Several times during the afternoon he tried to bring himself to
the point of urging on her the naked truth--that her father was
dead. There was no doubt of that--not the slightest. But each time
he fell a little short. Her confidence in the belief that her
father was alive, and that he was where she had marked the cross
on the map, puzzled him. Was it conceivable, he asked himself,
that the Eskimos had some reason for NOT killing Paul Armin, and
that Celie was aware of the fact? If so he failed to discover it.
Again and again he made Celie understand that he wanted to know
why the Eskimos wanted HER, and each time she answered him with a
hopeless little gesture, signifying that she did not know. He did
learn that there were two other white men with Paul Armin.

Only by looking at his watch did he know when the night closed in.
It was seven o'clock when he led Celie to her room and urged her
to go to bed. An hour later, listening at her door, he believed
that she was asleep. He had waited for that, and quietly he
prepared for the hazardous undertaking he had set for himself. He
put on his cap and coat and seized the club he had taken from
Bram's bed. Then very cautiously he opened the outer door. A
moment later he stood outside, the door closed behind him, with
the storm pounding in his face.

Fifty yards away he could not have heard the shout of a man. And
yet he listened, gripping his club hard, every nerve in his body
strained to a snapping tension. Somewhere within that small circle
of the corral were Bram Johnson's wolves, and as he hesitated with
his back to the door he prayed that there would come no lull in
the storm during the next few minutes. It was possible that he