CHAPTER IV
KOOTENAY

I

When Fatbald Tschirikov would take his seat before the fireplace his glance went first backward and downward, fear seemed to flatten his large ears against his head, and he lowered his hands to the chair-arms, testing in doubt the strength of the birchen frame. Next would his eyeballs roll, and his mouth gape in readiness for a screech while he lowered himself, fearful even unto anguish, into the vast rawhide seat; a very hammock, but liable to split. A smirk succeeded, the signal for applause from his four Indian wives, then a wriggle or two adjusted him for the day. No. 1 wife cast the bison robe to cover him. No. 2 served the soup wherewith he greased himself most amply, slopping his way through the mess. No. 3 loaded his meerschaum pipe. No. 4 stood by to run for the help of the tribe if aught went wrong. Afterwards he would remark that the four of them were canaille, and might attend their own several funerals for all he cared. At this token of his gratitude they crept away on tiptoe into the lean-to kitchen.

The clay fireplace in front of him was full of logs set upright and aflame as though an ox were to roast. The cabin walls were of cottonwood trunks notched at the ends and dovetailed where they crossed, the chinks between them being filled with blocks of wood, moss, and a daub of mud. No air got in or out save when some malefactor, a wife perchance, opened the front door. Then Fatbald screamed reproaches in Russian, Samoyed, French, Blackfoot, Kutenais, and general profanity mixed, hot, crescendo, and culminating in a volley of good round English damns, fortissimo.

Outside it might be twenty to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit in a world of dazzling sunshine and glittering snowdrift. Northward from the front door extended the frozen levels of Kootenay Lake some ninety miles, walled by austere forest, and still, white dreaming Alps. And yonder, fifty miles or so from the trading post, was a little headland jutting from the right. As far back as 1825—some fifteen years ago—the Hudson's Bay voyageurs, making a night camp, where now is the Bluebell mine, had been astonished by a flow of molten metal from under their cooking fire. The stuff was lead, the first discovery of mineral in all the regions west of the Mississippi, and the Hudson's Bay Company was quick to seize advantage from the find. They built a small stone smelter with a pyramid of roof, still standing when I saw the place in 1889, but gone when I returned in 1913. There they were wont to make bullets for use in the Indian trade. They were good bullets, hard, part silver as it happened, but nobody knew that. The Hydahs of Queen Charlotte Islands once made and used gold bullets, rather too soft, they said, but better than none at all.

In his mind old Tschirikov was rather concerned about the lead mine yonder, a long day's march to the north. Storm—these three years past his dear adopted son—was there, with a bullet mold found in the bos'n's locker aboard the Beaver, making some bullets for the Kutenais. A weary while away, weary weeks. The old man had made up his mind to live until Storm came home, rather than trust his funeral to a pack of useless wives.

He spoke many languages, and the blend was thickened into a husky wheeze. Nobody on earth excepting Storm knew what he talked about. The American trapper who squatted in a corner of the room, lacing the web of a snowshoe, heard Fatbald muttering feebly through the soup, something which ended

"—dobra fils delate Klahowya mik, eh, hombre?"

In Russian, French, Chinook and Eskimo, English and Spanish, this, being interpreted, meant: "I fear that my good son has gone to heaven, eh, man?"

"Fine day, sure," responded the trapper indulgently, "and a right smart snap of cold."