Part 8

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."

Gaspe 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."

Gaspe'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, Gaspe'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--Gaspe 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, Gaspe 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 _a la tortoise_," rejoined Gaspe. "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 Gaspe. "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 Gaspe, 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 Gaspe was placing so coaxingly in his fingers. A few sedative whiffs were enjoyed in silence; but before the boys were sent off to bed, Gaspe had secured the reversion of all the wooden remains of the carpentering bout, and as many nails as might be reasonably required.

"Now," said Gaspe, 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 Gaspe. "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 Gaspe 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.

Gaspe 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. Gaspe 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 Gaspe 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 Gaspe 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.

Yula was an experienced hand, and took the collar as a matter of course. Yankee was the first of the puppies to stand in the traces, and his severe doggie tastes were completely outraged by the amount of finery Gaspe and Louison seemed to think necessary for their proper appearance.

Wilfred was seated on a folded blanket, with a buffalo-robe tucked over his feet. Louison flourished a whip in the air to make the dogs start. Away went Yula with something of the velocity of an arrow from a bow, knocking down Gaspe, who thought of holding the back of the sled to guide it.

He scrambled to his feet and ran after it. Yula was careering over the snow at racehorse speed, ten miles an hour, and poor little Yankee, almost frightened out of his senses, was bent upon making a dash at the ribbon waving so enticingly before his eyes. He darted forward. He hung back. He lurched from side to side. He twisted, he turned. He upset the equilibrium of the sledge. It banged against a tree on one side, and all but tilted over on the other. One end went down into a badger hole, leaving Wilfred and his blanket in a heap on the snow, when Yankee, lightened of half his load, fairly leaped upon Yula's back and hopelessly entangled the traces. The boys concealed an uneasy sense of ignominious failure under an assertion calculated to put as good a face as they could on the matter: "We have not got it quite right yet, but we shall."

*CHAPTER XI.*

_*THE HUNTERS' CAMP.*_

A burst of merry laughter made the two boys look round, half afraid that it might be at their own expense.

Wilfred felt a bit annoyed when he perceived a little party of horsemen spurring towards the fort. But Gaspe ran after them, waving his arms with a bonjour as he recognized his own Louison's cousin, Batiste, among the foremost.

Dog training and dog driving are the never-failing topics of interest among the hunters and trappers. Batiste had reined in his horse to watch the ineffectual efforts of the boys to disentangle the two dogs, who were fighting and snarling with each other over the upturned sled.

Batiste and his comrades soon advanced from watching to helping. The sled was lifted up, the traces disentangled, and Wilfred and Gaspe were told and made to feel that they knew nothing at all about dog driving, and might find themselves in a heap all pell-mell at the bottom of the river bank some day if they set about it in such a reckless fashion. They were letting the dogs run just where they liked. Dogs wanted something to follow. Batiste jumped from his horse at last, quite unable to resist the pleasure of breaking in a young dog.

"It takes two to manage a dog team," he asserted. "It wants a man in snow-shoes to walk on in front and mark a track, and another behind to keep them steady to their work."

Dogs, horses, men, and boys all turned back together to discuss Yankee's undeveloped powers. But no, Batiste himself could do nothing with him. Yankee refused to haul.

"I'll make him," said Batiste.

But Gaspe preferred to take his dog out of the traces rather than surrender him to the tender mercies of a hunter. "I know they are very cruel," he whispered to Wilfred. So Yula was left to draw the empty sled back to the fort, and he did it in first-rate style.

"He is just cut out for hauling, as the hound is for hunting," explained Batiste. "It is not any dog can do it."

They entered the gate of the fort. The men stood patting and praising Yula, while Batiste exchanged greetings with his cousin.

Before he unlocked the door of his shop, Mr. De Brunier called Wilfred to him.

"Now is your chance, my boy," he said kindly. "Batiste tells me he passed this Bowkett on his way to the camp, so you are sure to find him there. Shall I arrange with Batiste to take you with him?"

The opportunity had come so suddenly at last. If Wilfred had any misgiving, he did not show it.

"What do you think I had better do, sir?" he asked.

"There is so much good common sense in your own plan," answered his friend, "I think you had better follow it. When we shut up, you cannot remain here; and unless we take you with us, this is the best thing to do."

Wilfred put both his hands in Mr. De Brunier's.

"I can't thank you," he said; "I can't thank you half enough."

"Never mind the thanks, my boy. Now I want you to promise me, when you get back to your home, you will make yourself missed, then you will soon find yourself wanted." Mr. De Brunier turned the key in the lock as he spoke, and went in.

Wilfred crossed the court to Gaspe. He looked up brightly, exclaiming, "Kusky is the boy for you; they all say Kusky will draw."

"I am going," whispered Wilfred.

"Going! how and why?" echoed Gaspe in consternation.

"With these men," answered Wilfred.

"Then I shall hate Batiste if he takes you from me!" exclaimed Gaspe impetuously.

They stepped back into the shed the puppies had occupied, behind some packing-cases, where nobody could see them, for the parting words.

"We shall never forget each other, never. Shall we ever meet again?" asked Wilfred despairingly. "We may when we are men."

"We may before," whispered Gaspe, trying to comfort him. "Grandfather's time is up this Christmas. Then he will take his pension and retire. He talks of buying a farm. Why shouldn't it be near your uncle's?"

