The Big Otter, R. M. Ballantyne [best free e book reader TXT] 📗

I must beg the reader now to leap with me into the middle of winter.

It is New Year’s Day. That festive season of the year is not less marked and honoured in the Great Nor’-west than it is in civilised lands, though there are comparatively few to honour it, and their resources are somewhat meagre. These facts do not however, diminish the hearty zeal of the few—perchance they tend rather to increase it.

Be that as it may, I now convey the reader to an ice-bound forest. Deep snow has buried the frozen ground. Masses of snow weigh down the branches of the leafless trees; and evergreens, which are not leafless, are literally overwhelmed, almost obliterated, by the universal covering. But the scene is by no means dismal. A blue sky overhead and a bright sun and calm frosty air render it pre-eminently cheerful. The ground is undulating, and among these undulations you may see two men and a couple of sledges slowly making their way along.

The sledge in rear is the ordinary provision-sled used by winter travellers in that land; it is hauled by an Indian. The one in front is styled a cariole. It resembles a slipper-bath in form, is covered with yellow parchment, gaily painted, and drawn by four fine wolf-like dogs. The rider in that cariole is so whelmed in furs as to be absolutely invisible. The man who beats the track has a straight, stalwart frame, and from what of his countenance is left exposed by his fur cap and whiskers, one may judge that he is a white man.

Slowly and silently they plod along through the deep snow—the sleigh-bells on the dog’s harness tinkling pleasantly. Ere long they come out upon a lake, where, the snow being beaten pretty hard, they proceed rapidly—the dogs trotting, and the leader, having changed to the rear, holding on to the cariole-line to restrain them.

Towards the afternoon the travellers draw towards the end of the lake, and then a spirit of mischief seems to enter into the wolf-like dogs, for, on turning round a point which reveals a wide reach of hard snow stretching away towards a distant group of buildings more than half buried in drift, they make a sudden bound, overturn the stalwart white man, jerk the tail-line from his grasp, and career away joyously over the ice, causing their bells to send up an exceeding merry and melodious peal.

From certain incomprehensible growls that escape the stalwart white man as he picks himself up, it might be conjectured that he had taken to the Chipewyan tongue; perhaps a Scotsman might have been led by them to recall the regions that lie north of the Grampians.

Lumley and I were sitting in the hall of Fort Wichikagan, awaiting the advent of dinner, when the sound of the sleigh-bells just referred to broke upon our ears. We bounded from our seats as if galvanised, seized our caps and rushed out.

“A cariole!” shouted Lumley.

“Run away!” said I.

As I spoke, the figure of a man was seen rushing round the point in pursuit.

“Macnab!” cried Lumley, with blazing eyes, “I’d know his figure at twenty miles off. I say, Max, the runaway cariole must certainly contain the sister—the carroty-haired Jessie! Hurrah! We must stop it, my boy, else the dogs will run slap into the fort, and dash the fair six-footer against one o’ the houses. Look out, man!”

But Lumley was wrong. Either the dogs had run as much as they desired, or the decided manner in which we faced them caused them to swerve aside, and stop when they came close to us. The swerve had the effect of overturning the cariole gently, and emptying its contents at our feet, and out from the mass of wraps and furs there arose—not a red-headed six-footer, but a young and sprightly girl, with clear dark complexion, a neat, rounded little figure, and a pair of magnificent black eyes, which, at the moment, were opened to their utmost with an expression of intense amazement.

Lumley gazed at this apparition open-mouthed, with a look of blank surprise. I believe that my own visage must also have worn some remarkable expression, for suddenly the girl’s gorgeous eyes half closed, and she burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

“Well, this is a surprise!” exclaimed Lumley, on recovering some of his usual self-possession.

“So it would seem,” replied the apparition, still laughing, “for it has robbed you of common politeness. Why don’t you introduce yourself and welcome me? No doubt you are my brother’s friend, Mr Lumley!”

She drew a very small white hand from a very large leather mitten, and held it out.

“Forgive me, Miss Macnab—for of course you can be no other,” said Lumley, advancing promptly and grasping the hand, “but your—your—sudden, and I may almost say magical, appearance has so taken me by surprise, that—that—”

“Yes, yes, I understand, Mr Lumley—that you find it difficult to recover yourself,—why, your friend Mr Maxby has not yet recovered,” said the fair Jessie, turning and holding out her hand to me.

