Part 9 (1/2)
The tents were up and the supper cooking, when the wind hauled and blew furiously into our haven. The fires were scattered and the rain came in blinding sheets. The tent-pegs pulled from the sand. We sprang to our feet and held on to the poles, wet to the skin. It was useless; the rain blew right under the canvas. We laid the tents on the ”grub” and stepped out into the dark. We could not be any wetter, and we did not care. To stand in the dark in the wilderness, with nothing to eat, and a fire-engine playing a hose on you for a couple of hours--if you have imagination enough, you can fill in the situation. But the G.o.ds were propitious. The wind died down. The stars came out by myriads. The fires were relighted, and the ordinary life begun. It was late in the night before our clothes, blankets, and tents were dry, but, like boys, we forgot it all.
Then came a river--blue and flat like the sky above--running through rushy banks, backed by the ma.s.ses of the forest; anon the waters rushed upon us over the rocks, and we fought, plunk-plunk-plunk, with the paddles, until our strength gave out. We stepped out into the water, and getting our lines, and using our long double blades as fenders, ”tracked” the canoes up through the boil. The Indians in their heavier boats used ”setting-poles” with marvellous dexterity, and by furious exertion were able to draw steadily up the grade--though at times they too ”tracked,” and even portaged. Our largest canoe weighed two hundred pounds, but a little voyager managed to lug it, though how I couldn't comprehend, since his pipe-stem legs fairly bent and wobbled under the enormous ark. None of us by this time were able to lift the loads which we carried, but, like a Western pack-mule, we stood about and had things piled on to us, until nothing more would stick. Some of the backwoodsmen carry incredible ma.s.ses of stuff, and their lore is full of tales which no one could be expected to believe. Our men did not hesitate to take two hundred and fifty pounds over short portages, which were very rough and stony, though they all said if they slipped they expected to break a leg. This is largely due to the tump-line, which is laid over the head, while persons unused to it must have shoulder-straps in addition, which are not as good, because the ”breastbone,” so called, is not strong enough.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 47 THE INDIANS USED 'SETTING-POLES']
We were getting day by day farther into ”the beyond.” There were no traces here of the hand of man. Only Jimmie knew the way--it was his trapping-ground. Only once did we encounter people. We were blown into a little board dock, on a gray day, with the waves piling up behind us, and made a difficult landing. Here were a few tiny log houses--an outpost of the Hudson Bay Company. We renewed our stock of provisions, after laborious trading with the stagnated people who live in the lonely place. There was nothing to sell us but a few of the most common necessities; however, we needed only potatoes and sugar. This was Jimmie's home. Here we saw his poor old mother, who was being tossed about in the smallest of canoes as she drew her nets. Jimmie's father had gone on a hunting expedition and had never come back. Some day Jimmie's old mother will go out on the wild lake to tend her nets, and she will not come back. Some time Jimmie too will not return--for this Indian struggle with nature is appalling in its fierceness.
There was a dance at the post, which the boys attended, going by canoe at night, and they came back early in the morning, with much giggling at their gallantries.
The loneliness of this forest life is positively discouraging to think about. What the long winters must be in the little cabins I cannot imagine, and I fear the traders must be all avarice, or have none at all; for there can certainly be absolutely no intellectual life. There is undoubtedly work, but not one single problem concerning it. The Indian hunters do fairly well in a financial way, though their lives are beset with weakening hards.h.i.+ps and constant danger. Their meagre diet wears out their const.i.tutions, and they are subject to disease. The simplicity of their minds makes it very difficult to see into their life as they try to narrate it to one who may be interested.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 48 TRYING MOMENTS]
From here on was through beautiful little lakes, and the voyagers rigged blanket sails on the big canoes, while we towed behind. Then came the river and the rapids, which we ran, darting between rocks, b.u.mping on sunken stones--shooting fairly out into the air, all but turning over hundreds of times. One day the Abwees glided out in the big lake Tesmiaquemang, and saw the steamer going to Bais des Pierres. We hailed her, and she stopped, while the little canoes danced about in the swell as we were loaded one by one. On the deck above us the pa.s.sengers admired a kind of boat the like of which had not before appeared in these parts.
At Bais des Pierres we handed over the residue of the commissaries of the Abwee-Chemun to Jimmie Friday, including personally many pairs of well-worn golf-breeches, sweaters, rubber coats, knives which would be proscribed by law in New York. If Jimmie ever parades his solemn wilderness in these garbs, the owls will laugh from the trees. Our simple forest friend laid in his winter stock--traps, flour, salt, tobacco, and pork, a new axe--and accompanied us back down the lake again on the steamer. She stopped in mid-stream, while Jimmie got his bundles into his ”bark” and shoved off, amid a hail of ”good-byes.”
The engine palpitated, the big wheel churned the water astern, and we drew away. Jimmie bent on his paddle with the quick body-swing habitual to the Indian, and after a time grew a speck on the reflection of the red sunset in Temiscamingue.
The Abwees sat sadly leaning on the after-rail, and agreed that Jimmie was ”a lovely Injun.” Jimmie had gone into the shade of the overhang of the cliffs, when the Norseman started violently up, put his hands in his pockets, stamped his foot, said, ”By George, fellows, any D. F. would call this a sporting trip!”
THE SOLEDAD GIRLS
”TO-NIGHT I am going down to my ranch--the Soledad--in my private car,”
said the manager of the Mexican International Railroad, ”and I would like the Captain and you to accompany me.”
The Captain and I were only too glad; so in process of time we awoke to find our car sidetracked on the Soledad, which is in the state of Coahuila, Mexico. The chaparral spread around, rising and falling in the swell of the land, until it beat against the blue ridge of the Sierra Santa Rosa, miles to the north. Here and there the bright sun spotted on a cow as she threaded the gray stretches; a little coyote-wolf sat on his haunches on a near-by hill-side, and howled protests at his new-found companions; while dimly through the gray meshes of the leaf-denuded chaparral we could see the main ranch-house of the Soledad.
We were informed at breakfast by the railroad manager that there was to be that day a ”round-up,” which is to say, a regular Buffalo Bill Show, with real cowboys, ponies, and cattle, all three of them wild, full of thorns, and just out of the brush.