Settlement. Ann Birch
bearskins and fell into a sound sleep.
About four o’clock, Sam jolted awake. Loud snuffles and grunts came from the bushes beside his bed. Jacob wakened too. He seized a tin plate and beat a tattoo on it with a fork, shouting something in his own language. The marauder—perhaps a bear enticed by the scent of their sleep-covers—lumbered off into the darkness, and just as quickly, Jacob lay back again and fell asleep.
But Sam stayed awake, staring up at the full moon. Gradually the darkness faded, and Jacob still snored softly. Finally, Sam tapped him on the shoulder. “Shall we call now?”
“Maybe,” Jacob said, then added, “or maybe wait.”
“Damn it, Jacob, why can’t you answer a simple question outright? It’s going to be a perfect dawn. Why don’t we use it?”
There was no answer, only the sound of his companion’s deep breathing.
It was utterly still, the sort of day that Jacob had once told him was necessary for moose calling. Of all the deer family, Jacob said, the bull moose had the keenest sense of smell. When he heard a call, he would circle downwind to get a scent of the animal beckoning him. If there was even a breath of wind, he would know that the caller was not the one he wanted as a mate.
Rifle in hand, Sam climbed a tall pine tree nearby. Two-thirds of the way up, he found a thick branch that provided a comfortable perch. There he waited. Sunrise came gradually. The stars and moon faded, and the pale light deepened into the pink and red that herald the warmth of the sun. The light glanced off his rifle, illuminating the silver inlays on the walnut stock and the barrel with its engraving of the serpent in the apple tree. It had belonged to his grandfather.
Suddenly the peace was shattered by wild, diabolical cries. Shocked out of his reverie, Sam clutched the branch of the pine tree to stop himself from pitching to the ground. He turned and saw Jacob grinning at him from a perch in an adjacent pine tree. “Nehkik, I call the moose now,” he said.
He put to his mouth a cone-shaped horn of birchbark, about a foot and a half in length, and fashioned like a speaking trumpet. The sound coming from this instrument was the primal call of the moose to her mate.
They waited in silence for upwards of fifteen minutes. Then Jacob tried again. Then another fifteen-minute silence. And so it went, for more than an hour, while the branch on which Sam stood pressed into his moccasined feet and the cold crept through his buckskin jacket and took possession of his body.
A movement in the next pine tree caught his attention. Jacob lowered the horn and held his forefinger to his mouth, signalling quiet. Then he pointed in the direction of the marsh. They inched their way down the tree, careful to be perfectly silent, both aware that a bull moose had uncannily acute hearing. On that clear, still morning, the slightest sound would announce their presence.
They started for the open space the Chippewas called Lake of Spirits. It had once probably been a lake of some three miles in breadth, but now it was a marshland filled with rushes on which the moose liked to feed. At intervals across its width, there were high, dry patches of treed land that were once islands. They waded through the marsh, making their way to one of these islands, where they lay down on pine needles and waited. The sun was higher in the sky now, and Sam welcomed its warmth on his wet legs. He dozed.
Snuffling noises like the breathing of a large animal brought him to his senses. Jacob had the large end of the birchbark horn in the water, and he was blowing through the small end to make bubbling sounds like an animal drinking. Then, smiling at Sam, he put his fingers over the small end, filled the horn with water, and held it aloft. In a moment or two, he removed his fingers, and a stream of water coursed back into the swamp.
It was an old trick. “Sounds like a cow moose pissing,” Jacob had once told him.
Scrambling back up onto the grass, Jacob waited with Sam, who watched the horizon with his telescope. It was only a moment or two before Jacob whispered, “Moose comes over the barren,” his word for the marshy land they had waded through. Sam threw down his scope and picked up his rifle.
And suddenly there it was, at least ten feet tall, and against the sun, its black bulk and huge antlers made it seem like a monster from some ancient folktale. It evidently sensed danger, for the bristles stood high on its shoulders.
Sam readied his rifle for a shot. He had the animal in his sights. Then, into his head flashed an image of Ridout, arm raised.
“Fire!” yelled Jacob.
The animal lunged towards him, eyes rolling and mouth drooling, hooves stirring ripples in the water, its bulk blocking out the sun. It would crush him. Sam dropped his rifle, covered his head with his arms, stopped breathing.
But in that hopeless instant, Jacob discharged his rifle. The animal staggered and crashed to the ground, four feet from Sam.
Cradling his firearm, Jacob crept towards the beast. A shudder rippled through its hide, and it was still.
“Aim for the head,” Jacob said. “When the brain dies, spirit leaves.”
“You saved my life,” Sam said. He took deep breaths, afraid that if he said more, he’d make an ass of himself. Cry like a baby.
In its last charge, the moose had propelled itself upwards from the marsh onto the dry oasis, so they did not have to lever the body to a place where they could work easily on its carcass. With the knives that Jacob produced from a deerskin pouch, they were able to get right down to the task of skinning and gutting.
Sam paused to sharpen his knife on a whetstone. “I promised my small son a fine set of antlers for the nursery.”
“Then I sever the antlers,” Jacob said, “so they do not break.”
The sun was hot as they worked, and Sam’s hands grew tired from hacking at the flesh. “Don’t think I can stand this much longer, Jacob.”
“Think, my friend. You work hard now, and I give you a reward: one grilled kidney when we carve him up.” He smiled and shook a bloody finger at Sam. “No work, no reward, white man.”
Sam laughed, forgetting his fatigue for a minute. “Now I understand why my fine white friends call you folk savages.”
They resumed their work, stopping only when they heard the sound of splashing. Looking up, they saw five Indian men crossing the marsh towards them.
“We hear rifle shots,” they said. “We come to help.”
“Just in time,” Jacob said. “Poor old white friend here is worn out. Let us go back to the camp and eat first. Then we leave him to smoke pipe while red men do the work.”
So they took some pieces of meat from the carcass and slopped back through the marsh to the place where he and Jacob had slept the night before. Jacob got a good fire going, and they impaled the moose meat on sharpened sticks and set it to roast.
“For you, my friend,” Jacob said, handing him a choice piece of the kidneys.
“Ah, so I get my reward after all. Thank you. Roasted moose kidneys with salt, a cup of strong tea and sugar, a hard biscuit: it’s a feast for King William himself.” They munched in silence.
Jacob looked at the sun. “Time to get to work.”
“Poor old white friend will help you,” Sam said. “I’ll take my pipe and smoke while we work.” He turned to the other Indians. “Let us work well together, and at the end of the day, we shall divide the moose among us.”
The sun was low in the sky when they finished carving up the carcass and smoking some of the pieces. There were several hundred pounds of meat. Sam saved a portion for his family, and the other men took their fair share and departed, single file, down the narrow bush trail.
“A good day, Nehkik,” said Jacob that evening as they sat at the campfire. Jacob had grilled two moose steaks in the coals and filled their tin cups with scalding tea.
“A good day, Jacob.” Sam set down his tin plate