INDIAN CHARLIE
Tom awoke with a vague sense of impending disaster, and looked
about, unable for a moment to realize where he was. It was just
dawn. A gray light hung over the woods. The remains of his fire
barely smoked, and frost lay white as snow over everything. Then he
remembered—the journey, the wreck of the burned house, the ruin of
all his plans; and he got up from his nest of hay, unable to remain
quiet.
He built up the fire again, feeling empty and miserable. His supper
had been a poor one, and there was nothing for breakfast. Perhaps he
might shoot a partridge, he thought, but he felt too inert and
lifeless to go on the hunt. At this point he recollected the boxes
of dates and candy he had with him, and he got them out and devoured
them. It was a queer breakfast, but it comforted his stomach
considerably. The heat of the fire began to take the chill out of
his blood. Over the trees in the east the sun began to come up
gloriously, and with some renewed courage Tom began to think of the
journey back to Oakley.
He hated intensely to do it, yet there seemed no other course. It
would be a hard, long tramp besides, lasting more than one day, and
he would have to depend on what he could shoot. The best thing would
be to acquire some provisions before starting; and he filled the
magazine of his rifle from the box of cartridges in his pocket, and
started into the woods.
He was eager, besides, to explore a little farther before leaving
the place. It was just possible that Uncle Phil’s house was still in
the vicinity. The burned building might have been some unused
structure; the real place might be farther on. He skirted the old
beaver meadow and plunged into the woods—a jungle of small spruces
and jack-pine, much of it dead as if attacked by some disease. A
hare bobbed out from the thickets, incautiously sat up to look at
the intruder, and rolled over the next moment. Tom picked it up and
hung it at his belt, reflecting that here was meat for at least one
meal.
He listened intently for a possible answer to the echo of his shot,
but there was no human sound. Pushing on, he reached the deserted
clearing, glanced over the fire ruin again, and went on to examine
the roughly cut road he had stumbled into the evening before.
This trail led him out to the bank of the little river, and ended.
He followed the stream up some rods. Here and there a tree had been
cut at least a year ago, but there were no further signs of
settlement, not even a blazed trail. He made a wide circle with a
radius of a mile and came back to the clearing, unable to cherish
any more hope. This clearing was all the settlement there was.
He looked at it disconsolately. It was untidy and studded with
stumps. All around its edges great heaps of logs and brush had been
piled up. South of the former house these had burned, and the fire
had penetrated for some distance into the woods, probably catching
from the dwelling. At the farthest end of the clearing there were
about three acres of struggling green, the green of some
autumn-planted grain. Other green sprouts showed near the
ruin—perhaps the relics of a garden. It was not in the least the
sort of homestead he had pictured from his cousins’ descriptions,
and he thought rather indignantly of the exaggerated accounts they
had given him.
He poked over the rubbish again. The ashes were full of nails and
screws, bits of glass, and bits of iron. He picked up the old
ax-head, and thought of taking it with him. It would be better than
nothing, perhaps, in collecting firewood; but he decided that it was
too heavy to carry. He put the torn and stained copy of “Ivanhoe” in
his pocket; it would be something to read. Nothing else seemed to be
of the slightest value to him.
There was no use in lingering about the place any longer. He turned
back irresolutely through the woods, and headed toward the river.
Ricks of dead driftwood were piled along its rocky banks. A couple
of swimming muskrats dived in a circle of ripples as he came up. Tom
paused, and as he stood there a lithe black form popped up between
two logs within twenty yards.
It was a mink, and a large one. Almost instinctively he put up his
rifle and drew a bead on the little fur-bearer’s head. It was
broadside to him, but it was a small mark to hit at that distance,
and a bullet anywhere but in the head would ruin the pelt. He aimed
long, expecting it to dodge away, but it vanished only at the
report.
He hardly hoped to have hit, but he found it on the other side of
the log, almost decapitated. It was a nearly black pelt and in prime
condition. If it had been trapped it might have been worth twenty
dollars, but the mangled head would reduce its value. He carefully
wiped the fur, however, and skinned the animal, reflecting that this
would help pay the expenses of his ill-starred venture.
He rolled up the skin temporarily and put it in his pocket, till he
should have time to stretch it, and continued his way down the
stream. There were plenty of traces of fur everywhere. He saw
several more muskrats though no more of the shy minks. But the signs
showed that there were minks there in abundance, and there were
probably martins in the woods, foxes, skunks, and perhaps sables and
fishers. Dave had said that there was plenty of fur in the district,
and he had been right in this, at any rate.
