CHAPTER III
"I KNOW WHAT I'M AT"
"Payatuk," said Dick. "Go carefully. Tell him we don't want to scare him, Phillipe."
"Him t'ink you mebbe in big hurry," interpreted the breed.
"That is kind of him. Explain that I earn my dollar-ten a day by waiting until he's ready to speak. But intimate that though he's my totam he's got to yakwa what he says, all the same."
Phillipe interpreted in low rapid gutturals. And in the little barrack-room where Tempest held his courts Kicking Horse, pure-bred Cree Indian, stood motionless and hunched in his ill-fitting store clothes. But the eyes in the copper-dark face overhung by the matted hair were alive enough for a regiment of men.
In perspective beyond the glass door showed more Indians, huddled in their fur coats and caps. For winter had descended suddenly upon Grey Wolf, thrusting the thermometer below zero with decision, and pasting all the land with a thick white layer that shone in the sun like a wedding-cake baked for a god.
At the bar of inquiry within Kicking Horse moved solemnly; bringing from under his coat the old fluttering hands where the brown veins and muscles ran corded like fibres on rotted leaves. He began to speak; using his tongue little, but weaving his story on the picturesque sign-language which Phillipe interpreted as one may interpret a telegraph-ribbon unrolling.
"Him and Pasasun mates many suns since. Dey go togedder all taime. Den Pasasun marry—lif on Reserve here. Kicking Horse him shoot an' fish—go all over. Von day him see Pasasun."
"When was that?"
52
