Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/71

Rh dogs barked and howled, and now and then the boy caught scraps of hoarse guttural, as blanketed forms moved in and out among the fires.

Connie had seen Indian villages before—had eaten and slept in them, but some way, this camp seemed different. An indefinable something, like an all-pervading spirit of doom, seemed to hover over the village and include the entire valley in its miasmal embrace. Even the mute figures of the squaws humped about the fires spoke absolute dejection and helpless apathy toward the inevitable. Unconsciously Connie shuddered, and little tickley chills crawled up and down his spine. As if to add to the depression and intensify the portent of evil, a weird wraith-like fog, grey and chill and clammy, crept up the valley and settled upon the village of tepees. Again Connie shuddered and drew closer, as the humped figures blurred beside the fires where the flames burned a sickly yellow and glowed weak and hazy through the chill fog-mist.

Suddenly the incessant pom, pom, pom of the drum was stilled, a fire larger than the rest glowed out, and blanketed forms in groups, and twos, and threes emerged from tepees and moved silently