She held up a knife which she had found half buried near the fire.
“It is not a common scalping-knife,” said the other woman. “It is the knife of a settler.”
The weapon in question was one of the large sheath-knives which many of the recently arrived settlers had brought with them from their native land. Most of these differed a little in size and form from each other, but all of them were very different from the ordinary scalping-knives supplied by the fur-traders to the half-breeds and Indians.
“I see no name on it—no mark,” said the woman who found it, after a critical inspection. Her companion examined it with equal care and similar result.
The two women had at first intended to encamp at this spot, but now they determined to push forward to the Settlement as fast as their exhausted condition permitted, carrying the knife, with the coat and gun of the murdered man, along with them.
Chapter Five.
Saved.
Duncan McKay senior was dreaming of, and gloating over, the flesh-pots of Red River, and his amiable daughter was rambling over the green carpet of the summer prairies, when the sun arose and shone upon the bushes which surrounded their winter camp—Starvation Camp, as the old man had styled it.