"Has it fish? Good wood?"

"Much wood. Ogâ[6], kinoj[7]."

[Footnote 6: Pickerel.]

[Footnote 7: Pike.]

Sam paused.

"Could a _brigade_ of canoes reach it easily?" he inquired.

Now a _brigade_ is distinctly an institution of the Honourable the
Hudson's Bay Company. It is used for two purposes; to maintain
communication with the outside world, and to establish winter camps in
the autumn or to break them up in the spring. At once the situation
became clear. A gleam of comprehension flashed over the Indian's eyes.
With the peculiar attention to detail distinctively the forest runner's
he indicated a route. Sam was satisfied to let the matter rest there for
the present.

The next evening he visited the Indian's camp. It was made under a
spreading tree, the tepee poles partly resting against some of the lower
branches. The squaw and her woman child kept to the shadows of the
wigwam, but the boy, a youth of perhaps fifteen years, joined the men by
the fire.

Sam accepted the hospitality of a pipe of tobacco, and attacked the
question in hand from a ground tacitly assumed since the evening before.