The father, who was unhitching his horses, hastily got them into the log barn. With the flintlock on his arm as it had been all through the fall plowing in this natural open glade of his section of land, he, too, leaped for the cabin, which was already being barricaded by the boy and his mother.
Through peepholes the family watched.
Soon a solitary figure appeared.
"That can't be an Indian," breathed the mother; "but it may be some kind of an Indian decoy."
"We will hold our aim on him and keep under cover," the father decided.
They could see that the new-comer had a mobile, laughing face. His clothes were of fur, picked out with bright cloth, somewhat ragged. A bandana tied back his grizzled curls to show the gold hoops in his ears. A strap across his forehead bore the weight of a pack which hung down his back.
He was playing a lively tune upon an elder flute, stepping to its measures with his moccasined feet.
While eying the man to be sure that he was not a treacherous disguised Indian, and to decide what sort of a chance comer he might be, the father's brow wrinkled with thoughts of this big Northwest and the men it had known and the origin of this wayfarer.
"Whom have we here, Doby?" he asked.