ON THE RIVER
Next morning they saw the dug-out pulled up on the shore below their
camp.
"The difference between a red man and a white man," said Stonor grimly,
"is that a red man doesn't mind being caught in a lie after the occasion
for it has passed, but a white man will spend half the rest of his life
trying to justify himself."
He regarded the craft dubiously. It was an antique affair, grey as an
old badger, warped and seamed by the sun and rotten in the bottom. But
it had a thin skin of sound wood on the outside, and on the whole it
seemed better suited to their purpose than the bark-canoes used by the
Kakisas.
As they carried their goods down and made ready to start the Indians
gathered around and watched with glum faces. None offered to help. It
must have been a trying situation for Mary Moosa. When Stonor was out of
hearing they did not spare her. She bore it with her customary stoicism.
Ahchoogah, less honest than the rank and file, sought to commend himself
to the policeman by a pretence of friendliness. Stonor, beyond telling
him that he would hold him responsible for the safety of the horses
during his absence, ignored him.
Having stowed their outfit, they gingerly got in. Their boat, though
over twenty feet long, was only about fifteen inches beam, and of the
log out of which she had been fashioned she still retained the tendency
to roll over. Mary took the bow paddle, and Stonor the stern; Clare sat
amidships facing the policeman.
"If we can only keep on top until we get around the first bend we'll
save our dignity, anyhow," said Stonor.
They pushed off without farewells. When they rounded the first point of
willows and passed out of sight of the crowd of lowering, dark faces,
they felt relieved. Stonor was able to drop the port of august
policeman.
Said he: "I'm going to call this craft the Serpent. She's got a fair
twist on her. Her head is pointed to port and her tail to starboard. It
takes a mathematical deduction to figure out which way she's going."
Clare was less ready than usual to answer his jokes. She was pale, and
there was a hint of strain in her eyes.
"You're not bothered about Ahchoogah's imaginary terrors, are you?" he
asked.
She shook her head. "Not that."
He wondered what it was then, but did not like to ask directly. It
suddenly struck him that she had been steadily losing tone since the
first day on the trail.
Her next words showed the direction her thoughts were taking. "You said
it was two hundred miles down the river. How long do you think it will
take us to make it?"
"Three days and a bit, if my guess as to the distance is right. We have
the current to help us, and now we don't have to stop for the horses to
graze."
"They will be hard days to put in," she said simply.
Stonor pondered for a long time on what she meant by this. Was she so
consumed by impatience to arrive that the dragging hours were a torture
to her? or was it simply the uncertainty of what awaited her, and a
longing to have it over with? That she had been eager for the journey
was clear, but it had not seemed like a joyful eagerness. He was aware
that there was something here he did not understand. Women had
unfathomable souls anyway.
As far as he was concerned he frankly dreaded the outcome of the
journey. How was he to bear himself at the meeting of this divided
couple? He could not avoid being a witness of it. He must hand her over
with a smile, he supposed, and make a graceful get-away. But suppose he
were prevented from leaving immediately. Or suppose, as was quite
likely, that they wished to return with him! He ground his teeth at the
thought of such an ordeal. Would he be able to carry it off? He must!
"What's the matter?" Clare asked suddenly. She had been studying his
face.
"Why did you ask?"
"You looked as if you had a sudden pain."
"I had," he said, with a rueful smile. "My knees. It's so long since I
paddled that they're not limbered up yet."
She appeared not altogether satisfied with this explanation.
This part of the river showed a succession of long smooth reaches with
low banks of a uniform height bordered with picturesque ragged
jack-pines, tall, thin, and sharply pointed. Here and there, where the
composition seemed to require it, a perfect island was planted in the
brown flood. At the foot of the pines along the edge of each bank grew
rows of berry bushes as regularly as if set out by a gardener. Already
the water was receding as a result of the summer drouth, but, as fast as
it fell, the muddy beach left at the foot of each bank was mantled with
the tender green of goose-grass, a diminutive cousin of the tropical
bamboo. Mile after mile the character of the stream showed no variance.
It was like a noble corridor through the pines.
At intervals during the day they met a few Kakisas, singly or in pairs,
in their beautifully-made little birch-bark canoes. These individuals,
when they came upon them suddenly, almost capsized in their astonishment
at beholding pale-faces on their river. No doubt, in the tepees behind
the willows, the coming of the whites had long been foretold as a
portent of dreadful things.
