“Hist! A redskin alone, and asleep! Well, I never did ’xpect to see that.”
“Mayhap, he’s a decoy-duck,” suggested Walter. “Better look sharp out.”
Robin and Roy heeded not the caution. They at once went forward, and the father lifted the blanket from the Indian’s head.
“Dead!” exclaimed Roy, in a solemn tone.
“Not yet, lad! but I do b’lieve the poor critter’s a’most gone wi’ starvation. Come, bestir you, boys—rouse up the fire, and boil the kettle.”
Walter and Roy did not require a second bidding. The kettle was ere long singing on a blazing fire. The Indian’s limbs were chafed and warmed; a can of hot tea was administered, and Wapaw soon revived sufficiently to look up and thank his deliverers.
“Now, as good luck has it, I chanced to leave my hand-sled at the Wolf’s Glen. Go, fetch it, Roy,” said Robin.
The lad set off at once, and, as the glen was not far distant, soon returned with a flat wooden sledge, six feet long by eighteen inches broad, on which trappers are wont to pack their game in winter. On this sledge Wapaw was firmly tied, and dragged by the hunters to Fort Enterprise.
“Hast got a deer, father?” cried little Nelly, as she bounded in advance of her mother to meet the returning party.
“No, Nelly—’tis dearer game than that.”