LOST IN THE WILDS (continued 2)

CHAPTER VI.

SEARCHING FOR A SUPPER.

Pe-na-Koam insisted upon examining Wilfred's hands and feet, and tending to them after her native fashion. She would not suffer him to leave the hut, but ventured out herself, for the storm was followed by a day of glorious sunshine. She returned with her lap full of a peculiar kind of moss, which she had scraped from under the snow. In her hand she carried a bunch of fine brown fibres.

"Wattape!" she exclaimed, holding them up before him, with such evident pleasure he thought it was something to eat; but no, the moss went into the kettle to boil for dinner, but the wattape was laid carefully aside.

The squaw had been used to toil from morning to night, doing all the work of her little world, whilst her warrior, when under shelter, slept or smoked by the fire. She expected no help from Wilfred within the hut, but she wanted to incite him to go and hunt. She took a sharp-pointed stick and drew a bow and arrow on the floor. Then she made sundry figures. which he took for traps; but he could only shake his head. He was thinking of a visit to the owl's tree. But when they had eaten the moss, Pe-na-Koam drew out a piece of skin from under her blanket, and spreading it on the floor laid her fingers beseechingly on his hunting-knife. With this she cut him out a pair of gloves, fingerless it is true, shaped like a baby's first glove, but oh! so warm. Wilfred now discovered the use of the wattape, as she drew out one long thread after another, and began to sew the gloves together with it, pricking the holes through which she passed it with a quill she produced from some part of her dress.

Wilfred took up the brown tangle and examined it closely. It had been torn from the fine fibrous root of the pine. He stood still to watch her, wondering whether there was anything he could do. He took the stick she had used and drew the rough figure of a man fishing on the earthen floor. He felt sure they must be near some stream or lakelet. The Indians would never have left her beyond the reach of water. The wrinkled face lit up with hopeful smiles. Away she worked more diligently than ever.

Wilfred built up the fire to give her a better blaze. They had wood enough to last them through to-morrow. Before it was all burnt up he must try to get in some more. The use was returning to his hands. He took up some of the soft mud, made by the melting of the snow on the earthen floor, and tried to stop up the cracks in the bark which formed the walls of the hut.

They both worked on in silence, hour after hour, as if there were not a moment to lose. At last the gloves were finished. The Far-off-Dawn considered her blanket, and decided a piece might be spared off every corner. Out of these she cut a pair of socks. The Indians themselves often wear three or four pairs of such blanket socks at once in the very coldest of the weather. But Wilfred could find nothing in the hut out of which to make a fishing line. The only thing he could do was to pay a visit to the white owl's larder. He was afraid to touch Maxica's trap. He did not think he could manage it. Poor boy, his spirit was failing him for want of food. Yet he determined to go and see if there was anything to be found. Wilfred got up with an air of resolution, and began to arrange the sling for his foot. But the Far-off-Dawn soon made him understand he must not go without his socks, which she was hurrying to finish.

"I believe I am changing into a snail," thought Wilfred; "I do nothing but crawl about. Yet twenty slips brought the snail to the top of his wall. Twenty slips and twenty climbs—that is something to think of."

The moon was rising. The owl would leave her haunt to seek for prey.

"Now it strikes me," exclaimed Wilfred, "why she always perches on a leafless tree. Her blinking eyes are dazzled by the flicker of the leaves: but they are nearly gone now, she will have a good choice. She may not go far a-field, if she does forsake her last night's roost." This reflection was wondrously consolatory.

The squaw had kept her kettle filled with melting snow all day, so that they could both have a cup of hot water whenever they liked. The Far-off-Dawn was as anxious to equip him for his foraging expedition as he was to take it. The socks were finished; she had worked hard, and Wilfred knew it. He began to think there was something encouraging in her very name—the Far-off-Dawn. Was it not what they were waiting for? It was an earnest that their night would end.

She made him put both the blanket socks on the swollen foot, and then persuaded him to exchange his boots for her moccasins, which were a much better protection against the snow. The strip of fur, no longer needed to protect his toes, was wound round and round his wrists.

Then the squaw folded her blanket over his shoulder, and started him, pointing out as well as she could the streamlet and the pool which had supplied her with water when she was strong enough to fetch it.

Both knew their lives depended upon his success. Yula was by his side. Wilfred turned back with a great piece of bark, to cover up the hole in the roof of the hut to keep the squaw warm. She had wrapped the skin over her feet and was lying before the fire, trying to sleep in her dumb despair. She had discovered there was no line and hook forthcoming from any one of his many pockets. How then could he catch the fish with which she knew the Canadian waters everywhere abounded?

Pe-na-Koam had pointed out the place of the pool so earnestly that Wilfred thought, "I will go there first; perhaps it was there she found the moss."

The northern lights were flashing overhead, shooting long lines of roseate glory towards the zenith, as if some unseen angel's hand were stringing heaven's own harp. But the full chord which flowed beneath its touch was light instead of music.

Wilfred stood silent, rapt in admiring wonder, as he gazed upon those glowing splendours, forgetting everything beside. Yula recalled him to the work in hand. He hobbled on as fast as he could. He was drawing near the pool, for tall rushes bent and shivered above the all-covering snow, and pines and willows rocked in the night wind overhead. Another wary step, and the pool lay stretched before him like a silver shield.

A colony of beavers had made their home in this quiet spot, building their mounds of earth like a dam across the water. But the busy workers were all settling within doors to their winter sleep—drawbridges drawn up, and gates barred against intruders. "You are wiseheads," thought Wilfred, "and I almost wish I could do the same—work all summer like bees, and sleep all winter like dormice; but then the winter is so long."

"Would not it be a grand thing to take home a beaver, Yula?" he exclaimed, suddenly remembering his gloves in their late reduced condition, and longing for another cup of the unpalatable soup; for the keen air sharpened the keener appetite, until he felt as if he could have eaten the said gloves, boiled or unboiled.

But how to get at the clever sleepers under their well-built dome was the difficulty, almost the impossibility.

"Yula, it can't be done—that is by you and me, old boy," he sighed. "We have not got their house-door key for certain. We shall have to put up with the moss, and think ourselves lucky if we find it."

The edge of the pool was already fringed with ice, and many a shallow basin where it had overflowed its banks was already frozen over. Wilfred was brushing away the crisp snow in his search for moss, when he caught sight of a big white fish, made prisoner by the ice in an awkward corner, where the rising flood had one day scooped a tiny reservoir. Making Yula sit down in peace and quietness, and remember manners, he set to work. He soon broke the ice with a blow from the handle of his knife, and took out the fish. As he expected, the hungry dog stood ready to devour it; but Wilfred, suspecting his intention, tied it up in the blanket, and swung it over his shoulder. Fortune did not favour him with such another find, although he searched about the edge of the lake until it grew so slippery he was afraid of falling in. He had now to retrace his steps, following the marks in the snow back to the hut.

The joy of Pe-na-Koam was unbounded when he untied the blanket and slid the fish into her hands.

The prospect of the hot supper it would provide for them nerved Wilfred to go a little further and try to reach the big owl's roost, for fear another snow should bury the path Maxica had made to it. Once lost he might never find it again. The owl was still their most trusty friend and most formidable foe. Thanks to the kindly labours of Maxica's pole, Wilfred could trudge along much faster now; but before he reached the hollow tree, strange noises broke the all-pervading stillness. There was a barking of dogs in the distance, to which Yula replied with all the energy in his nature. There was a tramping as of many feet, and of horses, coming nearer and nearer with a lumbering thud on the ground, deadened and muffled by the snow, but far too plain not to attract all Wilfred's attention.

There was a confusion of sounds, as of a concourse of people; too many for a party of hunters, unless the winter camp of which Diomé had spoken was assembling. Oh joy! if this could be. Wilfred was working himself into a state of excitement scarcely less than Yula's.

He hurried on to the roosting-tree, for it carried him nearer still to the trampling and the hum.

What could it mean? Yula was before him, paws up, climbing the old dead trunk, bent still lower by the recent storm. A snatch, and he had something out of that hole in the riven bark. Wilfred scrambled on, for fear his dog should forestall him. The night was clear around him, he saw the aurora flashes come and go. Yula had lain down at the foot of the tree, devouring his prize. Wilfred's hand, fumbling in its fingerless gloves, at last found the welcome hole. It was full once more. Soft feathers and furs: a gopher—the small ground squirrel—crammed against some little snow-birds.

Wilfred gave the squirrel to his dog, for he had many fears the squaw would be unwilling to give him anything but water in their dearth of food. The snow-birds he transferred to his pocket, looking nervously round as he did so; but there was no owl in sight. The white breasts of the snow-birds were round and plump; but they were little things, not much bigger than sparrows, and remembering Maxica's caution, he dare not take them all.

His hand went lower: a few mice—he could leave them behind him without any reluctance. But stop, he had not got to the bottom yet. Better than ever: he had felt the webbed feet of a wild duck. Mrs. Owl was nearly forgiven the awful scare of the preceding night. Growing bolder in his elation, Wilfred seated himself on the roots of the tree, from which Yula's ascent had cleared the snow. He began to prepare his game, putting back the skin and feathers to conceal his depredations from the savage tenant, lest she should change her domicile altogether.

