OUENWA SETS OUT ON A VAGUE QUEST
In the dead of winter--in that season of sweeping winds and aching
skies, when the wide barrens lie uncheered of life from horizon to
horizon--Soft Hand sent many of his warriors to the South. They followed
in the "leads" of the great herds of caribou, going partly for the meat
of the deer and partly to strike terror into the hearts of the Southern
enemy. At the head of this party went Panounia, chief of the village on
the River of Three Fires, and with him he took his hardy son, Wolf
Slayer. Grim plans were bred on that journey. Grim tales were told
around the big fire at night. The evil thing which Panounia hatched,
with his bragging tongue, grew day by day and night by night. The hearts
of the warriors were fired with the shameful flame. They dreamed things
that had never happened, and wrought black visions out of the
foolishnesses of their brains.
"The bear nods," they repeated, one to another, after the chief had
talked to them. "The bear nods, like an old woman over a pot of stew.
But for Panounia, surely the men of the South would have scattered our
lodges and led us, captive, to the playgrounds of their children and
their squaws. Such a fate would warm the heart of Soft Hand, for is not
our Great Chief an old woman himself?"
So, far from the eye and paw of the great bear, the foxes barked at his
power. The moon heard it, and the silent trees, and the wind which
carries no messages.
About this time Ouenwa, the grandson of Soft Hand, decided to make a
journey of many days from the lodges at the head of Wind Lake to the
Salt Water. He felt no interest in the Southern invasion. His eyes
longed for a sight of the edges of the land and the breast of the great
waters beyond. He had heard, in his inland home, rumour of mighty wooden
canoes walled higher than the peak of a wigwam, and manned by
loud-mouthed warriors from beyond the fogs and the rising sun. Some
wiseacre, squatted beside the old chief's fire, hinted that the
strangers were gods. He told many wonderful stories to back his
argument. Soft Hand nodded. But Ouenwa smiled and shook his head.
"Would gods make such flights for the sake of a few dried fishes and a
few dressed pelts of beaver and fox?" he asked.
"The gods of trade would do so," replied the wiseacre. "Also," he added,
"they slay at great distances by means of brown stakes which are
flame-tongued and smoke-crowned and thunder-voiced."
"But do these gods not fight with knives--long knives and short?"
inquired the lad. "I have heard it said that they sometimes fall out
over the ordering of their affairs, even as we mortals do."
"And what wonderful knives they are," cried the old gossip. "They are
coloured like ice. They gleam in the sunlight, like a flash of lightning
against a cloud. They cut quicker than thought, and the red blood
follows the edge as surely as the rains follow April."
"I have yet to see these gods," replied Ouenwa, "and in my heart I pray
that they be but men, for the gods have proved themselves but cheerless
companions to our people."
At that Soft Hand looked up. "Are the seasons not arranged to your
liking, boy?" he asked, quietly.
"Nay, I did not mean that," cried Ouenwa; "but strange men promise
better and safer company than strange gods."
Now he was journeying toward the ocean of his dreaming and the ports of
his desire. His eyes would search the headlands of fog. Out of the east,
and the sun's bed, would lift the magic canoes of the strangers. But the
journey was a hard one. The boy's only companion was a man of small
stature and unheroic spirit, whom the old chief could well spare. They
took their way down the frozen, snow-drifted lake, dragging their food
and sleeping-bags of skin on a rough sledge. The wind came out of a
steel-blue sky, unshifting and relentless. The dry snow ran before it
over the level surface, and settled in thin, white ridges across their
path. At the approach of night they sought the wooded shore, and in the
shelter of the firs built their fire.
During the journey Ouenwa's guide proved but a cheerless companion. He
had no heart for any adventure that might take him beyond the scent of
his people's cooking-fires. He considered the conversation of his young
master but a poor substitute for the gossip of the lodges. The scant
fare of his own cooking left his stomach uncomforted. He hated the
weariness of the march and dreaded the silence of the night. The cry of
the wind across the tree-tops was, to his craven ear, the voice of some
evil spirit. The barking of a fox on the hill set his limbs a-tremble.
The howl of a wolf struck him cold. The sudden leaping of a hare in the
underbrush was enough to shake his poor wits with fright. But he feared
the anger of Soft Hand more than all these terrors, and so held to
Ouenwa and his mission.
On the third day of the journey the blue sky thickened to gray, the wind
veered, and a great storm of snow overtook them. The snowflakes were
large and damp. The travellers turned aside and climbed the bank of the
river to the thickets of evergreens. With their rude axes of stone they
broke away the fir boughs and reared themselves a shelter in the heart
of the wood. Into this they drew their sledge of provisions and their
sleeping-bags. Then they collected whatever dry fuel they could
find--dead twigs and branches, tree-moss and birch bark--and, with his
ingenious contrivance of bow and notched stick, Ouenwa started a blaze.
They roasted dried venison by holding it to the flame on the ends of
pointed sticks. Each cooked what he wanted, and ate it without talk. All
creation seemed shrouded in silence. There was not a sound save the
occasional soft hiss of a melting snowflake in the fire. The storm
became denser. It was as if a sudden, colourless night had descended
upon the wilderness, blotting out even the nearer trees with its reeling
gray. The old retainer crouched low, and gazed out at the storm from
between his bony knees. His eyes fairly protruded with superstitious
terror.
