Part 11 (1/2)
In the meantime, an express had been despatched to Prince Albert to summon a doctor; but the old Indian women could not bear to wait so long for the coming of relief, so filing a big knife into a fine-toothed saw, they cut away the bruised flesh and sawed off the broken bones. They made a clean amputation which they dressed with a poultice made from well-boiled inner bark of juniper, and not only did no mortification set in, but the arm healed nicely; and when the doctor arrived ten days later, he examined the amputation carefully and said that there was nothing for him to do: the old women had done their work so well. Marasty quickly recovered, and next winter he was on the hunting trail again.
HOW BEARS ARE HUNTED
After spending three days upon the trapping trail we returned to camp; but because our toboggan was loaded with game, and also because we did not return by our outgoing route, the grandmother and the two boys set out to bring in the bear meat and the bear's head. During the feast that followed Oo-koo-hoo addressed the bear's head with superst.i.tious awe and again begged it not to be offended or angry because it had been killed since they needed both its coat and its fat and flesh to help tide them over the winter. In this entreaty Amik did not join--perhaps because he was too civilized. After the meal, the skull was hung upon a branch of a pine that stood near the lodges. It reminded me that once I had seen at an old camping place eleven bear skulls upon a single branch; but the sight of bear skulls upon trees is not uncommon when one is travelling through the Strong Woods Country.
That night, when I was sitting beside Oo-koo-hoo, we began talking about bear hunting and he said: ”My son, some day you, too, may want to become a great bear-hunter, and when you do go out to hunt alone, don't do as I do, but do as I say, for I am growing old and am sometimes careless about the way I approach game.” Puffing away at his pipe, he presently continued: ”In trailing bear, the hunter's method of approach, of course, depends entirely upon the information he has gained from the tracks he has discovered. If the hunter sees the bear without being seen, he will approach to within about twenty paces or even ten of the brute before he fires; being, however, always careful to keep some object between him and his quarry. And when he does fire, he should not wait to see the effect, but should immediately run aside for a distance of fifteen or twenty paces, as the first thing a bear does when it is shot is to bite the wound on account of the pain, next it tries to discover who hit it, and remembering from which direction the sound came, it looks up, and seeing the smoke, rushes for it. Then the hunter has his opportunity, for on seeing the beast pa.s.s broadside, he fires, and thus stands a good chance of hitting a vital spot.
”At a critical moment a good hunter's movements are not only swift but always premeditated. Nor does he ever treat a bear with contempt: from first to last, he is always on guard. He never takes a chance. Even if the bear drops when the hunter fires, he will immediately re-load and advance very slowly lest the brute be feigning death. The hunter advances, with his gun c.o.c.ked and in readiness, to within perhaps five paces, and then waits to see if his quarry is really dead. If the bear is not dead and sees that the hunter is off his guard, the chances are it will rush at him. But an experienced hunter is not easily fooled, for he knows that if an animal makes a choking sound in its throat, caused by internal bleeding, it is mortally wounded; but if it makes no such sound--watch out!”
”My son, no animal is ever instantly killed, for there is always a gradual collapse, or more or less of a movement caused by the contraction of its muscles, before death actually comes; but when an animal feigns death, it is always in too much of a hurry about it, and drops instantly without a final struggle, or any hard breathing--that is the time when one should wait and be careful.
”Then again, my son, if a wounded or cornered bear comes suddenly upon a hunter, the beast will not at once rush at him, grab him or bite him, but will instantly draw back, just as the hunter will do; then it will sit up upon its haunches for a moment, as though to think over the situation; that pause, slight as it is, gives the hunter a moment to uncover his gun, c.o.c.k it, and aim, and fire it at the beast's mouth.
In such a situation the hunter prefers to fire at its mouth, because if shot in the heart, the bear can still lunge at the hunter before it falls, but if struck in the mouth, the brute is dazed and stops to rub its face; meanwhile, the hunter has a chance to re-load and try for a shot behind the ear, as that is even more fatal than one in the heart.
But if the bear happens to be in a tree, the hunter does not try for either the brain or the heart, because the former is usually out of aim, and the latter is protected by the trunk or limb of the tree; so he shoots at the small of the back for that will paralyze it and cause it to let go hold of the tree, and drop to the ground. The fall will leave very little fight in it, or will finish it altogether. But if hit in the head or even in a paw, the chances are that the bear will jump; and then watch out, for it will either run or fight!
