We must now pass over another winter, during which the Red River
settlers had to sustain life as they best might--acquiring, however, in
doing so, an expertness in the use of gun and trap and fishing-line, and
in all the arts of the savages, which enabled them to act with more
independence, and to sustain themselves and their families in greater
comfort than before.
Spring, with all its brightness, warmth, and suggestiveness had returned
to cheer the hearts of men; and, really, those who have never
experienced the long six-or-eight-months' winter of Rupert's Land can
form no conception of the feelings with which the body--to say nothing
of the soul--opens up and expands itself, so to speak, in order to
receive and fully appreciate the sweet influences of spring.
For one thing, seven or eight months of cold, biting, steely frost
causes one almost to forget that there ever was such a thing as summer
heat, summer scents, summer sounds, or summer skies. The first thaw is
therefore like the glad, unexpected meeting of a dear old friend; and
the trumpet voice of the first goose, the whirring wing of the first
duck, and the whistle of the first plover, sounds like the music of the
spheres to one's long unaccustomed ears. Then the trickle of water
gives one something like a new sensation. It may be but a thread of
liquid no thicker than a pipe-stem faintly heard by an attentive ear
tinkling in the cold depths far under the ice or snow, but it is liquid,
not solid, water. It is suggestive of motion. It had almost been
forgotten as a sound of the long past which had forsaken the terrestrial
ball for ever.
It does not take a powerful imagination to swell a tiny stream to a
rivulet, a river, a lake, a mighty ocean. Shut your eyes for a moment,
and, in memory, the ice and snow vanish; the streams flow as in the days
of old; flowers come again to gladden the eyes and--but why trouble you,
good reader, with all this? We feel, sadly, that unless you have tasted
the northern winter no description, however graphic, will enable you to
drink in the spirit of the northern spring.
About this time Okematan, the Cree chief, took it into his head that he
would go a-hunting.
This last word does not suggest to a dweller in the wilderness that
crossing of ploughed lands on horseback, and leaping of hedges,
etcetera, which it conveys to the mind of an Englishman. The Cree
chief's notion of spring-hunting was, getting into a birch-bark canoe,
with or without a comrade, and going forth on the lakes and rivers of
the wilderness with plenty of powder and shot, to visit the native home
of the wild-goose, the wild-duck, the pelican, the plover, and the swan.
For such a trip not much is essential. Besides the gun and ammunition
referred to, Okematan carried a blanket, a hatchet, several extra pairs
of moccasins, a tin kettle in which to boil food, a fire-bag for steel,
flint, and tinder, with a small supply of tobacco.
On hearing of his intention, Dan Davidson resolved to accompany him.
Dan had by that time associated so much with the chief that he had
learned to speak his language with facility. Indeed nearly all the
settlers who had a turn for languages had by that time acquired a
smattering more or less of Indian and French.
"You see," said Dan to the chief, "there is not much doing on the farm
just now, and I want to see a little of the country round about, so, if
you don't object to my company, I'd like to go."
"The Cree chief will be proud to have the company of the Paleface
chief," replied the Indian, with grave courtesy.
Dan wanted to say "All right," but was ignorant of the Cree equivalent
for that familiar phrase; he therefore substituted the more sober and
correct, "It is well."
"But," said he, "you must not call me a Paleface chief, for I am only an
ordinary man in my own land--what you would call one of the braves."
"Okematan is thought to have a good judgment among his people," returned
the Indian, "though he has not the snows of many winters on his head,
and he thinks that if Dan'el had stayed in the wigwams of his people
beyond the Great Salt Lake, he would have been a chief."
"It may be so, Okematan, though I doubt it," replied Dan, "but that is a
point which cannot now be proved. Meanwhile, my ambition at present is
to become a great hunter, and I want you to teach me."
The chief, who was gratified by the way in which this was put, gladly
agreed to the proposal.
"There is another man who would like to go with us," said Davidson. "My
friend, Fergus McKay, is anxious, I know, to see more of the lands of
the Indian. You have no objection to his going, I suppose?--in another
canoe of course, for three would be too many in your small canoe."
Okematan had no objection.
"Three would not be too many in the canoe," he said, "but two are better
for hunting."
"Very good. But we will want a fourth to make two in each canoe. Whom
shall we invite?"