"What do you see?" inquired Ouenwa. The awe of the storm was creeping
over his courage like the first film of ice over a bright stream. The
old man did not move. He did not reply. Ouenwa drew closer to him, and
heaped dry moss on the fire. It glowed high, and splashed a ruddy circle
of light on the eddying snowflakes as on a wall.
"Hark!" whispered the old man. Yes, it was the sound of muffled
footsteps, approaching behind the impenetrable curtain of the storm. The
boy's blood chilled and thinned like water in his veins. He clutched his
companion with frenzied hands. The fear of all the devils and shapeless
beings of the wilderness was upon him. In the whirling snow loomed a
great figure. It emerged into the glow of the fire.
"Ah! ah!" cried the old man, cackling with relief. For their visitor was
nothing more terrible than a fellow human. The stranger greeted them
cordially, and told them that, but for the glow of their fire, he would
have been lost.
"But what are you doing here--an old man and a child?" he asked.
Ouenwa told him. He explained his identity, and his intention of
dwelling with the great arrow-maker of his grandfather's tribe to learn
wisdom.
"Then are we well met," replied the other, "for my lodge is not half a
spear-throw from the lodge of the arrow-maker. The old man has been as a
father to me since the day he saved my wife from death. Now I hunt for
him, and work at his craft, and have left the river to be near him. My
children play about his lodge. My wife broils his fish and meat. Truly
the old man has changed since the return of laughter and friendship to
his lodge."
The stranger's name was Black Feather. He was taller than the average
Beothic, and broad of shoulder in proportion. His hair was brown, and
one lock of it, which was worn longer than the rest, was plaited with
jet-black feathers. His garments consisted of a shirt of beaver skins
that reached half-way between hip and knee, trousers of dressed leather,
and leggins and moccasins of the same material. Around his waist was a
broad belt, beautifully worked in designs of dyed porcupine quills. His
head was uncovered.
Black Feather seated himself beside Ouenwa, and replied, good-naturedly,
and at great length, to the youth's many questions. He told of the
high-walled ships, and of how he had once seen four of these monsters
swinging together in the tide, with little boats plying between them,
and banners red as the sunset flapping above them. He told of trading
with the strangers, and described their manner of spreading out lengths
of bright cloth, knives and hatchets of gray metal, and flasks of strong
drink.
"Their knives are edged with magic," he said. "Many of them carry
weapons called muskets, which kill at a hundred paces, and terrify at
even a greater distance. But a nimble bowman might loose four arrows in
the time that they are conjuring forth the spirit of the musket."
The storm continued throughout the day and night, but the morning broke
clear. The travellers crawled from their weighted shelter and looked
with gratitude upon the silver shield of the sun. After a hearty
breakfast, they set out on the last stage of their journey. Their
racquets of spruce wood woven across with strips of caribou hide sank
deep in the feathery snow, and lifted a burden of it at every step. But
they held cheerfully on their way. Black Feather walked ahead, and Pot
Friend, the old gossip, brought up the rear. The thong by which they
dragged the sledge passed over the right shoulder of each, and was
grasped in the right hand. After several hours of tramping along the
level of the river's valley, Black Feather turned toward the western
bank and led them into the woods. Presently, after experiencing several
difficulties with the sledge, they emerged on the barren beyond the
fringe of timber. They ascended a treeless knoll that rounded in front
of them, blindingly white against the pale sky. Old Pot Friend grumbled
and sighed, and might just as well have been on the sledge, for all the
pulling he did. On reaching the top of the knoll Black Feather swept his
arm before him with a gesture of finality. "Behold!" he said.
An exclamation of wonder sprang to Ouenwa's lips, and
died--half-uttered. Before him lay a wedge of foam-crested winter sea
beating out against a far, glass-clear horizon. To right and left were
sheer rocks and timbered valleys, wave-washed coves, ice-rimmed islands,
and crouching headlands. Even Pot Friend forgot his weariness and
shortness of breath for the moment, and surveyed the outlook in silence.
It was many years since he had been so far afield. His little soul was
fairly stunned with awe. But presently his real nature reasserted
itself. He pointed with his hand.
"Smoke!" he exclaimed. "And the roofs of two lodges. Good!"
Black Feather smiled. Ouenwa did not hear the old man's cry of joy.
"I see the edge of the world," he said.
"But the ships come over it, and go down behind it," replied Black
Feather.
"That is foolishness," said Pot Friend, who was filled with his old
impudence at sight of the fire and the lodges. "No canoe would venture
on the great salt water. I say it, who have built many canoes. And, if
they voyaged so far, they would slip off into the caves of the Fog
Devils. I believe nothing of all these stories of the strangers and
their winged canoes."
"Silence!" cried the boy, turning on him with flashing eyes. "What do
you know of how far men will venture?--you, who have but heart enough to
stir a pot of broth and lick the spoon."
"I have brought you safely through great dangers," whined the old
fellow.
Montaw, the aged arrow-maker, welcomed his visitors cordially, and was
grateful for the kind messages from his chief, Soft Hand, and for the
gift of dressed leather. He accepted the charge and education of Ouenwa.
He set the unheroic Pot Friend to the tasks of carrying water and wood,
and snaring hares and grouse. He taught Ouenwa the craft of chipping
flints into shapes for spear-heads and arrow-heads, and the art of
painting, in ochre, on leather and birch bark.