From “The Last of the Plainsmen,” copyright, 1908, by
A. C. McClurg & Co. By special permission from the author.
It was a waiting day at Fort Chippewayan. The lonesome, far-northern
Hudson’s Bay Trading Post seldom saw such life. Tepees dotted the
banks of the Slave River and lines of blanketed Indians paraded its
shores. Near the boat landing a group of chiefs, grotesque in
semi-barbaric, semi-civilized splendor, but black-browed,
austere-eyed, stood in savage dignity with folded arms and high-held
heads. Lounging on the grassy bank were white men, traders, trappers
and officials of the post.
All eyes were on the distant curve of the river where, as it lost
itself in a fine-fringed bend of dark green, white-glinting waves
danced and fluttered. A June sky lay blue in the majestic stream;
ragged, spear-topped, dense green trees massed down to the water;
beyond rose bold, bald-knobbed hills, in remote purple relief.
A long Indian arm stretched south. The waiting eyes discerned a
black speck on the green, and watched it grow. A flatboat, with a
man standing to the oars, bore down swiftly.
Not a red hand, nor a white one, offered to help the voyager in the
difficult landing. The oblong, clumsy, heavily laden boat surged
with the current and passed the dock despite the boatman’s efforts.
He swung his craft in below upon a bar and roped it fast to a tree.
The Indians crowded above him on the bank. The boatman raised his
powerful form erect, lifted a bronzed face which seemed set in
craggy hardness, and cast from narrow eyes a keen, cool glance on
those above. The silvery gleam in his fair hair told of years.
Silence, impressive as it was ominous, broke only to the rattle of
camping paraphernalia, which the voyager threw to a level, grassy
beach on the bank. Evidently this unwelcome visitor had journeyed
from afar, and his boat, sunk deep into the water with its load of
barrels, boxes and bags, indicated that the journey had only begun.
Significant, too, were a couple of Winchester rifles shining on a
tarpaulin.
The cold-faced crowd stirred and parted to permit the passage of a
tall, thin, gray personage of official bearing, in a faded military
coat.
“Are you the musk-ox hunter?” he asked, in tones that contained no
welcome.
The boatman greeted this peremptory interlocutor with a cool
laugh--a strange laugh, in which the muscles of his face appeared
not to play.
“Yes, I am the man,” he said.
“The chiefs of the Chippewayan and Great Slave tribes have been
apprised of your coming. They have held council and are here to
speak with you.”
At a motion from the commandant, the line of chieftains piled down
to the level beach and formed a half-circle before the voyager. To a
man who had stood before grim Sitting Bull and noble Black Thunder
of the Sioux, and faced the falcon-eyed Geronimo, and glanced over
the sights of a rifle at gorgeous-feathered, wild, free Comanches,
this semi-circle of savages--lords of the north--was a sorry
comparison. Bedaubed and betrinketed, slouchy and slovenly, these
low-statured chiefs belied in appearance their scorn-bright eyes and
lofty mien. They made a sad group.
One who spoke in unintelligible language, rolled out a haughty
sonorous voice over the listening multitude. When he had finished, a
half-breed interpreter, in the dress of a white man, spoke at a
signal from the commandant.
“He says listen to the great orator of the Chippewayan. He has
summoned all the chiefs of the tribes south of Great Slave Lake. He
has held council. The cunning of the pale-face, who comes to take
the musk-oxen, is well known. Let the pale-face hunter return to his
own hunting-grounds; let him turn his face from the north. Never
will the chiefs permit the white man to take musk-oxen alive from
their country. The Ageter, the musk-ox, is their god. He gives them
food and fur. He will never come back if he is taken away, and the
reindeer will follow him. The chiefs and their people would starve.
They command the pale-face hunter to go back. They cry Naza! Naza!
Naza!”
“Say, for a thousand miles I’ve heard that word Naza!” returned the
hunter, with mingled curiosity and disgust. “At Edmonton Indian
runners started ahead of me, and every village I struck the redskins
would crowd round me and an old chief would harangue at me, and
motion me back, and point north with Naza! Naza! Naza! What does it
mean?”
“No white man knows; no Indian will tell,” answered the interpreter.
“The traders think it means the Great Slave, the North Star, the
North Spirit, the North Wind, the North Lights and Ageter, the
musk-ox god.”
“Well, say to the chiefs to tell Ageter I have been four moons on
the way after some of his little Ageters, and I’m going to keep on
after them.”
“Hunter, you are most unwise,” broke in the commandant, in his
officious voice. “The Indians will never permit you to take a
musk-ox alive from the north. They worship him, pray to him. It is a
wonder you have not been stopped.”
“Who’ll stop me?”
“The Indians. They will kill you if you do not turn back.”
“Faugh! to tell an American plainsman that!” The hunter paused a
steady moment, with his eyelids narrowing over slits of blue fire.
“There is no law to keep me out, nothing but Indian superstition and
the greed of the Hudson’s Bay people. And I am an old fox, not to be
fooled by pretty baits. For years the officers of this fur-trading
company have tried to keep out explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, an
Englishman, could not buy food of them. The policy of the company is
to side with the Indians, to keep out traders and trappers. Why? So
they can keep on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and food
by trading a few trinkets and blankets, a little tobacco and rum for
millions of dollars’ worth of furs. Have I failed to hire man after
man, Indian after Indian, not to know why I cannot get a helper?
Have I, a plainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be scared by
you, or a lot of craven Indians? Have I been dreaming of musk-oxen
for forty years, to slink south now, when I begin to feel the north?
