"We'll find him at Sebompa's, I expect," he said, and they rode on; taking the narrow twisting trails through the white woods with accurate knowledge of their intricacies; hearing Indian talk that carried far through the silence, and seeing, all about, the winking lights of the fires outside the shacks and tepees. In a trail they passed an old Indian, bent double, and stumbling over the snow by help of a stick. His tall son strode beside him, dragging a hand-sled, and both greeted the Policemen with the frankness of men who know their friends. Tempest halted, speaking in his broken Cree-French.
"Is Tommy Joseph hunting this season, Selok?" he asked, and the old man groaned, swaying his shaggy head until the white hair covered his face.
The son looked his disapproval. Tommy Joseph was own brother to him, but that was no reason why his father should show emotion.
"Him seeck away to Chipewyan," he said. "Go die soon, me t'ink."
"What made him sick?" asked Tempest, and the old man groaned again.
"Him chase Job Kesikaw in canoe. Git in brulé upset. Too col'. Seek in 'tomach. Goo'bye."
"Where is Job Kesikaw?" asked Dick idly.
"No can tell. Some place roun' 'bout." The young man spread his hands to the universe. "No talk wit' heem."
Lights grew closer as they followed that winding trail. In all that great Reserve, where each of the wild men can live his own wild life unmolested if he so desire, there were some who desired the contact of their fellows; making a scattered village, built without method or meaning of any sort, along the throat of a coulée where little running streams gave water in the summer and the high walls made a natural corral for the horses. Out of the dark, away from the distant blinking lights that spelt homes, Dick and Tempest rode up the coulée where the knots of shacks and tepees thickened; where the half-savage dogs swarmed noisily around them, and the camp-fires were big and lurid, shooting tongues of flame against the sky.
Men were here in numbers; smoking lazily about the
