Snowflakes and Sunbeams; Or, The Young Fur-traders: A Tale of the Far North, - [best summer reads .txt] 📗
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“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Jacques, as the party stood on a rock promontory after the events just narrated: “I would give a dollar to have that fellow’s nose and the sights o’ my rifle in a line at any distance short of two hundred yards.”
“It was Misconna,” said Redfeather. “I did not see him, but there’s not another man in the tribe that could do that.”
“I’m thankful we escaped, Jacques. I never felt so near death before, and had it not been for the timely aid of our friend here, it strikes me that our wild life would have come to an abrupt close.—God bless you, Redfeather,” said Charley, taking the Indian’s hand in both of his and kissing it.
Charley’s ebullition of feeling was natural. He had not yet become used to the dangers of the wilderness so as to treat them with indifference. Jacques, on the other hand, had risked his life so often that escape from danger was treated very much as a matter of course, and called forth little expression of feeling. Still, it must not be inferred from this that his nature had become callous. The backwoodsman’s frame was hard and unyielding as iron, but his heart was as soft still as it was on the day on which he first donned the hunting-shirt, and there was much more of tenderness than met the eye in the squeeze that he gave Redfeather’s hand on landing.
As the four travellers encircled the fire that night, under the leafy branches of the forest, and smoked their pipes in concert, while Wabisca busied herself in clearing away the remnants of their evening meal, they waxed communicative, and stories, pathetic, comic, and tragic, followed each other in rapid succession.
“Now, Redfeather,” said Charley, while Jacques rose and went down to the luggage to get more tobacco, “tell Jacques about the way in which you got your name. I am sure he will feel deeply interested in that story—at least I am certain that Harry Somerville and I did when you told it to us the day we were wind-bound on Lake Winnipeg.”
Redfeather made no reply for a few seconds. “Will Mr. Charles speak for me?” he said at length. “His tongue is smooth and quick.”
“A doubtful kind of compliment,” said Charley, laughing; “but I will, if you don’t wish to tell it yourself.”
“And don’t mention names. Do not let him know that you speak of me or my friends,” said the Indian, in a low whisper, as Jacques returned and sat down by the fire again.
Charley gave him a glance of surprise; but being prevented from asking questions, he nodded in reply, and proceeded to relate to his friend the story that has been recounted in a previous chapter. Redfeather leaned back against a tree, and appeared to listen intently.
Charley’s powers of description were by no means inconsiderable, and the backwoodsman’s face assumed a look of good-humoured attention as the story proceeded. But when the narrator went on to tell of the meditated attack and the midnight march, his interest was aroused, the pipe which he had been smoking was allowed to go out, and he gazed at his young friend with the most earnest attention. It was evident that the hunter’s spirit entered with deep sympathy into such scenes; and when Charley described the attack, and the death of the trapper’s wife, Jacques seemed unable to restrain his feelings. He leaned his elbows on his knees, buried his face in his hands, and groaned aloud.
“Mr. Charles,” he said, in a deep voice, when the story was ended, “there are two men I would like to meet with in this world before I die. One is the young Injin who tried to save that girl’s life, the other is the cowardly villain that took it. I don’t mean the one who finished the bloody work: my rifle sent his accursed spirit to its own place—”
“Your rifle!” cried Charley, in amazement.
“Ay, mine! It was my wife who was butchered by these savage dogs on that dark night. Oh, what avails the strength o’ that right arm!” said Jacques, bitterly, as he lifted up his clenched fist; “it was powerless to save her—the sweet girl who left her home and people to follow me, a rough hunter, through the lonesome wilderness!”
He covered his face again, and groaned in agony of spirit, while his whole frame quivered with emotion.
Jacques remained silent, and his sympathising friends refrained from intruding on a sorrow which they felt they had no power to relieve.
At length he spoke. “Yes,” said he, “I would give much to meet with the man who tried to save her. I saw him do it twice; but the devils about him were too eager to be balked of their prey.”
Charley and the Indian exchanged glances. “That Indian’s name,” said the former, “was Redfeather!”
“What!” exclaimed the trapper, jumping to his feet, and grasping Redfeather, who had also risen, by the two shoulders, stared wildly in his face; “was it you that did it?”
Redfeather smiled, and held out his hand, which the other took and wrung with an energy that would have extorted a cry of pain from any one but an Indian. Then, dropping it suddenly and clinching his hands, he exclaimed,—
“I said that I would like to meet the villain who killed her—yes, I said it in passion, when your words had roused all my old feelings again; but I am thankful—I bless God that I did not know this sooner—that you did not tell me of it when I was at the camp, for I verily believe that I would not only have fixed him, but half the warriors o’ your tribe too, before they had settled me!”
