The air was bitterly cold. Another
voice, almost as fitful as the sough of the wind, sounded across the
night. It was the waters of Stone Arrow Falls, above Big Rattle.
The frosts had drawn their bonds of ice and blankets of silencing snow
over all the rest of the stream, but the white and black face of the
falls still flashed from a window in the great house of crystal, and
threw out a voice of desolation.
Sacobie Bear, a full-blooded Micmac, uttered a grunt of relief when his
ears caught the bellow of Stone Arrow Falls. He stood still, and turned
his head from side to side, questioningly.
"Good!" he said. "Big Rattle off there, Archer's camp over there. I go
there. Good 'nough!"
He hitched his old smooth-bore rifle higher under his arm and continued
his journey. Sacobie had tramped many miles--all the way from
ice-imprisoned Fox Harbor. His papoose was sick. His squaw was hungry.
Sacobie's belt was drawn tight.
During all that weary journey his old rifle had not banged once,
although few eyes save those of timberwolf and lynx were sharper in the
hunt than Sacobie's. The Indian was reeling with hunger and weakness,
but he held bravely on.
A white man, no matter how courageous and sinewy, would have been prone
in the snow by that time.
But Sacobie, with his head down and his round snowshoes padding!
padding! like the feet of a frightened duck, raced with death toward
the haven of Archer's cabin.
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