"How can you sew it together, cousin?" asked Catharine; "you have neither deer sinews nor war-tap." The Indian name for the flexible roots of the tamarack, or swamp larch, which they make use of in manufacturing their birch baskets and canoes.
"I have a substitute at hand, ma belle;" and Louis pointed to the strips of leather-wood he had collected for binding the dressings on her foot.
When an idea once struck Louis, he never rested till he worked it out in some way. In a few minutes he was busily employed, stripping sheets of the ever-useful birch-bark from the birch tree that had fallen at the foot of the "Wolf's Crag;" for so the children had named the memorable spot where poor Catharine's accident had occurred.
The rough outside coatings of the bark, which are of silvery whiteness, but ragged from exposure to the action of the weather in the larger and older trees, he peeled off, and then cutting the bark so that the sides lapped well over and the corners were secured from cracks, he proceeded to pierce holes opposite to each other, and with some trouble managed to stitch them tightly together, by drawing strips of the moose or leather-wood through and through. The first attempt, of course, was but rude and ill-shaped, but it answered the purpose, and only leaked a little at the corners for want of a sort of flap, which he had forgotten to allow in cutting out the bark,—this flap in the Indian baskets and dishes turns up, and keeps all tight and close,—a defect he remedied in his subsequent attempts. In spite of its deficiencies, Louis's water-jar was looked upon with great admiration, and highly commended by Catharine, who almost forgot her sufferings while watching her cousin's proceedings.
Louis was elated by his own successful ingenuity, and was for running off directly to the spring. "Catharine shall now have cold water to bathe her poor ankle with, and to quench her thirst," he said, joyfully springing to his feet, ready for a start up the steep bank; but Hector quietly restrained his lively cousin, by suggesting the possibility of his not finding the "fountain in the wilderness," as Louis termed the spring, or losing himself altogether.
"Let us both go together then," cried Louis. Catharine cast on her cousin an imploring glance.
"Do not leave me, dear Louis—Hector, do not let me be left alone."
Her sorrowful appeal stayed the steps of the volatile Louis.
"Go you, Hector, as you know the way.—I will not leave you, Kate, since I was the cause of all you have suffered; I will abide by you, in joy or in sorrow, till I see you once more safe in your own dear mother's arms."
Comforted by this assurance, Catharine quickly dashed away the gathering tears from her cheeks, and chid her own foolish fears.
"But you know, dear cousin," she said, "I am so helpless; and then the dread of that horrible wolf makes a coward of me."