"I hope she can't count," said Wilfred, who knew not how to leave the spot without ascertaining the cause of the sounds, which kept him vibrating between hope and fear.

Suddenly Yula sprang forward with a bound and rushed over the snow-covered waste with frantic fury.

"The Blackfeet! the Blackfeet!" gasped Wilfred, dropping like lightning into the badger hole where Maxica had hidden him from the owl's vengeance. A singular cavalcade came in sight: forty or fifty Indian warriors, armed with their bows and guns and scalping-knives, the chiefs with their eagles' feathers nodding as they marched. Behind them trotted a still greater number of ponies, on which their squaws were riding man fashion, each with her pappoose or baby tucked up as warm as it could be in its deer-skin, and strapped safely to its wooden cradle, which its mother carried on her back.

Every pony was dragging after it what the Indians call a travoy—that is, two fir poles, the thin ends of which are harnessed to the pony's shoulders, while the butt ends drag on the ground; another piece of wood is fastened across them, making a sort of truck, on which the skins and household goods are piled. The bigger children were seated on the top of many a well-laden travoy, so that the squaws came on but slowly.

Wilfred was right in his conjecture: they were the Blackfeet Maxica feared to encounter, coming up to trade with the nearest Hudson Bay Company's fort. They were bringing piles of furs and robes of skin, and bags of pemmican, to exchange for shot and blankets, sugar and tea, beads, and such other things as Indians desire to possess. They always came up in large parties, because they were crossing the hunting-grounds of their enemies the Crees. They had a numerous following of dogs, and many a family of squalling puppies, on the children's laps.

The grave, stern, savage aspect of the men, the ugly, anxious, careworn faces of the toiling women, filled Wilfred with alarm. Maxica in his semi-blindness might well fear to be the one against so many. Wilfred dared not even call back Yula, for fear of attracting their attention. They were passing on to encamp by the pool he had just quitted. Friendly or unfriendly, Yula was barking and snarling in the midst of the new-comers.

"Was his Yula, his Yula chummie, going to leave him?" asked Wilfred in his dismay. "What if he had belonged originally to this roving tribe, and they should take him away!" This thought cut deeper into Wilfred's heart than anything else at that moment. He crept out of his badger hole, and crawled along the ditch-like path, afraid to show his head above the snow, and still more afraid to remain where he was, for fear of the owl's return.

He kept up a hope that Yula might come back of his own accord. He was soon at the birch-bark hut, but no Yula had turned up.

He tumbled in, breathless and panting. Pe-na-Koam was sure he had been frightened, but thought only of the owl. She had run a stick through the tail of the fish, and was broiling it in the front of the fire. The cheery light flickered and danced along the misshapen walls, which seemed to lean more and more each day from the pressure of the snow outside them.

"The blessed snow!" exclaimed Wilfred. "It hides us so completely no one can see there is a hut at all, unless the smoke betrays us."

How was he to make the squaw understand the dreaded Blackfeet were here? He snatched up their drawing stick, as he called it, and began to sketch in a rough and rapid fashion the moving Indian camp which he had seen. A man with a bow in his hand, with a succession of strokes behind him to denote his following, and a horse's head with the poles of the travoy, were quite sufficient to enlighten the aged woman. She grasped Wilfred's hand and shook it. Then she raised her other arm, as if to strike, and looked inquiringly in his face. Friend or foe? That was the all-important question neither could answer.

Before he returned his moccasins to their rightful owner, Wilfred limped out of the hut and hung up the contents of his blanket game-bag in the nearest pine. They were already frozen.

Not knowing what might happen if their refuge were discovered, they seated themselves before the fire to enjoy the supper Wilfred had secured. The fish was nearly the size of a salmon trout. The squaw removed the sticks from which it depended a little further from the scorch of the fire, and fell to—pulling off the fish in flakes from one side of the backbone, and signing to Wilfred to help himself in similar fashion from the other.

"Fingers were made before forks," thought the boy, his hunger overcoming all reluctance to satisfy it in such a heathenish way. But the old squaw's brow was clouded and her thoughts were troubled. She was trembling for Wilfred's safety.

She knew by the number of dashes on the floor the party was large—a band of her own people; no other tribe journeyed as they did, moving the whole camp at once. Other camps dispersed, not more than a dozen families keeping together.

If they took the boy for a Cree or the friend of a Cree, they would count him an enemy. Before the fish had vanished her plan was made.

She brought Wilfred his boots, and took back her moccasins. As the boy pulled off the soft skin sock, which drew to the shape of his foot without any pressure that could hurt his sprain, feeling far more like a glove than a shoe, he wondered at the skill which had made it. He held it to the fire to examine the beautiful silk embroidery on the legging attached to it. His respect for his companion was considerably increased. It was difficult to believe that beads and dyed porcupine quills and bright-coloured skeins of silk had been the delight of her life. But just now she was intent upon getting possession of his hunting-knife. With this she began to cut up the firewood into chips and shavings. Wilfred thought he should be the best at that sort of work, and went to her help, not knowing what she intended to do with it.

In her nervous haste she seemed at first glad of his assistance. Then she pulled the wood out of his hand, stuck the knife in his belt, and implored him by gestures to sit down in a hole in the floor close against the wall, talking to him rapidly in her soft Indian tongue, as if she were entreating him to be patient.

Wilfred thought this was a queer kind of game, which he did not half like, and had a good mind to turn crusty. But the tears came into her aged eyes. She clasped her hands imploringly, kissed him on both cheeks, as if to assure him of her good intentions, looked to the door, and laid a finger on his lips impressively. In the midst of this pantomime it struck Wilfred suddenly "she wants to hide me." Soon the billet stack was built over him with careful skill, and the chips and shavings flung on the top.

CHAPTER VII.

FOLLOWING THE BLACKFEET.

There was many a little loophole in Wilfred's hiding-place through which he could take a peep unseen. The squaw had let the fire die down to a smouldering heap, and this she had carefully covered over with bark, so that there was neither spark nor flame to shine through the broken roof. The hut was unusually clear of smoke, and all was still.

Wilfred was soon nodding dangerously behind his billet-stack, forgetting in his drowsy musings the instability of his surroundings. The squaw rose up from the floor, and replaced the knot of wood he had sent rolling. He dreamed of Yula's bark in the distance, and wakened to find the noise a reality, but not the bark. It was not his Yula wanting to be let in, as he imagined, but a confused medley of sounds suggestive of the putting up of tent poles. There was the ring of the hatchet among the trees, the crash of the breaking boughs, the thud of the falling trunk. Even Wilfred could not entertain a doubt that the Blackfeet were encamping for the night alarmingly near their buried hut. In silence and darkness was their only safeguard. It was all for the best Yula had run away, his uneasy growls would have betrayed them.

Midnight came and passed; the sounds of work had ceased, but the galloping of the ponies, released from the travoys, the scraping of their hoofs seeking a supper beneath the snow, kept Wilfred on the rack. The echo of the ponies' feet seemed at times so near he quite expected to see a horse's head looking down through the hole, or, worse still, some unwary kick might demolish their fragile roof altogether.

With the gray of the dawn the snow began again to fall. Was ever snow more welcome? The heavy flakes beat back the feeble column of smoke, and hissed on the smouldering wood, as they found ready entrance through the parting in the bark which did duty for a chimney. No matter, it was filling up the path which Maxica had made and obliterating every footprint around the hut. It seemed to Wilfred that the great feathery flakes were covering all above them, like a sheltering wing.

The tell-tale duck, the little snow-birds he had hung on the pine branch would all be hidden now. Not a chink was left in the bark through which the gray snow-light of the wintry morning could penetrate.

In spite of their anxiety, both the anxious watchers had fallen asleep. The squaw was the first to rouse. Wilfred's temporary trap-door refused to move when, finding all was still around them, she had tried to push it aside; for the hut was stifling, and she wanted snow to refill the kettle.

The fire was out, and the snow which had extinguished it was already stiffening. She took a half-burnt brand from the hearth, and, mounting the stones which surrounded the fireplace, opened the smoke-vent; for there the snow had not had time to harden, although the frost was setting in with the daylight. To get out of their hut in another hour might be impossible. With last night's supper, a spark of her former energy had returned. A piece of the smoke-dried bark gave way and precipitated an avalanche of snow into the tiny hut.

Wilfred wakened with a start. The daylight was streaming down upon him, and the squaw was gone. What could have happened while he slept? How he blamed himself for going to sleep at all. But then he could not live without it. As he wondered and waited and reasoned with himself thus, there was still the faint hope the squaw might return. Anyhow, Wilfred thought it was the wisest thing he could do to remain concealed where she had left him. If the Indians camping by the pool were her own people, they might befriend him too. Possibly she had gone over to their camp to ask for aid.

How long he waited he could not tell—it seemed an age—when he heard the joyful sound of Yula's bark. Down leaped the dog into the very midst of the fireplace, scattering the ashes, and bringing with him another avalanche of snow. But his exuberant joy was turned to desperation when he could not find his Wilfred. He was rushing round and round, scenting the ground where Wilfred had sat. Up went his head high in the air, as he gave vent to his feelings in a perfect yowl of despair.