"Okematan's counsel is," answered the chief, "to take a brave who is
young and strong and active; whose eye is quick and his hand steady;
whose heart never comes into his throat when danger faces him; whose
face does not grow pale at the sight of approaching death; whose heart
is as the heart of the grisly bear for courage, and yet tender as the
heart of a Paleface squaw; whose hand can accomplish whatever his head
plans, and whose tongue is able to make a sick man smile."
Davidson smiled to himself at this description, which the chief uttered
with the sententious gravity that would have characterised his speech
and bearing in a council of war.
"A most notable comrade, good Okematan; but where are we to find him,
for I know nobody who comes near to that description."
"He dwells in your own wigwam," returned the chief.
"In Prairie Cottage?" exclaimed the other with a puzzled air. "You
can't mean my brother Peter, surely, for he is about as grave as
yourself."
"Okematan means the young brave who loves his little brother."
"What! Archie Sinclair?" exclaimed Dan, with a surprised look. "I had
no idea you had so high an opinion of him."
"Okematan has seen much of Arch-ee: has watched him. He sees that he
thinks nothing of himself; that he thinks always for the sick brother,
Leetle Beel, and that he will yet be a great chief among the Palefaces."
"Well, now you come to mention it, there _is_ something about Archie
that puts him high above other boys; and I suppose his unselfishness has
much to do with it; but don't you think he's too young, and hardly
strong enough?"
"He is not young. He is fifty years old in wisdom. He is very strong
for his size, and he is _willing_, which makes his strength double."
"But he will never consent to leave Little Bill," said Dan.
"Okematan had fears of that," returned the Indian, with, for the first
time, a look of perplexity on his face. "If Arch-ee will not go without
Leetle Beel, Leetle Beel must go too."
It was found, on inquiry, that they were right in their surmise. When
the proposal was made to Archie that afternoon by Dan, the boy's eyes
seemed to light up and dance in his head at the prospect. Then the
light suddenly went out, and the dancing ceased.
"Why, what's the matter, Archie?" asked his friend.
"Can't go. Impossible!" said Archie.
"Why not?"
"Who's to look after Little Bill, I should like to know, if I leave
him?"
"Elspie, of course," said Dan, "and Elise, to say nothing of Jessie,
mother, and brother Peter."
Archie shook his head.
"No," he said, "no! I can't go. Elspie is all very well in her way,
and so is Elise, but _they_ can't carry Little Bill about the fields and
through the bush on their backs; and Peter wouldn't; he's too busy about
the farm. No--ever since mother died, I've stuck to Little Bill through
thick and thin. So I _won't_ go."
It was so evident that Archie Sinclair's mind was made up and fixed, and
also so obvious that a delicate little boy would be a great encumbrance
on a hunting expedition that Dan thought of attempting the expedient of
winning Little Bill himself over to his side. He had no difficulty in
doing that, for Billie was to the full as amiable and unselfish as his
brother. After a short conversation, he made Billie promise to do his
very best to induce Archie to go with the hunters and leave him behind.
"For you know, Little Bill," said Dan in conclusion, and by way of
consoling him, "although nobody could take such good care of you as
Archie, or make up to you for him, Elspie would take his place very well
for a time--."
"O yes, I know that well enough," said the poor boy with some
enthusiasm; "Elspie is always very good to me. You've no notion how
nice she is, Dan."
"Hm! well, I have got a sort of a half notion, maybe," returned Dan with
a peculiar look. "But that's all right, then. You'll do what you can
to persuade Archie, and--there he is, evidently coming to see you, so
I'll go and leave you to talk it over with him."
Billie did not give his brother time to begin, but accosted him on his
entrance with--"I'm so glad, Archie, that you've been asked to go on
this hunting expe--"
"O! you've heard of it, then?"
"Yes, and I want you to go, very very much, because--because--"
"Don't trouble yourself with _becauses_, Little Bill, for I won't go.
So there's an end of it--unless," he added, as if a thought had suddenly
occurred to him, "unless they agree to take you with them. They might
do worse. I'll see about that."
So saying, Archie turned about, left the room as abruptly as he had
entered it, and sought out Okematan. He found that chief sitting in La
Certe's wigwam, involved in the mists of meditation and tobacco-smoke,
gazing at Slowfoot.