They displayed their feelings according to their various natures. The
first they met, a solitary youth, was frankly terrified. He hastened
ashore, the water fairly cascading from his paddle, and, squatting
behind the bushes, peered through at them like an animal. The next pair
stood their ground, clinging to an overhanging willow--too startled to
escape perhaps--where they stared with goggling eyes, and visibly
trembled. It gave Stonor and Clare a queer sense of power thus to have
their mere appearance create so great an excitement. Nothing could be
got out of these two; they would not even answer questions from Mary in
their own tongue.
The fourth Kakisa, however, an incredibly ragged and dirty old man with
a dingy cotton fillet around his snaky locks, hailed them with wild
shouts of laughter, paddled to meet them, and clung to the dug-out,
fondly stroking Stonor's sleeve. The sight of Clare caused him to go off
into fresh shrieks of good-natured merriment. His name, he informed
them, was Lookoovar, or so they understood it. He had a stomach-ache, he
said, and wished for some of the white man's wonderful stomach-warming
medicine of which he had heard.
"It seems that our principal claim to fame up here is whisky," said
Stonor.
He gave the old man a pill. Lookoovar swallowed it eagerly, but looked
disappointed at the absence of immediate results.
All these men were hunting their dinners. Close to the shore they
paddled softly against the current, or drifted silently down, searching
the bushes with their keen flat eyes for the least stir. Since
everything had to come down to the river sooner or later to drink, they
could have had no better point of vantage. Every man had a gun in his
canoe, but ammunition is expensive on the Swan River, and for small fry,
musk-rat, duck, fool-hen, or rabbit, they still used the prehistoric bow
and arrow.
"The Swan River is like the Kakisas' Main Street," said Stonor. "All day
they mosey up and down looking in the shop-windows for bargains in
feathers and furs."
They camped for the night on a cleared point occupied by the bare poles
of several tepees. The Indians left these poles standing at all the best
sites along the river, ready to use the next time they should spell that
way. They frequently left their caches too, that is to say, spare gear,
food and what-not, trustfully hanging from near-by branches in
birch-bark containers. The Kakisas even tote water in bark pails.
Next day the character of the river changed. It now eddied around
innumerable short bends right and left with an invariable regularity,
each bend so like the last they lost all track of the distance they had
come. Its course was as regularly crooked as a crimping-iron. On each
bend it ate under the bank on the outside, and deposited a bar on the
inside. On one side the pines toppled into the water as their footing
was undermined, while poplars sprang up on the other side in the
newly-made ground.
On the afternoon of this day they suddenly came upon the village of
which they had been told. It fronted on a little lagoon behind one of
the sand-bars. This was the village where Imbrie was said to have cured
the Kakisas of measles. At present most of the inhabitants were pitching
off up and down the river, and there were only half a dozen covered
tepees in sight, but the bare poles of many others showed the normal
extent of the village.
The usual furore of excitement was caused by their unheralded appearance
around the bend. For a moment the Indians completely lost their heads,
and there was a mad scurry for the tepees. Some mothers dragged their
screaming offspring into the bush for better shelter. Only one or two of
the bravest among the men dared show themselves. But with true savage
volatility they recovered from their panic as suddenly as they had been
seized. One by one they stole to the edge of the bank, where they stood
staring down at the travellers, with their shoe-button eyes empty of all
human expression.
Stonor had no intention of landing here. He waited with the nose of the
Serpent resting in the mud until the excitement died down. Then, through
Mary, he requested speech with the head man.
A bent old man tottered down the bank with the aid of a staff. He wore a
dirty blanket capote--and a bicycle cap! He faced them, his head wagging
with incipient palsy, and his dim eyes looking out bleared, indifferent,
and jaded. Sparse grey hairs decorated his chin. It was a picture of age
without reverence.
"How dreadful to grow old in a tepee!" murmured Clare.
The old man was accompanied by a comely youth with bold eyes, his
grandson, according to Mary. The elder's name was Ahcunazie, the boy's
Ahteeah.
Stonor, in the name of the Great White Father, harangued the chief in a
style similar to that he had used with Ahchoogah. Ahcunazie appeared
dazed and incapable of replying, so Stonor said:
"Talk with your people and find out what all desire. I will return in a
week for your answer."
