FARTHEST NORTH
Ganawa quickly built a brush lean-to in a place where the campers had a
fine view of the lake. There were no mosquitoes and black flies at this
camp, and after a good meal of smoked moose meat and sweet tea, Ray
rolled up in his blanket and slept all afternoon with Tawny curled up
at his feet.
The tea and sugar had been a treat; for the supply of both was so
limited that they could use these luxuries only on special occasions
when they felt that they had deserved some kind of a feast. Any one who
has helped to carry a canoe three miles across “the bush,” as
present-day woodsmen call this kind of country, will admit that he has
earned a treat of some sort.
Bruce and Ganawa felt no more inclined to further exertion than Ray, so
they sat in the shade, enjoying the gentle westerly breeze and the
beautiful panorama of blue water and dark green forest spread out
before them.
There was very little talk, for each was busy with his own thoughts.
Bruce shared to some extent the fatigue and discouragement of Ray. He
also had a feeling that they had, so to speak, come to the ends of the
earth without finding as much as a real clue to the whereabouts of Jack
Dutton. “I reckon I shall never see my old friend again,” he thought.
“I have a feeling that he is dead. Death and danger lurk everywhere.
One may drown in a storm or in some wild rapids or waterfall almost any
day, he may freeze to death, and unless he is a good hunter and
fisherman, he might in winter even starve to death; and in summer the
terrible pests of mosquitoes and black flies might almost kill a man or
drive him crazy. Thank God, there are none of the pests at this camp!”
And then Bruce spread his blanket on a bed of lichens and moss that
covered the rock, and very soon he was as sound asleep as Ray.
The next thing he knew Ganawa was gently shaking him and saying: “Wake
up, my son. I have caught a mess of trout in a small stream and it is
time that you build a fire and broil them for our evening meal, for the
sun will soon sink behind the forest.”
The white lads ate their trout with a little salt, but Ganawa ate them
just as they came off the green willow sticks without salt. “The
Indians cannot get salt in this country,” he said, “unless they buy it
of the traders, so we often eat our meat and fish without salt as our
fathers did, before the white traders came to our country.”
After a long nap and a good supper, the lads felt more cheerful. For a
while they sat and watched the most gorgeous sunset they had ever seen.
The western sky was covered with scattered clouds, which the sun
painted at first with a golden orange which gradually changed to an
indescribable red, such as one sees only in the great wild forests,
where no smoke and dust fill the air. “It may rain to-night,” said
Ganawa rising and looking at some dark low clouds in the west. “My
sons, we must make our shelter larger and put more boughs on the roof.”
Then for half an hour the three worked diligently on their lean-to.
Bruce and Ray cut and carried long boughs of balsam, and Ganawa laid
them in place like shingles and tied them with strips of willow bark.
When it grew too dark to work, the lads built a camp-fire of driftwood
and for an hour or longer they all sat enjoying its gentle warmth and
listening to the voices of the forest. Some night-hawks were screaming
overhead as they hunted for flying insects over the lake. A bat circled
back and forth near the fire and now and then uttered its faint
high-pitched squeak. From across the lake came the call of wolves, and
kookookehaw, the big owl, made Ray’s hair stand up when he suddenly
uttered his unearthly hoot and deep guttural notes almost above the
camp-fire, as if he were protesting against the invasion of his realm.
These sounds, however, were not unknown to the lads, but there came a
new sound which brought Ray to his feet.
“Listen!” he called. “There is somebody coming. They are throwing rocks
in the lake and slamming the water with a paddle. Let us get away. They
may shoot at us if we stay near the fire. I’ll throw some water on the
fire.”
“Stop, my son,” Ganawa spoke. “They are not going to attack us. They
are the beaver people and they are making signals to their friends. The
wind has changed and their keen noses have caught the man scent. They
do hit the water with paddles, but their tails are the paddles, and
then they dive with a plunge which makes a noise, as if a man threw a
rock into the water.”
It did rain during the night, but the thatch of boughs had been so well
built that no rain fell on the sleepers; in fact Ray did not know it
had been raining until he saw little pools of water on the rocks next
morning.
On an ideal summer day the three paddled slowly northward to the outlet
of the lake without seeing a sign of other human beings, except a few
old Indian camp-sites, as indicated by the usual tepee-poles. At the
outlet they spent a day exploring the region. Bruce and Ray each
climbed a tall tree from which they could look miles away to the north.
The rough rocky hills had disappeared, and as far as their eyes could
see the country seemed to be one great monotonous level forest of black
spruce, the pulpwood trees of the present time.
“My sons,” said Ganawa, “I believe this little Oba River joins the big
river Missinaibi far to the north. My father and I once travelled to
the English traders on Hudson Bay by way of the Missinaibi. It is a bad
river with many falls and rapids, and it took us all summer to make the
journey. Your brother is not camping on this lake and I have seen no
white streaks of gold rock. To-morrow we start back for the
Michipicoten and look for your brother and the gold rock in other
places.”
The lads were glad to hear these words, for, although after plenty of
rest and sleep, they had lost the feeling of fatigue and
discouragement, they still felt as if they might travel on and on
forever and never get out of the level black spruce forest where one
tree looked like another, and where even the small brown creeks wound
about as if they were lost in an endless monotony of trees, and thick
soft knolls and patches of moss and Labrador tea without a piece of
solid ground anywhere for miles and miles.