“All right. Well, they can have this cowardly sneak if they want him. I’m sure I don’t.”
A little later, escorted by one of the headmen of the village, Dick and Toma arrived at the tepee of the chief. On hands and knees, they crawled through the aperture, over which hung a wide strip of tanned moose-hide, soft as chamois. Bear-skins covered the earth floor within, except in the center space, where a wood fire burned cheerfully. It was warm inside the tepee and clean and tidy. A faint odor of wood smoke mingled with the more pungent and appetizing smell of broiling meat.
Dick’s first impression was that it was pleasant to be there in so warm and comfortable a place; his next, a condition accentuated, no doubt, by the boiling kettle, was a feeling of hunger and weariness. Presently curiosity induced him to examine the interior more closely. Looking about, he perceived several persons of both sexes. One was the white-haired chief, who had interviewed Toma. Behind the chief, at a respectful distance, an aged squaw—probably the chief’s wife, and beyond her an individual of such unusual appearance that Dick’s eyes, resting upon him, remained there as if transfixed.
The man was emaciated, worn almost to a skeleton. From the depths of sunken sockets, burned two feverish eyes. A heavy beard-growth covered, but did not conceal, the deep hollows under the protruding cheek bones.
Dick continued to look at the man for several minutes, conscious of a steadily increasing horror. The person’s forehead was ghastly white, curving up to a matted crop of straw-colored hair. Around the drooping shoulders a blanket was held in place with considerable difficulty by a thin, wasted hand.
Dick was about to turn his gaze toward something less pathetic and terrible, when the effort of holding the blanket in place, proved too much for the unfortunate creature, and it slipped down over one thin shoulder, revealing—to Dick’s unutterable amazement—a crimson, tattered garment, the tunic of the royal mounted police.
Reaching out, Dick seized Toma’s arm, holding it in a vice-like grip.
“May God help him! Is that Rand?”
“Yes,” said Toma, his voice seeming to come from a great distance, “it Corporal Rand. All time, before I come here, I knew that. The chief him tell me all about it. Indian hunter find ’em Corporal Rand two days ago, where he lay down in the snow. Half dead, feet froze, no eat, no rifle—nothing. He get much better after while. Bye-’n’-bye mebbe all right. Get his sense back. Jus’ like crazy man now.”
Dick gulped down a lump in his throat, and hurried to the side of the mounted policeman. Gently, he placed one hand on the corporal’s head.