IN THE HANDS OF THE NASCAUPEES Late on the afternoon of the day that Bob fell asleep in the snow, he awoke to new and strange surroundings. His first conscious moments brought with them a sense of comfortable security. His mind had thrown off every feeling of responsibility and he knew only that he was warm and snugly tucked into bed and that the odour of spruce forest and wood smoke that he breathed was very pleasant. He lay quiet for a time, with his eyes closed, in a state of blissful, half consciousness, vaguely realizing these things, but not possessing sufficient energy to open his eyes and investigate them or question where he was. Slowly his mind awoke from its lethargy and then he began to remember as a dim, uncertain dream, his experience of the night before. Gradually it became more real but he recalled his failure to find the tent, the fearful groping in the snow, and his struggle for life against the storm as something that had happened in the long distant past. "But how could all this ha' been happenin' t' me now?" he asked himself, for here he was snug in the tent--or perhaps he had reached the tilt and did not remember. He opened his eyes now for the first time to see and satisfy himself as to whether it was the tent or the tilt he was in, and what he saw astonished and brought him to his senses very quickly. He recognized at once the interior of an Indian wigwam. In the centre a fire was burning and an Indian woman was leaning over it stirring the contents of a kettle. On the opposite side of the fire from her sat a young Indian maiden of about Bob's own age netting the babiche in a snow-shoe, her fingers plying deftly in and out. The woman and girl wore deerskin garments of peculiar design. The former was fat and ugly, the latter slender, and very comely, he thought, from her sleek black hair to her feet encased in daintily worked little moccasins. At that moment she glanced towards him and said something to her companion, who turned in his direction also. "Where am I?" he asked wonderingly and with some alarm. They both laughed and jabbered then in their Indian tongue but he could not understand a word they said. The girl lay aside the snow-shoe and babiche and, taking up a tin cup, dipped some hot broth from the kettle and offered it to him. He accepted it gladly for he was thirsty and felt unaccountably weak. The broth contained no salt or flavouring of any kind, but was very refreshing. When he had finished it he put the cup down and attempted to rise but this movement brought forth a flood of Indian expostulations and he was forced to lie quiet again. It was very evident that he was either considered an invalid too ill to move or was held in bondage. He had never heard that Indian captives were tucked into soft deerskin robes and fed broth by comely Indian maidens, however, and if he were a prisoner it did not promise to be so very disagreeable a captivity. On the whole it was very pleasant and restful lying there on the soft skins of which his bed was composed, for he still felt tired and weak. He took in every detail of his surroundings. The wigwam was circular in form and of good size. It was made of reindeer skins stretched over poles very dingy and black, with an opening at the top to permit the smoke from the fire in the centre to escape. Flat stones raised slightly above the ground served as a fireplace, and around it were thickly laid spruce boughs. Some strips of jerked venison hung from the poles above, and near his feet he glimpsed his own gun and powder horn. Bob could see at once that these Indians were much more primitive than those he knew at the Bay and, unfamiliar as he was with the Indian language, he noticed a marked difference in the intonation and inflection when the woman spoke. "Now," said Bob to himself, "th' Nascaupees must ha' found me an' these be Nascaupees. But Mountaineers an' every one says Nascaupees be savage an' cruel, an' I'm not knowin' what un be. 'Tis queer--most wonderful queer." He had no recollection of lying down in the snow. The last he could definitely recall was his fearful battling with the storm. There was a sort of hazy remembrance of something that he could not quite grasp--of having gone to sleep somewhere in a snug, warm bed spread with white sheets. Try as he would he could not explain his presence in this Indian wigwam, nor could he tell how long he had been here. It seemed to him years since the morning he left the tilt to go on the caribou hunt. So he lay for a good while trying to account for his strange surroundings until at last he became drowsy and was on the point of going to sleep when suddenly the entrance flap of the wigwam opened and two Indians entered--the most savage looking men Bob had ever seen--and he felt a thrill of fear as he beheld them. They were very tall, slender, sinewy fellows, dressed in snug fitting deerskin coats reaching half way to the knees and decorated with elaborately painted designs in many colours. Their heads were covered with hairy hoods, and the ears of the animal from which they were made gave a grotesque and savage appearance to the wearers. Light fitting buckskin leggings, fringed on the outer side, encased their legs, and a pair of deerskin mittens dangled from the ends of a string which was slung around the neck. One of the men was past middle age, the other a young fellow of perhaps twenty. The older woman said something to them and they began to jabber in so high a tone of voice that Bob would have thought they were quarrelling but for the fact that they laughed good-naturedly all the time and came right over to where he lay to shake his hand. They had a