TAWNY
Ray approached the camp with his face flushed and his heart beating
fast. He had been lonely on this trip thus far, but now he had found a
companion.
“Oh, Bruce! Oh, Bruce!” he called when he had approached within calling
distance. “I found somebody on the island, and I want to keep him.”
“What in the world did you pick up!” Bruce exclaimed, when he saw the
animal that looked so much like the collie which Ray had been forced to
leave behind in Vermont. Only this dog was bigger and appeared more
wolf-like. Bruce felt almost a little afraid of the beast, but Ray
stood with his right arm around the neck of the big tawny animal, who
seemed to be as content and happy as the young boy.
“I am going to keep him!” Ray spoke with his face set, without
explaining just how he found the animal.
“There must be some Indians camping on this island,” Bruce suggested,
when Ganawa stepped out of the tepee.
“No, my sons,” Ganawa replied, “no Indians camp on this island more
than a few days, and this dog is no Indian dog. I have seen this dog
with some miners that worked for the brave trader Alexander Henry, and
they must have lost him on this island. It may be that he was hunting
on a trail or was digging out a woodchuck, when the miners had to
leave.”
Ganawa was, however, not at all pleased with Ray’s desire of keeping
the dog. “We shall have to find food for him,” he said, “and we may
have to be on our journey a long time. The country and the lake are
very big, there are many islands and many rivers run into the Big Lake.
Yes, my sons, very many rivers race and tumble into the Big Lake with
much cold and noisy water. These rivers,” he continued after a pause,
“look very small on the maps which white men make of them and of the
lake, but when you go to the place where they run into the lake, or
when you try to cross them in the woods, you find that they are big
rivers with swift currents. Some of them are big only at the time the
snow melts in the forest on the hills, but some of them bring the water
from many lakes and are big at all seasons even if no rain falls from
the clouds for many moons.”
Ray had listened with only one ear, so to speak, to Ganawa’s talk on
the many rivers that fall into Lake Superior.
“My father,” he replied timidly, “I could hunt for my dog. Maybe he
will also eat fish and maybe he can catch rabbits for himself.”
“My son, he may do that,” Ganawa admitted, “but I am afraid he may
upset our canoe and that he may bark at a time when he should keep
still. It is hard to teach a dog anything after he has grown up.”
Both Ray and Bruce had to admit the truth of these points, but now
Bruce came to the assistance of his small brother by saying: “My
father, let us try this dog. Some dogs lie still in a canoe and do not
bark much. If this is not a good dog, we can leave him on the mainland,
where there is more game and where he may find some Indian camp or make
his way back to the traders at the Soo.”
“Bruce, I tell you something,” Ray spoke up when the two brothers were
alone, “if you are going to leave my dog behind in the woods, I am
going to stay behind, too.”
“Don’t talk foolish,” Bruce replied sharply. “Do you suppose I would
leave you stranded in this wilderness with a half-wild dog? Remember
you promised that you would do what I told you when I took you along.
Can’t you understand that nobody would ever see your face again or even
your bones, if you were set out on this wild shore? Remember that there
are no white men on the whole shore from the Soo to the Michipicoten
River, and Ganawa told us he did not know of any Indians except at
Batchawana Bay and at the mouth of the Michipicoten, and he was not
sure that we should find any at the Michipicoten.
“Then you want to remember that travelling overland is not as easy as
gliding along in a canoe. You would have to go up-hill and down-hill,
over rocks and fallen timber, through swamps and across many streams.
Don’t you remember what Ganawa said when I asked him how we could reach
the Michipicoten? He smiled when I told him you and I should like to
travel through the forest on an Indian trail and said: ‘My son,
travelling on land to the Michipicoten would be very hard work. You
could carry only your gun, one blanket and very little food, and your
moccasins would wear out on the rocks. The black flies and the
mosquitoes would eat you up and would not let you sleep. There is no
trail from the Soo to the Michipicoten, because no Indians ever go that
way on land. They always go in canoes on the lake. At night they camp
near the lake on shore or on an island where the cool air keeps away
the black flies and the mosquitoes, and when the lake is stormy they
camp till it is calm again.’”
“I did forget about the black flies and mosquitoes,” Ray admitted
somewhat humbly, “but I don’t want to leave my dog. I am going to call
him Tawny. Don’t you think that is a good name?”
“It is a good name for him,” Bruce agreed, “and I hope he will be a
well-behaved dog in the canoe and in camp. Perhaps he will leave us of
his own accord as soon as we camp on the mainland.”
“He will not leave us,” Ray replied indignantly. “He has no master and
no place to go. I would like to know how he happened to be left on this
island. Perhaps the boat of some white man, who owned him, was swamped
near here, and Tawny swam to the island. The mainland is over three
miles away and he never could have reached that through the ice-cold
water of this lake, but he is not going to leave us!”