“Might as well eat,” he said in a loudish, clear voice. Clement said nothing. It did not matter so much that Gatineau’s voice would carry across the water to the shack, but his own voice was known.
Gatineau began munching and surveying the lake. Suddenly he cried, “Say,” and his arm went out, indicating the shack. Clement, his hat well down over his eyes, his chin crouched in his shoulder, looked towards the shack. He said something. Gatineau answered clearly. “No, it ain’t deserted. Why, there’s smoke coming out of the stack. We sure can get some coffee there, or some hot water for our’n.”
He said this loudly, giving warning. If Neuburg and Siwash were in the shack, they had time to get out of it, to run to the bush and hide. Undoubtedly they would not want to be seen.
As they came close in under the shack, the woman appeared on the porch. She was a tall, wiry woman, as lithe-strung as a cat. She had the fierce, sharp, haggard air of a woman who had been wrenched from the more hectic pleasures of cities to stagnate in the wilds. She stood in the break of the door looking down on them, her eyes bright, her face pale, her hand gripping the doorjamb violently to help her master her emotions. Gatineau called, “Hello, mother; who’d a thought of seeing a white woman here?”
“Hello,” she said in a dry voice. “Fishin’? Had luck?” Her tone repelled advances.
“Poor,” said Gatineau. “Say—we was thinkin’—I mean seein’ you had a fire, we thought as you’d allow us to boil a drop o’ water fer cawfee.”
The woman’s tongue went over her dry lips. “Better not come here,” she said in a gasp. “There’s a sick man in this shack.”
“Say—out here—pore feller.”
“Infectious,” cried the woman, catching too much kindliness in Gatineau’s tone. “Turrible infectious.”
“Still a drop of hot water fer cawfee,” said Gatineau. “We don’t want to butt in on your trouble, mother. But we’d be mortal obliged if you could give us a drop of hot water fer our cawfee.”