It would be a splendid place for a winter’s trapping, Tom thought,
and he almost regretted that it was not November instead of April.
The trapping season was almost over now. It crossed his mind that he
might stop here for the remainder of it and make what he could. But
he had no traps, no grub, none of the necessary camping outfit.
He followed the stream down to the lake, and turned up the shore to
the spot where he had landed the day before. His dunnage sack was
still safe in the tree fork. He opened it and got out the camp
cooking outfit of nested aluminum that he had packed in Toronto.
There were salt and pepper boxes, both luckily full, and he put
these in his pocket, hesitated, and then walked back over the shore
to the old barn again.
Here he relighted the fire, skinned the rabbit, and set the quarters
to roast on forked sticks. He was voraciously hungry after the long
walk and his insufficient breakfast. While the meat was browning he
carefully cleaned the fat from the mink skin and stretched it on a
bent twig, and then devoured half the hare, gnawing the bones,
sitting back on his pile of hay.
Despite salt and pepper, it was rather dry and flavorless, but the
meat heartened him wonderfully. He felt equal now to starting on the
tramp to Oakley. He could make fully half the distance to-day, and
finish it to-morrow. He would, however, have to abandon his dunnage.
He might be able to send for it, but it was a poor chance.
He hesitated, reluctant to go. He crumbled the hay in his hands. It
was good hay—wild rich grass from the flats where the beavers of old
time had their pond. Dave must have made a good profit out of this
hay, he reflected, glancing over the brown meadow beyond him. There
were perhaps eight or ten acres of it, a long oval, with the remains
of the old beaver dam still visible at the lower end. Evidently it
had been mowed last summer, and this wild hay always brings a good
price at the winter lumber camps.
“This meadow would make ten tons easily,” he said to himself;
“likely more. It’ll bear over a hundred dollars’ worth of hay this
summer, and nobody to cut it. If I want some easy farming, here’s my
chance.”
The idea came to him carelessly, but it suddenly assumed weight. He
could make something more by trapping in the next few weeks—at least
another hundred dollars.
“It’ll be hard luck if I can’t get rabbits and birds enough to live
on,” he muttered. “There’ll be trout soon, too. It’s getting warm.
This old barn would be a good enough place to live in.”
The hay would have to be mowed in July. He would have to cut it,
turn it over, and stack it entirely by hand, but he knew he could
sell it in the stack as it stood. Living here would cost hardly
anything. At the end of the summer he could go back to Toronto with
a hundred dollars or so to show for his time.
Or why should he not stay up here till Christmas for the early
winter trapping? It would be more profitable than playing foot-ball;
and he could spare the time, for he was going to have to take his
last year’s collegiate work over again anyhow. For that matter, why
should he not keep control of this homestead? It was assuredly
abandoned. It had a clearing, at least one building, some grain
planted, a field of hay. He had wished for such a forest farm. Here
was one at least partly made to his hand. He would be eighteen years
old that summer, and eligible to take a government homestead grant.
If Uncle Phil had made no sign by that time he could apply to have
the rights transferred to himself, and he was perfectly certain that
his relatives had no intention of ever resuming possession.
He laughed to himself, but with a new thrill of hope. All sorts of
possibilities seemed suddenly to be opening out, just when things
had looked blackest. He got up and walked back toward the river,
thinking hard, more and more fascinated by his scheme. It was wild
enough, but almost anything was better than creeping back in
humiliation to Toronto. There was pulp-wood on the place too, which
he could cut in his spare time. As for the land itself, it did not
promise extraordinary fertility. Much of it was rocky, and the
stunted growth of the trees indicated poor soil. Just south of the
barn ran an immense ridge of gravel lightly overgrown with white
birches. But Tom did not at that moment dwell much on the actual
details of agriculture.
He went down to the lake shore and brought his dunnage sack up to
the old barn. It was a heavy load to carry on his shoulder, and he
had no tump-line; but he dropped it at the barn-door at last, aching
and played out, so that he had to drop on the hay and rest. He was
getting out of training, he told himself.
When he had recovered breath, he began to unpack his belongings.
Without having definitely pronounced a decision to stay here, he
went on acting as if the decision had been made. To stop a day or
two would do no harm anyway, he thought, if he could pick up food
enough; and he went into the log barn to see what could be done with
it.
