A certain consecutive number of days--weeks, to be more exact--ensued,
of which there is little to relate, save that we travelled steadily
northward, seeing no human except from afar. Once or twice we came in
sight of Hudson's Bay posts, but these Barreau was careful to avoid. It
was not the season when Indians were abroad in the forests, he told me
when I wondered that in all that vast land not a single lodge appeared.
They were gathered in summer villages by the trading posts. Hence we
crossed few fresh trails, and bespoke no man, white or red, in the four
weeks of our journey.
Before the end of it I was hardened to the saddle; and to many other
things. Twice we swam great rivers, the North Saskatchewan, and farther
on the Peace--to say nothing of lesser streams that were both deep and
swift. Our food supply dwindled to flour and tea. But with game on every
hand we suffered no hardship in that respect. The getting of meat
Barreau left to me. Strangely enough, after one or two virulent attacks
of "buck fever," when the rifle barrel wabbled in a most unseemly manner
and the bullet therefrom flew disgracefully wide of the mark, I got into
the way of bringing down whatever I shot at. Between my eye and the
rifle sights and the shoulder of a deer some mysterious, rapid process
of alignment seemed invariably to take place.
"Why not?" Barreau contended, when I remarked upon this sudden attaining
to marksmanship. "There are the sights. Your eyes are clear and your arm
steady as a rock. That's all there is to good shooting; that and a
little experience in judging distance. Some men handle guns all their
lives, and never make a decent shot other than by accident. Whenever you
run across such an individual you can be sure there is some defect in
his vision, or he lacks muscular control over his weapon."
That trip taught me many things besides holding a rifle true; how to
build a campfire in wet weather and dry; little labor-saving tricks of
the axe; the name and nature of this timber and that; the cooking of
plain food; a subtle sense of direction--fundamental trail-wisdom that I
was wholly ignorant of, but which a man must know if he would cope with
the wilderness of wood and plain. I profited as much by noting how he
did these things, as by direct instruction. Nor does a man forget easily
the lessons he is taught in the school of necessity.
With Peace River behind us we edged nearer to the base of the mountains,
passing through a stretch of country alive with caribou and deer.
Bear--monsters, by the track they left--frightened our picketed horses
of a night. The moist earth bordering every pond and spring was marked
with hoof and claw. The shyer fur-bearing animals, Barreau told me,
surrounded us unseen. Barring a thickly wooded plateau south of the
Peace we passed through no forest oppressively dense. Our way led over
ridges and swales, timbered, to be sure, but opening out here and there
into pleasant grassy parks. Once or twice forbidding areas of dead and
down trees turned us aside. Again, a vast swamp enforced a detour. But I
cannot recall any feature of marked unpleasantness--except the one thing
that no man who crosses the North Saskatchewan can escape--the flies.
Mosquitoes of all sizes, equipped with the keenest tools for their
nefarious business, green-headed bulldog flies that plagued our horses
beyond endurance, black gnats, flying ants, and other winged pests
assailed us day and night in hungry swarms. Some day that particular
portion of the Northwest will be a rich field for entomologists and
manufacturers of mosquito netting.
We held our own with the buzzing hosts, however, and when our flour sack
had nearly reached a stage of ultimate limpness, and our tea was reduced
to a tiny package in one corner of the shrunken pack, we rode out of a
long belt of quivering poplars and drew up on the brow of a sharp pitch
that fell away to the Sicannie River.
"What in the name of the devil has been to the fore here?" Barreau
exclaimed. He slid over in his saddle, staring at the scene below.
Down on the flat, just back from the river bank, I made out a clutter of
small log buildings enclosed within a stockade. In the center of the
enclosure a half-dozen men busied themselves about the gaunt walls of a
larger building. Logs and poles strewed the ground about its four sides.
The ring of axe-blades on timber came floating up to us. I saw nothing
amiss.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing that matters greatly," Barreau replied. "Only that ruin you see
was a fine upstanding storehouse when I left here in the early spring.
It seems to be undergoing a process of regeneration, for which I cannot
account. Likewise, I see no trace of a stable which stood at the west
end of the stockade. There are no men missing, by my count, so I dare
say no great thing has happened. Anyway, this is the end of our trail
for a while. We may as well get down there. I am a bit curious to know
the meaning of this."
Presently we were dismounting within the stockade. And as we greeted the
men who stopped their work to hail us, it was plain what form of
disaster had overtaken the Montell establishment. The standing walls of
sixteen-inch logs were smoke-blackened and scorched by fire. The inside
was gutted to the floor-joists; the roof gone. A pile of charred poles
and timbers laid to one side testified mutely to cause and effect.
"Well, Ben," Barreau addressed one man who came forward. "How did it
happen?"
"She burned, that's all. 'N' the stable, too," Ben made laconic answer.
