Steve watched her, his steady eyes full of profound thought.
"Us helps An-ina, Uncle Steve?" enquired the boy doubtfully.
The man had almost forgotten the mitted hand he was still clasping. Now he looked down into the up-turned, enquiring eyes.
"I don't guess An-ina needs us for awhile," he said. Then, after a pause: "No," he added. "Boy's worked hard—very hard. Maybe we'll go back to the fort. And—Uncle tell boy a story? Eh?"
Steve had no need to wait for the torrent of verbal appreciation that came. The boy's delight at the prospect was instant. So they forthwith abandoned the snow-drifts for the warm interior of the store.
Their furs removed, Steve settled himself on the bench which stood before the stove. The room was shadowed by the twilight outside, but he did not light a lamp. There was oil enough for their needs in the stores, but eventualities had to be considered, and rigid economy in all things was necessary.
The picture was complete. The dimly lit store, with its traffic counter deserted, and its shelves sadly depleted of trade. The staunch, plastered and lime-washed walls, which revealed the stress of climate in the gaping cracks that were by no means infrequent. The hard-beaten earth floor swept clean. The glowing stove that knew no attention from the cleaner's brush. Then the two figures on the rough bench, which was worn and polished by long years of use.
The completion of the picture, however, lay in the personalities for which the rest was only a setting. Steve, in his buckskin shirt and moleskin trousers, which divested him of the last sign of his relationship to the force which administered the white man's law. His young face so set and weather-tanned, so full of decision and strength, and his eyes, far gazing, like those of the men of the deep seas. And the boy upon his knee, his little hands clasping each other in his lap. With his curling, fair hair, and his wide, questioning eyes gazing up into the man's face. With his small body clad from head to foot in the beaded buckskin, which it was his nurse's joy to fashion for him. There was a wonderfully intimate touch in it all. It was a touch that powerfully illustrated the lives of those who are far removed from the luxury of civilization, and who depend for every comfort, even for their very existence, upon those personal physical efforts, the failure of which, at any moment, must mean final and complete disaster.
"Tell boy of bears, an' wolves, an' Injuns, an' debble-men, wot An-ina hers scairt of."
The demand was prompt and decided.