LESSONS IN PILOTING
At daylight the next morning old Martin roused the boy, reminding
him that he “was to begin learning his trade” that day. “And there
are many things to learn about this land-piloting, too,” he told
him. Meanwhile the old hunter took the axe and went into the woods
for fuel while Larry was putting on his shoes and his coat--the only
garments he had removed on going to bed the night before.
The air was very cold and everything frozen hard, and Larry’s teeth
were chattering before Martin returned and started the fire. “Now
notice how I lay these sticks and make this fire,” Martin
instructed. “I am making it to cook our breakfast over, so I’ll
build it in a very different way from what I should if I only wanted
it for heating our tent. Learning how to build at least three
different kinds of fires is a very important part of your
education.”
The old man selected two small logs about four feet long and seven
inches in diameter. He laid these side by side on the ground,
separating them at one end a distance of about six inches and at the
other end something over a foot. In the space between the logs he
laid small branches and twigs, and lighted them, and in a jiffy had
a hot fire going.
Larry noticed that Martin had placed the logs so that they lay at
right angles to the direction from which the wind was blowing; and
now as the heat thawed out the ground, the hunter took a sharp
pointed stick and dug away the earth from under the log almost its
whole length on the windward side. The wind, sucking in under this,
created a draught from beneath, which made the fire burn fiercely.
Then Martin placed two frying pans filled with slices of ham and
soggy, grease-covered bread over the fire, the tops of the two logs
holding the pans rigidly in place. Next he took the wide-bottomed
coffee pot, filled it with water, threw in a handful of coffee, and
placed the pot at the end where the logs were near enough together
to hold it firmly.
“Pretty good stove, isn’t it,” he commented, when he had finished.
“You see that kind of a fire does several things that you want it
to, and doesn’t do several others that you don’t want. It makes all
the heat go right up against the bottom of the pans where you need
it most, and it only takes a little wood to get a lot of heat. What
is more, the sides of the logs keep the heat from burning your face
and your hands when you have to stir things, as a big camp-fire
would. You can always tell a woodsman by the kind of fire he
builds.”
Presently the coffee boiled over and Martin set it off, and by that
time the ham and the bread were ready. And while they were eating
their breakfast he set a pail of water on the fire to heat. “That’s
to wash the dishes in,” he said. “A real woodsman washes his dishes
as soon as he finishes each meal--does it a good deal more
religiously than he washes his face or his hands, I fear.”
When breakfast was finished, and the last dish cleaned, Martin said:
“Now you’ll have an hour’s practice at target-shooting. Take your
gun and come along.”
He led the way to the pile of boxes, and hunted out three or four
solid looking cases. These were filled with paper boxes containing
cartridges--enough to supply an army, Larry thought. Tearing some of
these open, Martin instructed the boy to fill the right hand pocket
of his jacket with the little twenty-twos. “And always remember that
they are in that pocket and nowhere else,” he instructed.
Next he opened a bundle and took out a belt on which there were a
row of little leather pockets with snap fasteners. He filled these
pockets with the larger calibre cartridges, six to each pocket, and
instructed Larry to buckle it on over his coat. Then he led the way
to a level piece of ground just above the camp, and having paced off
fifty yards he fastened the round top of a large tin can against a
tree and stepped back to the firing line.
“I’ll try one shot first to see if the sights are true,” he said, as
he slipped a cartridge into each barrel. Then raising the gun to his
shoulder he glanced through the sights and fired. “Go and see where
that hit,” he told the boy.
Larry, running to the target, found the little hole of the .22
bullet almost in the center of the tin, and shouted his discovery
exultantly. Martin had fired so quickly after bringing the gun to
his shoulder that the boy could scarcely believe his eyes, although
the result of the shot did not seem to surprise the old hunter.
“Don’t try the .38 yet,” he instructed, handing Larry the gun. “Fire
twenty shots with the .22, and go and see where each shot strikes as
soon as you fire and have loaded. And don’t forget to bring the gun
to half-cock, and to load before you leave your tracks. That is one
of the main things to remember. After a little practice you will do
it instinctively, so that you will always have a loaded gun in your
hands. It may save your life sometime when you run up to a buck that
you have knocked over and only stunned.”