Not I.”
Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat in
the hunter’s face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated the
outrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange, cool
voice addressed the interpreter.
“Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in
council. Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they are
not even squaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them I turn
my back on them. Tell them the paleface has fought real chiefs,
fierce, bold, like eagles, and he turns his back on dogs. Tell them
he is the one who could teach them to raise the musk-oxen and the
reindeer, and to keep out the cold and the wolf. But they are
blinded. Tell them the hunter goes north.”
Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter as of gathering
thunder.
True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he brushed
by, his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat. At the
hunter’s stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started to run.
He had stolen a parcel, and would have succeeded in eluding its
owner but for an unforeseen obstacle, as striking as it was
unexpected.
A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thief’s passage,
and laid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel flew from the
Indian, and he spun in the air to fall into the river with a
sounding splash. Yells signaled the surprise and alarm caused by
this unexpected incident. The Indian frantically swam to the shore.
Whereupon the champion of the stranger in a strange land lifted a
bag, which gave forth a musical clink of steel, and throwing it with
the camp articles on the grassy bench, he extended a huge, friendly
hand.
“My name is Rea,” said he, in deep, cavernous tones.
“Mine is Jones,” replied the hunter, and right quickly did he grip
the proffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was but a
stunted shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with yard-wide
shoulders, a hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous, shaggy head
rested on a bull neck. His broad face, with its low forehead, its
close-shut mastiff under jaw, its big, opaque eyes, pale and cruel
as those of a jaguar, marked him a man of terrible brute force.
“Free-trader!” called the commandant. “Better think twice before you
join fortunes with the musk-ox hunter.”
“To hell with you an’ your rantin’, dog-eared redskins!” cried Rea.
“I’ve run agin a man of my own kind, a man of my own country, an’
I’m goin’ with him.” With this he thrust aside some encroaching,
gaping Indians so unconcernedly and urgently that they sprawled upon
the grass.
Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the bank.
Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of fortune, he had
fallen in with one of the few free-traders of the province. These
free-traders, from the very nature of their calling--which was to
defy the fur company, and to trap and trade on their own
account--were a hardy and intrepid class of men. Rea’s worth to
Jones exceeded that of a dozen ordinary men. He knew the ways of the
north, the language of the tribes, the habits of animals, the
handling of dogs, the uses of food and fuel. Moreover, it soon
appeared that he was a carpenter and blacksmith.
“There’s my kit,” he said, dumping the contents of his bag. It
consisted of a bunch of steel traps, some tools, a broken ax, a box
of miscellaneous things such as trappers used, and a few articles of
flannel. “Thievin’ redskins,” he added, in explanation of his
poverty. “Not much of an outfit. But I’m the man for you. Besides, I
had a pal onct who knew you on the plains, called you ‘Buff’ Jones.
Old Jim Bent he was.”
“I recollect Jim,” said Jones. “He went down in Custer’s last
charge. So you were Jim’s pal. That’d be a recommendation if you
needed one. But the way you chucked the Indian overboard got me.”
Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words and much action.
With the planks Jones had on board he heightened the stern and bow
of the boat to keep out the beating waves in the rapids; he
fashioned a steering-gear and a less awkward set of oars, and
shifted the cargo so as to make more room in the craft.
“Buff, we’re in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin an’ make a fire.
We’ll pretend to camp to-night. These Indians won’t dream we’d try
to run the river after dark, and we’ll slip by under cover.”
The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the north; a cold wind
swept the tips of the spruces, and rain commenced to drive in gusts.
By the time it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They were
housed from the storm. Lights twinkled in the tepees and the big log
cabins of the trading company. Jones scouted round till pitchy black
night, when a freezing, pouring blast sent him back to the
protection of the tarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea had
taken it down and awaited him. “Off!” said the free-trader; and with
no more noise than a drifting feather the boat swung into the
current and glided down till the twinkling fires no longer
accentuated the darkness.
By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullen
voice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its
meaning. The two boatmen, one at the steering gear, one at the oars,
faced the pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of trees. The
craft slid noiselessly onward into the gloom.
And into Jones’ ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a
steady, muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It
had come to be a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which, in
his long life of hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling, tight
shudder over his warm skin. Many times on the Athabasca that rumble
had presaged the dangerous and dreaded rapids.
“Hell Bend Rapids!” shouted Rea. “Bad water but no rocks.”
The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged the
air with heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct world
appeared to be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of rain, to
the roar of the river. The boat shot down and sailed aloft, met
shock on shock, breasted leaping dim white waves, and in a hollow,
unearthly blend of watery sounds, rode on and on, buffeted, tossed,
pitched into a black chaos that yet gleamed with obscure shrouds of
light. Then the convulsive stream shrieked out a last defiance,
changed its course abruptly to slow down and drown the sound of
rapids in muffling distance. Once more the craft swept on smoothly,
to the drive of the wind and the rush of the rain.
By midnight the storm cleared. Murky clouds split to show shining,
blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of the
spruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded pearl
behind the dark branches.
Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the
moon-blanched water. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy walls
of granite, where it swelled with hollow song and gurgle. He heard
again the far-off rumble, faint on the night wind. High cliff banks
appeared, walled out the mellow light, and the river suddenly
narrowed. Yawning holes, whirlpools of a second, opened with a
gurgling suck and raced with the boat.
On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumping
frosted waves played dark and white with the moonbeams. The Slave
plunged to his freedom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing no
patient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark, shiny rocks in spume and
spray.