”In hunting bears, however, the hunter must remember that he should guard most against scent and sound betraying him, since a bear's sight is not very keen. If the bear happens to be feeding, the hunter may easily approach, provided that the wind is right and he keeps quiet; but if the bear hears the slightest sound or catches a single whiff of scent--away he goes! If, however, the hunter approaches in an open place and the bear, seeing him, sits up to get a better look, the hunter should immediately stand perfectly still, and wait thus until the bear again resumes feeding or moves away. Then the hunter rushes forward, but all the while watches keenly to see when it stops to look again; and at the first sign of that the hunter becomes rigid once more. Such tactics may be successful two or three times but rarely more, so then the hunter had best fire. Now, my son, when you go hunting you will know what to do, and if Amik would only pay attention to what I say, he, too, might become a better hunter, for I have had much experience in hunting both black and grizzly bears.”
NEYKIA AND HER LOVER
As the weeks pa.s.sed, the children devoted themselves to their winter play and spent most of their days in the open air. Tobogganing was their greatest sport. Often did they invite me to take part in this, and whenever, in descending a slope, a sled-load was upset, it always created hilarious laughter.
The younger children, even during the severest part of the winter when it registered forty or more degrees below zero, were always kept comfortably warm, sometimes uncomfortably warm, in the rabbit-skin coats that their mother and their grandmother had made for them. The rabbit skins were cut into thin, spiral strips and twisted, with the hair-side out, about thin thongs, and woven together like a small-meshed fish-net, so that, though the hair overlapped and filled every mesh completely, one's fingers might be pa.s.sed through the garment anywhere. They also made rabbit-skin blankets in the same way; and of all blankets used in the north woods, none has so many good qualities. A rabbit-skin blanket is less bulky than that of the caribou skin; it is warmer than the famous four-point woollen blanket of the H. B. Co., and not only ventilates better than either of the others, but it is light to carry. It has the drawback, however, that unless it is enclosed in a covering of some light material, the hair gets on everything, for as long as the blanket lasts it sheds rabbit hair. I have tried many kinds of beds, and many kinds of blankets, and sleeping bags, too, even the Eskimo sleeping bag of double skin--hairless sealskin on the outside and hairy caribou skin on the inside--and many a night I have slept out in the snow when it was fifty degrees below zero, and experience has taught me that the rabbit skin blanket is best for winter use in the northern forest. A sleeping bag that is large enough to get into is too large when you are in it; you cannot wrap it around you as you can a blanket, therefore it is not so warm; besides, it is harder to keep a bag free of gathering moisture than a blanket.
But to return to the children. It used to amuse me to see the boys returning from their hunts carrying their guns over their shoulders.
The contrast in size between the weapons and the bearers of them was so great that by comparison the lads looked like Liliputians, yet with all the dignified air of great hunters they would stalk up to their sisters and hand them their guns and game bags to be disposed of while they slipped off their snowshoes, lighted their pipes, and entered the lodge. By the way, I don't believe I have mentioned that in winter time the guns are never kept in the lodges, but always put under cover on the stages, as the heat of the lodges would cause the guns to sweat and therefore to require constant drying and oiling; and for the same reason, in winter time, when a hunter is camped for the night, he does not place his gun near the open fire, but sets it back against a tree, well out of range of the heat.
On one of their rounds of the trapping trails the boys discovered a splendid black fox in one of Oo-koo-hoo's traps, and it was with great pride that the little chaps returned home with the prize.
One sunny day, late in November, while tobogganing with the children on the hillside, our sport was interrupted by the approach of a young stranger, an Indian youth of about seventeen. He came tramping along on snowshoes with his little hunting toboggan behind him on which was lashed his caribou robe, his tea-pail, his kit bag, and a haunch of young moose as a present to Amik and his wife. In his hand he carried his gun in a moose-skin case. He was a good-looking young fellow, and wore the regulation cream-coloured H. B. _capote_ with hood and turned-back cuffs of dark blue. He wore no cap, but his hair was fastened back by a broad yellow ribbon that encircled his head. At first I thought he was the advance member of a hunting party, but when I saw the bashful yet persistent way in which he sidled up to Neykia, and when I observed, too, the shy, radiant glance of welcome she gave him, I understood; so also did the children, but the little rogues, instead of leaving the young couple alone, teased their sister aloud, and followed the teasing with boisterous laughter. It was then that I obtained my first impression of the mating of the natives of the northern forest. The sylvan scene reminded me of the mating, too, of the white people of that same region, and I thought again of the beautiful Athabasca. Was it in the same way that her young white man had come so many miles on snowshoes through the winter woods just to call upon her? It set me thinking. Again, I wondered who ”Son-in-law”
could be? Whence did he come? But, perhaps, after all he was no super-man, or, rather, super-lover, for had not Neykia's beau travelled alone in the dead of winter, over ninety miles, just to see her once again and to speak to her? s.h.i.+ng-wauk--The Little Pine--as the Indians called him, stayed three days, but I did not see much of him, for I left early the following morning on another round of another trapping-path.
