They were seated at supper, and Gaspard was in the middle of a story of his vainglorious past to which only Mick Otter was paying any attention, when the latch of the front door lifted, the door opened slowly and a figure muffled in blankets stepped noiselessly into the room. Gaspard, who sat facing the door, ceased articulating suddenly and stared with open mouth. Catherine and Tom glanced over their shoulders and Mick Otter got to his feet and hurried to the visitor.
“Got sick pappoose here,” said the muffled figure, closing the door with a heel and leaning weakly against it; and before Mick could get a grip on it, it sagged slowly to the floor.
In his attempt at succor, Mick pulled a fold of the blanket aside, thus disclosing the haggard face of a young squaw. The blanket fell lower and a ragged bundle clutched tight in thin arms came to view; and at that moment a faint, shrill wail of complaint arose from the bundle. This brought Catherine flying and lifted Gaspard and Tom out of their chairs and stunned Mick Otter to immobility. The girl took the bundle swiftly but tenderly from the relaxing arms even as the squaw closed her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later both the mother and pappoose were in Gaspard’s wide and comfortable bed, more or less undressed. A nip of strong coffee, then a nip of brandy, had been successfully administered to the squaw and a little warm milk had been spoon-fed to the baby; and all this, except the carrying, had been accomplished by Catherine. Gaspard and Mick Otter were of no use at all, though Mick was eager to get busy asking questions. Tom warmed milk very well and filled two bottles with hot water which were placed at the foot of the bed.
The pappoose wailed with a thin and plaintive voice for an hour, then took a little more nourishment and fell asleep. The mother drank a bowl of warm milk and slept like a log. It was close upon midnight when Gaspard’s fur robes and blankets were laid on the floor of the big room, between the robes and blankets of Mick’s and Tom’s humble and mobile pallets.
Mick Otter questioned the young squaw industriously next day, but acquired very little information. Her answers were suspiciously vague. She did not seem to know how far she had come, or where from, or why. She said again and again, in answer to every question, that the baby was sick and needed a doctor; but the baby, full-fed now, seemed to be in the pink of condition. Hunger and fatigue seemed to be the only thing the matter with either of them. In three days they were both as right as rain, beyond a doubt; and still the young woman would not say where she had come from or why she had left home and seemed to entertain no idea whatever of where she was bound for.
Mick Otter, anxious and thoroughly exasperated, took the case firmly in his own hands at the end of a week. He made a snug apartment in one of the barns, established a rusty old stove in it and, deaf to Cathie’s protests, moved the visitors out of Gaspard’s room. The weather was mild by this time. The barn-chamber was very comfortable. Mick made a fire in the stove every morning and saw that every spark was dead before bed-time. He carried all the squaw’s food and the baby’s milk to the barn, forbade the others visiting the strangers and refused the mysterious squaw admittance to the house. He was hard as flint in the matter. One day he lost his temper with Catherine, who threatened to have the mother and baby back in the house in spite of his cruel whims.
“You know her, an’ why she come here?” he cried. “Nope, you don’t know. You know why she run away?—what she run away from? Nope nor me neither. When we know, then you call Mick Otter one darn fool all you want to,—maybe. What Mick Otter think,—what he see before two-three time—that squaw run away from big sickness maybe with her pappoose. So you keep ’way—an’ shut up!”
Tom and Gaspard were far too busy to worry much about Mick Otter’s peculiar treatment of the strangers. They had cleared the threshing-floor of the largest barn and turned it into a work-shop; and there, in a week, they had straightened and mended the buckled plane of Tom’s old bus.