Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/434

432 Dick had no time for thought until they came in the darkening evening of the short fall day to the Fishing Lakes, raising the Indian camp-fires one by one as they swung round the loops of the river.

"Smell the fish?" said Hensham. "They don't leave things to the imagination any, do they? What say? Oh, well; they do get a few greyling and loche and others. But it's mostly white fish, of course. Jelly"—he turned to the Loucheux behind him—"drive in there where the camp seems biggest. They're sure to have some chiefs among them. And you go right ahead and ask what you want to know, Heriot. Jelly will put you through. And you can trust 'em as far as you can size 'em up. They're decent fellows. Never have any trouble with them. Christians, too. They all carry around Bibles in their own language."

"Do you call that a recommendation," said Dick, amused; and he stepped out, looking round him with all the keen delight of his artist blood.

Through the colourless evening the big camp-fires blazed strongly; shooting their light among the little dingy tepees and the spreading spruces and across the clearing to the lip of the grey low lake. In the clearings stood great scaffoldings of birch poles, gridironed over the top. In dark, half-seen knots by the lake stooped the Indian women, splitting the fish, and running a sharp-pointed stick through the tails, one after the other. Presently a shapeless figure detached itself from the bulk; crossed the bars of light that pricked out for a moment the high-cheeked copper-yellow face and the black stiff hair; crossed to a scaffold, and hung her armful of sticks in a row along the gridiron. Then noiselessly she turned and went back to her work.

The men had done their share when they drew the last nets to land an hour ago. They smoked now, lounging round the fires, and sucking the fish-bones of their supper. Through signs and Jelly's assistance Dick extracted information from several, and then Hensham came back from a heated conversation down by the Lake.

"The women have got to clean up all that before the frost gets into it," he remarked. "It'll be stiff as ramrods