It could be turned into a shack that would at least be good enough
for the summer, he thought. The chinks between the logs would not
matter much, and he could stop the worst of them with moss. Clearing
away all the loose hay at the farther end disclosed a pile of loose
boards, which would be useful for patching. He might build a
partition across one portion of the building. Under the hay were
also a long piece of very good rope, a bit of chain and a broken
pitchfork, and a number of loose nails. There were plenty of other
nails in the fire wreck.
Growing interested, Tom made a huge broom of spruce branches and
swept out the litter from the floored portion of the barn and
brushed down the walls. There was a hole in the roof just above. He
climbed up with a board or two and contrived to cover it in a
temporary fashion. In one corner of the old stalls he fitted a rude
bunk and filled it with hay. Unpacking his dunnage, he spread the
blankets he had used on camping trips before, and hung up his
clothing, his aluminum cooking utensils, the few odds and ends he
had brought with him.
After this, he tramped over to the burned cabin to look for nails.
There were plenty; he quickly filled his pocket, but they were
fire-killed and brittle. They would be of some use, however, and he
secured the old ax-head also. The broken iron pot struck him as
still having possibilities; the lower half at any rate could be
used. He came upon an old tin plate that had not been burned. It
might have been the dog’s dish, kept outdoors; but he was not too
proud to take it; and, laden with this junk, he returned to the barn
again.
The glow of the fire and the blowing smoke as he came up, and the
litter of his activities gave him a queer thrill of home. In a
couple of days more, he promised himself, it would look still more
homelike.
He scoured out the rusty pot with sand and water, and cleaned the
tin plate in the same way. The ax-head was in bad condition, but
with two of the hardest stones he could find he ground laboriously
at the edge until some sharpness was restored. The temper was
entirely out of the metal, and so he heated it dull-red in the fire
and then dropped it into cold water. After this hardening he again
ground the edge and reheated it, this time to a brighter red, and
again cooled it suddenly. This treatment produced a rough sort of
temper. The edge held at any rate, and Tom shaped a crude, straight
handle from an ironwood sapling.
Rough as it was, this ax was an immense and immediate help. He
chopped up a supply of firewood with very little difficulty and was
delighted to find that the edge did not blunt. If anything, he had
made the steel too hard; it had chipped a little.
His foraging about the ruin had been so successful that he
determined to go back on the morrow and turn over the ashes
thoroughly. There might be many more things that would be useful.
The most worthless rubbish took on astonishing value in his complete
destitution, and he found an extraordinary pleasure in thus
salvaging broken junk and making use of it.
His mind recurred to the fur trade. By lying in wait along the creek
he might shoot an odd mink, but this was a most uncertain and
wasteful method. He thought of figure-four traps, of deadfalls.
These are seldom very successful where fur animals are shy and much
trapped, but in this unfrequented spot he thought they might work.
He split up one of the pine boards and whittled out half a dozen
sets of figure-fours, which would fall to pieces at a touch of the
baited spindle.
Half a dozen whiskey-jacks had been squalling about the roof of the
barn for hours, and he shot one of them for bait. He set two of his
deadfalls beside the tiny creek in the beaver meadow, where there
were muskrat signs, building a little inclosure of stakes and logs
with a heavy timber supported over the entrance on the figure-four
spring. Going through the woods to the river, he set four more traps
along the shore, close to the driftwood where the minks were sure to
pass.
It was growing late in the afternoon, and he was hungry again.
Remembering that he had nothing eatable but half a rabbit, for which
he felt no appetite, he made a circuit through the woods in the hope
of picking up a grouse. He did start up several; three of them
perched on a tree and sat in full view, craning their necks stupidly
to look at him, but he managed to make a clean miss, and they went
off with a scared roar of wings. With a shot-gun he might have
bagged half a dozen; but no more sitting shots presented themselves,
and he came back to the barn empty-handed.
The sky had clouded over, and a raw April wind blew. Twilight fell
drearily over the bare woods and the black spruces. Tom cooked his
rabbit and ate it without any great relish. He was very tired, and
felt once more filled with indecision and distress. More than ever
it seemed madness to attempt to remain in this place indefinitely.
To make the discomfort worse, the wind changed so that it drove the
fire toward the barn. He had to put it out, lest the building should
catch fire. Vainly he longed for an interior hearth so that he could
heat the place, but he got into his bunk, piled all his blankets and
spare clothing over himself, and shivered for some time, but
eventually went to sleep.
He awoke about sunrise, feeling stiff and cold. Once more he felt
that he had been a fool to stay here even as long as this. Already
he might have been back in Oakley, headed for Toronto.