He drew a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket, looked it over with a
speculative eye, bit off a piece, and returned it to the pocket. As he
masticated the piece contemplatively, Barreau watched him with a
whimsical smile. "Yes, sir," he went on, "she took fire in the night,
with the boys sleepin' in the doghouse, an' me in the front part uh the
store. It started to rain pretty tol'able hard, or I reckon there
wouldn't be nothin' left but a pile uh ashes."
"In the night, eh?" Barreau repeated thoughtfully. The three of us
walked around the building and peered in through a charred doorway.
"Quite so," Barreau continued. "Save anything? There wasn't much to
save, I know."
"Most all the stuff," Ben replied. "Injun name uh Tall Trees drifted in
day after yuh all left. He traded out most everythin' we could spare.
An' the pelts was easy to get out. Some grub was burned. Not much,
though. We got plenty left."
"A very nasty thing, fire," Barreau commented. "How do you think it
started, Ben?"
"I ain't thinkin'," said Ben. "I _know_."
"The deuce you do!" Neither Barreau's tone nor face bespoke more than
the mildest surprise. "Had a big fire going, I suppose, and a live coal
flew out. Eh?"
"Nary coal," Ben declared. "Some feller climbed the stockade, cut open
one uh them deer-skin winders, touched a match to a bucket uh oil an'
gunpowder, boosted it through the window--an' there yuh are. That
there's no dream, let me tell yuh."
"And then went on his way rejoicing," Barreau suggested.
"I reckon he did, all right," Ben owned, looking rather downcast at the
thought. "I never got to see nothin' but his tracks. If I'd seen _him_
he wouldn't 'a' done much rejoicin'."
"I dare say," Barreau laughed. "Meantime the joke is on the party of the
first part, it seems to me. Logs are plenty. You have ample time to put
on a roof and lay some sort of floor. It would be a different matter if
we should be burned out after our goods arrive; but this is a cheap
lesson. I see you have put up a good stock of hay. That's fortunate, for
they are bringing more stock than we figured on. Altogether, Ben, you
haven't done so badly. Now, hustle us some decent grub--it's near noon,
and this boy and I have been living on straight meat for some time."
Thus, we were once more fairly at our ease; the bugaboo of arrest and
subsequent lying in jail seemed a remote contingency. The confidence
born of successful escape stilled any misgivings I might have had as to
the future.
We lay at the post doing naught but eat and sleep and watch the long
storehouse creep higher log by log, till the skeleton of a roof took
form above the blackened walls. At night the eight of us would sprawl
around a fire in the open, talking of everything under the sun,
sometimes playing with a soiled and tattered pack of cards that these
exiles cherished as their dearest possession. If we were in hostile
territory no hint of apprehension cropped out in our intercourse; except
as one or another referred casually to incidents past--now a fragmentary
sentence which hinted of sharp action, or a joking allusion to the "H.
B. C." It was all in the day's work with them. But I noticed that each
night one man stood guard, pacing from corner to corner of the stockade,
a rifle slung in the crook of his arm.
Two weeks of this slipped by. Then one morning Barreau sat up on his bed
and looked over to where I humped on my blankets, rubbing the sleep from
my eyes.
"Bob," he announced, "it is high time we bestirred ourselves once more."
After which he got quickly into his clothes, and went rummaging in a box
by his bed--we had a little cabin to ourselves. His search bore fruit in
the shape of moccasins, a bundle of them.
"Here," he tossed a pair to me. "You'll find these better than riding
boots. This time we go afoot."
Later, when breakfast was eaten, he made up a shoulder-pack for himself,
and showed me how to prepare its fellow. Only actual necessaries found
place therein. Extra moccasins, a few pounds of flour, a little packet
of tea, pepper and salt, a tin plate and cup; these were laid upon a
pair of heavy blankets, and tightly rolled in a square of thin canvas. A
broad band of soft buckskin ran from the upper corners of the pack over
one's forehead. A loop slipped over each shoulder, leaving the hands
free. I was astonished at the ease with which I could walk under this
forty-pound burden. From among the post stores Barreau had long since
armed me with a rifle that was twin to his own. Between us we carried a
hundred cartridges. A butcher knife and a small hatchet apiece fitted us
for all emergencies. Thus equipped we set out, bearing away up the
Sicannie toward the grim range of peaks that cut the skyline into ragged
notches.
Ten miles upstream Barreau located the cluster of lodges he sought as
our first objective point--the summer camp of Two Wolves and his band.
There for two nights and a day we lingered, sitting in comical gravity
for hours at a time in the lodge of the chief. The upshot of this
lengthy council was that Two Wolves' son girded a pack on his broad
shoulders and joined us when we left the camp.
