To go in the opposite direction--farther north without dogs or sledge--would be deliberate suicide.
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.