[“COME, MAN. COME WIF NEL-TE. MAMMA SAY COME”]
If Phil had been nearly paralyzed with horror to discover, as his eye glanced along the levelled rifle-barrel, that he was aiming at a human being, he was almost equally staggered at hearing the fur-clad atom who called himself Nel-te address him in English. How could it be? Who was he? How came he there, alone in that vast wilderness of trackless forest, ice, and snow? Where had the child spent the night just passed, that had been so filled with terrors to him? How had he lived through it? Where was his mother?
All these questions and more he asked the child as he sat on a log, and, drawing the little one to him, gazed at him as though he were unreal, and might at any moment vanish as mysteriously as he had come.
But the child evidently had neither the time nor the inclination for explanations. He gravely repelled all the lad’s friendly advances, and turned to go away, as though confidently expecting him to follow. As Phil hesitated for a moment he looked back, and in a voice that had a slight tremble, together with a lower lip that quivered just a little, he repeated:
“Come. Mamma say come.”
And Phil, picking up his rifle, followed after the unique little figure like one who is dazed. A happy smile lighted the child’s face at this compliance with his wish, and after that he plodded sturdily onward without turning his head, as though satisfied that his mission was accomplished. After thus going something less than a quarter of a mile, they emerged from the forest, and came to a log-cabin standing on the bank of a small stream.
Though fairly well built, this cabin did not differ in outward appearance from ordinary structures of its kind in that country, save that its single glass window was hung with white curtains. These caught Phil’s eye at once, but ere he had time to speculate concerning them his little guide had reached the door. Slipping off the small snow-shoes, he pushed it open and entered. Phil followed, but had not taken a single step into the interior ere he started back in dismay.
On the floor close beside the threshold lay an Indian—a tall, handsome fellow, but with a terrible gash in his side. From it his life’s blood had evidently drained some time before, for it needed but a glance to show that he was dead.
From this startling sight the lad’s gaze wandered across the room. It caught the white curtains, a few poor attempts at ornamentation of the walls, an empty hearth, on which was no spark of fire, and then rested on a rude bed in one corner, to which the child had just run with a joyful cry.