good deal to say to him, but he could not understand one word of their language. After greeting him both men removed their outer coats and hoods, and Bob could not but admire the graceful, muscular forms that the buckskin undergarments displayed. Their hair was long, black and straight and around their foreheads was tied a thong of buckskin to keep it from falling over their faces. They laughed at Bob's inability to understand them, and were much amused when he tried to talk with them. Every effort was made to put him at ease. When the men were finally seated, the girl dipped out a cup of broth and a dish of venison stew from the kettle which she handed to Bob; then the others helped themselves from what remained. There was no bread nor tea, and nothing to eat but the unflavoured meat. It was quite dark now and the fire cast weird, uncanny shadows on the dimly-lighted interior walls of the wigwam. The Indians sitting around it in their peculiar dress seemed like unreal inhabitants of some spirit world. Bob's coming to himself in this place and amongst these people appealed to him as miraculous--supernatural. He could not understand it at all. He began to plan an escape. When they were all asleep he could steal quietly out and make his way back to the tilt. But, then, he reasoned, if they wished to detain him they could easily track him in the snow in the morning; and, besides, he did not know where his snow-shoes were and without them he could not go far. Neither did he know how far he was from the tilt. After the Indians had found him they may have carried him several days' journey to their camp and whether they had gone west or north he had no way of finding out. It was, therefore, he realized, an unquestionably hopeless undertaking for him to attempt to reach his tilt alone, and he finally dismissed the idea as impracticable. Perhaps in the morning he could induce them to take him there. That, he concluded, was the only plan for him to follow. So far they had been very kind and he could see no reason why they should wish to detain him against his will. The Indians were indeed Nascaupee Indians, but instead of being the ruthless cut-throats that the Mountaineers and the legends of the coast had painted them, they were human and hospitable, as all our eastern Indians were before white men taught them to be thieves and drove and goaded them--by the white man's own treachery--to acts of reprisal and revenge. These Nascaupees, living as they did in a country inaccessible to the white ravishers, had none but kindly motives in their treatment of Bob and had no desire to do him harm. On the morning that Bob fell in the snow Shish-e-ta-ku-shin--Loud-voice--and his son Moo-koo-mahn--Big Knife--had left their wigwam early to hunt. Not far away they crossed Bob's trail. Their practiced eye told them that the traveller was not an Indian, for the snow-shoes he wore were not of Indian make, and also, from the uncertain, wobbly trail, they decided that he was far spent. So they followed the tracks and within a few minutes after Bob had fallen found him. They carried him to the wigwam and rubbed his frosted limbs and face until it was quite safe to wrap him in the deerskins in the warm wigwam. They did not know who he was nor where he came from, but they did know that he needed care and several days of quiet. He was a stranger and they took him in. These poor heathens had never heard of Christ or His teachings, but their hearts were human. And so it was that Bob found himself amongst friends and was rescued from what seemed certain death. When morning came Bob tried in every conceivable way to make them understand that he wished to be taken back, but he found it a quite hopeless task. No signs or pantomime could make them comprehend his meaning, and it appeared that he was doomed to remain with them. The shock of exposure had been so great that he was still very weak and not able to walk, as he quickly realized when he tried to move about, and he was compelled to remain within in the company of the women, in spite of his desire to go out and reconnoitre. Ma-ni-ka-wan, the maiden, took it upon herself to be his nurse. She brought him water to bathe his face, which was very sore from frostbite, and gave him the choicest morsels from the kettle, and made him as comfortable as possible. At first he held a faint hope that when Bill missed him at the tilt, a search would be made for him and his friends would find the wigwam. But as the days slipped by he realized that he would probably never be discovered. There came a fear that the news of his disappearance would be carried to Wolf Bight and he dreaded the effect upon his mother and Emily. But there was one consolation. Emily could go to the hospital now and be cured. Bill would find the silver fox skin and his share of that and the other furs would pay not only his own but his father's debts, he felt sure, as well as all the expense of Emily's treatment by the doctor--and a good surplus of cash--how much he could not imagine and did not try to calculate--for the doctor had said that silver foxes were worth five hundred dollars in cash. This thought gave him a degree of satisfaction that towered so far above his troubles that he almost forgot them. In a little while he was quite strong and active again. Finally a day came when the Indians made preparations to move. The wigwam was taken down and with all their belongings packed upon toboggans, and under the cold stars of a January morning, they turned to the northward, and Bob had no other course than to go with them even farther from the loved ones and the home that his heart so longed to see.