The Pioneers, R. M. Ballantyne [shoe dog free ebook .txt] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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Reloading quickly, the young hunter advanced towards the trap, where his worst fears were realised, for near to it he found the body of an Indian torn limb from limb, and mostly eaten, except the head, which remained entire. It was evident that the poor man, having set several snares for bears, had gone to visit them, and found this brown bear caught by the head and leg. He seemed to have tried to kill it with arrows, but must have been afraid to go near enough to use his weapons with effect, and the enraged animal, having broken the snare, flew upon him and tore him to pieces.
Brown bears of this kind are very powerful. One traveller in these regions saw the footprints of a large one, which, having seized a moose-deer in a river, dragged it for a quarter of a mile along the sandy banks, and afterwards devoured it all except part of the hind-quarters; and the moose which had been treated in this unceremonious way, judging from the size and hardness of the bones, must have been upwards of a year old, when it would weigh as much as an ox of the same age.
Collecting the scattered remnants of the unfortunate Indian, who was no other than the old woman’s son, Lawrence covered them over with leaves and sticks. He then skinned the bear and cut off its claws, which he carried away as trophies, along with one or two choice steaks cut from the creature’s flank. He also collected the weapons and part of the dress of the Indian, with which he returned to the camp.
“Heyday! Lawrence, what have you got there, lad?” said Reuben, as his son came up and threw the bundle on the ground.
“A brown bear, father.”
“Well done!” exclaimed Reuben, with a look of pride, for although his son had shot many a black bear in the forest, he had never before stood face to face with such a monster as that whose skin and claws now lay at his feet.
“It would have been well, father,” said Lawrence gravely, “if the man who first saw this had owned a gun. His arrows were no better than needles in such a hide. See here!”
He drew from his breast the bloody portions of dress which had belonged to the slaughtered Indian.
“The son of the old woman has gone to the happy hunting-grounds,” said Swiftarrow, referring to the heaven of the Indian, as he lifted and examined the dress.
“Ay, ay,” said Reuben sadly, “’tis the chances of the wilderness. You’d better tell the poor old creetur’, Swiftarrow; you understand her ways and lingo better than me.”
Silently the Indian went to the old woman, and laid the bloody garments before her. At first she did not understand what had happened. Suddenly the truth flashed upon her, and she looked quickly up into the grave countenance of the Indian, but death and sorrow appeared to have already done their worst on her, for she neither spoke nor wept for some time. She took up the shreds of cloth and turned them over tenderly; but neither sign nor groan escaped her. Evidently she had been already so stunned by the horrors which had surrounded her for some time, that this additional blow did not tell—at least, not at first—but Reuben observed, while trying to comfort her some time afterwards, that a few tears were coursing slowly down her withered cheeks.
That night, round the camp-fire, the pioneers held earnest counsel, and resolved, sadly but firmly, that their projected journey must be given up for that season.
“It’s a hard thing to do,” said Reuben, as he lay at full length before the fire after supper, “to give up our plans after comin’ so far; but it ain’t possible to carry that old ’ooman along with us an’ it’s not to be thought of to leave her behind to starve, so there’s nothin’ for it but to go back an’ take her wi’ us to the settlements. I would feel like a murderer if I was to leave one o’ God’s creeturs to perish in the wilderness. What think you, Lawrence?”
“I think you are right, father,” replied the youth, with a deep sigh.
“An’ what says Swiftarrow?”
“Go back,” was the Indian’s prompt and laconic answer.
“Well, then, we’re all agreed, so we’ll turn back on our trail to-morrow; but I shall try again next year if I’m above ground. I once know’d a Yankee who had what he called a motto, an’ it was this, ‘Never give in, ’xcept w’en yer wrong.’ I think I’ll take to that motto. It seems to me a good ’un.”
In proof, we presume, of his sincerity, Reuben Guff rolled himself in his blanket, stretched his feet towards the fire, pillowed his head on a bundle of moss, and at once gave in to the seductive influences of sleep; an example which was so irresistible that his companions followed it without delay.
Discarding space and ignoring time, we seize you by the hand, reader, and bound away with you still deeper into the northern wilderness, away into that remote region which, at the time we write of, was the ultima thule of the fur-traders of Canada,—beyond which lay the great unknown world, stretching to the pole. Here, amid the grand scenery of the Rocky Mountains, lies the Athabasca Lake, also styled the Lake of the Hills. We prefer the latter name, as being more romantic.
This is no pretty pond such as we in England are wont to visit and delight in during our summer holidays. It is a great sheet of water; a grand fresh-water sea, 200 miles long and 15 miles broad—a fitting gem for the bosom of the mighty region on which it glitters.
A year has fled since the period of our last chapter, and here, in a birch-bark canoe on the waters of the Lake of the Hills, we find our pioneers—Reuben Guff, his son Lawrence, and his Indian friend Swiftarrow. There is also a young Indian woman in the canoe—Swiftarrow’s wife.