"Come, Gaspard, what are you about?" shouted Mr. De Brunier from the shop door. "Take Wilfred in, and see that he has a good dinner."

Words failed over the knife and fork. Yula and Kusky had to be fed.

"Will the sled be of any use?" asked Gaspe.

Even Wilfred did not feel sure. They had fallen very low--had no heart for anything.

Louison was packing the sled--pemmican and tea for three days.

"Put plenty," said Gaspe, as he ran out to see all was right.

Louison and Batiste were talking.

"We'll teach that young dog to haul," Batiste was saying; "and if the boy gets tired of them, we'll take them off his hands altogether."

"With pleasure," added Louison, and they both laughed.

The last moment had come.

"Good-bye, good-bye!" said Wilfred, determined not to break down before the men, who were already mounting their horses.

"God bless you!" murmured Gaspe.

Batiste put Wilfred on his horse, and undertook the management of the sled. The unexpected pleasure of a ride helped to soften the pain of parting.

"I ought to be thankful," thought Wilfred--"I ought to rejoice that the chance I have longed for has come. I ought to be grateful that I have a home, and such a good home." But it was all too new. No one had learned to love him there. Whose hand would clasp his when he reached Acland's Hut as Gaspe had done?

On, on, over the wide, wild waste of sparkling snow, with his jovial companions laughing and talking around him. It was so similar to his ride with Bowkett and Diome, save for the increase in the cold. He did not mind that.

But there was one thing Wilfred did mind, and that was the hard blows Batiste was raining down on Kusky and Yula. He sprang down to remonstrate. He wanted to drive them himself. He was laughed at for a self-conceited jackass, and pushed aside.

Dog driving was the hunter's hobby. The whole party were engrossed in watching Yula's progress, and quiet, affectionate little Kusky's infantine endeavours to keep up with him.

Batiste regarded himself as a crack trainer, and when poor Kusky brought the whole cavalcade to a standstill by sitting down in the midst of his traces, he announced his intention of curing him of such a trick with his first taste.

"Send him to Rome," shouted one of the foremost of the hunters. "He'll not forget that in a hurry."

"He is worth training well," observed another. "See what a chest he has. He will make as good a hauler as the old one by-and-by. Pay him well first start."

What "sending to Rome" might mean Wilfred did not stay to see. Enough to know it was the uttermost depth of dog disgrace. He saw Batiste double up his fist and raise his arm. The sprain in his ankle was forgotten. He flew to the ground, and dashed between Batiste and his dogs, exclaiming, "They are mine, my own, and they shan't be hurt by anybody!"

He caught the first blow, that was all. He staggered backwards on the slippery ground.

Another of the hunters had alighted. He caught Wilfred by the arm, and pulled him up, observing dryly, "Well done, young 'un. Got a settler unawares. That just comes of interfering.--Here, Mathurin, take him up behind ye."

The hunter appealed to wheeled round with a good-natured laugh.

But Wilfred could not stand; the horses, dogs, and snow seemed dancing round him.

"Yula! Kusky!" he called, like one speaking in a dream.

But Yula, dragging the sled behind him, and rolling Kusky over and over in the tangling harness, had sprung at Batiste's arm; but he was too hampered to seize him. Wilfred was only aware of a confused _melee_ as he was hoisted into Mathurin's strong arms and trotted away from the scene of action.

"Come, you are the sauciest young dog of the three," said Mathurin rather admiringly. "There, lay your head on me. You'll have to sleep this off a bit," he continued, gently walking his horse, and gradually dropping behind the rest of the party.

Poor Wilfred roused up every now and then with a rather wild and incoherent inquiry for his dogs, to which Mathurin replied with a drawling, sleepy-sounding "All right."

Wilfred's eyes were so swollen over that he hardly knew it was starshine when Mathurin laid him down by a new-lit camping-fire.

"There," said the hunter, in the self-congratulatory tone of a man who knows he has got over an awkward piece of business; "let him have his dogs, and give him a cup of tea, and he'll be himself again by the morning."

"Ready for the same game?" asked Batiste, who was presiding over the tea-kettle.

The cup which Mathurin recommended was poured out; the sugar was not spared. Wilfred drank it gladly without speaking. When words were useless silence seemed golden. Yula was on guard beside him, and poor little Kusky, cowed and cringing, was shivering at his feet. They covered him up, and all he had seen and heard seemed as unreal as his dreams.

The now familiar cry of "_Leve! leve!_" made Yula sit upright. The hunters were astir before the dawn, but Wilfred was left undisturbed for another hour at least, until the rubeiboo was ready--that is, pemmican boiled in water until it makes a sort of soup. Pemmican, as Mr. De Brunier had said, was the hunters' favourite food.

"Now for the best of the breakfast for the lame and tame," laughed Batiste, pulling up Wilfred, and looking at his disfiguring bruises with a whistle.

Wilfred shrank from the prospect before him. Another day of bitter biting cold, and merciless cruelty to his poor dogs. "Oh, if Gaspe knew!--if Kusky could but have run back home!"

Wilfred could not eat much. He gave his breakfast to his dogs, and fondled them in silence. It was enough to make a fellow's blood boil to be called Mathurin's babby, _l'enfant endormi_ (sleepy child), and Pierre the pretty face.