The boy took the gun and began his lesson, the hunter leaving him
without waiting to see how he went about it. A few minutes later,
when Larry had finished the twenty rounds, he found the old man
going through the dismantled yacht.
“Just making a final inspection to see if there is anything left
that we may need,” the old hunter said. “There’s a king’s ransom in
here yet, but we can’t use it on our trip, and in another
twenty-four hours it may be on the bottom of the ocean.”
Larry, trying to conceal the pride he felt, handed Martin the tin
target he had brought with him. The old hunter examined it gravely,
counting the number of bullet holes carefully. There were ten of
them, including the one Martin had made.
“Eleven misses in twenty shots,” he commented, simply.
The boy, who was swelling with pride, looked crestfallen.
“But the last five all hit it,” he explained. “At first I hit all
around it, and then I hit it almost every other time, and at last I
hit it five times straight.”
“Put up a new target and try ten more,” was Martin’s only comment.
But when Larry had gone he chuckled to himself with satisfaction.
“Some shooting for a city boy!” he said to himself; “but I won’t
spoil him by telling him so.”
When Larry returned with the second target there were seven bullet
holes in it; but still the old hunter made no comment on the score.
“Now go back and try ten of the big ones, and remember that you are
shooting at big game this time,” he admonished.
Larry returned slowly to his shooting range. Martin was a very hard
and unreasonable task-master, he decided. But, remembering that he
had hit the mark so frequently before, he resolved to better his
score this time. This was just the resolution Martin had hoped he
would make.
So the boy fastened the target in place, adjusted the hammer for
firing the larger cartridge. Then he shut his teeth together hard,
took a careful but quick aim, for Martin had explained that slow
shooting was not the best for hunting, and pulled the trigger. The
sound of the loud report startled him, and his shoulder was jerked
back by the recoil. It didn’t hurt, exactly, for the aluminum butt
plate was covered with a springy rubber pad; but it showed him very
forcibly what a world of power there must be in those stubby little
cylinders of brass and lead.
He forgot his astonishment, however, when on going to the target, he
found that the big bullet had pierced the tin almost in the center;
and as he stood gazing at the hole he heard a low chuckle that
cleared away all his dark clouds. Old Martin had slipped up behind
him quietly; and there was no mistaking the old hunter’s wrinkled
smile of satisfaction.
“Now you see what you can do with her,” the old man said, his eyes
twinkling. “If that tin had been a moose’s forehead he’d be a dead
moose, sure enough. Did the noise and the kick surprise you?”
“Yes, it did,” Larry admitted honestly; “but it won’t next time--it
never will again. And I am going to kill just nine more moose with
these cartridges.”
“That’s the way to talk,” said Martin, with frank admiration; “after
a few more shots you’ll get used to the recoil, and pretty soon you
won’t even feel it. But you musn’t expect to make nine more
bull’s-eyes just yet.”
The old hunter went back to his work at the pile of plunder under
the big canvas, and Larry fired his nine remaining rounds. Then he
sought the old man again, but as Martin asked no question about the
result of the shots, Larry did not volunteer any information.
Presently Martin looked up from his work.
“I suppose you’ve cleaned the rifle now that you have finished
practice for the morning?” he inquired.
Larry shook his head.
“Well that’s the very first thing to do, now, and always,” said the
hunter.
It took quite a time for the boy to clean and oil the gun so that he
felt it would pass inspection, and when he returned to Martin the
old man was busy with an assortment of interesting looking parcels,
placing them in separate piles. He was making notes on a piece of
paper, while both the dogs were sniffing about the packages, greatly
interested.
The old hunter sent Larry to bring two of the toboggans that he had
saved from the yacht. They looked like ordinary toboggans to the
boy, but Martin called his attention to some of their good points
which he explained while he was packing them with what he called an
“experimental load,” made up from the pile of parcels he had been
sorting.
Each of the toboggans had fastened to its top a stout canvas bag,
the bottom of which was just the size of the top of the sled. The
sides of the bag were about four feet high, each bag forming, in
effect, a canvas box fastened securely to the toboggan. Martin
pointed out the advantages of such an arrangement in one terse
sentence. “When that bag is tied up you can’t lose anything off your
sled without losing the sled itself,” he said. “And if you had ever
done much sledging,” he added, “you’d know what that means.”
