“Harpooned a moose!” cried Phil and Serge together; for they had by this time discovered the nature of the sailor’s “big deer.” And “Where did you get the harpoon?” asked the former.
“Found it leaning agin a tree while I were out after firewood,” replied Jalap Coombs, at the same time producing and proudly exhibiting a heavy A-yan spear, such as were formerly used by the natives of the Pelly river valley. “It were a trifle rusty, and a trifle light in the butt,” he added, “but it come in mighty handy when it were most needed, and for an old whaler it aren’t a bad sort of a weepon. I’m free to say, though, that I might have had hard luck in tackling the beast with it ef he hadn’t been already wounded. I didn’t know it till after he were dead; but when I come to cut him up, I saw where he’d been bleeding pretty free, and then I found this bullet in his innards. Still, I don’t reckin you’d have called him a mouse, nor yet a rat, if ye’d seed him like I did under full sail, with his horns set wing and wing, showing the spread of a fifty-ton schooner. Ef I hadn’t had the harpoon I’d left him severely alone; but I allowed that a weepon as were good enough for a whale would do for a deer, even ef he were bigger than the run.”
“It’s a rifle-bullet, calibre forty-four,” said Phil, who was examining the bit of lead that Jalap Coombs had taken from his “big deer.” “I wonder if it can be possible that he is the same moose I wounded, and without whose lead I should never have found Cree Jim’s cabin. It seems incredible that he should have come right back to camp to be killed, though I suppose it is possible. Certainly good fortune, or good luck, or whatever else you choose to call it, does seem to be pretty steadily on our side, and without the aid of the fur-seal’s tooth either,” he added, with a sly glance at Serge.
The latter was already hard at work cooking a bountiful supply of the meat so wonderfully provided for them, while Nel-te, who had been left to his own devices for several minutes, had made his way to the “doggies,” and was rolling over and over in the snow with Musky and Luvtuk and big Amook. They were treating him exactly as they would a frolicsome puppy, and their joyous barkings were mingled with his shrill screams of delight in a happy chorus. The little chap could hardly be persuaded to leave his new playmates long enough to eat dinner, and returned to them the moment his appetite was satisfied.
As soon as the meal was finished Phil and Serge slipped away, taking a sledge, to which was lashed a couple of axes, with them. They were going back to bury the parents of the child, who was so happily oblivious of the sad nature of their errand that he did not even take note of their departure.
The lads had no idea of how they should accomplish their sorrowful task. Even with proper tools they knew it would be impossible to dig a grave in the frozen ground, and, as they had only axes with which to work, this plan was dismissed without discussion. They talked of building a tomb of logs, but decided that to make it proof against wild beasts would take more time than they could afford. Serge suggested a scaffold, on which the bodies might be placed, in Indian fashion, while Phil thought that, by taking up the floor of the cabin, they might find earth in which they could dig. He could not bear the thought that one who had been brought up in the ways of civilization, and who had moreover suffered as had poor Ellen McLeod, should have aught save a Christian burial; and when he told Serge the sad story of her life as he had learned it from the missionary at Anvik, the latter agreed with him.
So they had not settled on any plan when they rounded the last bend of the little stream and gained a point from which the cabin should have been visible. Then they saw at a glance that the task they had been dreading had been accomplished without their aid. There was no cabin; but a cloud of smoke rising from its site, as from an altar, gave ample evidence of its fate. A blazing log from the fire Phil left on its hearth must have rolled out on the floor directly after his departure. Now only a heap of ashes and glowing embers remained to mark the site of Nel-te’s home.
“It is best so,” said Phil, as the two lads stood beside the smouldering ruins of what had been a home and was now become a sepulchre. “And oh, Serge! think of what might have been the child’s fate if I had left him behind, as I at first intended. Poor little chap! I realize now, as never before, how completely his past is wiped out, and how entirely his future lies in our hands. It is a trust that came without our seeking, but I accepted it; and now, beside his mother’s ashes, I swear to be true to the promise I gave her.”
“Amen!” said Serge, softly, as though at the conclusion of a prayer, and Phil knew that the little wilderness orphan had found another friend who would be as loyal as himself.
They planted a rude wooden cross, the face of which was chipped to a gleaming whiteness, close in front of the smouldering heap, and near it Serge fastened a streamer of white cloth to the tip of a tall young spruce. Cutting off the limbs as he descended, he left it a slender pole, and thus provided the native symbol of a place of burial.