Wilfred was fairly frightened now. "Oh, if he had to give his Yula chummie back to some horrid stranger!" He thought it would be the last straw which brings the breakdown to boy as well as camel. But he consoled himself at their journey's end. Bowkett would interfere on his behalf. Mathurin's assertion was not true, by the twinkle in his eye and the laugh to his companions. Louison must have told his cousin that Yula was a stray, or they would never have guessed it. True or false, the danger of losing his dog was a real one. They meant to take it from him. One thing Wilfred had the sense to see, getting in a passion was of no good anyway. "Frederick the Great lost his battle when he lost his temper," he thought. "Keep mine for Yula's sake I will."
But the work was harder than he expected, although the time was shorter. The hardy broncos of the hunters were as untiring as their masters. Ten, twenty, thirty miles were got over without a sign of weariness from any one but Wilfred and Kusky. If they were dead beat, what did it matter? The dog was lashed along, and Wilfred was teased, to keep him from falling asleep.
"One more push," said the hunters, "and instead of sleeping with our feet to a camp-fire, and our beards freezing to the blankets, we shall be footing it to Bowkett's fiddle."
The moon had risen clear and bright above the sleeping clouds still darkening the horizon. A silent planet burned lamp-like in the western sky. Forest and prairie, ridges and lowland, were sparkling in the sheen of the moonlight and the snow.
Wilfred roused himself. The tinkle of the dog-bells was growing fainter and fainter, as Mathurin galloped into the midst of a score or so of huts promiscuously crowded together, while many a high-piled meat-stage gave promise of a winter's plenty. Huge bones and horns, the remnants of yesterday's feast, were everywhere strewing the ground, and changing its snowy carpet to a dingy drab. There were wolf-skins spread over framework. There were buffalo-skins to be smoked, and buffalo-robes—as they are called when the hair is left on—stretched out to dry. Men and horses, dogs and boys, women drawing water or carrying wood, jostled each other. There was a glow of firelight from many a parchment window, and here and there the sound of a fiddle, scraped by some rough hunter's hand, and the quick thud of the jovial hunter's heel upon the earthen floor.
It resembled nothing in the old world so much as an Irish fair, with its shouts of laughter and snatches of song, and that sense of inextricable confusion, heightened by the all too frequent fight in a most inconvenient corner. The rule of contrary found a notable example in the name bestowed upon this charming locality. A French missionary had once resided on the spot, so it was still called La Mission.
Mathurin drew up before one of the biggest of the huts, where the sounds of mirth were loudest, and the light streamed brightest on the bank of snow beside the door.
"Here we are!" he exclaimed, swinging Wilfred from the saddle to the threshold.
CHAPTER XII.
MAXICA'S WARNING.