He built up the fire and warmed himself. There were some scraps of
rabbit left from last night, and he ate them morosely, feeling that
he had carried a diet of rabbit about as far as it would go. This
morning he would have to pick up something better; afterward he
would plan his retreat to Oakley, and when he had finished the
scanty meal he took up his rifle and started toward the river, where
he had set the deadfalls.
He had a stroke of luck at once. Coming quietly out by the stream he
espied four ducks on the water close to the shore. It was not more
than twenty yards, and he knocked over one, and missed with a second
bullet; then the birds went splashing and squawking away through the
air.
He retrieved the duck with a long stick, hung it on his belt and
walked up the shore. The first of his traps was untouched. The
second was sprung and the bait taken, but the animal had eluded the
falling log. Tom reset it, rebaiting it with the head of the duck.
He had not much faith in his deadfalls, but the next one was down
and had a muskrat in it—a dark, sleek pelt, quite flattened with the
weight of the heavy timber.
Tom was unreasonably elated over his prize. It showed that his traps
were good for something after all, and it ran through his mind that
he might set a whole string of them up and down the river. He
skinned the musquash and put the pelt in his pocket; then he walked
slowly up the shore, on the lookout for more ducks.
He saw no more, but, turning into the woods, he managed to pick a
partridge out of a tree. He followed his former trail toward the
burned cabin, for he wanted to look over the ruins again for
something useful. He laid down his rifle and game, and pulled the
burned timbers apart pretty thoroughly. He took out a number of good
boards that might some time be of service, and found a broken cup,
an unbroken saucer, and a useless table knife, but nothing else that
was worth taking away.
Walking about the clearing, however, he made a much more important
find. He observed a slight mound of earth, some scattered boards and
straw almost filling a depression in the ground, and he guessed that
it was a last year’s potato pit. It had been emptied, of course, but
Tom burrowed about among the earth and straw at the bottom and was
rewarded by finding, one by one, nearly a peck of rather small
scattered potatoes.
He yelled with delight. He had grown terribly nauseated with a meat
diet. His mouth watered at the sight of these grubby little spuds.
Taking off his coat, he wrapped them up sack wise in it, and started
back immediately for his barn, which already had come to be home.
He had a real dinner that day—wild duck roasted in fragments, and
potatoes baked in the ashes and eaten with salt and grease from the
duck. Nothing had ever seemed so delicious. There might be still
more potatoes in the pit—possibly some other vegetables. Stimulated
by the food, his courage revived again, and he definitely resolved
to stay here at least until the end of the spring trapping season.
If necessary he could tramp down to Oakley and exchange a pelt or
two for flour, pork, and sugar. As for a longer stay, there would be
time to decide upon that later.
He went back that afternoon to the burned cabin to look for more
potatoes, but, after turning the pit thoroughly out, he found only
three. He shot a rabbit, however, that had come out of the woods to
nibble at the sprouting grain in the clearing, and with the potatoes
in his pocket and the rabbit at his belt he walked across to the
river and down the shore.
A half a mile down, the stream broke into a series of rapids,
swirling among black boulders. The rocks and piled drift logs at the
foot of the rapids looked like a good place for mink, and he stopped
to examine the “sign.” Minks and musquashes dwelt there, surely;
their traces were abundant. He sat down on a log, looking the place
over, considering where he might construct a few deadfalls, when he
was startled by the sudden appearance of a canoe at the head of the
rapid above him.
It shot into sight like an arrow, steered by a single paddler, a
dark-faced young fellow, with a big pack piled amidships. The
canoeman had not seen him; his whole attention was fixed on running
the rapid; he was half-way down it, going like a flash, when Tom
foolishly sprang up and shouted from the shore.
The paddler cast a quick, startled glance aside, and it was his
undoing. The canoe swerved, and capsized with the suddenness of
winking. Tom caught a glimpse of the overturned keel darting past
him. The man had gone out of sight in the smother of spray and foam;
then Tom saw him come up in the swirl of the tail of the rapid,
struggling feebly.
The water was not waist-deep, and Tom rushed in and dragged him out.
It was a young Indian, half choked and perhaps partly stunned, but
not drowned by any means. He coughed and kicked when Tom deposited
him on the shore; and, seeing, that he was safe, Tom made another
plunge and rescued the big bale of goods that was drifting fast
down-stream. The capsized canoe had lodged against a big
half-submerged log lower down, and was secure for the time being.