When this was translated the young man spoke up sharply. Mary said:
"Ahteeah say, What for you want go down the river?"
Stonor said: "To see the white man," and watched close to see how they
would take it.
The scene in the other village was almost exactly repeated. Ahteeah
brought up all the reasons he could think of that would be likely to
dissuade Stonor. Other men, hearing what was going forward, came down to
support the boy. Stonor's boat was rotten, they pointed out, and the
waves in the rapids ran as high as a man. With vivid gestures they
illustrated what would happen to the dug-out in the rapids. If he
escaped the rapids he would surely be carried over the Falls; and if he
wasn't, how did he expect to get back up the rapids? And so on.
Old Ahcunazie stood through it all uncomprehending and indifferent. He
was too old even to betray any interest in the phenomenon of the white
woman.
One thing new the whites marked: "White Medicine Man don' like white
men. He say if white men come he goin' away." This suggested a possible
reason for the Indian's opposition.
Stonor still remaining unmoved, Ahteeah brought out as a clincher:
"White Medicine Man not home now."
Stonor and Clare looked at each other startled. This would be a calamity
after having travelled all that way. "Where is he?" Stonor demanded.
The young Indian, delighted at his apparent success, answered glibly:
"He say he goin' down to Great Buffalo Lake this summer."
An instant's reflection satisfied Stonor that if this were true it would
have been brought out first instead of last. "Oh, well, since we've come
as far as this we'll go the rest of the way to make sure," he said
calmly.
Ahteeah looked disappointed. They pushed off. The Indians watched them
go in sullen silence.
"Certainly we are not popular in this neighbourhood," said Stonor
lightly. "One can't get rid of the feeling that their minds have been
poisoned against us. Mary, can't you tell me why they give me such black
looks?"
She shook her head. "I think there is something," she said. "But they
not tell me because I with you."
"Maybe it has something to do with me?" said Clare.
"How could that be? They never heard of you."
"I think it is Stonor," said Mary.
Clare was harder to rouse out of herself to-day. Stonor did his best not
to show that he perceived anything amiss, and strove to cheer her with
chaff and foolishness--likewise to keep his own heart up, but not
altogether with success.
On one occasion Clare sought to reassure him by saying, _a propos_ of
nothing that had gone before: "The worst of having an imagination is,
that when you have anything to go through with, it keeps presenting the
most horrible alternatives in advance until you are almost incapable of
facing the thing. And after all it is never so bad as your imagination
pictures."
"I understand that," said Stonor, "though I don't suppose anybody would
accuse me of being imaginative."
"'Something to go through with!'" he thought. "'Horrible alternatives!'
'Never so bad as your imagination pictures!' What strange phrases for a
woman to use who is going to rejoin her husband!"
When they embarked after the second spell Clare asked if she might sit
facing forward in the dug-out, so she could see better where they were
going. But Stonor guessed this was merely an excuse to escape from
having his solicitous eyes on her face.
* * * * *
Next morning they overtook the last Kakisa that they were to see on the
way down. He was drifting along close to the shore, and behind him in
his canoe sat his little boy as still as a mouse, receiving his
education in hunter's lore. This man was a more intelligent specimen
than they had met hitherto. He was a comely little fellow with an
extraordinary head of hair cut _a la_ Buster Brown, and his name, he
said, was Etzooah. Stonor remembered having heard of him and his hair as
far away as Fort Enterprise. His manners were good. While naturally
astonished at their appearance, he did not on that account lose his
self-possession. They conversed politely while drifting down side by
side.
Etzooah, in sharp contrast to all the other Kakisas, appeared to see
nothing out of the way in their wish to visit the White Medicine Man,
nor did he try to dissuade them.
"How far is it to the Great Falls?" asked Stonor.
"One sleep."
"Are the rapids too bad for a boat?"
"Rapids bad, but not too bad. I go down in my bark-canoe, I guess you go
all right in dug-out. Long tam ago my fat'er tell me all the Kakisa
people go to the Big Falls ev'ry year at the time when the berries ripe.
