"Oh, nothing. Only we got to be careful."




CHAPTER SIX


Camp was made among the trees of an elevated bank above a small brook.

Already the Indian women had pitched the shelters, spreading squares of
canvas, strips of birch-bark or tanned skins over roughly improvised
lean-to poles. A half dozen tiny fires, too, they had built, over which
some were at the moment engaged in hanging as many kettles. Several of
the younger women were cleaning fish and threading them on switches.
Others brought in the small twigs for fuel. Among them could be seen
May-may-gwán, the young Ojibway girl, gliding here and there, eyes
downcast, inexpressibly graceful in contrast with the Crees.

At once on landing the men took up their share of the work. Like the
birds of the air and the beasts of the wood their first thoughts turned
to the assurance of food. Two young fellows stretched a gill-net across
the mouth of the creek. Others scattered in search of favourable spots
in which to set the musk-rat traps, to hang snares for rabbits and
grouse.

Soon the camp took on the air of age, of long establishment, that is so
suddenly to be won in the forest. The kettles began to bubble; the
impaled fish to turn brown. A delicious odour of open-air cooking