Chapter XXI: The Burned Cabin

Before sunrise Louis was stirring and woke the others. When Walter tried to move, he found his ankles and calves so stiff and sore that he wondered if he could possibly go on with the march. Of course he must go on. Louis and Neil seemed as spry as ever. He would not hold them back. Pride helped him to set his teeth and bear the pain of getting to his feet and moving about. His first few minutes of snowshoeing were agony. As he went on, some of the stiffness wore off, but sharp darts of pain stabbed foot, ankle, or leg at every step. Doggedly he trudged behind the toboggan, thankful that trail breaking through the deep snow prevented speed.

Keeping to open, level ground at the foot of the hills, Louis watched for familiar landmarks. The day was clear and cold. Going north and northwest, the party traveled against the piercing wind. The boys walked with heads lowered. The dogs, every now and then, veered to one side or stopped and turned about in their traces. Most drivers would have beaten and abused the poor beasts for such behavior, but Louis was not without sympathy for them. He himself had to turn his back to the wind occasionally. With a fellow feeling for the dogs, he encouraged rather than drove them. Askimé did his best, and the others were usually ready to follow him.

What he had seen so far of the Pembina Mountains was a disappointment to Walter. He could not understand why anyone should dignify mere low ridges and irregular, rolling hills with the name of mountains. Nevertheless, after weeks of open prairie, the rolling, partly wooded land looked good to him. He felt more at home in broken country.

The wind-driven surface snow obscured the distance, so that landmarks were difficult to recognize. In a momentary lull, a line of woods, winding out across the plain, was revealed. Louis paused in his trail breaking, and turned to call to his comrades.

“There is the river again,” he cried. “We came too far to the south, as I thought.”

“Is the cabin on the river bank?” asked Walter, hoping that the long tramp was almost over.

“No, it is in the hills about a mile beyond,” was the rather discouraging reply.

Walter’s heart sank. He had been wondering at every step how long he could go on. Could he keep going to that line of trees and then on for another mile or more? He must of course, no matter how much it hurt.

Louis, sure of the way now, led to and across the river, then turned to the northwest into the broken, hilly country. There they were less exposed to the sweep of the wind, but in other ways the going was harder. It seemed to Walter that they must have gone at least three miles beyond the river, when he heard Louis, who had rounded a clump of leafless trees, give a cry of dismay. Following their leader, Walter and Neil entered a snug, tree-protected hollow, backed by a steep, sandy slope. And all three stood staring at a roofless, blackened ruin.

Louis was the first to recover himself. “This is bad, yes, but the walls still stand, and the chimney has not fallen.”

“We can rig up some sort of a roof,” Neil responded. “It will be better than camping in the open.”

Walter said nothing. He had expected to find a cabin all ready for occupancy, where they could make themselves comfortable at once. Cold and suffering sharply with the pain in his feet and legs, his bitter disappointment quite overwhelmed his courage.

“Someone has camped here since the blizzard. There are raquette and sled and dog tracks, but it is strange,”—Louis, turning towards Walter, forgot what he intended to say, seized a handful of snow, made a lunge at his friend, and clapped the snow on his face. “Your cheek is frozen. It is all white. Rub it,—not so hard, you will take the skin off. Let me do it. Neil, cut some wood, dry branches. We will make a fire the first thing we do, even if we have no roof over our heads.”

Neil took the ax from the sled, and started to obey Louis’ order, while the latter skilfully rubbed and slapped Walter’s stiff, white cheek, until it began to tingle.

The log walls of the old cabin were intact. The door, of heavy, ax-hewn planks, was only charred. It stood ajar, and Louis pulled it wide open and went in, Walter following. There was no snow within, but the hard earth floor was strewn with the fallen remains of the roof. Had there been a plank floor to catch fire, the inside of the house would certainly have been burned out, and the walls would probably have gone too. As it was, the logs were merely blackened, the top ones charred a little. Two bed frames, a stool made of unbarked sticks, and the stone and clay fireplace and chimney were unharmed.

“We will make a fire, warm ourselves and unload the _tabagane_. Then we must build a new roof.”

Louis was not satisfied with the appearance of Walter’s frozen cheek. As soon as the fire was kindled, he melted some snow, removed the warm water from the blaze and added more snow until it was like ice water. He bade Walter bathe his cheek with the cold water and keep on bathing it until the frost was drawn out. Noticing the stiffness of his friend’s movements and the signs of suffering in his face, Louis guessed his other trouble.

“You have a pain in the legs?” he inquired. “It is the _mal de raquette_. Everyone not used to snowshoeing has it if he travels long. It is very painful. Take off your moccasins. Warm your feet and legs and rub them. That will help.”

Walter was glad to obey. He expected to do his share in unloading the sled and roofing the cabin, but when Louis saw how inflamed and swollen the Swiss boy’s ankles and insteps were, he refused to let him help. Walter must remain quiet. His work would be to sit on a buffalo robe before the fire and keep the blaze going.

The roof the others constructed was only a temporary affair. It was almost flat, slanting a little towards the rear, as the back wall was slightly lower than the front. Poles and bark were the materials, weighted with stones to keep them from blowing away. Such a covering would not stand a strong wind, but the cabin was well sheltered. In a hard rain the roof would probably leak, and heavy snow might sag it or break it. But it would serve for a while at least, and it was the best the boys could do in haste and with the materials at hand. By nightfall they had a cover over their heads, flimsy though it was.

As they were eating their evening meal before a warm blaze, Neil said thoughtfully, “I wonder how this cabin caught fire. The fellows who camped here can’t have been gone long, yet when we came the fire was out and everything cold.”

“Yes,” agreed Louis. “Even the ashes on the hearth were cold.”

“Probably it broke out in the night,” Neil suggested. “Sparks from the chimney started it. But how _could_ they, with the roof covered with snow?”

“If there had been snow on it, it would not have burned so easily,” Louis returned.

“This place is too sheltered for the wind to blow the snow off the roof. Someone must have cleaned it off. Perhaps the weight was breaking it down.”

“Well, it burned anyway,” Walter put in. “All we know is that there was a fire, and that some other party was here before we came. Do you remember those men we saw in the mirage, Louis?”

“Yes, we thought they were coming to the mountain. Whoever it was who camped here, we owe him a grudge. He burned our roof and stole our beds. Antoine and I made those beds last winter.” One of the first things Louis had noticed on entering the house was that the stretched hides, which had taken the place of springs and mattress, were gone from the rustic cots. The hides had been cut off with a knife.

The bed frames being of no use, the boys lay down on the buffalo robe before the fire. Louis and Neil slept soundly, but the pain in Walter’s feet and legs and frosted cheek made him wakeful and restless.

His lameness and his sore face kept him at home the next day when the others went out to seek for game and signs of fur animals. That was a long day for Walter. Enough wood had been cut to last until evening, and he kept the fire going. He cleaned out the remains of the burned roof which cluttered the floor, arranged the scanty supplies and equipment more neatly, drove some wooden pegs between the logs to hang clothes and snowshoes on, mended a break in the dog harness, and did everything he could find to do. The cabin had one window covered with oiled deerskin that let in a little light, and the open fire helped to illuminate the dim interior.

Dusk had come when the hunters returned, bringing two big white hares. Rabbit stew would be a welcome change from pemmican. They had set traps and snares, had seen elk tracks, and had found, among rocks at the base of a tree, a partly snow-blocked hole Louis thought might be a bear’s winter den.