Snowflakes and Sunbeams; Or, The Young Fur-traders: A Tale of the Far North, - [best summer reads .txt] 📗

in his day. The expression of his face was pleasing, despite a look of habitual severity which sat upon it, and a deep scar which traversed his brow from the right temple to the top of his nose. It was difficult to tell to what country he belonged. His father was a Canadian, his mother a Scotchwoman. He was born in Canada, brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for anyone to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied the stern of the canoe, acting the part of steersman, was quite a youth, apparently about seventeen, but tall and stout beyond his years, and deeply sunburned. Indeed, were it not for this fact, the unusual quantity of hair that hung in massive curls down his neck, and the voyageur costume, we should have recognised our young friend Charley Kennedy again more easily. Had any doubts remained in our mind, the shout of his merry voice would have scattered them at once.

“Hold hard, Jacques,” he cried, as the canoe trembled in the current, “one moment, till I get my pole fixed behind this rock. Now, then, shove ahead. Ah!” he exclaimed with chagrin, as the pole slipped on the treacherous bottom and the canoe whirled round.

“Mind the rock,” cried the bowsman, giving an energetic thrust with his pole, that sent the light bark into an eddy formed by a large rock which rose above the turbulent waters. Here it rested while Jacques and Charley raised themselves on their knees (travellers in small canoes always sit in a kneeling position) to survey the rapid.

“It’s too much for us, I fear, Mr. Charles,” said Jacques, shading his brow with his horny hand. “I’ve paddled up it many a time alone, but never saw the water so big as now.”

“Humph! we shall have to make a portage then, I presume. Could we not give it one trial more? I think we might make a dash for the tail of that eddy, and then the stream above seems not quite so strong. Do you think so, Jacques?”

Jacques was not the man to check a daring young spirit. His motto through life had ever been, “Never venture, never win”—a sentiment which his intercourse among fur-traders had taught him to embody in the pithy expression, “Never say die;” so that, although quite satisfied that the thing was impossible, he merely replied to his companion’s speech by an assenting “Ho,” and pushed out again into the stream. An energetic effort enabled them to gain the tail of the eddy spoken of, when Charley’s pole snapped across, and, falling heavily on the gunwale, he would have upset the little craft had not Jacques, whose wits were habitually on the qui vive, thrown his own weight at the same moment on the opposite side, and counterbalanced Charley’s slip. The action saved them a ducking; but the canoe, being left to its own devices for an instant, whirled off again into the stream, and before Charley could seize a paddle to prevent it, they were floating in the still water at the foot of the rapids.

“Now isn’t that a bore?” said Charley, with a comical look of disappointment at his companion.

Jacques laughed.

“It was well to try, master. I mind a young clerk who came into these parts the same year as I did, and he seldom tried anything. He couldn’t abide canoes. He didn’t want for courage neither; but he had a nat’ral dislike to them, I suppose, that he couldn’t help, and never entered one except when he was obliged to do so. Well, one day he wounded a grizzly bear on the banks o’ the Saskatchewan (mind the tail o’ that rapid, Mr. Charles; we’ll land t’other side o’ yon rock). Well, the bear made after him, and he cut stick right away for the river, where there was a canoe hauled up on the bank. He didn’t take time to put his rifle aboard, but dropped it on the gravel, crammed the canoe into the water and jumped in, almost driving his feet through its bottom as he did so, and then plumped down so suddenly, to prevent its capsizing, that he split it right across. By this time the bear was at his heels, and took the water like a duck. The poor clerk, in his hurry, swayed from side to side tryin’ to prevent the canoe goin’ over. But when he went to one side, he was so unused to it that he went too far, and had to jerk over to the other pretty sharp; and so he got worse and worse, until he heard the bear give a great snort beside him. Then he grabbed the paddle in desperation, but at the first dash he missed his stroke, and over he went. The current was pretty strong at the place, which was lucky for him, for it kept him down a bit, so that the bear didn’t observe him for a little; and while it was pokin’ away at the canoe, he was carried down stream like a log and stranded on a shallow. Jumping up he made tracks for the wood, and the bear (which had found out its mistake), after him; so he was obliged at last to take to a tree, where the beast watched him for a day and a night, till his friends, thinking that something must be wrong, sent out to look for him. (Steady, now, Mr. Charles; a little more to the right. That’s it.) Now, if that young man had only ventured boldly into small canoes when he got the chance, he might have laughed at the grizzly and killed him too.”

As Jacques finished, the canoe glided into a quiet bay formed by an eddy of the rapid, where the still water was overhung with dense foliage.

“Is the portage a long one?” asked Charley, as he stepped out on the bank, and helped to unload the canoe.

“About half-a-mile,” replied his companion. “We might make it shorter by poling up the last rapid; but it’s stiff work, Mr. Charles, and we’ll do the thing quicker and easier at one lift.”