Thereafter I lost count of the days. Possibly, if the need arose, I
could detail the camps we made, the streams we crossed, the huge circle
we swung upon, the crossing and doubling back upon our own trail; but
there is no need. Suffice it to say that we did these things. It was no
pleasure jaunt that we three went upon. Crow Feathers was a man of iron
in the matter of covering ground.
He knew the haunt of every tribe and offshoot of a tribe, every petty
chief's following, and every family group in the North, it seemed to me.
If he did not lead us to them all, he at least tried. The smoky smell of
an Indian lodge became as familiar to my nostrils as the odor of food.
And in every camp, over the peace pipe, Barreau talked "trade," with
Crow Feathers to vouch for him. Barreau spoke the tongue like a native,
but there were lodges wherein neither Cree nor French _patois_ was
spoken or understood, and, when we encountered such, the wisdom of Crow
Feathers smoothed the way. He used the sign language in all its
bewildering variety. I, myself, picked up words and phrases here and
there, comprehended a few of the simpler signs, but Crow Feathers
lingers with me as a past master in wordless communication with his
race. Barreau, even, used to wonder at the astonishing amount of
information Crow Feathers could impart with a few languid motions of his
hands. He made a right able interpreter.
Insensibly the days shortened. I recollect with what surprise I wakened
one morning to find hoar frost thick on my blanket, and a scum of ice
fringing the little creek beside which we slept. Hard on that I observed
the turning of the leaves, the red and yellow tints of autumn. And about
this time Crow Feathers left us; took up his pack one day at noon, shook
hands solemnly with each of us, and a moment later was lost in the
still, far-spreading woods. Three days after that Barreau and I, in the
midst of a thinly timbered belt of land, came suddenly upon a clear-cut
trail. Even my limited experience told me that it was made by man-guided
animals.
"The chumps," Barreau drawled. "They are ten miles out of their way. I
didn't expect to hit their trail till to-morrow. Well, they should be at
the post now. We may as well follow them in."
"How is it," I voiced a thing that puzzled me, "that there are no wagon
tracks? Are you sure this is Montell's outfit?"
"No other," he answered. "For many reasons. By the mule tracks, for one.
You, of course, could not see them in the dark, but there was a mule
herd with the bull-train. Loaded wagons are too hard to handle in this
woods country. We have always used pack-mules this side of the Peace."
"Oh," said I, and, my mystery solved, I forbore further inquiry. We
tramped along the trail in silence. Then, all at once, he flung out an
abrupt question. Curiously enough, the thing he spoke of had just
drifted into my mind.
"Remember those two Hudson's Bay men, Bob?"
I remembered them very well; two taciturn, buckskin-garbed men, who came
to an Indian camp while we were there talking trade. They greeted us
civilly enough, slept in the next lodge overnight, and left us a clear
field in the morning. But before they took to the trail they drew
Barreau aside and the three of them sat upon a fallen tree and conversed
thus for an hour.
"Why, yes," I replied. "What of them?"
"I didn't tell you, did I, that they were Company agents with a proposal
to buy out _my_ interest in the house of Montell," he said. "Now, that
amused me at the time. But the confounded thing has stuck in my mind,
and lately I've been thinking--in fact, I've wondered if----"
He broke off as abruptly as he had begun. I was walking abreast of him,
and I could see that he was engrossed with some problem; the mental
groping in his tone was duplicated in the expression on his face.
"What?" I blurted.
"Oh, just an idea that popped into my mind," he parried carelessly.
"I'll tell you by and by."
"To be perfectly honest," I challenged, on the impulse of the moment, "I
don't think you trust me very much, after all."
"You're mistaken there," he said slowly. "You are the one man in all
this country whom I would trust. But I am not going to burden you with
mere theories of possible trouble. Wait till I am sure."
With this I was forced to content myself. In a mild way I resented his
secretiveness, even while I recognized his right to tell me as much or
as little as he chose. Thus a certain diffidence crept into my attitude,
perhaps. If it was obvious, it made no difference to Barreau. In the two
days it took us to reach the post, I do not think he spoke a dozen
sentences. He followed the trail of the packtrain, wholly absorbed in
thought. Only when the stockade-enclosed group of buildings huddled
below us, casting long shadows across the flat, did his self-absorption
cease. We had halted for a moment on the bank above the river, not far
from where I had first seen the Sicannie. The sun rested on the jagged
mountain range to the west, and the river caught its slanting beams till
it lay below us like cloth of gold, a glittering yellow gash in the
somber woods. Barreau's hand fell lightly on my shoulder.
"Lord! I've been a cheerful companion of late," he said, as if it had
but occurred to him. And some intangible quality of comradeship in the
words, or perhaps his way of saying them, put me at ease once more.
We stood a little longer, and the sun dipped behind the mountains,
robbing the Sicannie of its yellow gleam, casting a sudden grayness over
the North. Then we hitched our lean packs anew, and went down the hill.