And sometimes he
wondered if Bessie ever thought of him, and if she would be sorry when
she heard he was lost.
"Manikawan an' all th' Injuns be wonderful kind, but 'tis not like
bein' home," he would often say sadly to himself when he lay very
lonely at night upon his bed of boughs and skins.
At first Manikawan's attentions were rather agreeable to Bob, but he
was not accustomed to being waited upon, and in a little while they
began to annoy him and make him feel ill at ease, and finally to
escape from them he rarely ever remained in the wigwam during daylight
hours.
"I'm wishin' she'd not be troublin' wi' me so--I'm not wantin' un," he
declared almost petulantly at times when the girl did something for
him that he preferred to do himself.
Mornings he would wander down through the valley attending to his
deadfalls and snares, and afternoons tramp over the hills in the hope
of seeing caribou.
One afternoon two weeks after the arrival at Petitsikapau he was
skirting a precipitous hill not far from camp, when suddenly the snow
gave way under his feet and he slipped over a low ledge. He did not
fall far, and struck a soft drift below, and though startled at the
unexpected descent was not injured. When he got upon his feet again he
noticed what seemed a rather peculiar opening in the rock near the
foot of the ledge, where his fall had broken away the snow, and upon
examining it found that the crevice extended back some eight or ten
feet and then broadened into a sort of cavern.
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