The time was an evening in the spring when the atmosphere was all red
and gold; the place the flowering grass mounds between the white poplar
and birch beside little Yellow Sands River. I had walked out to haul
up my sturgeon lines, and had reached the thicket of pines on the sand
side of our snake fence, where I could begin to hear the splash of the
waters, when my well-trained ears caught a new and different sound
proceeding from the bush-bound trail. Curiosity led me to intrude, and
I soon came upon a group of Indian maidens at play, pelting each other
with soft green cones, and using their shawls as shields to protect
their faces.
Directly they saw me a mischievous cry went up, and they united forces,
their black eyes dancing with fun as they flung their dainty missiles
in my direction with a pitiless accuracy. Presently I dashed forward
and captured one of the girls, the most audacious, and, incidentally,
the most handsome. She struggled with me, her great beautiful eyes
two imps of laughter, but I held on, and, as a punishment, tried to
force one of the cones into her laughing mouth. The soft scented thing
crumbled upon her teeth; she twisted round, slapped me sharply across
the cheek, and, with another deft twist, freed herself, her black hair
dashing into my face as she escaped.
The other girls stood at a distance, and chaffed at my defeat.
“When did you come?” I called, in the Cree which I knew better than
English, because the girls were strangers to me.
It was Akshelah, my chief tormentor, who replied from the summit of an
ant-mound. The tribe had just come to Yellow Sands from Thunder Lake,
where fish and fur-bearers had become scarce.
“Come with me,” commanded the girl, holding out her brown shapely arms.
“I will take you down to the tepee, and the chief, my father, will give
you some moose.”
“We have lots of moose,” I said. “Come with me, and I will give you a
sturgeon for your father.”
“But the sturgeon is in the river,” said the bright girl, her head to
one side.
“I hope he is pulling at my line,” I said.
Then the girl jumped from the ant-mound, and swung round, catching at
my hand, and so drew me away from her companions.
“I will not walk over those stones,” said she, and I noticed then that
her left foot was tied up. Yet she walked lightly enough beside me,
through the thicket of pines, where some purple butterflies idled, and
down to the yellow sands, where the surface was as soft and yielding as
white moss.
This bright girl was full of talk, and as we walked she told me of the
many things she had done, and all she had seen, the silver fox, the
white bear, and Wepechenite, the walrus, himself.
“One day,” said she very sternly, “I shot a moose myself.”
“I will track a musk-ox for you, and you shall kill that,” I said.
“Perhaps I should be afraid,” said Akshelah, with a quick glance.
“You would not be afraid if I were with you.”
Said she more slowly:
“Perhaps you shall come down and dance with me at the lodge. But where
is your sturgeon for my father?”
Line after line I gathered in out of the amber water, but there was no
sturgeon that evening. When we had visited the last, Akshelah laughed
delightedly.
“A fisherman!” she cried. “Such a fisherman! I am sure you could not
catch the gold-eyes.”
These are stupid little fish, which will suffer themselves to be pulled
out of the water with the hand.
“I will catch one, and put it down your back,” I threatened, but
Akshelah went on laughing.
“The gold-eyes will have all sunk to the bottom because the sun is
going,” said she. “You will have to go home empty-handed. We laugh at
the young men when they come home empty-handed.”
“You are laughing at me now!”
“I laugh at everyone.” She tried to hush her merry voice. “In the
morning sometimes I laugh into the face of the sun himself.”
Our homestead was encircled by rolling park-like country, which
stretched away endlessly upon three sides; but on the fourth, the
western, there was merely a strip of bush separating us from the Yellow
Sands River, which made a winding course round Big Stone Point, and
entered Lake Whispering some twenty-six miles lower down. Our log-house
stood upon a clearing, with a little cow-byre adjoining which sheltered
our few beasts in winter; both buildings were thatched with swamp
grass. We had reclaimed from the bush about five acres of garden,
where father grew what grain and vegetables we needed, and the flowers
grew themselves. The willow scrub and the wood-ants were our principal
difficulties; and Antoine, our Indian servant, whose duty it was to
keep the ground clear, devoted more anathemas than labour upon his
work. To this day I do not know who owns that land, whether the Crown
or the Hudson Bay Company, but the matter is of no importance.
