The Buffalo Runners | Page 9

Fergus back to us with food."
Old McKay was somewhat mollified by her manner, or by the fire, or by the prospect of relief held out, for his tone improved decidedly.
"Try the bag again, lass," he said, "maybe you'll find a crumb or two in the corners yet. It will do no harm to try."
Obediently poor Elspie tried, but shook her head as she did so.
"There's nothing there, daddy. I turned it inside out last time."
"Wow! but it's ill to bear!" exclaimed old Duncan, with a half-suppressed groan.
Meanwhile his daughter put the tin kettle on the fire and prepared their last cup of tea. When it was ready she looked up with a peculiar expression on her face, as she drew something from her pocket.
"Look here, daddy," she said, holding up a bit of pemmican about the size of a hen's egg.
The old man snatched it from her, and, biting off a piece, began to chew with a sort of wolfish voracity.
"I reserved it till now," said the girl, "for I knew that this being the second night, you would find it impossible to get to sleep at all without something in you, however small. If you manage to sleep on this and the cup of hot tea, you'll maybe rest well till morning--and then--"
"God forgive me!" exclaimed the old man, suddenly pausing, as he was about to thrust the last morsel into his mouth; "hunger makes me selfish. I wass forgettin' that you are starvin' too, my tear. Open your mouth."
"No, father, I don't want it. I really don't feel hungry."
"Elspie, my shild," said old Duncan, in a tone of stern remonstrance, "when wass it that you began to tell lies?"
"I'm telling the truth, daddy. I did feel hungry yesterday, but that has passed away, and to-day I feel only a little faint."
"Open your mouth, I'm tellin' you," repeated old Duncan in a tone of command which long experience had taught Elspie promptly to obey. She received the morsel, ate it with much relish, and wished earnestly for more.
"Now, you'll lie down and go to sleep," she said, after her father had washed down the last morsel of food with the last cup of hot tea, "and I'll gather a few more sticks to keep the fire going till morning. I think it is not so cold as it was, and the wind is quite gone. They have been away five days now, or more. I think that God, in His mercy, will send us relief in the morning."
"You are a goot lass, my tear," said the old man, allowing himself to be made as comfortable as it was in his daughter's power to accomplish; "what you say is ferry true. The weather feels warmer, and the wind is down. Perhaps they will find us in the mornin'. Goot-night, my tear."
It was one of the characteristics of this testy old man, that he believed it quite possible for a human being to get on quite well enough in this world without any distinct recognition of his Maker.
Once, in conversation with his youngest son and namesake Duncan junior, he had somehow got upon this subject, not by any means in a reverential, but in an argumentative, controversial spirit, and had expressed the opinion that as man knew nothing whatever about God, and had no means of finding out anything about Him, there was no need to trouble one's head about Him at all.
"I just go about my work, Tuncan," he said, "an' leave preachin' an' prayin' an' psalm-singin' to them that likes it. There's Elspie, now. She believes in God, an' likes goin' to churches an' meetin's, an' that seems to make her happy. Ferry goot--I don't pelieve in these things, an' I think I'm as happy as hersel'."
"Humph!" grunted the son in a tone of unconcealed contempt; "if ye are as happy as hersel', faither, yer looks give the lie to your condeetion, whatever. An' there's this great dufference between you an' her, that she's not only happy hersel', but she does her best to mak other folk happy--but you, wi' your girnin' an' snappin', are always doin' the best ye can to mak everybody aboot ye meeserable."
"Tuncan," retorted the sire, with solemn candour, "it iss the same compliment I can return to yoursel' with interest, my boy--whatever."
With such sentiments, then, it is not remarkable that Duncan McKay senior turned over to sleep as he best could without looking to a higher source than earth afforded for help in his extremity. Happily his daughter was actuated by a better spirit, and when she at last lay down on her pile of brushwood, with her feet towards the fire, and her head on a buffalo robe, the fact of her having previously committed herself and her father to God made her