The two travellers now proceeded to make a portage. They prepared to carry their canoe and baggage overland, so as to avoid a succession of rapids and waterfalls which intercepted their further progress.

“Now, Jacques, up with it,” said Charley, after the loading had been taken out and placed on the grassy bank.

The hunter stooped, and seizing the canoe by its centre bar, lifted it out of the water, placed it on his shoulders, and walked off with it into the woods. This was not accomplished by the man’s superior strength. Charley could have done it quite as well; and, indeed, the strong hunter could have carried a canoe twice the size with perfect ease. Immediately afterwards Charley followed with as much of the lading as he could carry, leaving enough on the bank to form another load.

The banks of the river were steep—in some places so much so that Jacques found it a matter of no small difficulty to climb over the broken rocks with the unwieldy canoe on his back; the more so that the branches interlaced overhead so thickly as to present a strong barrier, through which the canoe had to be forced, at the risk of damaging its delicate bark covering. On reaching the comparatively level land above, however, there was more open space, and the hunter threaded his way among the tree stems more rapidly, making a detour occasionally to avoid a swamp or piece of broken ground; sometimes descending a deep gorge formed by a small tributary of the stream they were ascending, and which to an unpractised eye would have appeared almost impassable, even without the encumbrance of a canoe. But the said canoe never bore Jacques more gallantly or safely over the surges of lake or stream than did he bear it through the intricate mazes of the forest; now diving down and disappearing altogether in the umbrageous foliage of a dell; anon reappearing on the other side and scrambling up the bank on all-fours, he and the canoe together looking like some frightful yellow reptile of antediluvian proportions; and then speeding rapidly forward over a level plain until he reached a sheet of still water above the rapids. Here he deposited his burden on the grass, and halting only for a few seconds to carry a few drops of the clear water to his lips, retraced his steps to bring over the remainder of the baggage. Soon afterwards Charley made his appearance on the spot where the canoe was left, and throwing down his load, seated himself on it and surveyed the prospect. Before him lay a reach of the stream which spread out so widely as to resemble a small lake, in whose clear, still bosom were reflected the overhanging foliage of graceful willows, and here and there the bright stem of a silver birch, whose light-green leaves contrasted well with scattered groups and solitary specimens of the spruce fir. Reeds and sedges grew in the water along the banks, rendering the junction of the land and the stream uncertain and confused. All this and a great deal more Charley noted at a glance; for the hundreds of beautiful and interesting objects in nature which take so long to describe even partially, and are feebly set forth after all even by the most graphic language, flash upon the eye in all their force and beauty, and are drunk in at once in a single glance.

But Charley noted several objects floating on the water which we have not yet mentioned. These were five gray geese feeding among the rocks at a considerable distance off, and all unconscious of the presence of a human foe in their remote domains. The travellers had trusted very much to their guns and nets for food, having only a small quantity of pemmican in reserve, lest these should fail—an event which was not at all likely, as the country through which they passed was teeming with wild-fowl of all kinds, besides deer. These latter, however, were only shot when they came inadvertently within rifle range, as our voyageurs had a definite object in view, and could not afford to devote much of their time to the chase.

During the day previous to that on which we have introduced them to our readers, Charley and his companion had been so much occupied in navigating their frail bark among a succession of rapids, that they had not attended to the replenishing of their larder, so that the geese which now showed themselves were looked upon by Charley with a longing eye. Unfortunately they were feeding on the opposite side of the river, and out of shot. But Charley was a hunter now, and knew how to overcome slight difficulties. He first cut down a pretty large and leafy branch of a tree, and placed it in the bow of the canoe in such a way as to hang down before it and form a perfect screen, through the interstices of which he could see the geese, while they could only see, what was to them no novelty, the branch of a tree floating down the stream. Having gently launched the canoe, Charley was soon close to the unsuspecting birds, from among which he selected one that appeared to be unusually complacent and self-satisfied, concluding at once, with an amount of wisdom that bespoke him a true philosopher, that such must as a matter of course be the fattest.

“Bang” went the gun, and immediately the sleek goose turned round upon its back and stretched out its feet towards the sky, waving them once or twice as if bidding adieu to its friends. The others thereupon took to flight, with such a deal of sputter and noise as made it quite apparent that their astonishment was unfeigned. Bang went the gun again, and down fell a second goose.

“Ha!” exclaimed Jacques, throwing down the remainder of the cargo as Charley landed with his booty, “that’s well. I was just thinking as I comed across that we should have to take to pemmican to-night.”

“Well, Jacques, and if we had, I’m sure an old hunter like you, who have roughed it so often, need not complain,” said Charley, smiling.

“As to that, master,” replied Jacques, “I’ve roughed it often enough; and when it does come to a clear fix, I can eat my shoes without grumblin’ as well as any man. But, you see, fresh meat is better than dried meat when it’s to be had; and so