"Don't want to leave me, little man?" Grey asked, while his heart thrilled with a new-found joy at the child's confiding action.
"Ya, me tay," whimpered the boy. "You carry baby."
"All right, dear, you shall stay with me as long as I have any strength left," and he motioned the Indian to advance.
Silently they threaded their way through the chilly night, Grey using every exertion to keep up with his dusky guide. Donnie was a considerable weight to him in his weakened condition. Once he felt he should be forced to relinquish his burden to the Indian, no matter how badly the child might feel. But the pressure of that little body and the hand laid so trustingly against his shoulder nerved him to greater action, and painfully he stumbled forward. After what seemed to Grey to be an interminable distance, although in reality it was not far, a bright light suddenly pierced the darkness. It came from a camp fire directly ahead, around which he observed someone moving. In another minute the place was reached, and gladly he laid the child down in front of the cheerful blaze.
It was only a temporary brush camp erected there in the wilderness, but to Grey no place had ever seemed half so welcome. Seated on a blanket spread over some fir boughs was an Indian woman with hair, jet black and straight, falling over not unshapely shoulders. Nearby stood a girl of fifteen years, whose eyes sparkled with curiosity as she turned them upon the stranger and the little form at his feet. One glance at the sympathetic faces before him told Grey that he was in the midst of friends. A few brief words in the rhythmical native tongue passed between the Indian man and woman, and immediately the rude camp was converted into a hive of industry. The child was stripped of his wet clothes, his cold body thoroughly rubbed and then enwrapped in a soft grey blanket which the girl had brought forth from a mysterious corner of the camp.
Donnie had no fear of the woman, but sat contentedly on her lap, alternately watching the blazing fire and the animated face of the young maiden kneeling by his side. Then, after he had taken some of the savoury ptarmigan soup which the girl had dipped from a kettle near the fire, he laid his tired little head against the Indian woman and was soon fast asleep.
All this Grey noted with much satisfaction as he lay close to the fire trying to dry his own wet garments. How his heart warmed toward these dusky waifs as he watched their care of the child. He saw the little head droop, the eyes close, and observed how gently the Indian woman laid him down upon the brush bed, and tenderly placed over him a thick warm blanket. The thoughtfulness and dignity of these people surprised him. Formerly he had very little use for the natives, and considered them with a certain degree of pity, mingled with contempt. Most of the Indians he had seen in this northern land were weak, inferior creatures, fond of hanging about towns and mining camps, and trying to imitate the ways of the whites. But these were different, and he fell asleep there on the hard ground wondering if all the Indians in the Hishu region were of this same superior class.
A cry fell upon his ears, and he awoke with a start. He sat quickly up, and looked around in a dazed manner. He glanced toward Donnie, and instantly realised the nature of the trouble. The icy water had done its work, and he saw the poor little form racked with a terrible cough. The Indian woman had the boy on her lap, and was rubbing his chest with oil which was warming near the fire. But still the child cried, stopping only as the painful, wheezing cough swept upon him.