The Best Ballantyne Westerns. R. M. Ballantyne
process of time spring merged into summer—a season chiefly characterised in those climes by intense heat and innumerable clouds of mosquitoes, whose vicious and incessant attacks render life, for the time being, a burden. Our three voyageurs, meanwhile, ascended the Saskatchewan, penetrating deeper each day into the heart of the North American continent. On arriving at Fort Pitt, they were graciously permitted to rest for three days, after which they were forwarded to another district, where fresh efforts were being made to extend the fur-trade into lands hitherto almost unvisited. This continuation of their travels was quite suited to the tastes and inclinations of Harry and Hamilton, and was hailed by them as an additional reason for self-gratulation. As for Jacques, he cared little to what part of the world he chanced to be sent. To hunt, to toil in rain and in sunshine, in heat and in cold, at the paddle or on the snow-shoe, was his vocation, and it mattered little to the bold hunter whether he plied it upon the plains of the Saskatchewan or among the woods of Athabasca. Besides, the companions of his travels were young, active, bold, adventurous, and therefore quite suited to his taste. Redfeather, too, his best and dearest friend, had been induced to return to his tribe for the purpose of mediating between some of the turbulent members of it and the white men who had gone to settle among them, so that the prospect of again associating with his red friend was an additional element in his satisfaction. As Charley Kennedy was also in this district, the hope of seeing him once more was a subject of such unbounded delight to Harry Somerville, and so, sympathetically, to young Hamilton, that it was with difficulty they could realise the full amount of their good fortune, or give adequate expression to their feelings. It is, therefore, probable that there never were three happier travellers than Jacques, Harry, and Hamilton, as they shouldered their guns and paddles, shook hands with the inmates of Fort Pitt, and with light steps and lighter hearts launched their canoe, turned their bronzed faces once more to the summer sun, and dipped their paddles again in the rippling waters of the Saskatchewan River.
As their bark was exceedingly small, and burdened with but little lading, they resolved to abandon the usual route, and penetrate the wilderness through a maize of lakes and small rivers well known to their guide. By this arrangement they hoped to travel more speedily, and avoid navigating a long sweep of the river by making a number of portages; while, at the same time, the changeful nature of the route was likely to render it more interesting. From the fact of its being seldom traversed, it was also more likely that they should find a supply of game for the journey.
Towards sunset, one fine day, about two weeks after their departure from Fort Pitt, our voyageurs paddled their canoe round a wooded point of land that jutted out from, and partially concealed, the mouth of a large river, down whose stream they had dropped leisurely during the last three days, and swept out upon the bosom of a large lake. This was one of those sheets of water which glitter in hundreds on the green bosom of America’s forests, and are so numerous and comparatively insignificant as to be scarce distinguished by a name, unless when they lie directly in the accustomed route of the fur-traders. But although, in comparison with the fresh-water oceans of the Far West, this lake was unnoticed and almost unknown, it would by no means have been regarded in such a light had it been transported to the plains of England. In regard to picturesque beauty it was perhaps unsurpassed. It might be about six miles wide, and so long that the land at the farther end of it was faintly discernible on the horizon. Wooded hills, sloping gently down to the water’s edge; jutting promontories, some rocky and barren, others more or less covered with trees; deep bays, retreating in some places into the dark recesses of a savage-looking gorge, in others into a distant meadow-like plain, bordered with a stripe of yellow sand; beautiful islands of various sizes, scattered along the shores as if nestling there for security, or standing barren and solitary in the centre of the lake, like bulwarks of the wilderness, some covered with luxuriant vegetation, others bald and grotesque in outline, and covered with gulls and other waterfowl,—this was the scene that broke upon the view of the travellers as they rounded the point, and, ceasing to paddle, gazed upon it long and in deep silence, their hands raised to shade their eyes from the sun’s rays, which sparkled in the water, and fell, here in bright spots and broken patches, and there in yellow floods, upon the rocks, the trees, the forest glades and plains around them.
“What a glorious scene!” murmured Hamilton, almost unconsciously.
“A perfect paradise!” said Harry, with a long-drawn sigh of satisfaction.—“Why, Jacques, my friend, it’s a matter of wonder to me that you, a free man, without relations or friends to curb you, or attract you to other parts of the world, should go boating and canoeing all over the country at the beck of the fur-traders, when you might come and pitch your tent here for ever!”
“For ever!” echoed Jacques.
“Well, I mean as long as you live in this world.”
“Ah, master,” rejoined the guide, in a sad tone of voice, “it’s just because I have neither kith nor kin nor friends to draw me to any partic’lar spot on arth, that I don’t care to settle down in this one, beautiful though it be.”
“True, true,” muttered Harry; “man’s a gregarious animal, there’s no doubt of that.”
“Anon?” exclaimed Jacques.
“I meant to say that man naturally loves company,” replied Harry, smiling.
“An’ yit I’ve seen some as didn’t, master; though, to be sure, that was onnat’ral, and there’s not many o’ them, by good luck. Yes, man’s fond o’ seein’ the face o’ man.”
“And woman too,” interrupted Harry.—“Eh, Hamilton, what say you?
“‘O woman, in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.’
“Alas, Hammy! pain and anguish and everything else may wring our unfortunate brows here long enough before woman, ‘lovely woman,’ will come to our aid. What a rare sight it would be, now, to see even an ordinary housemaid or cook out here! It would be good for sore eyes. It seems to me a sort of horrible untruth to say that I’ve not seen a woman since I left Red River; and yet it’s a frightful fact, for I don’t count the copper-coloured nondescripts one meets with hereabouts to be women at all. I suppose they are, but they don’t look like it.”
“Don’t be a goose, Harry,” said Hamilton.
“Certainly not, my friend. If I were under the disagreeable necessity of being anything but what I am, I should rather be something that is not in the habit of being shot,” replied the other, paddling with renewed vigour in order to get rid of some of the superabundant spirits that the beautiful scene and brilliant weather, acting on a young and ardent nature, had called forth.
“Some of these same redskins,” remarked the guide, “are not such bad sort o’ women, for all their ill looks. I’ve know’d more than one that was a first-rate wife an’ a good mother, though it’s true they had little edication beyond that o’ the woods.”
“No doubt of it,” replied Harry, laughing gaily. “How shall I keep the canoe’s head, Jacques?”
“Right away for the p’int that lies jist between you an’ the sun.”
“Yes; I give them all credit for being excellent wives and mothers, after a fashion,” resumed Harry. “I’ve no wish to asperse the character of the poor Indians; but you must know, Jacques, that they’re very different from the women that I allude to and of whom Scott sung. His heroines were of a very different stamp and colour!”
“Did he sing of niggers?” inquired Jacques simply.
“Of niggers!” shouted Harry, looking over his shoulder at Hamilton, with a broad grin; “no, Jacques, not exactly of niggers—”
“Hist!” exclaimed the guide, with that peculiar, subdued energy that at once indicates an unexpected discovery, and enjoins caution, while at the same moment, by a deep, powerful back-stroke of his paddle, he suddenly checked the rapid motion of the canoe.
Harry