[Illustration: Tom rushed in and dragged him out]
Returning to his Indian, he found him sitting up, looking dazed and
angry, and spitting out water. It was a young fellow of about Tom’s
own age, wearing a Mackinaw coat and trousers, and a battered felt
hat which had stuck to his head, and he looked at Tom with intensely
black and angry eyes.
“Hello! Feeling better?” Tom cried.
The Indian boy spluttered a rapid mixture of unintelligible French
and Ojibway.
“What you do that for?” he swerved into English. “You make me
upset—mos’ drown. I lose canoe—pelts—gun—everyt’ing.”
“Oh no. I got your stuff ashore, and there’s your canoe yonder,”
said Tom. “Sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have called out, but
there’s nothing lost, anyway.”
The Indian got to his feet, went dripping to the rescued pack, and
turned it over carefully.
“All right, eh? Merci,” he said, his anger dying out. “All my winter
trapping here. Thought heem sure lost. Say, you live here? What your
name?”
“Tom Jackson. Yes, I guess I live here.”
“You good fellow, Tom. Me, I’m Charlie. Say, must make a fire,
quick.”
Both of them were drenched and shivering, and the breeze was cold.
“Come along over to my camp. Fire there,” said Tom. “We’ll put your
canoe safe first.”
They pulled the canoe high and dry, rescuing a shot-gun that was
tied in it, and then the two boys took up the heavy pack and started
across the ridge to the old barn.
The fire was still smoldering, and Tom built it up to a roaring
flame. He hastened to change his wet clothes for dry ones; but
Charlie, who had no other clothes, merely stood in the heat until he
steamed like a kettle, finally becoming passably dry. He said there
was tea in his pack, however, and Tom hastened to get it out. There
was a little sugar, too; and they hastened to boil the tea, and
drank great mugs of the hot, strong, sweet beverage, the first hot
drink Tom had had for several days.
As Charlie thawed out he explained that he belonged to an Ojibway
village north of Oakley, but he had been trapping far in the
northwest with two friends all winter. They had taken another route
home; he was returning this way alone with his fur pack, and after
selling the plunder he was going to spend the summer at his village.
The boy had been partly educated at a mission station. He spoke both
English and French in some fashion, frequently mixing them, and when
excited he combined them with his native tongue in a manner that
would have shattered the nerves of a philologist.
He presently opened up his pack of furs, and Tom was astonished at
the showing. There were nearly fifty minks, scores of muskrats,
besides skunks, sables, foxes, fishers, and weasels. Altogether
there must have been upward of a thousand dollars’ worth of peltry,
and all the skins were taken off, cured, and stretched with a
neatness that showed the boy an expert at his craft. There were
several deer hides also, and one bearskin. Charlie told a great tale
of how they had smoked the bear out of his winter nest.
“You trap, too,” he said, his eye lighting on Tom’s single mink
skin. “Good pelt, if it ain’t shot. Too bad. Ain’t stretched right
neither. You git mebbe seven dollar.”
“More than that,” said Tom. “Look here, you want to trade? I’ll swap
you that pelt for some of your traps and grub and—what else you
got?”
“Dunno,” said Charlie cunningly. “What you want?”
The boys plunged into a war of bargaining, in which the Indian
patience wore out the white nerve. In the end Tom secured four good
steel traps, a little tea and sugar and flour from the remains of
Charlie’s provisions, and a box of matches, in exchange for the mink
and the muskrat skin, an old pair of trousers, and a brilliant red
and green necktie which irresistibly took Charlie’s fancy.
When it was over Charlie thawed out still more, and his black eyes
twinkled as he looked over his acquisitions.
“Tom, you good fellow. Say, I show you how to trap. You git heap
mink here.”
Charlie kept his promise. He stayed three days, looked the field
over, and gave Tom quantities of concise expert advice where to set
his traps and what bait to use. He expounded deadfalls to him—how to
lay blood trails along a trap line, how to stretch and cure the
pelts properly. Altogether his instructions were worth almost as
much as his traps, and during his stay Tom caught another mink and
two muskrats. The boys grew to be great friends in those days, and
then Charlie collected his property again and launched his canoe.
“_Bo’ jour_, Tom!” he said. “You good fellow. I see you again some
time, mebbe.”
He went off down the stream, the red and green tie fluttering over
his shoulder. Tom hated to see him go. The old barn by the lake
seemed doubly lonesome now, but the visit had given him the dose of
fresh courage he needed to carry out his enterprise.