l. His stumbling feet were on a track. He had
reached the dip in the saddle-back of the hill, and--yes! this was the
_right_ trail; for down on the other side below him were faint
lights--huts--an Indian village! with fish and food for everybody. And
Nig--Nig was being--

The Boy turned as if a hurricane had struck him, and tore back down the
incline--stumbling, floundering in the snow, calling hoarsely:
"Colonel, Colonel! don't do it! There's a village here, Colonel! Nig!
Colonel, don't do it!"

He dashed into the circle of firelight, and beheld Nig standing with a
bandaged paw, placidly eating softened biscuit out of the family
frying-pan.

It was short work getting down to the village. They had one king salmon
and two white fish from the first Indian they saw, who wanted hootch
for them, and got only tabak.

In the biggest of the huts, nearly full of men, women, and children,
coughing, sickly-looking, dejected, the natives made room for the
strangers. When the white men had supped they handed over the remains
of their meal (as is expected) to the head of the house. This and a few
matches or a little tobacco on parting, is all he looks for in return
for shelter, room for beds on the floor, snow-water laboriously melted,
use of the fire, and as much wood as they like to burn, even if it is a
barren place, and fuel is the precious far-travelled "drift."

It is curious to see how soon travellers get past that first cheeckalko
feeling that it is a little "nervy," as the Boy had said, to walk into
another man's house uninvited, an absolute stranger, and take
possession of everything you want without so much as "by your leave."
You soon learn it is the Siwash[*] custom.

[Footnote: Siwash, corruption of French-Canadian _sauvage_, applied all
over the North to the natives, their possessions and their customs.]

Nothing would have seemed stranger now, or more inhuman, than the
civilized point of view.

The Indians trailed out one by one, all except the old buck to whom the
hut belonged. He hung about for a bit till he was satisfied the
travellers had no hootch, not even a little for the head of the house,
and yet they seemed to be fairly decent fellows. Then he rolls up his
blankets, for there is a premium on sleeping-space, and goes out, with
never a notion that he is doing more than any man would, anywhere in
the world, to find a place in some neighbour's hut to pass the night.

He leaves the two strangers, as In