"Yula! Yula!" called Wilfred softly. The dog turned round and tore at the billet-stack. Wilfred's defence was levelled in a moment; the wood went rolling in every direction, and Yula mounted the breach in triumph, digging out his master from the debris as a dog might dig out a fox. He would have him out, he would not give up. He tugged at Wilfred's arms, he butted his head under his knees; there was no resisting his impetuosity, he made him stand upright. When, as Yula evidently believed, he had set his master free, he bounded round him in an ecstasy of delight.

"You've done it, old boy," said Wilfred. "You've got me out of hiding; and neither you nor I can pile the wood over me again, so now, whatever comes, we must face it together."

He clasped his arms round the thick tangle of hair that almost hid the two bright eyes, so full of love, that were gazing at him.

Wilfred could not help kissing the dear old blunderer, as he called him. "And now, Yula," he went on, "since you will have it so, we'll look about us."

Wilfred's foot was a good deal better. He could put his boot on for the first time. He mounted the stones which the squaw had piled, and listened. Yes, there were voices and laughter mingling with the neighing of the ponies and the lumbering sounds of the travoys. The camp was moving on. The "Far-off-Dawn" was further off than ever from him. He had no longer a doubt the squaw had gone with her people.

She had left him her kettle and the piece of skin. To an Indian woman her blanket is hood and cloak and muff all in one. She never goes out of doors without it.

Wilfred smoothed the gloves she had made him and pulled up the blanket socks. Oh, she had been good to him! He thought he understood it all now—that farewell kiss, and the desire to hide him until the fierce warriors of her tribe had passed on. He wrapped the skin over his shoulders, slung the kettle on his arm, chose out a good strong staff to lean on, and held himself ready for the chapter of accidents, whatever they might be.

No one came near him. The sounds grew fainter and fainter. The silence, the awful stillness, was creeping all around him once again. It became unbearable—the dread, the disappointment, the suspense. Wilfred climbed out of the hut and swung himself into the branches of the nearest pine. The duck and the snow-birds were frozen as hard as stones. But the fire was out long ago. Wilfred had no matches, no means of lighting it up again. He put back the game; even Yula could not eat it in that state. He swung himself higher up in the tree, just in time to catch sight of the vanishing train, winding its way along the vast snow-covered waste. He watched it fading to a moving line. What was it leaving behind? A lost boy. If Wilfred passed the night in the tree he would be frozen to death. If he crept back into the tumble-down hut he might be buried beneath another snow. If he went down to the pool he might find the ashes of the Indians' camp-fires still glowing. If they had left a fire behind them he must see the smoke—the snow-soaked branches were sure to smoke. The sleet was driving in his face, but he looked in vain for the dusky curling wreath that must have been visible at so short a distance.

Was all hope gone? His head grew dizzy. There were no words on his lips, and the bitter cry in his heart died mute. Then he seemed to hear again his mother's voice reading to him, as she used to read in far-off days by the evening fire: "I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong, and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. For the Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou goest."

The Indian train was out of sight, but the trampling of those fifty ponies, dragging the heavily-laden travoys, had left a beaten track—a path so broad he could not lose it—and he knew that it would bring him to some white man's home.

Wilfred sprang down from the tree, decided, resolute. Better to try and find this shop in the wilderness than linger there and die. The snow beneath the tree was crisp and hard. Yula bounded on before him, eager to follow where the Blackfeet dogs had passed. They were soon upon the road, trudging steadily onward.

The dog had evidently shared the strangers' breakfast; he was neither hungry nor thirsty. Not so his poor little master, who was feeling very faint for want of a dinner, when he saw a bit of pemmican on the ground, dropped no doubt by one of the Indian children.

Wilfred snatched it up and began to eat. Pemmican is the Indians' favourite food. It is made of meat cut in slices and dried. It is then pounded between two smooth stones, and put in a bag of buffalo-skin. Melted fat is poured over it, to make it keep. To the best kinds of pemmican berries and sugar are added. It forms the most solid food a man can have. There are different ways of cooking it, but travellers, or voyageurs, as they are usually called in Canada, eat it raw. It was a piece of raw pemmican Wilfred had picked up. Hunger lent it the flavour it might have lacked at any other time.

With this for a late dinner, and a rest on a fallen tree, he felt himself once more, and started off again with renewed vigour. The sleet was increasing with the coming dusk. On he toiled, growing whiter and whiter, until his snow-covered figure was scarcely distinguishable from the frozen ground. Yula was powdered from head to foot; moreover, poor dog, he was obliged to stop every now and then to bite off the little icicles which were forming between his toes.

Fortunately for the weary travellers the sky began to clear when the moon arose. Before them stood dark ranks of solemn, stately pines, with here and there a poplar thicket rising black and bare from the sparkling ground. Their charred and shrivelled branches showed the work of the recent prairie fires, which had only been extinguished by the snowstorm.

Wilfred whistled Yula closer and closer to his side, as the forest echoes wakened to the moose-call and the wolf-howl. On, on they walked through the dusky shadows cast by the giant pines, until the strange meteors of the north lit up the icy night, flitting across the starry sky in such swift succession the Indians call it the dance of the dead spirits.

In a scene so weird and wild the boldest heart might quail. Wilfred felt his courage dwindling with every step, when Yula sprang forward with a bark that roused a sleeping herd, and Wilfred found himself in the midst of the Indian ponies, snorting and kicking at the disturber of their peace. The difficulty of getting Yula out again, without losing the track or rousing the camp, which they must now be approaching, engrossed Wilfred, and taxed his powers to their uttermost. He could see the gleam of their many watch-fires, and guided his course more warily. Imposing silence on Yula by every device he could imagine, he left the beaten track which would have taken him into the midst of the dreaded Blackfeet, and slanted further and further into the forest gloom, but not so far as to lose the glow of the Indians' fires. In the first faint gray of the wintry dawn he heard the rushing of a mighty fall, and found concealment in a wide expanse of frozen reeds and stunted willows.

Yula had been brought to order. A tired dog is far more manageable. He lay down at his master's feet, whilst Wilfred watched and listened. He was wide of the Blackfeet camp, yet not at such a distance as to be unable to distinguish the sounds of awakening life within it from the roar of the waterfall. To his right the ground was rising. He scarcely felt himself safe so near the Blackfeet, and determined to push on to the higher ground, where he would have a better chance of seeing what they were about. If they moved on, he could go back to their camping-place and gather the crumbs they might have let fall, and boil himself some water before their fires were extinguished, and then follow in their wake as before.

He began to climb the hill with difficulty, when he was aware of a thin, blue column of light smoke curling upwards in the morning air. It was not from the Indian camp. Had he nearly reached his goal? The light was steadily increasing, and he could clearly see on the height before him three or four tall pines, which had been stripped of their branches by the voyageur's axe, and left to mark a landing-place. These lop-sticks, as the Canadians call them, were a welcome sight. He reached them at last, and gained the view he had been longing to obtain. At his feet rolled the majestic river, plunging in one broad, white sheet over a hidden precipice.

In the still uncertain light of the early dawn the cataract seemed twice its actual size. The jagged tops of the pine trees on the other side of the river rose against the pale green of coming day. Close above the falls the bright star of the morning gleamed like a diamond on the rim of the descending flood; at its foot the silvery spray sprang high into the air, covering the gloomy pines which had reared their dark branches in many a crack and cleft with glittering spangles.

Nestling at the foot of the crag on which Wilfred stood was the well-built stockade of the trading-fort. The faint blue line of smoke which he had perceived was issuing from the chimney of the trader's house, but the inmates were not yet astir.

He brushed the tears from his eyes, but they were mingled tears of joy and thankfulness and exhaustion. As he was watching, a party of Indians stole out from their camp, and posted themselves among the frozen reeds which he had so recently vacated.

The chief, with a few of the Blackfeet, followed by three or four squaws laden with skins, advanced to the front of the stockade, where they halted. The chief was waving in his hand a little flag, to show that he had come to trade. After a while the sounds of life and movement began within the fort. The little group outside was steadily increasing in numbers. Some more of the Blackfeet warriors had loaded their horses and their wives, and were coming up behind their chief, with their heavy bags of pemmican hanging like panniers across the backs of the horses, whilst the poor women toiled after them with the piles of skins and leather.

All was bustle and activity inside the trader's walls. Wilfred guessed they were making all sorts of prudent preparations before they ventured to receive so large a party. He was thinking of the men in ambush among the reeds, and he longed to give some warning to the Hudson Bay officer, who could have no idea of the numbers lurking round his gate.

But how was this to be done in time? There was but one entrance to the fort. He was afraid to descend his hill and knock for admittance, under the lynx-like eyes of the Blackfoot chief, who was growing impatient, and was making fresh signs to attract the trader's attention.

At last there was a creaking sound from the fort. Bolts and bars were withdrawn, and the gate was slowly opened. Out came the Hudson Bay officer, carefully shutting it behind him. He was a tall, white-haired man, with an air of command about him, and the easy grace of a gentleman in every action. He surveyed his wild visitors for a moment or two, and then advanced to meet them with a smile of welcome. The chief came a step or two forward, shook hands with the white man, and began to make a speech. A few of his companions followed his example.

"Now," thought Wilfred, "while all this talking and speechifying is abroad, I may get a chance to reach the fort unobserved."