One night when I reached home father was smoking, sitting upon a log
beside the door, silent as usual. Father had always been taciturn; had
I not been provided with Indian companions, I might have altogether
lost the use of my tongue. He eyed me more narrowly than usual, I
thought, but he said nothing as I passed. We had our supper, and I was
about to roam outside to watch the insects of the night at play, when
my father surprised me by calling in a hoarse voice:
“Sit down, Rupert!”
I had always stood in awe of the unhappy-looking man who called himself
my father. All my life I had lived with him at Yellow Sands, knowing
no other relation, no other friend, except my Indians and morose
MacCaskill, factor of the dying Hudson Bay Station. Why my father
spent himself there I did not know, and the thought never troubled
me, because I did not then know that there was any world outside
that narrow circle of the horizon where earth and sky met. I had no
learning; I could neither read nor write. I had often been to the lake
shores, and I knew that boats sometimes came to the yellow beach; but
where these boats came from I had no idea.
“Rupert,” began my father, “have I taught you anything? Do you know
what London is?”
He spoke in the deliberate manner of a man little accustomed to speech,
and he had his hand to his brow as though his brain were tired. I
replied, not wishing to be ignorant:
“Is it anything like a moose?”
“It is not an animal,” said my father. I wonder now that he did not
smile. “London is the name of a city, and you were born there.”
He stopped, and I could hear the throbbing murmurs of the night. There
was no lamp in our shanty, but we could see by the northern lights,
and by the fire which smouldered outside the open door to keep away
the mosquitos. My father struck a match, rekindled his pipe, and, with
the match still burning between his fingers, walked across to the far
corner of the room, and opened a box; presently he came near, and I saw
that he held a buckskin bag. He poured out the contents upon the table,
but when I bent forward to look, as the light flickered up momentarily,
I was disappointed. Only a few ounces of coarse dirt, and some small
honey-combed stones.
“Is that stuff of any use, father?” I said. He looked across slowly,
and I went on: “I picked some yellow stones like those out of the white
rocks up Split Leaf Creek. I gave them to Factor MacCaskill.”
Turning upon me abruptly, my father went on:
“I have been for the best part of my life a gold-hunter. I, too, was
born in London, and I was once what they call a gentleman. You may
understand the meaning of the word some day. I have made more than
one fortune in my time, but fortunes so made melt as quickly. During
an exceptional period of prosperity I returned to my native city,
there married, and you were born.” He started suddenly. “Come with me,
Rupert.”
He had re-collected the gold, and now snatched at the bag and left the
shanty. I followed, along the dark-blue trail, where I had lingered
with Akshelah that afternoon, and out over the river falling in bars
of alternate black and silver to its own soft music. Father held the
buckskin bag swinging by one hand. It was large and heavy, but he
launched it forth with one strong movement, and it went under the water
with a sullen splash.
“When I am gone, you shall never say that I did not teach you one
lesson, boy.” He went back, and I followed, wondering what this
teaching meant. When we had passed the smoke of the smudge, and had
regained our home, father seized my hand. “Gold has ruined me, Rupert.”
Then he went away, and I suppose to sleep, but I wandered outside,
trying hard to think; and when the lights grew brighter, and the sounds
of the bush more distinct, my untrained mind awoke, and I had dreams
that night.
Father had always looked ill. One day I thought his face was whiter
than usual. I ventured to ask after his health, and succeeded in again
drawing him into conversation.
“I have only a little more time to be miserable,” he said, in his slow
fashion. Then his manner became harsh. “Shall you stay here when I’m
away, or will you go to find the world?”