It need scarcely be added that the friendship which already subsisted between Jacques and Redfeather was now doubly cemented; nor will it create surprise when we say that the former, in the fulness of his heart, and from sheer inability to find adequate outlets for the expression of his feelings, offered Redfeather in succession all the articles of value he possessed, even to the much-loved rifle, and was seriously annoyed at their not being accepted. At last he finished off by assuring the Indian that he might look out for him soon at the missionary settlement, where he meant to stay with him evermore in the capacity of hunter, fisherman, and jack-of-all-trades to the whole clan.
The scene changes—Bachelor’s Hall—A practical joke and its consequences—A snow-shoe walk at night in the forest.
Leaving Charley to pursue his adventurous career among the Indians, we will introduce our reader to a new scene, and follow for a time the fortunes of our friend Harry Somerville. It will be remembered that we left him labouring under severe disappointment at the idea of having to spend a year, it might be many years, at the depot, and being condemned to the desk, instead of realising his fond dreams of bear-hunting and deer-stalking in the woods and prairies.
It was now the autumn of Harry’s second year at York Fort. This period of the year happens to be the busiest at the depot, in consequence of the preparation of the annual accounts for transmission to England, in the solitary ship which visits this lonely spot once a year; so that Harry was tied to his desk all day and the greater part of the night too, so that his spirits fell infinitely below zero, and he began to look on himself as the most miserable of mortals. His spirits rose, however, with amazing rapidity after the ship went away, and the “young gentlemen,” as the clerks were styled en masse, were permitted to run wild in the swamps and woods for the three weeks succeeding that event. During this glimpse of sunshine they recruited their exhausted frames by paddling about all day in Indian canoes, or wandering through the marshes, sleeping at nights in tents or under the pine trees, and spreading dismay among the feathered tribes, of which there were immense numbers of all kinds. After this they returned to their regular work at the desk; but as this was not so severe as in summer, and was further lightened by Wednesdays and Saturdays being devoted entirely to recreation, Harry began to look on things in a less gloomy aspect, and at length regained his wonted cheerful spirits.
Autumn passed away. The ducks and geese took their departure to more genial climes. The swamps froze up and became solid. Snow fell in great abundance, covering every vestige of vegetable nature, except the dark fir trees, that only helped to render the scenery more dreary, and winter settled down upon the land. Within the pickets of York Fort, the thirty or forty souls who lived there were actively employed in cutting their firewood, putting in double window-frames to keep out the severe cold, cutting tracks in the snow from one house to another, and otherwise preparing for a winter of eight months’ duration, as cold as that of Nova Zembla, and in the course of which the only new faces they had any chance of seeing were those of the two men who conveyed the annual winter packet of letters from the next station. Outside of the fort, all was a wide, waste wilderness for thousands of miles around. Deathlike stillness and solitude reigned everywhere, except when a covey of ptarmigan whirred like large snowflakes athwart the sky, or an arctic fox prowled stealthily through the woods in search of prey.
As if in opposition to the gloom and stillness and solitude outside, the interior of the clerks’ house presented a striking contrast of ruddy warmth, cheerful sounds, and bustling activity.
It was evening; but although the sun had set, there was still sufficient daylight to render candles unnecessary, though not enough to prevent a bright glare from the stove in the centre of the hall taking full effect in the darkening chamber, and making it glow with fiery red. Harry Somerville sat in front, and full in the blaze of this stove, resting after the labours of the day; his arms crossed on his breast, his head a little to one side, as if in deep contemplation, as he gazed earnestly into the fire, and his chair tilted on its hind legs so as to balance with such nicety that a feather’s weight additional outside its centre of gravity would have upset it. He had divested himself of his coat—a practice that prevailed among the young gentlemen when at home, as being free-and-easy as well as convenient. The doctor, a tall, broad-shouldered man, with red hair and whiskers, paced the room sedately, with a long pipe depending from his lips, which he removed occasionally to address a few remarks to the accountant, a stout, heavy man of about thirty, with a voice like a Stentor, eyes sharp and active as those of a ferret, and a tongue that moved with twice the ordinary amount of lingual rapidity. The doctor’s remarks seemed to be particularly humorous, if one might judge from the peals of laughter with which they were received by the accountant, who stood with his back to the stove in such a position that, while it warmed him from his heels to his waist, he enjoyed the additional benefit of the pipe or chimney, which rose upwards, parallel with his spine, and, taking a sudden bend near the roof, passed over his head—thus producing a genial and equable warmth from top to toe.
“Yes,” said the doctor, “I left him hotly following up a rabbit-track, in the firm belief that it was that of a silver fox.”
“And did you not undeceive the greenhorn?” cried the accountant, with another shout of laughter.
“Not I,” replied the doctor. “I merely recommended him to keep his eye on the sun, lest he should lose his way, and
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