“What is it going to be?” asked the old hunter, looking at the lad, with a scared look, as if he dreaded to reply.
“I have no more idea of its nature than have you, but I know it’s coming, for all that. And then too,” he added, with more animation, “by my trying so much to think of the past. I have succeeded at last.”
“What!” exclaimed the astonished hunter, moving away from the table, “what can you call to mind?”
“I remember when you found me. I was lying asleep upon some furs in an Indian lodge, when I opened my eyes, and saw a man dressed in a hunter’s dress, leaning over me. I remember that I was so frightened that I cried, and you took me up in your arms to quiet me, and you carried me away with you.”
“That’s it exactly,” replied the hunter; “and the qu’arest thing about that business was that when I come to that lodge, standing by itself, there wasn’t a red-skin to be seen anywhar near. I walked in, picked you up, and walked away ag’in, and never cotched so much as a glimpse of a copper-skin. I went back arter a month or so to see if I could l’arn any thing, and found the lodge burned to the ground.”
“How far was that from here?”
“Hundreds of miles up along the Saskatchewan, on the trapping-grounds of the Hudson Bay Company. You see arter I got hold of you, I took such a fancy to you that I was afeard some of the red-skins would make a hunt fur you, so I emigrated, and come down into Oregon. Arter I got here, I felt troubled thinking maybe your parents or friends might be up in them parts. So I left you with some friends at Fort Abercrombie, and went up there to find out.”
“And learned nothing?”
“Nothing at all; I spent a month in trampin’ over the grounds. You know that part of the country isn’t very thick with white folks, and such as they be are hunters or trappers. I went to the forts, and every place, where I could find any of ’em, but never a word did I l’arn. When I fotched you away, I see’d that little rifle of yours hung up over your head, and knowin’ as it was meant for you, I fotched that too. I expected to l’arn something from that, ’cause you know thar ar’ two letters carved onto the stock—the letters ‘H. R.’, and I s’posed by that means I’d git some track of the owner—but it wa’n’t any use, and I give it up at last. But what I want to ask my pet, is whether you can’t call up any thing afore I come into the Injin lodge and took you away?”
“You know how hard I’ve tried, and once or twice, it seems to me that I have succeeded. It is a dim picture of riding over a deep broad river, with a good many people in the boat, and it seems to me that some of them were of my own color, and I think, though you know that it is all guesswork, that my father and mother were among them; but the picture is so dim and faint that when I try to fix it in my mind it slips away again, and all is dark.”