“The usual way of doing it,” Martin explained, “is to pack your sled
as firmly as you can, and then draw a canvas over it and lash it
down. And that is a very good way, too. But this bag arrangement
beats it in every way, particularly in taking care of the little
things that are likely to spill out and be lost. With this bag there
is no losing anything, big or little. You simply pack the big things
on the bottom, and then instead of having to fool around half an
hour fastening the little things on and freezing your fingers while
you do it, you throw them all in on top, close up the end of the
bag, and strap it down tight. You see it will ride then wherever the
sled goes, for it is a part of the sled itself.”
Larry noticed that most of the larger parcels on the sled were done
up in long, slender bags, and labeled. Martin explained that the
bags were all made of waterproof material, and carefully sealed, and
that narrow bags could be packed more firmly and rode in place
better than short, stubby ones. A large proportion of these bags
were labeled “Pemmican” and the name excited the boy’s curiosity.
“It’s something good to eat, I know,” he said; “but what is it made
of, Martin?”
“It’s an Indian dish that made it possible for Peary to reach the
Pole,” Martin assured him. “It is soup, and fish, and meat and
vegetables, and dessert, all in one--only it hasn’t hardly any of
those things in it. If you eat a chunk of it as big as your fist
every day and give the same sized chunk to your dog, you won’t need
any other kind of food, and your dog won’t. It has more heat and
nourishment in it, ounce for ounce, than any other kind of food ever
invented. That’s why I am going to haul so much of it on our sleds.”
While he was talking he had slit open one of the bags and showed
Larry the contents, which resembled rather dirty, tightly pressed
brown sugar.
“Gee, it looks good!” the boy exclaimed. “Let’s have some of it for
supper.”
“You needn’t wait for supper,” Martin told him. “Eat all you want of
it, we’ve got at least a ton more than we can carry away with us.”
And he cut off a big lump with his hunting knife and handed it to
the boy.
Larry’s mouth watered as he took it. He had visions of maple-sugar
feasts on this extra ton of Indian delicacy close at hand, as he
took a regular boy’s mouthful, for a starter. But the next minute
his expression changed to one of utmost disgust, and he ran to the
water pail to rinse his mouth. He paused long enough, however, to
hurl the remaining piece at the laughing hunter. But Martin ducked
the throw, while Kim and Jack, the dogs, raced after the lump, Kim
reaching it first and swallowing it at a gulp.
“What made you change your mind so suddenly?” the old hunter asked
when he could get his breath. “You seemed right hungry a minute ago,
and I expected to see you eat at least a pound or two.”
“Eat that stuff!” Larry answered, between gulps from the water
bucket. “I’d starve to death before I’d touch another grain of it.”
“That’s what you think now,” the old man answered, becoming serious
again;--“that’s what I thought, too, the first time I tasted it. It
tasted to me then like a mixture of burnt moccasin leather and boot
grease. But wait until you have hit the trail for ten hours in the
cold, when you’re too tired to lift your feet from the ground, and
you’ll think differently. You’ll agree with me then that a chunk of
this pemmican as big as your two fists is only just one third big
enough, and tastes like the best maple sugar you ever ate.”
But the boy still made wry faces, and shook his head. “What do they
put into it to make it taste so?” he asked. “Or why don’t they
flavor it with something?”
“Oh, they flavor it,” Martin explained, laughing. “They flavor it
with grease poured all over it after they have dried the meat that
it is made of, and pounded it up into fine grains. But take my word
for it that when you try it next time, somewhere out there in the
wilderness two or three weeks from now, you’ll say that they flavor
it just right.”
“But we needn’t worry about that now,” he added. “What we need more
than anything else for to-night is a big lot of fire-wood, green and
dry both. Take the axe and get in all you can between now and night.
I want plenty of wood to use in teaching you how to make two other
kinds of fires. Do you suppose you could cut down a tree about a
foot in diameter?”
Larry thought he could. Some lumbermen in the Adirondacks had shown
him how a tree could be felled in any direction by chopping a deep
notch low down, and another higher up on the opposite side. He knew
also about stepping to one side and away from the butt to avoid the
possible kick-back of the trunk when the tree fell.
