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When Janesse moved to Fort Churchill, where Meleese might learn more in the way of reading and writing and books than her parents could teach her, John Cummins went with her. He went with them to Nelson House, and from there to Split Lake, where Janesse died. From that time, at the age of eighteen, he became the head and support of the home.
And with the Missioner had come Ladue, the Frenchman, who could send a bullet through the head of a running fox at two hundred yards four times out of five. Kaskisoon and his Crees had not arrived, and Philip knew that Jean was disappointed. "I heard three days ago of a big caribou herd to the west," said Janesse in answer to the half-breed's inquiry. "It may be they have gone for meat."
They drew close about the fire, and the Foutelles dragged in a fresh birch log for the flames. "Mad" Joe Horn, with hair and beard as red as copper, hummed the Storm Song under his breath. Janesse stood with his back to the heat, facing darkness and the west. He raised a hand, and all listened. For sixty years his world had been bounded by the four walls of the forests.
Tall and ghostlike in the firelight, more like spectre than man, was Janesse, a white beard falling almost to his waist, a thick marten skin cap shrouding his head, and armed with a long barrelled smooth-bore that shot powder and ball. From the fox grounds out on the Barren had come "Mad" Joe Horn behind eight huge malemutes that pulled with the strength of oxen.
On the 12th day of August the mountain party left the camp. It was fifteen in number. On the 14th of August some of the party reached an elevation at which the barometer stood 19.401. On the 15th some of the party were sent back. Kit Carson had command of this party. The remainder consisted of Colonel Fremont, Mr. Preuss, Basil Lajeunesse, Clement Lambert, Janesse, and Descoteaux.
It was then that there came down from the north, one bitter cold day, a ragged and half-starved boy, whose mother and father had died of the plague in a little cabin fifty miles away, and who from the day he staggered into the home of Henry Janesse, became Meleese's playmate and chum. This boy was John Cummins.
For many seconds Janesse did not lower his hand; and then, still unheard by the others, there came slowly out of the gloom a file of dusky-faced, silent, shadowy forms.
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