Perhaps
farther north, at Lac La Biche, at Old Fort Resolution, or at Fort
McPherson some trace of him might have been found. His skin was
crinkled and weather-worn, like dry buckskin, and over his brown,
thin face his hair fell to his shoulders, snow-white. His hands
were thin, even his nose was thin with the thinness of age. But
his eyes were still like dark garnets, and down through the
greater part of a century their vision had come undimmed.
They roved over the valley now. At Meshaba's back, a mile on the
other side of the ridge, was the old trapper's cabin, where he
lived alone. The winter had been long and cold, and in his
gladness at the coming of spring Meshaba had come up the ridge to
bask in the sun and look out over the changing world. For an hour
his eyes had travelled up and down the valley like the eyes of an
old and wary hawk. The dark spruce and cedar forest edged in the
far side of the valley; between that and the ridge rolled the
meadowy plain--still covered with melting snow in places, and in
others bare and glowing, a dull green in the sunlight. From where
he sat Meshaba could also see a rocky scarp of the ridge that
projected out into the plain a hundred yards away. But this did
not interest him, except that if it had not been in his line of
vision he could have seen a mile farther down the valley.
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