He slid down the steep hill, with Yula after him, crept along the back of the stockade, and round the end farthest from the reeds. In another moment he was at the gate. A gentle tap with his hand was all he dared to give. It met with no answer. He repeated it a little louder. Yula barked. The gate was opened just a crack, and a boy about his own age peeped out.

"Let me in," said Wilfred desperately. "I have something to tell you."

The crack was widened. Wilfred slipped in and Yula followed. The gate was shut and barred behind them.

"Well?" asked the boyish porter.

"There are dozens of Blackfeet Indians hiding among the frozen reeds. I saw them stealing down from their camp before it was light. I am afraid they mean mischief," said Wilfred, lowering his voice.

"We need to be careful," returned the other, glancing round at their many defences; "but who are you?"

"I belong to some settlers across the prairie. I have lost my way. I have been wandering about all night, following the trail of the Blackfeet. That is how I came to know and see what they were doing," replied Wilfred.

"They always come up in numbers," answered the stranger thoughtfully, "ready for a brush with the Crees. They seem friendly to us."

As the boy spoke he slipped aside a little shutter in the gate, and peeped through a tiny grill.

In the middle of the enclosure there was a wooden house painted white. Three or four iron funnels stuck out of the roof instead of chimneys, giving it a very odd appearance. There were a few more huts and sheds. But Wilfred's attention was called off from these surroundings, for a whole family of dogs had rushed out upon Yula, with a chorus of barking that deafened every other sound. For Yula had marched straight to the back door of the house, where food was to be had, and was shaking it and whining to be let in.

The young stranger Gaspé took a bit of paper and a pencil out of his pocket and wrote hastily: "There are lots more of the Blackfeet hiding amongst the reeds. What does that mean?"

"Louison!" he cried to a man at work in one of the sheds, "go outside and give this to grandfather."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SHOP IN THE WILDERNESS.

As soon as Gaspé had despatched his messenger he turned to Wilfred, observing, in tones of grateful satisfaction, "I am so glad we know in time."

"Is that your grandfather?" asked Wilfred.

Gaspé nodded. "Come and look at him."

The two boys were soon watching earnestly through the grating, their faces almost touching. Gaspé's arm was over Wilfred's shoulder, as they drew closer and closer to each other.

Gaspé's grandfather took the slip of paper from his man, glanced at it, and crushed it in his hand. The chief was hastily heaping a mass of buffalo robes and skins and bags of pemmican upon one of the horses, a gift for the white man, horse and all. This was to show his big heart.

"Do you hear what he is saying?" whispered Gaspé, who understood the Indians much better than Wilfred did. "Listen!"

"Are there any Crees here? Crees have no manners. Crees are like dogs, always ready to bite if you turn your head away; but the Blackfeet have large hearts, and love hospitality."

"After all, those men in the reeds may only be on the watch for fear of a surprise from the Crees," continued Gaspé.

"Will there be a fight?" asked Wilfred breathlessly.

"No, I think not," answered Gaspé. "The Crees have lived amongst us whites so long they have given up the war-path. But," he added confidentially, "I have locked our old Indian in the kitchen, for if they caught sight of him they might say we were friends of the Crees, and set on us."

One door in the white-painted house was standing open. It led into a large and almost empty room. Just inside it a number of articles were piled on the floor—a gun, blankets, scarlet cloth, and a brightly-painted canister of tea. Louison came back to fetch them, for a return present, with which the chief seemed highly delighted.

"We see but little of you white men," he said; "and our young men do not always know how to behave. But if you would come amongst us more, we chiefs would restrain them."

"He would have hard work," laughed Wilfred, little thinking how soon his words were to be verified. The Blackfeet standing round their chief, with their piles of skins, were so obviously getting excited, and impatient to begin the real trading, the chief must have felt even he could not hold them back much longer. But he was earnest in his exhortation to them not to give way to violence or rough behaviour.

Gaspé's grandfather was silently noting every face, without appearing to do so; and mindful of the warning he had received, he led the way to his gate, which he invited them to enter, observing, "My places are but small, friends. All shall come in by turns, but only a few at a time."

Gaspé drew back the bar and threw the gate wide. In walked the stately chief, with one or two of his followers who had taken part in the speech-making. The excited crowd at the back of them pushed their way in, as if they feared the gate might be shut in their faces.

Gaspé remonstrated, assuring them there was no hurry, all should have their turn.

The chief waved them back, and the last of the group contented themselves with standing in the gateway itself, to prevent it being shut against them.

Gaspé gave up the vain attempt to close it, and resumed his post.

"I am here on the watch," he whispered to Wilfred; "but you are cold and hungry. Go with grandfather into the shop."

"I would rather stay with you," answered Wilfred. "I am getting used to being hungry."

Gaspé answered this by pushing into his hand a big hunch of bread and butter, which he had brought with him from his hurried breakfast.

Meanwhile Gaspé's grandfather had entered the house, taking with him the Blackfoot chief. He invited the others to enter and seat themselves on the floor of the empty room into which Wilfred had already had a peep. He unlocked an inner door, opening into a passage, which divided the great waiting-room from the small shop beyond. This had been carefully prepared for the reception of their wild customers. Only a few of his goods were left upon the shelves, which were arranged with much ingenuity, and seemed to display a great variety of wares, all of them attractive in Indian eyes. The bright-coloured cloths, cut in short lengths, were folded in fantastic heaps; the blankets were hung in graceful festoons. Beads scattered lightly on trays glittered behind the counter, on which the empty scales were lightly swaying up and down, like miniature swinging-boats.

A high lattice protected the front of the counter. Gaspé's grandfather established himself behind it. Louison took his place as door-keeper. The chief and two of his particular friends were the first to be admitted. Louison locked the door to keep out the others. It was the only way to preserve order. The wild, fierce strangers from the snow-covered plain and the darksome forest drew at once to the stove—a great iron box in the middle of the shop, with its huge black funnel rising through the ceiling. Warmth without smoke was a luxury unknown in the wigwam.

The Indians walked slowly round the shop, examining and considering the contents of the shelves, until their choice was made.

One of the three walked up to the counter and handed his pile of skins to the trader, Mr. De Brunier, through a little door in the lattice, pointing to some bright scarlet cloth and a couple of blankets. The chief was examining the guns. All three wanted shot, and the others inquired earnestly for the Indians' special delight, "tea and suga'." But when they saw the canister opened, and the tea poured into the scale, there was a grunt of dissatisfaction all round.

"What for?" demanded the chief. "Why put tea one side that swing and little bit of iron the other? Who wants little bit of iron? We don't know what that medicine is."

The Indians call everything medicine that seems to them learned and wise.

Mr. De Brunier tried to explain the use of his scales, and took up his steelyard to see if it would find more favour.

"Be fair," pursued the chief; "make one side as big as the other. Try bag of pemmican against your blankets and tea, then when the thing stops swinging you take pemmican, we blankets and tea—that fair!"

His companions echoed their chief's sentiments.

"As you like," smiled the trader. "We only want to make a fair exchange."

So the heavy bag of pemmican was put in the place of the weight, and a nice heap of tea was poured upon the blanket to make the balance true. The Indians were delighted.

"Now," continued Mr. De Brunier, "we must weigh the shot and the gun against your skins, according to your plan."

But when the red men saw their beautiful marten and otter and fisher skins piling higher and higher, and the heavy bag of shot still refusing to rise, a grave doubt as to the correctness of their own view of the matter arose in the Indians' minds. The first served took up his scarlet cloth and blanket and went out quickly, whilst the others deliberated.

The trader waited with good-humoured patience and a quiet gleam of amusement in the corner of his eye, when they told him at last to do it his own way, for the steel swing was a great medicine warriors could not understand. It was plain it could only be worked by some great medicine man like himself.

This decision had been reached so slowly, the impatience of the crowd in the waiting-room was at spirit-boil.

The brave who had come back satisfied was exhibiting his blankets and his scarlet cloth, which had to be felt and looked at by all in turn.

"Were there many more inside?" they asked eagerly.

He shook his head.

A belief that the good things would all be gone before the rest of the Indians could get their turn spread among the excited crowd like wild-fire.

Gaspé still held to his watch by the gate, with Wilfred beside him.

There was plenty of laughing and talking among the party of resolute men who kept it open; they seemed full of fun, and were joking each other in the highest spirits. Gaspé's eyes turned again and again to the frozen reeds, but all was quiet.

Wilfred was earnestly watching for a chance to ask the mirthful Blackfeet if an old squaw, the Far-off-Dawn, had joined their camp. He could not make them understand him, but Gaspé repeated the question.

At that moment one of the fiercest-looking of the younger warriors rushed out of the waiting-room in a state of intense excitement. He beckoned to his companions at the gate, exclaiming, "If we don't help ourselves there will be nothing left for you and me."

"We know who will see fair play," retorted the young chief, who was answering Gaspé.

A whoop rang through the frosty air, and the still stiff reeds seemed suddenly alive with dusky faces. The crush round the inner door in the waiting-room became intense.

"Help me," whispered Gaspé, seizing Wilfred's arm and dragging him after him through the sheds to the back of the house. He took out a key and unlocked a side door. There was a second before him, with the keyhole at the reverse hand. It admitted them into a darkened room, for the windows were closely shuttered; but Gaspé knew his ground, and was not at a moment's loss.

