“Oo-ee-ee,” she said in Cree, her red lips rounded as she saw him flinch, and that one word, a song in a word; came to him like a flute note.

“It hurts—­a little,” he said.  He dropped back on his bunk, and Oachi sank upon the skins at his feet, looking up at him steadily with her wonderful, pure eyes, her mouth still rounded, little wrinkles of tense anxiety drawn in her forehead.  Roscoe laughed.

For a few moments his soul was filled with a strange gladness.  He reached out his hand and stroked it over her shining hair, and a radiance such as he had never seen leapt into her eyes.  “You—­talk—­French?” he asked slowly.

She nodded.

“Then tell me this—­you are hungry—­starving?”

She nodded again, and made a cup of her two small hands.  “No meat.  This little—­so much—­flour—­” Her throat trembled and her voice fluttered.  But even as she measured out their starvation her face was looking at him joyously.  And then she added, with the gladness of a child, “Feesh, for you,” and pointed to the simmering pot.

“For ME!” Roscoe looked at the pot, and then back at her.

“Oachi,” he said gently, “go tell your father that I am ready to talk with him.  Ask him to come—­now.”

She looked at him for a moment as though she did not quite understand what he had said, and he repeated the words.  Even as he was speaking he marvelled at the fairness of her skin, which shone with a pink flush, and at the softness and beauty of her hair.  What he saw impelled him to ask, as she made to rise: 

“Your father—­your mother—­is French.  Is that so, Oachi?” The girl nodded again, with the soft little Cree throat note that meant yes.  Then she slipped to her feet and ran out, and a little later there came into the tepee the man who had first loomed up in the dusky light like a god of the First People to Roscoe Cummins.  His splendid face was a little more gaunt than the night before, and Roscoe knew that famine came hand in hand with him.  He had seen starvation before, and he knew that it reddened the eyes and gave the lips a grayish pallor.  These things, and more, he saw in Oachi’s father.  But Mukoki came in straight and erect, hiding his weakness under the pride of his race.  Fighting down his pain Roscoe rose at sight of him and held out his hands.

“I want to thank you,” he said, repeating the words he had spoken to Oachi.  “You have saved my life.  But I have eyes, and I can see.  You gave me of your last fish.  You have no meat.  You have no flour.  You are starving.  What?  I have asked you to come and tell me, so that I may know how it fares with your women and children.  You will give me a council, and we will smoke.”  Roscoe dropped back on his bunk.  He drew forth his pipe and filled it with tobacco.  The Cree sat down mutely in the centre of the tepee.  They smoked, passing the pipe back and forth without speaking.  Once Roscoe loaded the pipe, and once the chief; and when the last puff of the last pipeful was taken the Indian reached over his hand, and Roscoe gripped it hard.