The kind-hearted red man adopted the old woman who had been rescued on their previous trip, but, not finding her a good substitute for his own mother, he bethought him of adding a young squaw to his establishment. While he meditated on this step, the old woman died. About the same time Reuben Guff made proposals to him to join him on a second “v’yage of diskivery.” The Indian agreed; got married off-hand, and took his bride along with him. We now find them all four at the Lake of the Hills.
It may be as well to observe, in passing, that Indian brides are usually more robust than those of civilised communities. They are quite competent to follow their lords on the most arduous canoe voyages, and, besides being able to wield the paddle with great dexterity, are exceedingly useful in managing what may be styled the domestic matters of the camp. They also keep up a constant supply of the Indian’s indispensable foot-gear—moccasins—which are so slender in their nature that a pair may be completely worn-out in a single day of hard hunting.
The brown bride, therefore, was not a hindrance to the party, but a useful member of it, as well as a pleasant companion. True, her companionship consisted chiefly in answering “yes” and “no” when spoken to, and in smiling pleasantly at all times; but this was sufficient to satisfy the moderate demands of her male friends upon her intellectual resources.
“Fort Chipewyan at last,” said Reuben, resting his paddle across the canoe and looking earnestly towards the horizon; “I hope we ain’t too late after all our pushin’ on. It would be hard to find that Monsieur Mackenzie had started.”
“Too much ice in the lake,” said Swiftarrow. “He has not gone yet.”
“I’m not so sure o’ that,” observed Lawrence. “If reports be true, Monsieur Mackenzie is not the man to wait until the ice is all off the lakes and nothin’ but plain sailin’ lies before him.”
“That’s true, lad,” replied Reuben, resuming his paddle. “I wonder,” he murmured to himself, as he gazed wistfully towards the unknown north, “I wonder if the big river is really there, an’ if it do jine the sea?”
That same question was put to himself that same evening—though not for the first time—by one of the inhabitants of Fort Chipewyan. The fort was a mere group of two or three log-huts. In the largest of these huts sat a man whose strongly-marked handsome countenance gave evidence of a bold enterprising spirit and a resolute will. He pored over a map for some time, carefully tracing a few pencil-lines into the blank spaces on the paper, and then murmured, in words which were almost identical with those of Reuben Guff, “I wonder if it joins the Polar Sea?”
This man was the true pioneer, or, rather, the king of pioneers, to whom Guff gave place without a murmur, for Reuben was a modest man; and the moment he heard that one of the gentlemen of the Canadian fur-trading company had taken up his favourite hobby, and meant to work out the problem, he resolved, as he said, “to play second fiddle,” all the more that the man who thus unwittingly supplanted him was a mountaineer of the Scottish Highlands.
“It’s of no manner of use, you see,” he said to Swiftarrow, when conversing on the subject, “for me to go off on a v’yage o’ diskivery w’en a gentleman like Monsieur Mackenzie, with a good edication an’ scienteefic knowledge and the wealth of a fur company at his back, is goin’ to take it in hand. No; the right thing for Reuben Guff to do in the circumstances is to jine him an’ play second fiddle—or third, if need be.”
Alexander Mackenzie—while seated in the lowly hut of that solitary outpost poring over his map, trying to penetrate mentally into those mysterious and unknown lands which lay just beyond him—saw, in imagination, a great river winding its course among majestic mountains towards the shores of the ice-laden polar seas. He also saw the lofty peaks and snow-clad ridges of that mighty range which forms the back-bone of the American continent, and—again in imagination—passed beyond it and penetrated the vast wilderness to the Pacific, thus adding new lands to the British Crown, and opening up new sources of wealth to the fur company of which he was one of the most energetic members. He saw all this in imagination, we say, but he did not, at that time, see his name attached to one of the largest American rivers, classed with the names of the most noted discoverers of the world, and himself knighted. Still less, if possible, did he see, even in his wildest flights of fancy, that the book of travels which he was destined to write, would be translated into French by the order of Napoleon the First, for the express purpose of being studied by Marshal Bernadotte, with the view of enabling that warrior to devise a roundabout and unlooked-for attack on Canada—in rear, as it were—from the region of the northern wilderness—a fact which is well worthy of record! (See Appendix for an interesting letter on the subject.)
None of these things loomed on the mind of the modest though romantic and enterprising man, for at that time he was only at the beginning of his career of discovery.
It may not be out of place here to say a word or two as to the early career of the hero whose footsteps we are about to follow.
He was a Highlander, to begin with; and possessed all the fire and determination peculiar to that race. At an early period of life he was led to engage in commercial enterprises in the country north-west of Lake Superior, joined the North-West Fur Company of Canada in 1784, and went into the Indian country
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