of hoped-for and much-needed rest and refreshment. The poor creatures
had been recently made widows. The husband of one, Louis Blanc, had
been killed by Indians during this hunt; that of the other, Antoine
Pierre, had met his death by being thrown from his horse when running
the buffalo. Both women were in better condition than many of the other
hunters' wives, for they had started on the homeward journey with a
better supply of meat, which had not yet been exhausted.

It happened that Marie Blanc and Annette Pierre came upon McKay's camp
soon after he left it the second time. Here they prepared to spend the
night, but, on discovering marks of fresh blood about, they made a
search, and soon came on the unburied corpse of the murdered man, lying
behind a bush. They recognised it at once, for Perrin had been
well-known, as well as much liked, in the Settlement.

Neither of the women was demonstrative. They did not express much
feeling, though they were undoubtedly shocked; but they dug a hole in
the snow with their snow-shoes, and buried the body of the hunter
therein--having first carefully examined the wound in his breast, and
removed the poor man's coat, which exhibited a burnt hole in front, as
well as a hole in the back, for the bullet had gone quite through him.

Then they returned to the camp, and made a careful examination of it;
but nothing was found there which could throw light on the subject of
who was the murderer. Whether a comrade or an Indian had done the deed
there was nothing to show; but that a murder had been committed they
could not doubt, for it was physically almost impossible that a man
could have shot himself in the chest, either by accident or intention,
with one of the long-barrelled trading guns in use among the
buffalo-hunters.

Another point, justifying the supposition of foul play, was the
significant fact that Perrin's gun, with his name rudely carved on the
stock, still lay in the camp _undischarged_.

"See--here is something," said one woman to the other in the Cree
tongue, as they were about to quit the camp.

She held up a knife which she had found half buried near the fire.

"It is not a common scalping-knife," said the other woman. "It is the
knife of a settler."

The weapon in question was one of the large sheath-knives which many of
the recently arrived settlers had brought with them from their native
land. Most of these differed a little in size and form from each