By the Big Falls they meet the people from Great Buffalo Lake and make
big talk there and make dance to do honour to the Old Man under the
falls. And this people trade leather for fur with the people from Great
Buffalo Lake. But now this people is scare to go there. But I am not
scare. I go there. Three times I go there. Each time I leave a little
present of tobacco for the Old Man so he know my heart is good towards
him. I guess Old Man like a brave man better than a woman. No harm come
to me since I go. My wife, my children got plenty to eat; I catch good
fur. Bam-bye I take my boy there too. Some men say I crazy for that, but
I say no. It is a fine sight. It make a man's heart big to see that
sight."
This was a man after Stonor's own heart. "Tell him those are good
words," he said heartily.
When they asked him about the White Man who lived beside the falls,
Etzooah's eyes sparkled. "He say he my friend, and I proud. Since he say
that I think more of myself. I walk straight. I am not afraid. He is
good. He make the sick well. He give the people good talk. He tell how
to live clean and all, so there is no more sickness. He moch like
children. He good to my boy. Give him little face that say 'Ticky-ticky'
and follow the sun."
Etzooah issued a command to his small son, and the boy shyly exhibited a
large cheap nickel watch.
"No other Kakisa man or boy got that," said the parent proudly.
"Is it true that this white man hates other white men?" asked Stonor.
Etzooah made an emphatic negative. "He got no hate. He say red man white
man all the same man."
"Then he'll be glad to see us?"
"I think he glad. Got good heart to all."
"Is he at home now?"
"He is at home. I see him go down the river three sleeps ago."
Those in the dug-out exchanged looks of astonishment. "Ask him if he is
sure?" said Stonor.
Etzooah persisted in his statement. "I not speak him for cause I hiding
in bush watchin' bear. And he is across the river. But I see good. See
white face. I know him because he not paddle like Kakisa one side other
side; him paddle all time same side and turn the paddle so to make go
straight."
"Where had he been?"
"Up to Horse Track, I guess."
Horse Track, of course, was the trail from the river to Fort Enterprise.
The village at the end of the trail received the same designation. If
the tale of this visit was true it might have something to do with the
hostility they had met with above.
"But we have just come from the Horse Track," said Stonor, to feel the
man out. "Nobody told us he had been there."
Etzooah shrugged. "Maybe they scare. Not know what to say to white man."
But Stonor thought, if anything, they had known too well what to say.
"How long had he been up there?" he asked.
"I not know. I not know him gone up river till see him come back."
"Maybe he only went a little way up."
Etzooah shook his head vigorously. "His canoe was loaded heavy."
Etzooah accompanied them to the point where the current began to
increase its pace preparatory to the first rapid.
"This the end my hunting-ground," he said. "Too much work to come back
up the rapids." He saluted them courteously, and caused the little boy
to do likewise. His parting remark was: "Tell the White Medicine Man
Etzooah never forget he call him friend."
"Well, we've found one gentleman among the Kakisas," Stonor said to
Clare, as they paddled on.
The first rapid was no great affair. There was plenty of water, and they
were carried racing smoothly down between low rocky banks. Stonor named
the place the Grumbler from the deep throaty sound it gave forth.
In quiet water below they discussed what they had heard.
"It gets thicker and thicker," said Stonor. "It seems to me that
Imbrie's having been at the Horse Track lately must have had something
to do with the chilly reception we received."
"Why should it?" said Clare. "He has nothing to fear from the coming of
anybody."
"Then why did they say nothing about his visit?"
She shook her head. "You know I cannot fathom these people."
"Neither can I, for that matter. But it does seem as if he must have
told them not to tell anybody they had seen him."
"It is not like him."
"Ahteeah said Imbrie hated white men; Etzooah said his heart was kind to
all men: which is the truer description?"
"Etzooah's," she said instantly. "He has a simple, kind heart. He lives
up to the rule 'Love thy neighbour' better than any man I ever knew."
"Well, we'll know to-morrow," said Stonor, making haste to drop the
disconcerting subject. Privately he asked himself: "Why, if Imbrie is
such a good man, does she seem to dread meeting him?" There was no
answer forthcoming.
The rapids became progressively wilder and rougher as they went on down,
and Stonor was not without anxiety as to the coming back. Sometimes they
came on white water unexpectedly around a bend, but the river was not so
crooked now, and more often far ahead they saw the white rabbits dancing
in the sunshine, causing their breasts to constrict with a foretaste of
fear. As the current bore them inexorably closer, and they picked out
the rocks and the great white combers awaiting them, there was always a
moment when they longed to turn aside from their fate. But once having
plunged into the welter, fear vanished, and a great exhilaration took
its place. They shouted madly to each other--even stolid Mary, and were
sorry when they came to the bottom. Between rapids the smooth stretches
seemed insufferably tedious to pass.