OO-KOO-HOO AND THE WOLF
As a faint gray light crept through the upper branches of the eastern trees and warned the denizens of the winter wilderness of approaching day, the door-skin flapped aside and a tall figure stepped from the cozy fire-lit lodge into the outer sombreness of the silent forest. It was Oo-koo-hoo. His form clad in fox-skin cap, blanket _capote_, and leggings, made a picturesque silhouette of lighter tone against the darker shadows of the woods as he stood for a moment scanning the starry sky. Reentering the lodge, he partook of the breakfast his wife had cooked for him, then he kissed her and went outside. Going to the stage, he took down his five-foot snowshoes, slipped his moccasined feet into the thongs, and with his gun resting in the hollow of his bemittened hand, and the sled's hauling-line over his shoulder, strode off through the vaulted aisles between the boles of the evergreens; while through a tiny slit in the wall of his moose-skin home two loving eyes watched the stalwart figure vanis.h.i.+ng among the trees.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Going to the stage, he took down his five-foot snowshoes, slipped his moccasined feet info the thongs, and with his gun resting in the hollow of his bemittened hand, and the sled's hauling-line over his shoulder, strode off through the vaulted aisles between the boles of evergreens; while through a tiny slit in the wall of his moose-skin home two loving eyes watched his stalwart figure vanis.h.i.+ng among the . . . See Chapter IV.]
Later on, though the sun was already s.h.i.+ning, it was still intensely cold. As we went along, Oo-koo-hoo's breath rose like a cloud of white smoke fifteen or twenty feet in the air before it disappeared. Only the faintest whisper of scuffling snowshoes and scrunching snow could be heard; the sound of the occasional snapping of a twig came as a startling report compared with the almost noiseless tread of the hunter. A little cloud of powdery snow rose above the dragging heels of his snowshoes, and, whirling about, covered the back of his leggings with a coating of white. Onward he strode, twisting through the tangled scrub, stooping under a fallen tree, stepping over a snow-capped log, or pacing along a winter-locked stream.
When Oo-koo-hoo came to a district overgrown with willows interspersed with poplars, he stopped to examine a snare set for lynx. It had not been disturbed, but a little farther on we saw the form of a dead lynx hanging from a tossing-pole above the trail. The carca.s.s was frozen stiff, and the face still showed the ghastly expression it had worn in its death struggle. The rigid body was taken down and lashed to the sled. Resetting the snare, we continued our way. Farther on, in a hilly country timbered with spruce, where there was not much undergrowth, we came to marten traps. In swampy places, or where there were creeks and small lakes, we examined traps and deadfalls set for mink, muskrat, beaver, fisher, and otter. Where the country was fairly open and marked with rabbit runways we came upon traps set for foxes and wolves.
The gray, or timber, wolf is trapped in the same way as the coloured fox, save only that the trap is larger. Though the steel trap is much in vogue among white men and half-breeds, the deadfall, even to this day, is much preferred by the Indian. Though, in the first place, it requires more labour to build, yet it requires less for transportation since the materials are all at hand; and, besides, when once built it lasts for years. Then, again, it is not only cheaper, but it is more deadly than the steel trap, for once the animal is caught, it seldom escapes. With the steel trap it is different, as animals often pull away from the steel jaws or even gnaw off a foot in order to get free.
If, however, the hunter's deadfalls and traps have been set in vain, and if the wolf has been causing trouble and the hunter is determined to secure him, he will sit up for him at night in the hope of getting a shot at him. Years ago many wolves were destroyed with poison, but nowadays it has gone out of use--that is, among the fur-hunters of the forest.
When a wolf is caught in a trap and he sees a hunter approaching, he will at first lie down, close his eyes, and keep as still as possible to escape notice; but should he find that the hunter is still coming on, say to within twenty paces from him, he will fly into a rage, show his fangs, bristle his hair, and get ready for a spring. The hunter usually takes a green stick about a yard long by two inches thick, and instead of striking a great, swinging blow with both hands, he holds the stick in one hand and strikes a short, quick, though powerful, blow, hitting the brute on the snout close to the eyes. That stuns him, and then the hunter, with either foot or knee, presses over the heart until death ensues. But clubbing the wolf is dangerous work, for the hunter may hit the trap and set the captive free, or it may bite him. So the gun is frequently used, but only to shoot the wolf in the head, as a wound anywhere else would injure the fur.
Late in the afternoon, as we were approaching a wolf trap, Oo-koo-hoo, who was leading the way, suddenly stopped and gazed ahead. A large wolf was lying in the snow, evidently pretending to be dead. One of its forepaws was held by the trap, and the hunter drew his axe and moved forward. As we came near, the beast could stand the strain no longer, but rose up with bristling hair, champing fangs, and savage growl. When Oo-koo-hoo had almost reached the deeply marked circle in the snow where the wolf had been struggling to gain its freedom, he paused and said: