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The wind washed over the cabin and fingered the eaves, and brushed furtive hands against the door. It was dawn when Archer awoke. He sat up in his bunk and looked about the quiet, gray-lighted room. Sacobie Bear was nowhere to be seen. He glanced at the corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It, too, was gone.
By the time the bacon was fried and the tea steeped, Sacobie was sufficiently revived to leave the bunk and take a seat by the fire. He ate as all hungry Indians do; and Archer looked on in wonder and whimsical regret, remembering the miles and miles he had tramped with that bacon on his back. "Sacobie, you will kill yourself!" he protested.
The frosts had drawn their bonds of ice and blankets of silencing snow over all the rest of the stream, but the white and black face of the falls still flashed from a window in the great house of crystal, and threw out a voice of desolation. Sacobie Bear, a full-blooded Micmac, uttered a grunt of relief when his ears caught the bellow of Stone Arrow Falls.
Sacobie Bear was a great gossip for one of his race. In fact, he had a Micmac nickname which, translated, meant "the man who deafens his friends with much talk." Archer, however, was pleased with his ready chatter and unforced humour. But at last they both began to nod. The white man made up a bed on the floor for Sacobie with a couple of caribou skins and a heavy blanket.
"These things are for your squaw," he said. Sacobie was delighted. Archer tied the articles into a neat pack and stood it in the corner, beside his guest's rifle. "Now you had better turn in," he said, and blew out the light. In ten minutes both men slept the sleep of the weary. The fire, a great mass of red coals, faded and flushed like some fabulous jewel.
He stood still, and turned his head from side to side, questioningly. "Good!" he said. "Big Rattle off there, Archer's camp over there. I go there. Good 'nough!" He hitched his old smooth-bore rifle higher under his arm and continued his journey. Sacobie had tramped many miles all the way from ice-imprisoned Fox Harbor. His papoose was sick. His squaw was hungry. Sacobie's belt was drawn tight.
He jumped out of his bunk and ran to the door. Opening it, he looked out. Not a breath of air stirred. In the east, saffron and scarlet, broke the Christmas morning, and blue on the white surface of the world lay the imprints of Sacobie's round snowshoes. For a long time the trapper stood in the doorway in silence, looking out at the stillness and beauty. "Poor Sacobie!" he said, after a while.
Or would tinned beef suit you better?" "Bacum," replied Sacobie. He hoisted himself to his elbow, and wistfully sniffed the fumes of brandy that came from the direction of his bare feet. "Heap waste of good rum, me t'ink," he said. "You ungrateful little beggar!" laughed Archer, as he pulled a frying pan from under the bunk.
Then he gathered together a few plugs of tobacco, some tea, flour, and dried fish. Sacobie watched him with freshly aroused interest. "More tobac, please," he said. "Squaw, he smoke, too." Archer added a couple of sticks of the black leaf to the pile. "Bacum, too," said the Micmac. "Bacum better nor fish, anyhow." Archer shook his head.
"Tobac?" he inquired. Archer passed him a dark and heavy plug of tobacco. "Knife?" queried Sacobie. "Try your own knife on it," answered Archer, grinning. With a sigh Sacobie produced his sheath-knife. "You t'ink Sacobie heap big t'ief," he said, accusingly. "Knives are easily lost in people's pockets," replied Archer. The two men talked for hours.
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