The double doors were locked and bolted in double quick time behind them. Then Gaspé lifted up a heavy iron bar and banged it into its socket. Noise did not matter. The clamour in the waiting-room drowned every other sound.

"They will clear the shop," he said, "but we must stop them getting into the storeroom. Come along."

Wilfred was feeling the way. He stumbled over a chair; his hand felt a table. He guessed he was in the family sitting-room. Gaspé put his mouth to the keyhole of an inner door.

"Chirag!" he shouted to their Indian servant, "barricade."

The noises which succeeded showed that his command was being obeyed in that direction.

Gaspé was already in the storeroom, endeavouring to push a heavy box of nails before the other door leading into the shop. Wilfred was beside him in a moment. He had not much pushing power left in him after his night of wandering.

"Perhaps I can push a pound," he thought, laying his hands by Gaspé's.

"Now, steady! both together we shall do it," they said, and with one hard strain the box was driven along the floor.

"That is something," cried Gaspé, heaving up a bag of ironmongery to put on the top of it. And he looked round for something else sufficiently ponderous to complete his barricade.

"What is this?" asked Wilfred, tugging at a chest of tools.

Meanwhile a dozen hatchets' heads were hammering at the door from the waiting-room where Louison was stationed. The crack of the wood giving way beneath their blows inspired Gaspé with redoubled energy. The chest was hoisted upon the box. He surveyed his barricade with satisfaction. But their work was not yet done. He dragged forward a set of steps, and running up to the top, threw open a trap-door in the ceiling. A ray of light streamed down into the room, showing Wilfred, very white and exhausted, leaning against the pile they had erected.

Gaspé sprang to the ground, rushed back into the sitting-room, and began to rummage in the cupboard.

"Here is grandfather's essence of peppermint and the sugar-basin and lots of biscuits!" he exclaimed. "You are faint, you have had no breakfast yet. I am forgetting. Here."

Wilfred's benumbed fingers felt in the sugar for a good-sized lump. Gaspé poured his peppermint drops upon it with a free hand. The warming, reviving dose brought back the colour to Wilfred's pale lips.

"Feel better?" asked his energetic companion, running up the steps with a roll of cloth on his shoulder, which he deposited safely in the loft above, inviting Wilfred to follow. The place was warm, for the iron chimneys ran through it, like so many black columns. Wilfred was ready to embrace the nearest.

Gaspé caught his arm. "You are too much of a human icicle for that," he cried. "I'll bring up the blankets next. Roll yourself up in them and get warm gradually, or you will be worse than ever. You must take care of yourself, for I dare not stop. It is always a bit dangerous when the Indians come up in such numbers to a little station like this. There is nobody but grandfather and me and our two men about the place, and what are four against a hundred? But all know what to do. Chirag watches inside the house, I outside, and Louison keeps the shop door. That is the most dangerous post, because of the crush to get in."

A crash and a thud in the room below verified his words.

"There! down it goes," he exclaimed, as a peal of laughter from many voices followed the rush of the crowd from one room to the other.

"They will be in here next," he added, springing down the steps for another load. Wilfred tried to shake off the strange sensations which oppressed him, and took it from him. Another and another followed quickly, until the boys had removed the greater part of the most valuable of the stores into the roof. The guns and the heavy bags of shot had all been carried up in the early morning, before the gate of the fort was opened.

And now the hammering began at the storeroom door, amid peals of uproarious laughter.

Gaspé tore up the steps with another heavy roll of bright blue cloth.

"We can do no more," he said, pausing for breath. "Now we will shut ourselves in here."

"We will have these up first," returned Wilfred, seizing hold of the top of the steps, and trying to drag them through the trap-door.

"Right!" ejaculated Gaspé. "If we had left them standing in the middle of the storeroom, it would have been inviting the Blackfeet to follow us."

They let down the trap-door as noiselessly as they could, and drew the heavy bolt at the very moment the door below was broken open and the triumphant crowd rushed wildly in, banging down their bags of pemmican on the floor, and seizing the first thing which came to hand in return.

Louison had been knocked down in the first rush from the waiting-room, and was leaning against the wall, having narrowly escaped being trampled to death. "All right!" he shouted to his master, who had jumped up on his counter to see if his agile servitor had regained his feet. It was wild work, but Mr. De Brunier took it all in good part, flinging his blankets right and left wherever he saw an eager hand outstretched to receive them. He knew that it was far better to give before they had time to take, and so keep up a semblance of trade. Many a beautiful skin and buffalo-robe was tossed across the counter in return. The heterogeneous pile was growing higher and higher beside him, and in the confusion it was hard to tell how much was intended for purchase, how much for pillage.

The chief, the Great Swan, as his people called him, still stood by the scales, determined to see if the great medicine worked fairly for all his people.

Mr. De Brunier called to him by his Indian name: "Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu, do you not hear what I am saying? Your young men are too rough. Restrain them. You say you can. How am I to weigh and measure to each his right portion in such a rout?"

"Give them all something and they will be content," shouted the chief, trying his best to restore order.

Dozens of gaudy cotton handkerchiefs went flying over the black heads, scrambling with each other to get possession of them. Spoonfuls of beads were received with chuckles of delight by the nearest ranks; hut the Indians outside the crowd were growing hot and angry. Turns had been long since disregarded. It was catch as catch can. They broke down the lattice, and helped themselves from the shelves behind the counter. These were soon cleared. A party of strong young fellows, laughing as if it were the best fun in the world, leaped clear over the counter, and began to chop at the storeroom door with their hatchets. With a dexterous hand Mr. De Brunier flung his bright silks in their faces. The dancing skeins were quickly caught up. But the work of demolition went forward. The panels were reduced to matchwood. Three glittering hatchets swung high over the men's heads, came down upon the still resisting framework, and smashed it. The mirthful crowd dashed in.

The shop was already cleared. Mr. De Brunier would have gone into his storeroom with them if he could, but a dozen guns were pointed in his face. It was mere menace, no one attempted to fire. But the chief thought it was going too far. He backed to the waiting-room. Mr. De Brunier seized his empty tea-canister, and offered it to him as a parting gift, saying in most emphatic tones, "This is not our way of doing business. Some of these men have got too much, and some too little. It is not my fault. I must deal now with the tribe. Let them all lay down on the floor the rest of the skins and bags they have brought, and take away all I have to give in exchange, and you must divide when you get back to your camp, to every man his right share."

Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu rushed off with his canister under his arm; not into the storeroom, where the dismayed trader hoped his presence might have proved a restraint, but straight through the waiting-room with a mad dash into the court, and through the gate, where he halted to give a thunderous shout of "Crees! Crees!" The magic words brought out his followers pell-mell. A second shout, a wilder alarm, made the tribe rally round their chief, in the full belief the Crees had surprised their camp in their hateful dog-like fashion, taking their bite at the women and children when the warriors' heads were turned.

But the unmannerly foe was nowhere in sight.

"Over the hill!" shouted their Great Wild Swan, the man of twenty fights.

Meanwhile the gate of the little fort was securely barred against all intruders. The waiting squaws meekly turned their horses' heads, and followed their deluded lords, picking up the beads and nails which had been dropped in their headlong haste.

"Woe to Maxica," thought Wilfred, "if he should happen to be returning for his moose!"

The wild war-whoop died away in the distance, only the roar of the cataract broke the stillness of the snow-laden air.

De Brunier walked back into his house, to count up the gain and loss, and see how much reckless mischief that morning's work had brought him.

CHAPTER IX.

NEW FRIENDS.

"We shall always be friends," said Gaspé, looking into Wilfred's face, as they stood side by side against the chimney in the loft, emptying the biscuit-canister between them.

Wilfred answered with a sunny smile. The sounds below suddenly changed their character. The general stampede to the gate was beginning.

The boys flew to the window. It was a double one, very small and thickly frozen. They could not see the least thing through its glittering panes.

They could scarcely believe their ears, but the sudden silence which succeeded convinced Gaspé their rough visitors had beaten a hasty retreat.

"Anyhow we will wait a bit, and make sure before we go down," they decided.

But De Brunier's first care was for his grandson, and he was missing.

"Gaspard!" he shouted, and his call was echoed by Louison and Chirag.

"Here, grandfather; I am here, I am coming," answered the boy, gently raising the trap-door and peeping down at the dismantled storeroom. A great bag of goose-feathers, which had been hoarded by some thrifty squaw, had been torn open, and the down was flying in every direction.

There was a groan from Mr. De Brunier. All his most valuable stores had vanished.

"Not quite so bad as that, grandfather," cried Gaspé brightly.

The trader stepped up on to the remains of the barricade the boys had erected, and popped his head through the open trap-door.

"Well done, Gaspard!" he exclaimed.

"This other boy helped me," was the instantaneous reply.

The other boy came out from the midst of the blanket heap, feeling more dead than alive, and expecting every moment some one would say to him, "Now go," and he had nowhere to go.

Mr. De Brunier looked at him in amazement. A solitary boy in these lone wastes! Had he dropped from the skies?

"Come down, my little lad, and tell me who you are," he said kindly; but without waiting for a reply he walked on through the broken door to survey the devastation beyond.

