On a sunshiny day twelve miles down the river at the Indian settlement,
old Chief Shingwauk, known in English as the Pine Tree, put on his best
beaded caribou-skin moccasins and, motioning to his wife, moved slowly
toward the shore where a small bark canoe nestled in the long reeds. A
few moments later they slid silently up stream, the aged crone kneeling
in the bow, a red shawl enveloping head and shoulders, her thin and
bony arms wielding a narrow paddle with smooth agility. In the stern
squatted Shingwauk, his dark eyes deep in thought.
Slowly they pushed up current, pausing now and again to peer unspeaking
into the woods, every ancient instinct still alive, though ninety years
had passed since the old man and his wife were unstrapped from the
stiff board cradles in which they once swung mummy-like in long
forgotten camps. Shingwauk, his broad blade winnowing the clear water,
reflected that this journey had been contemplated for many months,
since first he heard that strange things were being done at the big
white water, and now it was well to see for himself, for the time was
approaching when he would not see anything any more.
It was years since he had been at St. Marys and he was very old, so he
worked up stream carefully, skirting close to the shore in the back
water, hugging every point and sheering not at all into the strong
current of midstream. Thus for hours the canoe floated like a dry leaf
in the unruffled corner of a hidden pool, and in it the ancient pair,
dry themselves with the searching seasons of nearly a hundred years.
For five hours they paddled, then the last bend in the river and St.
Marys lay three miles ahead. Naqua, in the bow, reached up a withered
hand, caught at an overhanging branch and their old eyes took in a
scene familiar but yet strange. The sky line had changed, and up where
the big white water crossed the river like a flat bar there was cause
for wonderment.
Presently Shingwauk tapped the thwart with the haft of his paddle and
they glided on, past the lower end of the town with its new houses and
gardens, past a street car that moved like a noisy miracle with nothing
to pull it, being evidently animated by some devil enchained, past
Filmer's dock where years before Shingwauk and Naqua used to bring mink
and otter and marten for trade; past other docks newer and larger and a
town bigger than anything they had ever conceived, and opposite which
sharp-nosed devil boats darted about or swung at anchor, across the
deep bay that lay between the town and the big white water, till
finally they floated near the block-house and Shingwauk's eyes, gazing
profoundly at the massive proportions of Clark's buildings, caught the
narrow stone lined entrance to the little Hudson Bay canal.
"How," he grunted.
The canoe slid delicately forward till presently it floated in the tiny
lock. Naqua said nothing, being seized by an enormous fear that
clutched at her stringly throat and held her silent, but Shingwauk felt
something stirring in his breast. Here, surrounded by the confused
vibrations of the works, he resigned himself to ancient memories.
Putting out a brown hand he touched the rough walls, and at the touch
the year rolled back. He saw himself a young man, the bow paddle of a
great thirty-foot canoe that came down through the broken waters of the
big lake to the rapids above, with the Hudson Bay factor enthroned in
the middle, surrounded by the precious takings of the winter. He saw
Ojibway faces, now long forgotten, and smelt the smoke of vanished camp
fires. He saw the thirty-foot canoe lowered delicately into just such
a lock as this, and automatically thrust out his own paddle to protect
her tender tawny sides from the rough masonry. The hewn gates had
opened when he floated out, and here were the gates looking
non-understandably new, and with the adze marks still on the yellow
timber.
Involuntarily he cast about for the blockhouse and found it hard by.
He looked at his own hands--they were knotted and wrinkled; he scanned
the twelve-foot canoe--it seemed small and hastily built of poor bark;
he stared at the back of Naqua and reflected how bent and rounded it
was instead of being straight and strong and supple; he glanced up and
where once there stretched green bush and small running streams now
stood things bigger than he had ever seen; he sniffed at the wind and,
without knowing what it was, caught the sharp odor of metal and
machinery. Last of all, he lifted his gaze straight into the eyes of a
man who stood staring down from the coping of the little lock.
From the blockhouse window Clark had seen him since first the canoe
approached the shore. With a curious thrill he had watched the old
chief enter the tiny chamber and float motionless--a visitant from the
past. So complete was the picture and so almost poignant the pleasure
it afforded, that, loath to mar it, he had hesitated to approach.
Never had he conceived anything so intimately appropriate as this
linking of bygone days with the insistent present.
They stared at each other, Clark's keen features suffused with
interest, Shingwauk's black eyes gazing lustrous from a dark bronze
face seamed with innumerable wrinkles. His visage was noble with the
proud wisdom of the wilderness and the unnamable shadow of traditions
that went back through uncounted centuries of forest life. Clark,
recognizing it, felt strangely juvenile. Presently Shingwauk, with
some subtle intuition of who and what was the man who stood so quietly,
waved his hand. The motion took in the works, the blockhouse, the
canal, in short the entire setting.
"You?" he asked in deep, hollow tones.