Slipping and stumbling through the muck and slush, crashing through dripping underbrush, they stood at length before the door of the low-roofed log cabin.
Their knock was answered by a tousled-headed man who stood, lamp in hand, and blinked owlishly at them from the shelter of the doorway.
"You are Vic Chenault?" asked the girl, and, without waiting for his grunted assent, continued: "I am Jeanne Lacombie, and this is M's'u' Bill, The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die."
At the mention of the names the door swung wide and the man smiled a welcome. They entered amid a rabble of sled-dogs and puppies, which rolled about the floor in a seemingly inextricable tangle, with numerous dusky youngsters of various ages and conditions of nudity.
Chenault's Indian wife sat upon the edge of the bunk, a blackened cob-pipe between her teeth, industriously beading a moccasin; and seemed in no wise disturbed by the arrival of visitors, nor by the babel of hubbub that arose from the floor, where dogs and babies howled their protest against the cold draft from the open door and the pools of ice-cold water that drained from the clothing of the strangers.
Chenault pronounced a few guttural syllables, and the stolid squaw reached behind her and, removing a single garment of flaming red calico from a nail, extended it toward Jeanne.
The girl accepted it with thanks, and her eyes roved about the cabin, which, being a one-roomed affair, offered scant privacy. The woman caught the corner of a blanket upon a projecting nail and another corner upon a similar nail in the upright of the bunk, and motioned the girl behind the screen with a short wave of her pipe.
The man offered Bill a pair of faded blue overalls and a much-bepatched shirt of blue flannel, and when Jeanne emerged, clad in the best dress of her hostess, Bill took his turn in the dressing-room.
"Can't be too pedicular in a pinch," he grinned as he wriggled dubiously into the dry garments, and in a few minutes he was seated beside the girl upon a rough bench drawn close to the fire.
Chenault, being a half-breed, was more inclined toward garrulity than his Indian spouse.