That worthy woman--who, with her lord and little child, was wont to
forsake her hut in spring, and go into the summer-quarters of a wigwam--
was seated on the opposite side of a small fire, enduring Okematan's
meditative gaze, either unconsciously or with supreme indifference.
"Hallo! Oke,"--thus irreverently did Archie address the chief--had any
one else ventured to do so, he might possibly have been scalped--"Hallo!
Oke, I've been huntin' for you all round. You're worse to find than an
arrow in the grass."
It may be said, here, that Archie had learned, like some of the other
settlers, a smattering of the Cree language. How he expressed the above
we know not. We can only give the sense as he would probably have given
it in his own tongue.
"Okematan's friends can always find him," answered the Indian with a
grave but pleased look.
"So it seems. But I say, Oke, I want to ask a favour of you. Dan
Davidson tells me you want me to go a-hunting with you. Well, I'm your
man if you'll let me take Little Bill with me. Will you?"
"Leetle Beel is not strong," objected the Indian.
"True, but a trip o' this sort will make him strong perhaps. Anyhow, it
will make him stronger."
"But for a sick boy there is danger," said the chief. "If Arch-ee
upsets his canoe in a rapid, Arch-ee swims on shore, but Leetle Beel
goes to the bottom."
"Not as long as Arch-ee is there to hold him up," returned the boy.
"Waugh!" exclaimed the Indian.
"Humph!" remarked the boy. "What d'ye mean by `Waugh,' Oke?"
"Okematan means much that it is not in the power of the tongue to tell,"
replied the Indian with increasing gravity; and as the gravity increased
the cloudlets from his lips became more voluminous.
"Arch-ee hopes, nevertheless, that the tongue of Oke may find power to
tell him a little of what he thinks."
This being in some degree indefinite, the chief smoked in silence for a
minute or two, and gazed at Slowfoot with that dreamy air which one
assumes when gazing into the depths of a suggestive fire. Apparently
inspiration came at last--whether from Slowfoot or not we cannot tell--
for he turned solemnly to the boy.
"Rain comes," he said, "and when sick men get wet they grow sicker.
Carrying-places come, and when sick men come to them they stagger and
fall. Frost often comes in spring, and when sick men get cold they die.
Waugh!"
"Humph!" repeated the boy again, with a solemnity quite equal to that of
the Red-man.
"When rain comes I can put up an umbrella--an _umbrella_. D'you know
what that is?"
The Indian shook his head.
"Well it's a--a thing--a sort of little tent--a wigwam, you know, with a
stick in the middle to hold on to and put it up. D'you understand?"
An expression of blank bewilderment, so to speak, settled on the chief's
visage, and the lights of intelligence went out one by one until he
presented an appearance which all but put the boy's gravity to flight.
"Well, well, it's of no use my tryin' to explain it," he continued.
"I'll show it to you soon, and then you'll understand."
Intelligence began to return, and the chief looked gratified.
"What you call it?" he asked--for he was of an inquiring disposition--"a
bum-rella?"
"No, no," replied the other, seriously, "an um_brella_. It's a clever
contrivance, as you shall see. So, you see, I can keep the rain off
Little Bill when he's in the canoe, and on shore there are the trees,
and the canoe itself turned bottom up. Then, at carryin' places, I can
carry Little Bill as well as other things. He's not heavy and doesn't
struggle, so we won't leave him to stagger and fall. As to frost--have
we not hatchets, and are there not dead trees in the forest? Frost and
fire never walk in company, so that Little Bill won't get cold and die,
for we'll keep him warm--waugh!"
When human beings are fond of each other disagreement seldom lasts long.
Okematan had taken so strong a fancy to Archie that he felt it
impossible to hold out; therefore, being a man of strong common sense,
he did not attempt the impossible.
Thus it came to pass that, two days later, a couple of birch-bark canoes
were launched on the waters of Red River, with Dan Davidson in the stern
of one and Fergus McKay acting as his bowman. Okematan took the stern
of the other, while Archie Sinclair wielded the bow-paddle, and Little
Bill was placed in the middle on a comfortable green blanket with the
celebrated "bum-rella" erected over him to keep off, not the rain, but,
the too glorious sunshine.