The talk drifted to stories of the Indians, tributary to Rupert’s House, and the practical jokes perpetrated on them while camped about the post to which they brought each spring from the far interior their winter’s catch of furs.  There were stories of Hannah Bay massacre, and the retribution which followed swift and certain; and of their own trips inland, and the hospitality of the Indians.  The talk ended with an anxious “If it were only the Hudson Bay Indians we were coming to, there would be no doubt about the welcome we should get.”

Turning to me, George remarked, “You are giving that revolver a fine rubbing up to-night.”

“Yes,” I replied, laughing a little:  “I am getting ready for the Nascaupees.”

“They would not shoot you,” he said gravely.  “It would be us they would kill if they took the notion.  Whatever their conjurer tells them to do, they will do.”

“No,” asserted Gilbert, who boasted some traditional knowledge of the Nascaupees, “they would not kill you, Mrs. Hubbard.  It would be to keep you at their camp that they would kill us.”

I had been laughing at George a little, but Gilbert’s startling announcement induced a sudden sobriety.  As I glanced from one to the other, the faces of the men were all unwontedly serious.  There was a whirl of thoughts for a moment, and then I asked, “What do you think I shall be doing while they are killing you?  You do not need to suppose that because I will not kill rabbits, or ptarmigan, or caribou, I should have any objection to killing a Nascaupee Indian if it were necessary.”

Nevertheless the meeting with the Indians had for me assumed a new and more serious aspect, and, remembering their agony of fear lest some harm befall me ere we reached civilisation again, I realised how the situation seemed to the men.  When I went to my tent, it was to lie very wide awake, turning over in my mind plans of battle in case the red men proved aggressive.

The following morning the weather was still bad but we attempted to go forward.  Soon a snow squall drove us to the shelter of the woods.  When it had passed we were again on the water; but rain came on and a gale of wind drove it into our faces, till they burned as if hot water instead of cold were pelting them.  We could make no headway, and so put ashore on the right bank of the river to wait for calmer weather.  Camp was made on a tiny moss-covered ridge of rock back of the stretch of swamp along the shore, and soon a roaring fire sent out its welcome warmth to the wet and shivering wayfarers crouching near it in the shelter of the spruce.  How cold it was!  And how slowly we were getting on!

The river widened here, and on the left bank, at short intervals broad trails with fresh cut tracks led down to its edge, and along the shore a wide band of white caribou hair clung to the bank four feet above the river, where it had been left by the receding water.  So we knew that the caribou had been in possession of the region since shedding their winter coats.