Stonor's endeavour was to steer a middle course between the great
billows in the middle of the channel, which he feared might swamp the
Serpent or break her in half, and the rocks at each side which would
have smashed her to pieces. Luckily he had had a couple of days in which
to learn the vagaries of his craft. In descending a swift current one
has to bear in mind that any boat begins to answer her helm some yards
ahead of the spot where the impulse is applied.
As the day wore on he bethought himself that "one sleep" was an elastic
term of distance, and in order to avoid the possibility of being carried
over the falls he adopted the rule of landing at the head of each rapid,
and walking down the shore to pick his channel, and to make sure that
there was smooth water below. They had been told that there was no rapid
immediately above the falls, that the water slipped over without giving
warning, but Stonor dismissed this into the limbo of red-skin romancing.
He did not believe it possible for a river to go over a fall without
some preliminary disturbance.
As it happened, dusk descended on them in the middle of a smooth reach,
and they made camp for the last time on the descent, pitching the three
tents under the pines in the form of a little square open on the river
side. Clare was very silent during the meal, and Stonor's gaiety sounded
hollow in his own ears. They turned in immediately after eating.
Stonor awoke in the middle of the night without being able to tell what
had awakened him. He had a sense that something was wrong. It was a
breathless cool night. Under the pines it was very dark, but outside of
their shadow the river gleamed wanly. Such sounds as he heard, the
murmur of a far-off rapid, and a whisper in the topmost boughs of the
pines, conveyed a suggestion of empty immeasurable distances. The fire
had burned down to its last embers.
Suddenly he became aware of what was the matter; Clare was weeping. It
was the merest hint of a sound, softer than falling leaves, just a catch
of the breath that escaped her now and then. Stonor lay listening with
bated breath, as if terrified of losing that which tore his heartstrings
to hear. He was afflicted with a ghastly sense of impotence. He had no
right to intrude on her grief. Yet how could he lie supine when she was
in trouble, and make believe not to hear? He could not lie still. He got
up, taking no care to be quiet, and built up the fire. She could not
know, of course, that he had heard that broken breath. Perhaps she would
speak to him. Or, if she could not speak, perhaps she would take comfort
from the mere fact of his waking presence outside.
He heard no further sound from her tent.
After a while, because it was impossible for him not to say it, he
softly asked: "Are you asleep?"
There was no answer.
He sat down by the fire listening and brooding--humming a little tune
meanwhile to assure her of the blitheness of his spirits.
By and by a small voice issued from under her tent: "Please go back to
bed,"--and he knew at once that she saw through his poor shift to
deceive her.
"Honest, I don't feel like sleeping," he said cheerfully.
"Did I wake you?"
"No," he lied. "Were you up?"
"You were worrying about me," she said.
"Nothing to speak of. I thought perhaps the silence and the solitude had
got on your nerves a little. It's that kind of a night."
"I don't mind it," she said; "with you near--and Mary," she quickly
added. "Please go back to bed."
He crept to her tent. It was purely an involuntary act. He was on his
knees, but he did not think of that. "Ah, Clare, if I could only take
your trouble from you!" he murmured.
"Hush!" she whispered. "Put me and my troubles out of your head. It is
nothing. It is like the rapids; one loses one's nerve when they loom up
ahead. I shall be all right when I am in them."
"Clare, let me sit here on the ground beside you--not touching you."
"No--please! Go back to your tent. It will be easier for me."
* * * * *
In the morning they arose heavily, and set about the business of
breakfasting and breaking camp with little speech. Indeed, there was
nothing to say. Neither Stonor nor Clare could make believe now to be
otherwise than full of dread of what the day had in store. Embarking,
Clare took a paddle too, and all three laboured doggedly, careless alike
of rough water and smooth.
In the middle of the day they heard, for some minutes before the place
itself hove in view, the roar of a rapid greater than any they had
passed.
"This will be something!" said Stonor.
But as they swept around the bend above they never saw the rapid, for
among the trees on the bank at the beginning of the swift water there
stood a little new log shack. That sight struck them like a blow. There
was no one visible outside the shack, but the door stood open.