Le Brun, a brave fellow, laughed at the notion.
Just as Mr Harvey was about to set out, old Sass and Greensnake appeared mounted at the gate.
“I’ll go with you, friend,” he said, addressing the clergyman. “Though I’ve not had much to do with parsons in my day, I want to have a talk with you, and maybe if those villains, the Blackfeet, try to give you any trouble, I may be of as much use as those six men you are taking with muskets and pistols.”
Before finally starting, the old man bade adieu to Captain Mackintosh and his family, as also to Loraine.
He gazed in Sybil’s face as he took her hand. “I have not prayed for many a day, but if God will hear the prayers of such an outcast as I am, I will ask Him to bless you and make you happy with the noble young Englishman to whom you have given your heart. It is my belief that he will prove true and faithful.”
He spoke in a similar strain to Loraine; and turning, with an evident effort, to where Greensnake was holding his horse, mounted, and joined Mr Harvey, who had already left the fort.
Chapter Eight.
Life in a fort in the Far West is not as monotonous as may be supposed. There is a variety of work to be done. The hunters are employed in procuring buffalo, deer, and other game for provisions during the many winter months. The meat has to be preserved in summer by being converted into pemmican, and in winter by being placed in deep pits, with floors of ice between each intervening layer of meat, and then covered up with snow. When the fort is in the neighbourhood of a lake or river, fish have to be caught and preserved. This is done by salting them in summer, and freezing them as soon as the cold becomes intense enough. Numerous horses have to be attended to, and dogs trained for dragging the sleighs when the snow covers the ground, the only mode then possible of travelling. Sleighs, carts, snow-shoes, and harness of all sorts, have to be manufactured, and moccasins and winter clothing prepared. In the neighbourhood of some forts gardens containing vegetables, and fields of maize, wheat, and oats have to be attended to. In others boats and canoes are built, while at all the gunsmith has constant work in repairing damaged fire-arms.