The Best Ballantyne Westerns. R. M. Ballantyne
canoe—Ascending the rapids—The portage—Deer-shooting, and life in the woods.
We must now beg the patient reader to take a leap with us, not only through space, but also through time. We must pass over the events of the remainder of the journey along the shore of Lake Winnipeg. Unwilling though we are to omit anything in the history of our friends that would be likely to prove interesting, we think it wise not to run the risk of being tedious, or of dwelling too minutely on the details of scenes which recall powerfully the feelings and memories of bygone days to the writer, but may nevertheless appear somewhat flat to the reader.
We shall not, therefore, enlarge at present on the arrival of the boats at Norway House, which lies at the north end of the lake, nor on what was said and done by our friends and by several other young comrades whom they found there. We shall not speak of the horror of Harry Somerville, and the extreme disappointment of his friend Charley Kennedy, when the former was told that, instead of hunting grizzly bears up the Saskatchewan, he was condemned to the desk again at York Fort, the depot on Hudson’s Bay—a low, swampy place near the seashore, where the goods for the interior are annually landed and the furs shipped for England, where the greater part of the summer and much of the winter is occupied by the clerks who may be doomed to vegetate there in making up the accounts of what is termed the Northern Department, and where the brigades converge from all the wide-scattered and far-distant outposts, and the ship from England—that great event of the year—arrives, keeping the place in a state of constant bustle and effervescence until autumn, when ship and brigades finally depart, leaving the residents (about thirty in number) shut up for eight long, dreary months of winter, with a tenantless wilderness around and behind them, and the wide, cold, frozen sea before. This was among the first of Harry’s disappointments. He suffered many afterwards, poor fellow!
Neither shall we accompany Charley up the south branch of the Saskatchewan, where his utmost expectations in the way of hunting were more than realised, and where he became so accustomed to shooting ducks and geese, and bears and buffaloes, that he could not forbear smiling when he chanced to meet with a red-legged gull, and remembered how he and his friend Harry had comported themselves when they first met with these birds on the shores of Lake Winnipeg! We shall pass over all this, and the summer, autumn, and winter too, and leap at once into the spring of the following year.
On a very bright, cheery morning of that spring, a canoe might have been seen slowly ascending one of the numerous streams which meander through a richly-wooded, fertile country, and mingle their waters with those of the Athabasca River, terminating their united career in a large lake of the same name. The canoe was small—one of the kind used by the natives while engaged in hunting, and capable of holding only two persons conveniently, with their baggage. To any one unacquainted with the nature or capabilities of a northern Indian canoe, the fragile, bright orange-coloured machine that was battling with the strong current of a rapid must indeed have appeared an unsafe and insignificant craft; but a more careful study of its performances in the rapid, and of the immense quantity of miscellaneous goods and chattels which were, at a later period of the day, disgorged from its interior, would have convinced the beholder that it was in truth the most convenient and serviceable craft that could be devised for the exigencies of such a country.
True, it could only hold two men (it might have taken three at a pinch), because men, and women too, are awkward, unyielding baggage, very difficult to stow compactly; but it is otherwise with tractable goods. The canoe is exceedingly thin, so that no space is taken up or rendered useless by its own structure, and there is no end to the amount of blankets, and furs, and coats, and paddles, and tent-covers, and dogs, and babies, that can be stowed away in its capacious interior. The canoe of which we are now writing contained two persons, whose active figures were thrown alternately into every graceful attitude of manly vigour, as with poles in hand they struggled to force their light craft against the boiling stream. One was a man apparently of about forty-five years of age. He was a square-shouldered, muscular man, and from the ruggedness of his general appearance, the soiled hunting-shirt that was strapped round his waist with a parti-coloured worsted belt, the leather leggings, a good deal the worse for wear, together with the quiet, self-possessed glance of his grey eye, the compressed lip and sunburned brow, it was evident that he was a hunter, and one who had seen rough work in his day. The expression of his face was pleasing, despite a look of habitual severity which sat upon it, and a deep scar which traversed his brow from the right temple to the top of his nose. It was difficult to tell to what country he belonged. His father was a Canadian, his mother a Scotchwoman. He was born in Canada, brought up in one of the Yankee settlements on the Missouri, and had, from a mere youth, spent his life as a hunter in the wilderness. He could speak English, French, or Indian with equal ease and fluency, but it would have been hard for any one to say which of the three was his native tongue. The younger man, who occupied the stern of the canoe, acting the part of steersman, was quite a youth, apparently about seventeen, but tall and stout beyond his years, and deeply sunburned. Indeed, were it not for this fact, the unusual quantity of hair that hung in massive curls down his neck, and the voyageur costume, we should have recognised our young friend Charley Kennedy again more easily. Had any doubts remained in our mind, the shout of his merry voice would have scattered them at once.
“Hold hard, Jacques!” he cried, as the canoe trembled in the current; “one moment, till I get my pole fixed behind this rock. Now then, shove ahead. Ah!” he exclaimed, with chagrin, as the pole slipped on the treacherous bottom and the canoe whirled round.
“Mind the rock,” cried the bowsman, giving an energetic thrust with his pole, that sent the light bark into an eddy formed by a large rock which rose above the turbulent waters. Here it rested while Jacques and Charley raised themselves on their knees (travellers in small canoes always sit in a kneeling position) to survey the rapid.
“It’s too much for us, I fear, Mr Charles,” said Jacques, shading his brow with his horny hand. “I’ve paddled up it many a time alone, but never saw the water so big as now.”
“Humph! we shall have to make a portage, then, I presume. Could we not give it one trial more? I think we might make a dash for the tail of that eddy, and then the stream above seems not quite so strong. Do you think so, Jacques?”
Jacques was not the man to check a daring young spirit. His motto through life had ever been, “Never venture, never win,”—a sentiment which his intercourse among fur-traders had taught him to embody in the pithy expression, “Never say die;” so that, although quite satisfied that the thing was impossible, he merely replied to his companion’s speech by an assenting “Ho,” and pushed out again into the stream. An energetic effort enabled them to gain the tail of the eddy spoken of, when Charley’s pole snapped across, and falling heavily on the gunwale, he would have upset the little craft, had not Jacques, whose wits were habitually on the qui vive, thrown his own weight at the same moment on the opposite side, and counterbalanced Charley’s slip. The action saved them a ducking; but the canoe, being left to its own devices for an instant, whirled off again into the stream, and before Charley could seize a paddle to prevent it, they were floating in the still water at the foot of the rapids.
“Now, isn’t that a bore?” said Charley, with a comical look of disappointment at his companion.
Jacques laughed.
“It was well to try, master. I mind a young clerk who came into these parts the same year as I did, and he seldom tried anything. He couldn’t abide canoes. He didn’t want for courage neither; but he had a nat’ral dislike to them, I suppose, that he couldn’t help, and never entered one except when he was obliged to do so. Well, one day he wounded a grizzly bear on the banks o’ the Saskatchewan (mind the tail o’ that rapid, Mr Charles; we’ll land t’other side o’ yon rock). Well, the bear made after him, and he cut stick right away for the river, where there was a canoe hauled up on the bank. He didn’t take time to put his rifle aboard, but dropped it on the gravel, crammed the canoe into the water and jumped in, almost driving his feet through its bottom as he did so, and then plumped down so suddenly, to prevent its capsizing, that he split it right across. By this time the bear was at his heels, and took the water like a duck. The poor clerk, in his hurry, swayed from side to side tryin’ to prevent the canoe goin’ over. But when he went to one