Who the inhabitants of the hut could be we could not surmise. Probably they were weatherbound travellers like ourselves.
“If Sandy and the other men hadn’t been drowned, bedad, I should be afther thinking it was themselves,” observed Pat.
I greatly hoped that our friend Sandy had escaped, and that we should find him occupying the hut. It stood a little way back from the river, on a piece of level ground, surrounded by trees whose branches were now weighed down with the snow. Climbing up the bank, we were approaching the door, when our footsteps must have been heard, for it opened, and the same Indian we had before seen appeared, gun in hand.
On discovering that we were whites, he turned round and uttered a few words, as if addressing some other person within.
“You friends!” he exclaimed; “glad see you.”
“Yes, indeed we are, and very glad to see you,” I answered, advancing and putting out my hand. He took it, and then went through the same ceremony with Robin and Pat.
“Come in; but not make much noise,” he said, looking over his shoulder; “sick man in there—very sick; glad to see you; maybe you do him good.”
“I hope that we may,” I said, as I advanced into the hut, followed by Robin and Pat.
A fire was blazing on the hearth, and with his feet towards it lay a tall man on a low rough bunk covered over with a buffalo-robe. I saw that a number of things were piled up in the corner of the hut, but the scanty furniture was of the roughest description. The whole was comprised in a table formed of a slab of fir and a couple of three-legged stools.
“Who are you, friends?” asked the sick man on the bunk, feebly raising his head to look at us.