“It was not starvation and not cold,” the half-breed boy replied gravely. “He was hurt, sore hurt.” The lad cast a swift glance about him, at the still and silent woods shadowy with approaching night. Then he leaned towards Hugh and spoke so low the latter could scarcely catch the words. “Our father was sore hurt, but not in the wreck. How he ever lived to reach us I know not. The wound was in his side.”
“But how came he by a wound?” Hugh whispered, unconsciously imitating the other’s cautious manner.
Blaise shook his black head solemnly. “I know not how, but not in the storm or the wreck. The wound was a knife wound.”
“What?” cried Hugh, forgetting caution in his surprise. “Had he enemies who attacked him? Did someone murder him?”
Again Blaise shook his head. “It might have been in fair fight. Our father was ever quick with word and deed. The bull moose himself is not braver. Yet I think the blow was not a fair one. I think it was struck from behind. The knife entered here.” Blaise placed his hand on a spot a little to the left of the back-bone.
“A blow from behind it must have been. Could it have been his companion who struck him?”
“Black Thunder? No, for then Black Thunder would have carried away the furs. Our father would not have told us to go get them.”
“True,” Hugh replied, but after a moment of thought he added, “Yet the fellow may have attacked him, and father, though mortally wounded, may have slain him.”
A quick, fierce gleam shone in the younger boy’s bright eyes. “If he who struck was not killed by our father’s hand,” he said in a low, tense voice, “you and I are left to avenge our father.” It was plain that Christian schooling in Quebec had not rooted out from Little Caribou’s nature the savage’s craving for revenge. To tell the truth, at the thought of that cowardly blow, Hugh’s own feelings were nearly as fierce as those of his half-Indian brother.