She was right. I had not recovered, but stood there open-mouthed and eyed, bereft of speech, until the necessity for action was thrust upon me. My apologies were, however, cut short by the coming up of her brother, who, while yet a long way off, began to shout in his stentorian tones:—

“Hallo! Lumley, my boy, how are ye? Here we are at last. A happy New Year, Max. Glad to see you once more—all alive and hearty? Eh? More than I expected to find you, Jess, after such a run with these rascally dogs—absolute wolves! But it might have been worse. Give us a shake o’ your fists, my boys, on this happy New Year’s Day.”

By this time our hearty friend was beside us, shaking us both vigorously by the hands, wishing us all manner of good luck, and compliments of the season, and otherwise letting off the steam of his exuberant feelings.

“You’ve introduced yourselves, I see,” he continued; “come, Lumley, give your arm to Jessie, and show us the way to the fort.”

“If Miss Macnab,” began Lumley, advancing, but his speech was here cut short.

“Miss Macnab!” echoed the explosive Peter in a sarcastic shout, “call her Jessie, man! who ever heard of a ‘Miss Macnab’ in the backwoods? When men take to living in the wilderness, it’s time to cast off all the humbuggin’ politenesses o’ civilised life.”

“Pardon me, Macnab,” returned my friend, with more than his usual urbanity, “I differ from you there.”

“Oh, ay, I daresay ye do,” interrupted the other. “It’s been said of Scotsmen that ‘they can aye objec’,’ and I think it’s equally true of Englishmen that they can always differ!”

“Men who live in the wilderness,” continued Lumley, merely answering the interruption with a smile, “ought to be unusually particular about keeping up all the politenesses of civilised life, instead of dropping them, and ought to be inexpressibly thankful when a soft and civilising influence, like Miss Macnab, condescends to visit them with a ray of sunshine from the old country.”

“Bravo, Lumley,” cried Macnab, with a boisterous laugh, “that speech was worthy of an Irishman! Call her what you like, my good fellow, so long as you never call her too late for meals; but come along now and let’s have something to eat, for I’m famishing.”

By this time the Indian with the sled had joined us, so we all went off to the fort in a state of boisterous joy, of which those unfortunates who have never been banished from their fellows for months—or for years—can form no conception. As dinner was opportunely smoking on the table when we entered the hall, our visitor’s hilarity was, if possible, increased. Moreover, we had company that New Year’s Day, for a knife and fork had been laid in the hall for every man at the fort. You see, Lumley was a strict disciplinarian, and, therefore, could afford at special times to relax without loss of dignity and with a great increase of good-will on the part of all under him. At all other times we and the men—excepting our guide—messed apart; but on Christmas and New Year’s Days all distinctions were laid aside, discipline was relaxed, and we acted on the principle of that brotherhood which is based upon the assumption that all men have the same objects in life and the same hopes after death. That morning we had all played football on the ice together, had slidden and tumbled down the snow-slope together, and now we were about to mess together in the hall. Still further, our company was to be increased, and our festive board to be graced, by the presence of Waboose and her mother. Little had we imagined, when all this was planned, that we were to have the addition of our old friend Macnab, and that glorious beam from the sun of civilisation, his sister Jessie!

I will, however, make but brief reference to this festive occasion, and proceed to tell of an event which created an unexpected sensation in our little community, and might have closed our New Year’s Day amusements with a terrible tragedy.

After dinner we circled round the blazing fire and enjoyed ourselves listening to Macnab, who had a happy facility in giving a graphic account of his sledge journey from the Mountain Fort—his recently built trading-post—to Fort Wichikagan, and I observed particularly that the presence of a lady among us had a most wonderful and irresistible influence in softening the tones and the manners of all.

As the evening advanced tea was introduced—we had nothing stronger, and did not, indeed, feel any desire for fire-water. Under the inspiriting influence of this beverage, several of our men were induced to tell stories, which were more or less humorous.

During the meal—at which Lumley insisted that “Miss Macnab” should preside, to the immense disgust of Salamander—I observed that the dark-haired white girl