Mooswa & Others of the Boundaries. Fraser William Alexander
"What! only Your Majesty and the Red Widow here as yet. It's bad form for our Comrades to keep the King waiting."
While Blue Wolf was still speaking the Willows were thrust open as though a tree had crashed through them, and Mooswa's massive head protruded, just for all the world as if hanging from a wall in the hall of some great house. His Chinese-shaped eyes blinked at the light. "May I be knock-kneed," he wheezed plaintively, "if it didn't take me longer to do those thirty miles this morning than I thought it would-the going was so soft. I should have been here on time, though, if I hadn't struck just the loveliest patch of my favourite weed at Little Rapids-where the fire swept last year, you know."
"That's what the Men call Fire-weed," cried Carcajou, pushing his strong body through the fringe of berry bushes.
"That's because they don't know," retorted Mooswa; "and because it always grows in good soil after the Fire has passed, I suppose."
"Where does the seed come from, Mooswa?" asked Lynx, who had come up while they were talking. "Does the Fire bring it?"
"I don't know," answered the Bull Moose.
"It is not written in Man's books, either," affirmed Carcajou.
"Can the King, who is so wise, tell us?" pleaded Fisher, who had arrived.
"Manitou sends it!" Black Fox asserted decisively.
"The King answers worthily," declared Wolverine. "If Mooswa can stand in the Fire-flower until it tops his back, and eat of the juice-filled stalk without straining his short neck until his belly is like the gorge of a Sturgeon, what matters how it has come. Let the Men, who are silly creatures, bother over that. Manitou has sent it, and it is good; that is enough for Mooswa."
"You are late, Nekik," said the King, severely; "and you, too, Sakwasu."
"I am lame!" pleaded Otter.
"My ear is bleeding!" said Mink.
"Who got the Fish?" queried Carcajou. They both tried to look very innocent.
"What Fish?" asked Black Fox.
"My Fish," replied Mink.
"Mine!" claimed Otter, in the same breath.
Wolverine winked solemnly at the Red Widow.
"Yap! that won't do-been fighting!" came from the King.
"It was a Doré, Your Majesty," pleaded Sakwasu, "and I caught him first."
"Just as I dove for him," declared Otter, "Sakwasu followed after and tried to take him from me-a great big Fish it was. I've been fishing for four years, but this was the biggest Doré I ever saw-why, he was the length of Pisew."
"A Fisherman's lie," quoth the Red Widow.
"Who got the Doré? That's the main question," demanded Carcajou.
"He escaped," replied Nekik, sorrowfully; "and we have come to the Meeting without any breakfast."
"Bah! Bah! Bah!" laughed Blue Wolf; "that's rich! Hey, Muskwa, you heard the end of the story-isn't it good?"
"I, too, have had no breakfast," declared Muskwa, "so I don't see the point-it's not a bit funny. Seven hard-baked Ant Hills have I torn up in the grass-flat down by the river, and not a single dweller in one of them. My arms ache, for the clay was hard; and the dust has choked up my lungs. Wuf-f-f! I could hardly get my breath coming up the hill, and I have more mortar in my lungs than Ants in my stomach."
"Are there no Berries to be had, then, Muskwa?" asked Wapistan.
"Oh, yes; there are Berries hereabouts, but they're all hard and bitter. The white Dogberries, and the pink Buffalo-berries, and the Wolf-willow berries-what are they? Perhaps not to be despised in this Year of Famine, for they pucker up one's stomach until a Cub's ration fills it; but the Saskatoons are now dry on the Bush, and I miss them sorely. Gluck! they're the berries-full of oil, not vinegar; a feed of them is like eating a little Sucking Pig."
"What's a Sucking Pig?" queried Lynx; "I never saw one growing."
"I know," declared Carcajou. "The Priest over at Wapiscaw had six little white fellows in a small corral. They had voices like Pallas, the Black Eagle. I could always tell when they were being fed, their wondrous song reached a good three miles."
"That's where I got mine," remarked Muskwa, looking cautiously about to see that there were no eavesdroppers; "I had three, and the Priest keeps three. But talking of food, one Summer I crossed the great up-hills that Men call Rockies, and along the rivers of that land grows just the loveliest Berry any poor Bear ever ate."
"Saskatoons?" queried Carcajou.
"No, the Salmon Berry-great, yellow, juicy chaps, the size of Mooswa's nose."
"Fat Birds! what a sized Berry!" ejaculated the Widow, dubiously.
"Well, almost as big," modified Muskwa; "and sweet and nippy. Ugh! ugh! It was like eating a handful of the fattest black Ants you ever tasted."
"I don't eat Ants," declared the Red Widow.
"Neither did I this morning, I'm sorry to say," added Bear, hungrily.
"Weren't they hairy little Beggars, Muskwa?" asked Blue Wolf, harking back longingly to the meat food.
"What, the Salmon Berries?"
"No; the Padre's little Pigs at Wapiscaw."
"Yes, somewhat; I had bristles in my teeth for a week-awfully coarse fur they wore. But they were noisy little rats-the screeching gave me an earache. Huf, huf, huh! You should have seen the Factor, who is a fat, pot-bellied little Chap, built like Carcajou, come running with his short Otter-shaped legs when he heard me among the Pigs."
"What did you do, Muskwa-weren't you afraid?" asked the Red Widow.
"I threw a little Pig out of the corral and he took to the Forest. The Factor in his excitement ran after him, and I laughed so much to see this that I really couldn't eat a fourth Pig."
"But you did well," cried Black King; "there's nothing like a good laugh at meal-time to aid digestion."
"I thought they would eat like that, Muskwa," continued Blue Wolf. "You remember the thick, white-furred animals they once brought to the Mission at Lac La Biche?"
"Sheep," interposed Mooswa, "I remember them; stupid creatures they were-always frightened by something; and always bunching up together like the Plain Buffalo, so that a Killer had more slaying than running to do amongst them."
"That was the worst of it," declared Blue Wolf. "My Pack acted as foolishly as Man did with the Buffalo-killed them all off in a single season, for that very reason."
"And for that trick Man put the blood-bounty on your scalp," cried Carcajou.
"Oh, the bounty doesn't matter so long as I keep the scalp on my own head. But, as I was going to say, the queer fur they had got into my teeth, and made me fair furious. Where one Sheep would have sufficed for my supper, I killed three-though I'm generally of an even temper. The Priest did much good in this country-"
"Bringing in the Sheep, eh?" interrupted Carcajou.
"Perhaps, perhaps; each one according as his interests are affected."
"The Priests are a benefit," asserted Marten. "The Father at Little Slave Lake had a corral full of the loveliest tame Grouse-Chickens, they called them. They were like the Sheep, silly enough to please the laziest Hunter."
"Did you join the Mission, Brother?" asked Carcajou, licking his chops hungrily.
"For three nights," answered Wapistan, "then I left it, carrying a scar on my hip from the snap of a white bob-tailed Dog they call a Fox-terrier. A busy, meddlesome, yelping little cur, lacking the composure of a Dweller in the Boundaries. I became disgusted at his clatter and cleared out."
"A Fox what?" asked the Red Widow. "He was not of our tribe to interfere with a Comrade's Kill."
"It must have been great hunting," remarked Black King, his mouth watering at the idea of a corral full of Chickens.
"It was!" asserted Wapistan. "All in a row they sat, shoulder to shoulder-it was night,