True, her father's dogs were there, faithful watchers through
the night, who had helped to keep the family in food and fuel through
the long winter months, hauling the sleighs, laden with moose or
deer's meat; or with good-sized fir trees, morning by morning, for
their camp fires. Strong, faithful creatures they were, patient and
enduring, sharing all the hardships and privations of the Indian,
with a fortitude and devotion to be met with nowhere else. It would
have been hard enough to tell when those four watchers of the little
one had had their last good meal; the scraps awarded to most dogs
seldom could be spared for them,--the very bones, picked bare by the
hungry masters, were grudged them, being carefully kept, and broken
and melted down for grease (that most necessary ingredient in
Northern diet.) Sometimes indeed their famished nature would assert
itself, and they would steal something, it might be a rabbit caught
in the snare near the camp (a most tempting bait for a hungry dog) or
perchance a choice piece of dried fish hung high, yet not quite high
enough to miss the spring of "Capri" or "Muskimo;" or a piece of soap
lately purchased of the white man, or even a scrap of moose-skin
reserved as shoe leather. All helped to assuage the pangs of hunger,
yet these indulgences would be dearly purchased by the inevitable
cuffs and blows which followed, till the poor brutes, scarred and
bleeding, were fain to creep away and hide in some hole, until the
imperative call or whistle made fresh claim for their services.
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