The snow which Catherine had predicted began to circle down just as Tom reached his camp on Pappoose Lake. He placed his pack in the lean-to, fed the fire, and then went out and brought in his three traps. One had a mink. Returning to the camp he made all his possessions—including the tarpaulin and the dead mink—into two formidable packs. He shouldered one of these and started for Racquet Pond.
It was close upon seven o’clock in the morning, and snow was still falling, when Tom reached the camp on Racquet Pond. He found Mick Otter up and breakfasting by the light of the fire in the middle of his floor. He explained the situation without loss of time, in the fewest possible words.
“Got you,” said the old Maliseet, gulping the last of his mug of tea as he rose to his feet. “I go. You eat breakfas’, then fetch in two trap by brook, then pack. Git other five trap sometime maybe. Don’t matter now.”
Tom breakfasted and lit his pipe. He brought in the two nearest traps, which were empty. The snow continued to circle down through the windless air. The morning came on grayly, without a gleam of sunshine. He made another pack of everything that he could find about the camp—pelts dried and fresh, provisions and blankets and the two traps—and wondered what was to be done with all this luggage.
It was ten o’clock when Mick Otter appeared, staggering. He dropped his load, shook and beat the clinging snow from his head and shoulders and sat down with a grunt in the doorway of the shack.
“You make darn bad pack,” he said.
He pulled the mitten from his right hand, produced a short clay pipe from somewhere about his person and passed it over his shoulder, without turning his head.
“You fill a pipe,” he said. “You got dry ’baccy, what?”
He was a generous man, but he always made a point of cadging tobacco.
Tom, who stood behind him, took the pipe, filled it and returned it, then lit a splinter of wood at the fire and held the flame to the bowl. Mick puffed strongly.