do not think I know."
Sorley thought about it. He thought about Ledyard laughing as he sealed a letter. He thought about a room sixteen by fourteen with no corners. He thought about the old woman saying the sugar comes up the same, and about a fourteen-year-old boy with a knotted cord pacing out a white man's mistake through the snow because he wanted to know.
"Because it's mine," he said. "It was always mine. I let someone else carry it and he's dead and I can't give it back to him. But I can stop letting it lie on your name." He hesitated. "And because I'd like to see the sugar camp. I've been eating your family's sugar for six years and I've never once seen where it comes from."
Yellow Cloud nodded. He did not say thank you. He looked at Sorley a moment longer and then out across the clearing, toward the south, where beyond the black line of the bog and the burned hills and two days' walk of snow lay the ridge above Ajijaak Lake.
"You will need better snowshoes," he said. "Those are terrible. Who made them?"
"I did."
"Yes," said Yellow Cloud. "I thought so. Like the chimney."
They left in the grey of the next morning, the whole band moving out across the clearing in single file on snowshoes, the toboggans loaded with what remained of the venison and Zhingwaak lashed onto one of them under a heap of robes, protesting