"I have grown gray in the service of the Company, and never had a more provoking disaster," he lamented, as he began to count the tumbled heap of valuable furs blocking his pathway.

Louison, looking pale and feeling dizzy from his recent knock over, was collecting the bags of pemmican. Chirag, released from his imprisonment, was opening window shutters and replenishing the burnt-out fires. Gaspé dropped down from the roof, without waiting to replace the steps, and went to his grandfather's assistance, leaving Wilfred to have a good sleep in the blanket heap.

The poor boy was so worn out he slept heavily. When he roused himself at last, the October day was drawing to its close, and Gaspé was laughing beside him.

"Have not you had sleep enough?" he asked. "Would not dinner be an improvement?"

Wilfred wakened from his dreams of Acland's Hut. Aunt Miriam and Pe-na-Koam had got strangely jumbled together; but up he jumped to grasp his new friend's warm, young hand, and wondered what had happened. He felt as if he had been tossing like a ball from one strange scene to another. When he found himself sitting on a real chair, and not on the hard ground, the transition was so great it seemed like another dream.

The room was low, no carpet on the floor, only a few chairs ranged round the stove in the centre; but a real dinner, hot and smoking, was spread on the unpainted deal table.

Mr. De Brunier, with one arm thrown over the back of his chair, was smoking, to recall his lost serenity. An account-book lay beside his unfinished dinner. Sometimes his eye wandered over its long rows of figures, and then for a while he seemed absorbed in mental calculation.

He glanced at Wilfred's thin hands and pinched cheeks.

"Let the boy eat," he said to Gaspé.

As the roast goose vanished from Wilfred's plate the smile returned to his lips and the mirth to his heart. He outdid the hungry hunter of proverbial fame. The pause came at last; he could not quite keep on eating all night, Indian fashion. He really declined the sixth helping Gaspé was pressing upon him.

"No, thanks; I have had a Benjamin's portion—five times as much as you have had—and I am dreadfully obliged to you," said Wilfred, with a bow to Mr. De Brunier; "but there is Yula, that is my dog. May he have these bones?"

"He has had something more than bones already; Chirag fed him when he fed my puppies," put in Gaspé.

"Puppies," repeated Mr. De Brunier. "Dogs, I say."

"Not yet, grandfather," remonstrated the happy Gaspé. "You said they would not be really dogs, ready for work, until they were a year old, and it wants a full week."

"Please, sir," interrupted Wilfred abruptly, "can you tell me how I can get home?"

"Where is your home?" asked Mr. De Brunier.

"With my uncle, at Acland's Hut," answered Wilfred promptly.

"Acland's Hut," repeated Mr. De Brunier, looking across at Gaspé for elucidation. They did not know such a place existed.

"It is miles away from here," added Wilfred sorrowfully. "I went out hunting—"

"You—a small boy like you—to go hunting alone!" exclaimed Mr. De Brunier.

"Please, sir, I mean I rode on a pony by the cart which was to bring back the game," explained poor Wilfred, growing very rueful, as all hope of getting home again seemed to recede further and further from him. "The pony threw me," he added, "and when I came to myself the men were gone."

"Have you no father?" whispered Gaspé.

"My father died a year ago, and I was left at school at Garry," Wilfred went on.

"Fort Garry!" exclaimed Mr. De Brunier, brightening. "If this had happened a few weeks earlier, I could easily have sent you back to Garry in one of the Company's boats. They are always rowing up and down the river during the busy summer months, but they have just stopped for the winter With this Blackfoot camp so near us, I dare not unbar my gate again to-night, so make yourself contented. In the morning we will see what can be done."

"Nothing!" thought Wilfred, as he gathered the goose-bones together for Yula's benefit. "If you do not know where Acland's Hut is, and I cannot tell you, night or morning what difference can it make?"

He studied the table-cloth, thinking hard. "Bowkett and Diomé had talked of going to a hunters' camp. Where was that?"

"Ask Louison," said Mr. De Brunier, in reply to his inquiry.

Gaspé ran out to put the question.

Louison was a hunter's son. He had wintered in the camp himself when he was a boy. The hunters gathered there in November. Parties would soon be calling at the fort, to sell their skins by the way. Wilfred could go on with one of them, no doubt, and then Bowkett could take him home.

Wilfred's heart grew lighter. It was a roundabout-road, but he felt as if getting back to Bowkett was next to getting home.

"How glad your uncle will be to see you!" cried Gaspé radiantly, picturing the bright home-coming in the warmth of his own sympathy.

"Oh, don't!" said Wilfred; "please, don't. It won't be like that; not a bit. Nobody wants me. Aunt wanted my little sister, not me. You don't understand; I am such a bother to her."

Gaspé was silenced, but his hand clasped Wilfred's a little closer. All the chivalrous feelings of the knightly De Bruniers were rousing in his breast for the strange boy who had brought them the timely warning. For some of the best and noblest blood of old France was flowing in his veins. A De Brunier had come out with the early French settlers, the first explorers, the first voyageurs along the mighty Canadian rivers. A De Brunier had fought against Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, in the front ranks of that gallant band who faithfully upheld their nation's honour, loyal to the last to the shameless France, which despised, neglected, and abandoned them—men whose high sense of duty never swerved in the hour of trial, when they were given over into the hands of their enemy. Who cared what happened in that far-off corner of the world? It was not worth troubling about. So the France of that day reasoned when she flung them from her.

It was of those dark hours Gaspé loved to make his grandfather talk, and he was thinking that nothing would divert Wilfred from his troubled thoughts like one of grandfather's stories. The night drew on. The snow was falling thicker and denser than before. Mr. De Brunier turned his chair to the stove, afraid to go to bed with the Blackfoot camp within half-a-mile of his wooden walls.

"They might," he said, "have a fancy to give us a midnight scare, to see what more they could get."

The boys begged hard to remain. The fire, shut in its iron box, was burning at its best, emitting a dull red glow, even through its prison walls. Gaspé refilled his grandfather's pipe.

"Wilfred," he remarked gently, "has a home that is no home, and he thinks we cannot understand the ups and downs of life, or what it is to be pushed to the wall."

Gaspé had touched the right spring. The veteran trader smiled. "Not know, my lad, what it is to be pushed to the wall, when I have been a servant for fifty years in the very house where my grandfather was master, before the golden lilies on our snow-white banner were torn down to make room for your Union Jack! Why am I telling you this to-night? Just to show you, when all seems lost in the present, there is the future beyond, and no one can tell what that may hold. The pearl lies hidden under the stormiest waters. Do you know old Cumberland House? A De Brunier built it, the first trading-fort in the Saskatchewan. It was lost to us when the cold-hearted Bourbon flung us like a bone to the English mastiff. Our homes were ours no longer. Our lives were in our hands, but our honour no one but ourselves could throw away. What did we do? What could we do? What all can do—our duty to the last. We braved our trouble; and when all seemed lost, help came. Who was it felt for us? The men who had torn from us our colours and entered our gates by force. Under the British flag our homes were given back, our rights assured. Our Canadian Quebec remains unaltered, a transplant from the old France of the Bourbons. In the long years that have followed the harvest has been reaped on both sides. Now, my boy, don't break your heart with thinking, If there had been anybody to care for me, I should not have been left senseless in a snow-covered wilderness; but rouse your manhood and face your trouble, for in God's providence it may be more than made up to you. Here you can stay until some opportunity occurs to send you to this hunters' camp. You are sure it will be your best way to get home again?"

"Yes," answered Wilfred decidedly. "I shall find Bowkett there, and I am sure he will take me back to Acland's Hut. But please, sir, I did not mean aunt and uncle were unkind; but I had been there such a little while, and somehow I was always wrong; and then I know I teased."

The cloud was gathering over him again.

"If—" he sighed.

"Don't dwell on the ifs, my boy; talk of what has been. That will teach you best what may be," inter posed Mr. De Brunier.

Gaspé saw the look of pain in Wilfred's eyes, although he did not say again, "Please don't talk about it," for he was afraid Mr. De Brunier would not call that facing his trouble.

Gaspé came to the rescue. "But, grandfather, you have not told us what the harvest was that Canada reaped," he put in.

"Cannot you see it for yourself, Gaspard?" said Mr. De Brunier. "When French and English, conquered and conqueror, settled down side by side, it was their respect for each other, their careful consideration for each other's rights and wrongs, that taught their children and their children's children the great lesson how to live and let live. No other nation in the world has learned as we have done. It is this that makes our Canada a land of refuge for the down-trodden slave. And we, the French in Canada, what have we reaped?" he went on, shaking the ashes from his pipe, and looking at the two boys before him, French and English; but the old lines were fading, and uniting in the broader name of Canadian. "Yes," he repeated, "what did we find at the bottom of our bitter cup? Peace, security, and freedom, whilst the streets of Paris ran red with Frenchmen's blood. The last De Brunier in France was dragged from his ancestral home to the steps of the guillotine by Frenchmen's hands, and the old chateau in Brittany is left a moss-grown ruin. When my father saw the hereditary foe of his country walk into Cumberland House to turn him out, they met with a bonjour [good day]; and when they parted this was the final word: 'You are a young man, Monsieur De Brunier, but your knowledge of the country and your influence with the Indians can render us valuable assistance. If at any time you choose to take office in your old locale, you will find that faithful service will be handsomely requited.' We kept our honour and laid down our pride. Content. Your British Queen has no more loyal subjects in all her vast dominions than her old French Canadians."

