The next minute they entered the house, and Harding, lurching forward across the floor of a large room, clutched at a table and then fell with a crash into a chair. After the extreme cold outside, the air was suffocatingly hot. Overcome by the change and pain, Harding leaned back with flushed face and half-closed eyes, while his companions stood still, with the snow glistening on their ragged furs.
The man shut the door before he turned to them.
"A rough night," he said calmly. "Ye might as weel sit down. Where do ye hail from?"
Blake laughed as he found a seat. He imagined that their appearance must have been somewhat startling, but he knew it takes a good deal to disturb the equanimity of a Hudson Bay Scot.
"From Sweetwater; but we have been up in the timber belt since winter set in. Now we have run out of provisions and my partner's lamed by snowshoe trouble."
"Ay," said the man; "I suspected something o' the kind. But maybe ye'll be wanting supper?"
"I believe, if we were put to it, we could eat half a caribou," Benson told him with a grin.
"It's no to be had," the Scot answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "I can give ye a good thick bannock and some whitefish. Our stores are no so plentiful the now."
They took off their furs and glanced about the place while their host was busy at the stove. The room was large, and its walls of narrow logs were chinked with clay and moss. Guns and steel traps hung upon them; the floor was made of uneven boards which had obviously been split in the nearest bluff; and the furniture was of the simplest and rudest description. The room had, however, an air of supreme comfort to the famishing newcomers, and after the first few minutes they found it delightfully warm. They ate ravenously the food given them, and afterward the agent brought Harding some warm water and examined his leg.
"Ye'll no walk far for a while, I'm thinking," he commented. "Rest it on the chair here and sit ye still."