The arrival of the visitors caused a great stir in the lonely camp. A dozen cur dogs barked savagely at the men and at Tawny, who, however, treated the whole pack with an air of contempt. He walked erect close to Ray, with his hair bristling and his teeth flashing and uttering now and then a fierce low growl, when one of the half-starved curs made a move as if to snap at him. A few [[85]]small children scampered into the tepees at the sight of the strangers while several men arose from their seats outside the tepees, drove away the yelping dogs and shook hands with the strangers.
Ganawa was delighted to find some of his own people at the camp, for he did not understand the talk of Ininiwac people very well, and the Indians of the Great Lakes region were not good sign-talkers like the Indians of the plains.
By this time Ray and Bruce had picked up quite a number of Chippewa words, and when they joined the circle of Ganawa and his friends, they could understand enough of the conversation to learn that Ganawa was asking if they knew anything about Jack Dutton, or if they had seen him.
Later in the evening, when the three were inside of their own tepee, with a small bright fire of dry sticks burning in the center, Ganawa told the lads in English what he had learned.
Jack Dutton with another white man had [[86]]been in the Michipicoten country about twelve moons ago, last winter. There had been a rumor that the two men had made a valuable cache of fur within one or two days’ journey of this place, the mouth of the Michipicoten. A hunter, who had been following the track of a moose, had accidentally discovered the camp and the fur cache of the two white men, because they had made their camp on a little stream near a moose trail which led from a big lake to a small lake farther back in the wilderness of rocky wooded hills that stretch northward from the Sault Sainte Marie and Lake Superior for a distance of fifty to two hundred miles, where they run out into a flat country of the greatest black spruce forest in North America, a sombre dark forest which extends northward almost to Hudson Bay and eastward a thousand miles from Lake of the Woods to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
The two white men, the hunter had told, had collected and bought of some Indians [[87]]only the most valuable furs, such as silver foxes, dark prime beaver, and marten. All lower-grade furs they had traded to the Indians for a few high-grade furs or had used them for clothing and robes. “They had a big canoe-load of furs worth ten hundred beavers,” the old hunter had told, holding up the fingers of both hands to emphasize his story. “The white man gave me lead and powder so I could kill the fat moose, and my squaw and I had plenty of meat till the ducks came north and the ice left the streams so we could catch fish.”
The Indians had understood that the lead and powder had been given the old hunter on the condition that he would not betray the location of the white men’s fur cache. He had not even told them the distance of the cache from Lake Superior, but he had returned within four days and had then taken his squaw with him. “Where is the hunter now?” asked Bruce. “Perhaps he would tell us more, so we might learn if one [[88]]of the white men was my friend, Jack Dutton.”
“He and his squaw have gone to visit a married daughter, who lives on Lake Winnipeg,” Ganawa replied.
“My father,” asked Ray after a brief silence, “do you know the way to Lake Winnipeg? Perhaps we might find the hunter and ask him to tell us more.”
“My son,” Ganawa answered kindly, “I know the way to Lake Winnipeg, but it is so far away that I fear the lakes and streams would be frozen again by the time we returned to this camp.