There was a mist before Wilfred's eyes, and his voice was low and husky. He only whispered, "I shall not forget, I never can forget to-night."

The small hours of the morning were numbered before Gaspé opened the door of his little sleeping room, which Wilfred was to share. It was not much bigger than a closet. The bed seemed to fill it.

There was just room for Gaspé's chest of clothes and an array of pegs. But to Wilfred it seemed a palace, in its cozy warmth. It made him think of Pe-na-Koam. He hoped she was as comfortable in the Blackfoot camp.

Gaspé was growing sleepy. One arm was round Wilfred's neck; he roused himself to answer, "Did not you hear what the warrior with the scalps at his belt told me? She came into their camp, and they gave her food as long as she could eat it. She was too old to travel, and they left her asleep by their camp-fires."

Up sprang Wilfred. "Whatever shall I do? I have brought away her kettle; I thought she had gone to her own people, and left it behind her for me."

"Do!" repeated Gaspé, laughing. "Why, go to sleep old fellow; what else can we do at four o'clock in the morning? If we don't make haste about it, we shall have no night at all."

Gaspé was quick to follow his own advice. But the "no night" was Wilfred's portion. There was no rest for him for thinking of Pe-na-Koam. How was she to get her breakfast? The Blackfeet might have given her food, but how could she boil a drop of water without her kettle?

At the first movement in the house he slipped out of bed and dressed himself. The fire had burned low in the great stove in the sitting-room, but when he softly opened the door of their closet it struck fairly warm. The noise he had heard was Louison coming in with a great basket of wood to build it up.

"A fire in prison is a dull affair by daylight," remarked Wilfred. "I think I shall go for a walk—a long walk."

"Mr. De Brunier will have something to say about that after last night's blizzard," returned Louison.

"Then please tell him it is my duty to go, for I am afraid an old Indian woman, who was very kind to me, was out in last night's snow, and I must go and look for her. Will you just undo that door and let me out?"

"Not quite so fast; I have two minds about that," answered Louison. "Better wait for Mr. De Brunier. I know I shall be wrong if I let you go off like this."

"How can you be wrong?" retorted Wilfred. "I came to this place to warn you all there was a party of Blackfeet hidden in the reeds. Well, if I had waited, what good would it have been to you? Now I find the old squaw who made me these gloves was out in last night's snow, and I must go and look for her, and go directly."

"But a boy like you will never find her," laughed Louison.

"I'll try it," said Wilfred doggedly.

"Was she a Blackfoot?"

"Yes."

"Then she is safe enough in camp, depend upon it," returned Louison.

"No, she was left behind," persisted Wilfred.

"Then come with me," said Louison, by no means sorry to have found a friendly reason for approaching the Blackfeet camp. "I have a little bit of scout business in hand, just to find out whether these wild fellows are moving on, or whether they mean waiting about to pay us another visit."

Chirag was clearing away the snow in the enclosure outside. Wilfred found the kettle and the skin just where he had laid them down, inside the first shed. He called up Yula, and started by Louison's side. Chirag was waiting to bar the gate behind them.

"Beautiful morning," said the Canadians, vigorously rubbing their noses to keep them from freezing, and violently clapping their mittened hands together. The snow lay white and level, over hill and marsh, one sparkling sheet of silvery sheen. The edging of ice was broadening along the river, and the roar of the falls came with a thunderous boom through the all-pervading stillness around them.

The snow was already hard, as the two ran briskly forward, with Yula careering and bounding in extravagant delight.

Wilfred looked back to the little fort, with its stout wooden walls, twice the height of a man, hiding the low white house with its roof of bark, hiding everything within but the rough lookout and the tall flag-staff, for

"Ever above the topmost roof the banner of England blew."

Wilfred was picturing the feelings with which the De Bruniers had worked on beneath it, giving the same faithful service to their foreign masters that they had to the country which had cast them off.

"It is a dirty old rag," said Louison; "gone all to ribbons in last night's gale. But it is good enough for a little place like this—we call it Hungry Hall. We don't keep it open all the year round. Just now, in October, the Indians and the hunters are bringing in the produce of their summer's hunting. We shall shut up soon, and open later again for the winter trade."

"A dirty old rag!" repeated Wilfred. "Yes, but I am prouder of it than ever, for it means protection and safety wherever it floats. Boy as I am, I can see that."

"Can you see something else," asked Louison—"the crossing poles of the first wigwam? We are at the camp."

CHAPTER X.

THE DOG-SLED.

A cloud of smoke from its many wigwam fires overhung the Indian camp as Louison and Wilfred drew near. The hunter's son, with his quick ear, stole cautiously through the belt of pine trees which sheltered it from the north wind, listening for any sounds of awakening life. Yesterday's adventure had no doubt been followed by a prolonged feast, and men and dogs were still sleeping. A few squaws, upon whom the hard work of the Indian world all devolves, were already astir. Louison thought they were gathering firewood outside the camp. This was well. Louison hung round about the outskirts, watching their proceedings, until he saw one woman behind a wigwam gathering snow to fill her kettle. Her pappoose in its wooden cradle was strapped to her back; but she had seen or heard them, for she paused in her occupation and looked up wondering.

Louison stepped forward.

"Now for your questions, my boy," he said to Wilfred, "and I will play interpreter."

"Is there an old squaw in your camp named the Far-off-Dawn?"

Wilfred needed no interpreter to explain the "caween" given in reply.

"Tell her, Louison," he hurried on, "she was with me the night before last. I thought she left me to follow this trail. If she has not reached this camp, she must be lost in the snow."

"Will not some of your people go and look for her," added Louison, on his own account, "before you move on?"

"What is the use?" she asked. "Death will have got her by this time. She came to the camp; she was too old to travel. If she is alive, she may overtake us again. We shall not move on until another sunrising, to rest the horses."

"Then I shall go and look for her," said Wilfred resolutely.

"Not you," retorted Louison; "wait a bit." He put his hand in his pockets. They had been well filled with tea and tobacco, in readiness for any emergency. "Is not there anybody in the camp who will go and look for her?"

Louison was asking his questions for the sake of the information he elicited, but Wilfred caught at the idea in earnest. "Go and see," urged Louison, offering her a handful of his tea.

"Thé!" she repeated. The magic word did wonders. Louison knew if one of the men were willing to leave the camp to look for Pe-na-Koam, no further mischief was intended. But if they were anticipating a repetition of "the high old time" they had enjoyed yesterday, not one of them could be induced to forego their portion in so congenial a lark, for in their eyes it was nothing more.

The squaw took the tea in both her hands, gladly leaving her kettle in the snow, as she led the way into the camp.

Wilfred, who had only seen the poor little canvas tents of the Crees, looked round him in astonishment. In the centre stood the lodge or moya of the chief—a wigwam built in true old Indian style, fourteen feet high at the least. Twelve strong poles were stuck in the ground, round a circle fifteen feet across. They were tied together at the top, and the outside was covered with buffalo-skins, painted black and red in all sorts of figures. Eagles seemed perching on the heads of deers, and serpents twisted and coiled beneath the feet of buffaloes. The other wigwams built around it were in the same style, on a smaller scale, all brown with smoke.

A goodly array of spears, bows, and shields adorned the outside of the moya; above them the much-coveted rifles were ranged with exceeding pride. The ground between the moya and the tents was littered with chips and bones, among which the dogs were busy. A few children were pelting each other with the snow, or trying to shoot at the busy jays with a baby of a bow and arrows to match.

Louison pushed aside the fur which hung over the entrance to the moya—the man-hole—and stepped inside. A beautiful fire was burning in the middle of the tent. The floor was strewed with pine brush, and skins were hung round the inside wall, like a dado. They fitted very closely to the ground, so as to keep out all draught. The rabbits and swans, the buzzards and squirrels painted on this dado were so lifelike, Wilfred thought it must be as good as a picture-book to the dear little pappoose, strapped to its flat board cradle, and set upright against the wall whilst mother was busy. The sleeping-places were divided by wicker-screens, and seemed furnished with plenty of blankets and skins. One or two of them were still occupied; but Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu lay on a bear-skin by the fire, with his numerous pipes arranged beside him. The squaw explained the errand of their early visitors: a woman was lost in the snow, would the chief send one of his people to find her?

The Great Swan looked over his shoulder and said something. A young man rose up from one of the sleeping-places.

Both were asking, "What was the good?"

"She is one of your own people," urged Louison. "We came to tell you."

This was not what Wilfred had said, and it was not all he wanted, but he was forced to trust it to Louison, although he was uneasy.

He could see plainly enough an Indian would be far more likely to find her than himself, but would they? Would any of them go?

Louison offered a taste of his tobacco to the old chief and the young, by way of good-fellowship.

"They will never do it for that," thought Wilfred growing desperate again. He had but one thing about him he could offer as an inducement, and that was his knife. He hesitated a moment. He thought of Pe-na-Koam dying in the snow, and held it out to the young chieftain.

The dusky fingers gripped the handle.