So he selected a tree of the right size as near the tent as he could
find one, felled it after much futile chopping and many rests for
breath, and cut it into logs about six feet long. When he had
finished he called the two dogs, put a harness on each, hitched them
up tandem, and fastened the hauling rope to the end of one of the
logs. Martin had suggested that he do this, so as to get accustomed
to driving the dogs, and get the big fellows accustomed to being
driven by him.
The dogs, full of energy were eager for the work, and at the word
sprang forward, yelping and straining at the straps, exerting every
ounce of strength in their powerful bodies. The log was a heavy one,
and at first they could barely move it; but after creeping along for
a few inches it gradually gained speed on the thin snow, and was
brought into camp on the run. Even in the excitement of shouting to
the struggling dogs and helping with an occasional push, Larry
noticed the intelligence shown by the animals in swinging from one
side to the other, feeling for the best position to get leverage,
and taking advantage of the likely places.
They seemed to enter into the spirit of the work, too, rushing madly
back to the woods after each log or limb had been deposited at the
tent, and waiting impatiently for Larry to make up the bundles of
wood and fasten the draw rope. Working at this high pressure the boy
and dogs soon had a huge pile of fire-wood at Martin’s disposal, and
by the time the old hunter had finished his task, had laid in a
three days’ supply.
“Now you build a ‘cooking fire,’ such as I made this morning, and
get supper going,” said Martin, coming over to the tent; “and while
you are doing that I’ll be fixing up another kind of a fire--one
called a ‘trapper’s fire,’ which is built for throwing heat into a
tent.”
The old hunter then drove two stakes into the ground directly in
front of the opening of the tent and six feet from it, the stakes
being about five feet apart and set at right angles to the open
flaps. Against these stakes he piled three of the green logs Larry
had cut, one on top of the other like the beginning of a log house,
and held them in place by two stakes driven in front, opposite the
two first stakes. Next he selected two green sticks about four
inches in diameter and three feet long, and placed them like the
andirons in a fireplace, the wall of logs serving as a reflecting
surface like the back wall of a chimney. Across these logs he now
laid a fire, just as one would in a fireplace.
Larry all this time had been busy getting the supper, Martin
offering a suggestion now and then. When he saw that the meal was
almost ready the old man spread a piece of canvas on the ground just
inside the opening of the tent and before the log fire he had laid,
and set out the plates and cups, and when Larry announced that the
feast was ready Martin lighted the fire in front of the logs.
He had a double motive in this--to show the boy how to make a heating
fire and to furnish heat for the evening. For the weather was
growing very cold, and he had some work that he wished to do which
would require light to guide his fingers and heat for keeping them
warm.
With the protection of the tent back of them and the roaring fire in
front they toasted their shins and ate leisurely. To Larry it all
seemed like one grand lark, and he said so.
“I’m afraid you will change your mind about it being such a lark
before we are through with it,” the old man said presently. “It
won’t be a lark for either of us. But I’m beginning to feel more
hopeful about it, now that I see that you can learn things, and are
willing to try.”
He lighted his pipe and smoked thoughtfully for a few minutes. Larry
too, was thoughtful, turning over in his mind the old hunter’s last
remark.
“And so you have been thinking all this time that I might be in the
way--that perhaps you would be better off if you were alone, and
didn’t have a boy like me on your hands?” the boy asked presently.
For a little time the old man did not answer, puffing his pipe and
gazing silently at the fire. At last he said:
“I couldn’t help feeling a little that way at first, Larry. The job
on our hands is one for a strong man, not for a city boy. But I’m
feeling different now that I see how you take hold and are willing
to work, and try to learn all the things I tell you. And wouldn’t it
be funny,” he added, with a twinkle in his kindly eye, “if,
sometime, I should get into trouble and you have to help me out of
it instead of my helping you all the time? A fellow can never tell
what strange things may happen on the trail; and that is one reason
why no man should start on a journey through the woods in the winter
time alone.”
Presently the old man knocked the ashes from his pipe and set about
cleaning the dishes, Larry helping him; but neither of them were in
talking mood, each busy with his own thoughts. When they had
finished the hunter said:
“Now I’ll show you how to make an Indian fire, the kind the Indian
still likes best of all, and the best kind to use when wood is
scarce or when you want to boil a pot of tea or get a quick meal.”
