“It is not right,” he said at last, “for me to let you sit here talking, when the first thing you should do is to have breakfast and then sleep the clock around.”
He got up and led the way into the cottage, with Hugh following eagerly, curious to see what sort of an abode it was. There were two tiny rooms inside with so wide a doorway between that they were practically one. Linda Ingmarsson’s fingers must surely have sewed those curtains at the windows, the braided rugs on the floor and the blue and white quilts on the two narrow bunks. She must also have given her brother the pot of red geraniums that stood on the sill of the sunniest window. But she had never seen the little log cottage, so she could not have been responsible for the spotless cleanliness of everything.
Never before had Hugh sat down to such an odd breakfast, nor, even at the Indian camp, had he ever eaten with such ravenous appetite. There was half a partridge stewed in brown gravy, wild rice, flapjacks instead of bread, blueberries and, strange to say, thick, rich cream.
“The blueberries? Yes, it is pretty late for them, but you still can find a few in the hollows,” said Oscar, misunderstanding Hugh’s surprise. “Oh, you mean the cream? Why, that is nothing; I have a cow.”
“But how did she get here?” Hugh persisted. “By water, or through the woods?”
He thought of the journey that he himself had made and decided that, for a four-footed creature, both routes were equally impossible.
“She must have been born hereabouts,” Oscar answered. “I found her running wild in the woods when she was still a calf. I brought her home and built her a stable and fed her for a month or two and then”—here he indulged in the silent chuckle that Hugh was to learn was his only form of laughter—“and then Half-Breed Jake sent over to say that she was his.”
“Was she?” Hugh wished to know. He felt a great interest in what had occurred between Oscar and the pirate.
“In a way she might have been called so. You see, old Mat Henderson had a little farm up on the spur of Jasper Peak, where Jake lives now. I don’t know how Henderson got his live stock in; I believe he chartered a little steamer to bring them up the lake and through Harbin’s Channel. That was before the pirates came; boats do not come through there now. Henderson was a queer old soul; he had lots of money, people said, and just came away up here so that he could live alone. The next thing we knew Half-Breed Jake and some Indians were living on the place, claiming that Henderson had sold it to them and that very soon after the sale—he had died. There wasn’t anything to be proved, so we had to let it go. But we’ll know some day.”
He had spoken quietly until the last words, when his tone turned suddenly to bitter earnestness and he dropped his big sunburned hand upon the table with such force that the tin plates danced in their places. His clear face clouded with anger and he sat silent, staring out through the little window. Hugh was almost frightened at the sudden sternness of his face.