"Will you take care of her and bring her here, or give her food and build up her hut?" asked Wilfred, making his meaning as plain as he could, by the help of nods and looks and signs.

The young chief was outside the man-hole in another moment. He slung his quiver to his belt and took down his bow, flung a stout blanket over his shoulder, and shouted to his squaw to catch a bronco, the usual name for the Canadian horse. The kettle was in his hand.

"Can we trust him?" asked Wilfred, as he left the camp by Louison's side.

"Trust him! yes," answered his companion. "Young Sapoo is one of those Indians who never break faith. His word once given, he will keep it to the death."

"Then I have only to pray that he may be in time," said Wilfred gravely, as he stood still to watch the wild red man galloping back to the beavers' lakelet.

"Oh, he will be in time," returned Louison cheerily. "All their wigwam poles would be left standing, and plenty of pine brush and firewood strewing about. She is sure to have found some shelter before the heaviest fall of snow; that did not come until it was nearly morning."

Gaspé had climbed the lookout to watch for their return.

"Wilfred, mon cher," he exclaimed, "you must have a perfect penchant for running away. How could you give us the slip in such a shabby fashion? I could not believe Chirag. If the bears were not all dropping off into their winter sleep, I should have thought some hungry bruin had breakfasted upon you."

Gaspé's grandfather had turned carpenter, and was already at work mending his broken doors. Not being a very experienced workman, his planking and his panelling did not square. Wood was plentiful, and more than one piece was thrown aside as a misfit. Both the boys were eager to assist in the work of restoration. A broken shelf was mended between them—in first-rate workmanly style, as Wilfred really thought. "We have done that well," they agreed; and when Mr. De Brunier—who was still chipping at his refractory panel—added a note of commendation to their labours, Gaspé's spirits ran up to the very top of the mental thermometer.

To recover his balance—for Wilfred unceremoniously declared he was off his head—Gaspé fell into a musing fit. He wakened up, exclaiming,—

"I'm flying high!"

"Then mind you don't fall," retorted Mr. De Brunier, who himself was cogitating somewhat darkly over Louison's intelligence. "There will be no peace for me," he said, "no security, whilst these Blackfeet are in the neighbourhood. 'Wait for another sun-rising'—that means another forty-eight hours of incessant vigilance for me. It was want of confidence did it all. I should teach them to trust me in time, but it cannot be done in a day."

As he moved on, lamenting over the scene of destruction, Gaspé laid a hand on Wilfred's arm. "How are you going to keep pace with the hunters with that lame foot?" he demanded.

"As the tortoise did with the hare," laughed Wilfred. "Get myself left behind often enough, I don't doubt that."

"But I doubt if you will ever get to your home à la tortoise," rejoined Gaspé. "No, walking will never do for you. I am thinking of making you a sled."

"A sledge!" repeated Wilfred in surprise.

"Oh, we drop the 'ge' you add to it in your English dictionaries," retorted Gaspé. "We only say sled out here. There will be plenty of board when grandfather has done his mending. We may have what we want, I'm sure. Your dog is a trained hauler, and why shouldn't we teach my biggest pup to draw with him? They would drag you after the hunters in fine style. We can do it all, even to their jingling bells."

Wilfred, who had been accustomed to the light and graceful carioles and sledges used in the Canadian towns, thought it was flying a bit too high. But Gaspé, up in all the rough-and-ready contrivances of the backwoods, knew what he was about. Louison and Chirag had to be consulted.

When all the defences were put in order—bolts, bars, and padlocks doubled and trebled, and a rough but very ponderous double door added to the storeroom—Mr. De Brunier began to speak of rest.

"The night cometh in which no man can work," he quoted, as if in justification of the necessary stoppage.

The hammer was laid down, and he sank back in his hard chair, as if he were almost ashamed to indulge in his one solace, the well-filled pipe Gaspé was placing so coaxingly in his fingers. A few sedative whiffs were enjoyed in silence; but before the boys were sent off to bed, Gaspé had secured the reversion of all the wooden remains of the carpentering bout, and as many nails as might be reasonably required.

"Now," said Gaspé, as he tucked himself up by Wilfred's side, and pulled the coverings well over head and ears, "I'll show you what I can do."

Three days passed quickly by. On the morning of the fourth Louison walked in with a long face. The new horse, the gift of the Blackfoot chief, had vanished in the night. The camp had moved on, nothing but the long poles of the wigwams were left standing.

The loss of a horse is such an everyday occurrence in Canada, where horses are so often left to take care of themselves, it was by no means clear that Oma-ka-pee-mulkee-yeu had resumed his gift, but it was highly probable.

Notwithstanding, the Company had not been losers by the riotous marketing, for the furs the Blackfeet had brought in were splendid.

"Yes, we were all on our guard—thanks to you, my little man—or it might have ended in the demolition of the fort," remarked Mr. De Brunier. "Now, if there is anything you want for your journey, tell me, and you shall have it."

"Yes, grandfather," interposed Gaspé. "He must have a blanket to sleep in, and there is the harness for the dogs, and a lot of things."

Wilfred grew hot. "Please, sir, thanks; but I don't think I want much. Most of all, perhaps, something to eat."

Mr. De Brunier recommended a good hunch of pemmican, to cut and come again. The hunters would let him mess with them if he brought his own pemmican and a handful of tea to throw into their boiling kettle. The hunters' camp was about sixty miles from Hungry Hall. They would be two or three days on the road.

More than one party of hunters had called at the fort already, wanting powder and ball, matches, and a knife; and when the lynx and marten and wolf skins which they brought were told up, and the few necessaries they required were provided, the gay, careless, improvident fellows would invest in a tasselled cap bright with glittering beads.

The longer Wilfred stayed at the fort, the more Mr. De Brunier hesitated about letting the boy start for so long a journey with no better protection. Gaspard never failed to paint the danger and magnify the difficulties of the undertaking, wishing to keep his new friend a little longer. But Wilfred was steady to his purpose. He saw no other chance of getting back to his home. He did not say much when Mr. De Brunier and Gaspé were weighing chances and probabilities, hoping some travelling party from the north might stop by the way at Hungry Hall and take him on with them. Such things did happen occasionally.

But Wilfred had a vivid recollection of his cross-country journey with Forgill. He could not see that he should be sure of getting home if he accepted Mr. De Brunier's offer and stayed until the river was frozen and then went down with him to their mid-winter station, trusting to a seat in some of the Company's carts or the Company's sledges to their next destination.

Then there would be waiting and trusting again to be sent on another stage, and another, and another, until he would at last find himself at Fort Garry. "Then," he asked, "what was he to do? If his uncle and aunt knew that he was there, they might send Forgill again to fetch him. But if letters reached Acland's Hut so uncertainly, how was he to let them know?"

As Wilfred worked the matter out thus in his own mind, he received every proposition of Mr. De Brunier's with, "Please, sir, I'd rather go to Bowkett. He lost me. He will be sure to take me straight home."

"The boy knew his own mind so thoroughly," Mr. De Brunier told Gaspard at last, "they must let him have his own way."

The sled was finished. It was a simple affair—two thin boards about four feet long nailed together edgeways, with a tri-cornered piece of wood fitted in at the end. Two old skates were screwed on the bottom, and the thing was done. The boys worked together at the harness as they sat round the stove in the evening. The snow was thicker, the frost was harder every night. Ice had settled on the quiet pools, and was spreading over the quick-running streams, but the dash of the falls still resisted its ever-encroaching influence. By-and-by they too must yield, and the whole face of nature would be locked in its iron clasp. November was wearing away. A sunny morning came now and then to cheer the little party so soon to separate.

Gaspé proposed a run with the dogs, just to try how they would go in their new harness, and if, after all, the sled would run as a sled should.

Other things were set aside, and boys and men gathered in the court. Even Mr. De Brunier stepped out to give his opinion about the puppies. Gaspé had named them from the many tongues of his native Canada.

In his heart Wilfred entertained a secret belief that not one of them would ever be equal to his Yula. They were Athabascans. They would never be as big for one thing, and no dog ever could be half as intelligent; that was not possible. But he did not give utterance to these sentiments. It would have looked so ungrateful, when Gaspé was designing the best and biggest for his parting gift. And they were beauties, all four of them.

There was Le Chevalier, so named because he never appeared, as Gaspé declared, without his white shirtfront and white gloves. Then there was his bluff old English Boxer, the sturdiest of the four. He looked like a hauler. Kusky-tay-ka-atim-moos, or "the little black dog," according to the Cree dialect, had struck up a friendship with Yula, only a little less warm than that which existed between their respective masters. Then the little schemer with the party-coloured face was Yankee-doodle.

"Try them all in harness, and see which runs the best," suggested grandfather, quite glad that his Gaspard should have one bright holiday to checker the leaden dulness of the everyday life at Hungry Hall.

Louison was harnessing the team. He nailed two long strips of leather to the lowest end of the sled for traces. The dogs' collars were made of soft leather, and slipped over the head. Each one was ornamented with a little tinkling bell under the chin and a tuft of bright ribbon at the back of the ear, and a buckle on either side through which the traces were passed. A band of leather round the dogs completed the harness, and to this the traces were also securely buckled. The dogs stood one before the other, about a foot apart.