The old hunter then gathered an armful of small limbs, and laid them
on the ground in a circle like the spokes of a wheel, the butts
over-lapping at the center where the hub of the wheel would be. With
a few small twigs he lighted a fire where the butts joined, the
flames catching quickly and burning in a fierce vertical flame.
“This fire will make the most heat for the least amount of wood and
throw the heat in all directions,” Martin explained. “And that is
why it is the best kind of a fire for heating a round tent, such as
an Indian tepee.”
“But why did the Indian have to care about the amount of wood he
burned?” Larry asked. “He had all the wood he wanted, just for the
chopping of it, didn’t he?”
The old man smiled indulgently. “Yes, he surely had all the wood he
wanted just for the chopping--millions of cords of it. But how was he
going to chop it without anything to chop it with, do you think? You
forget that the old Indians didn’t have so much as a knife, let
alone an axe. And that explains the whole thing: that’s why the
Indian made small fires and built skin tepees instead of log houses.
“If you left your axe and your knife here at the tent and went into
the woods to gather wood, Larry, how long do you suppose it would
take you to collect a day’s supply for our big fire? You wouldn’t
have much trouble in getting a few armfuls of fallen and broken
branches but very soon you’d find the supply running short. The logs
would be too large to handle, and most of the limbs too big to
break. And so you would soon be cold and hungry, with a month’s
supply of dry timber right at your front dooryard.
“But it’s all so different when you can give a tap here and there
with your axe, or a few strokes with your hunting knife. And this
was just what the poor Indian couldn’t do; for he had no cutting
tool of any kind worth the name until the white man came. So he
learned to use little sticks for his fire, and built his house of
skins stretched over small poles.
“It is hard for us to realize that cutting down a tree was about the
hardest task an Indian could ever attempt. Why the strongest Indian
in the tribe, working as hard as he could with the best tool he
could find, couldn’t cut down a tree as quickly as you could with
your hunting knife. He could break rocks to pieces by striking them
with other rocks, and he could dig caves in the earth; but when it
came to cutting down a tree he was stumped. The big trees simply
stood up and laughed at him. No wonder he worshipped the forests and
the tree gods!
“Of course when the white man came and supplied axes, hatchets, and
knives, he solved the problem of fire-wood for the Indian. But he
never changed the Indian’s idea about small fires. Too many thousand
generations of Indian ancestors had been making that kind of a fire
all their lives; and the Indian is a great fellow to stick to fixed
habits. He adopted the steel hatchet and the knife, but he stuck to
his round fire and his round tepee.
“And yet, although he had never seen a steel hatchet until the white
man gave him one, he improved the design of the white man’s axe
right away. The white man’s hatchet was a broad-bladed, clumsy
thing, heavy to carry and hard to handle. The Indian designed a
thin, narrow-bladed, light hatchet--the tomahawk--that would bite
deeper into the wood and so cut faster than the white man’s thick
hatchet. And every woodsman now knows that for fast chopping, with
little work, a hatchet made on the lines of the tomahawk beats out
the other kind.”
The old man took his own hunting axe from the sheath at his belt and
held it up for inspection.
“You see it’s just a modified tomahawk,” he said, “with long blade
and thin head, and only a little toy axe, to look at. But it has cut
down many good-sized trees when I needed them, all the same. And the
axe you were using this afternoon, as you probably noticed, is
simply a bigger brother of this little fellow, exactly the same
shape. It’s the kind the trappers use in the far North, because it
will do all the work of a four-pound axe, and is only half as heavy.
We’ve got some of those big axes over there under the tarpaulin, but
we’ll leave them behind when we hit the trail, and take that small
one with us.”
While they were talking Martin had been getting out a parcel
containing clothing and odds and ends, and now he sat down before
the fire to “do some work” as he expressed it.
“If you’re not too sleepy to listen,” he said, “I’ll tell you a
story that I know about a little Algonquin Indian boy.”
Larry was never too tired to listen to Martin’s stories; and so he
curled up on a blanket before the fire, while the old man worked and
talked.