The Young Alaskans on the Trail - Emerson Hough (best free novels TXT) 📗

it’s all the more fun if we can’t.”

VII AROUND THE CAMP-FIRE

The point at which they ended their day’s voyage was a long sand-pit projecting out from the forest and offering a good landing for the canoes. They were glad enough to rest. Moise and Alex, who had paddled steadily all the afternoon, stepped out on the beach and stretched themselves.

“Let’s go back into the woods,” said Jesse. “We can’t sleep on these hard little rocks—we can’t even drive the tent-pegs here.”

“Well, Mr. Jess,” said Alex, “if you went back into the woods I think you’d come back here again—the mosquitoes would drive you out. If you notice, the wind strikes this point whichever way it comes. In our traveling we always camp on the beaches in the summer-time when we can.”

“Besides,” added Rob, “even if we couldn’t drive the tent-pins, we could tie the ropes to big rocks. We can get plenty of willows and alders for our beds, too, and some pine boughs.”

The long twilight of these northern latitudes still offered them plenty of light for their camp work, although the sun was far down in the west. Alex, drawing his big buffalo knife, helped the tired boys get ready their tent and beds, but he smiled as he saw that to-night they were satisfied with half as many boughs as they had prepared on their first night in camp.

“I don’t suppose,” said Rob, “that Sir Alexander and his men made very big beds.”

“No, I’m afraid not,” replied Alex. “On the contrary, the canoemen always broke camp about four o’clock in the morning, and they kept going until about seven at night. Fifteen hours a day in and out of the water, paddling, poling, and tracking, makes a man so tired he doesn’t much care about what sort of bed he has.”

While the others were getting the tent ready Moise was busy making his fire and getting some long willow wands, which he now was making into a sort of frame.

“What’s that for, Moise?” asked Jesse.

“That’s for dry those feesh you boys’ll got this morning. Fine big trouts, three, four poun’, an’ fat. I’ll fix heem two, three, days so he’ll keep all right.”

“But we couldn’t stay here two or three days,” said John.

“We might do worse,” replied Alex. “This isn’t a bad camping place, and besides, it seems to me good country to make a little hunt, if we care to do that.”

“It certainly would be a fine place for beaver,” said Rob, “if it weren’t against the law to kill them.”

“Yes, or other things also—bear or bighorns, I should think very likely.”

“I suppose there isn’t any law against killing bears,” said Rob, “but how about bighorns? I thought they were protected by law.”

“We’ll talk about that after a while,” Alex answered. “Of course, no one would want to kill beaver at this time of year, no matter what the law was, because the fur is not good.”

“I see by Sir Alexander’s journal,” continued Rob, “that it must have been along in here that they saw so much beaver work. There are plenty of dams even now, although it’s a hundred years later than the time he came through.”

“I suppose when we get down farther there are fewer creeks,” said John, “and the rocks and trees are bigger. I don’t know just where we are now, because the trees are so thick a fellow can’t see out.”

“Well,” went on Rob, bringing out his map, and also that which was found in his copy of Mackenzie’s Voyages, “it must have been just about in here that Mackenzie met the first Indians that he saw in this country—the ones who told him about the carrying place, and about the big river and the salt water beyond it. They were the Indians who had iron spears, and knives, and things, so that he knew they had met white men off to the west. They had a big spoon which Mackenzie says was made out of a horn like the buffalo horn of the Copper Mine River. I suppose Mackenzie called the musk-ox buffalo, and very likely he never had seen a mountain-sheep.”

“That’s right,” said Alex, “those Injuns used to make big spoons out of the horns of the mountain-sheep—all the Injuns along the Rockies always have done that. It seems strange to me that Mackenzie didn’t know that, although at that he was still rather a new man in the north.”

“You never have been in here yourself, have you, Alex?” asked John.

“No, and that’s what is making the trip so pleasant for me. I’m having a good time figuring it out with you. I know this river must run north between those two ranges of mountains, and it must turn to the east somewhere north of here. But I’ve never been west of Fort St. John.”

“I don’t like the look of this river down there,” said Jesse, stepping to the point of the bar, and gazing down the stream up which came the sullen roar of heavy rapids.

“Those rapeed, she’ll been all right,” said Moise. “Never fear, we go through heem all right. To-morrow, two, three, day we’ll go through those rapeed like the bird!”

“We can walk around them, Jesse, if we don’t want to run them,” said Rob, reassuringly. “Of course it’s rather creepy going into heavy water that you don’t know anything about—I don’t like that myself. But just think how much worse it must have been for Sir Alexander and his men, who were coming up this river, and on the high water at that. Why, all this country was overflowed, and one time, down below here, all the men wanted to quit, it was such hard work. He must have been a brave man to keep them going on through.”

“He was a great man,” added Alex. “A tired man is hard to argue with, but he got them to keep on trying, and kept them at their work.”

“Grub pile!” sang Moise once more, and a moment later all were gathered again around the little fire where Moise had quickly prepared the evening meal.

“I’m just about starved,” said John. “I’ve been wanting something to eat all afternoon.”

They all laughed at John’s appetite, which never failed, and Moise gave him two large pieces of trout from the frying-pan. “I’ll suppose those feesh he’ll seem good to you,” said Moise.

“I should say they were good!” remarked Jesse, approvingly. “I like them better all the time.”

“S’pose we no get feesh in the north,” began Moise, “everybody she’ll been starve.”

“That’s right,” said Alex. “The traders couldn’t have traveled in this country without their nets. They got fish enough each night to last them the next day almost anywhere they stopped. You see, sometimes the buffalo or the caribou are somewhere else, but fish can’t get out of the river or the lake, and we always know where to look for them.”

“The dorè, she’ll be good feesh,” continued Moise, “but we’ll not got dorè here. Maybe so whitefeesh over east, maybe so pickerel.”

“You remember how we liked codfish better than salmon up in Alaska when we were on Kadiak Island?” asked Rob. “I wonder if we’ll like trout very long at a time?”

“Whitefeesh she’ll be all right,” Moise smiled. “Man an’ dog both he’ll eat whitefeesh.”

“Well, it’s all right about fish,” Rob remarked, after a time, “but how about the hunt we were talking about? I promised Uncle Dick I’d bring him some bearskins.”

“Black bear or grizzlies?” asked Alex, smiling.

“Grizzly.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” demurred Alex. “Of course I don’t deny you may have killed a bear or so up in Alaska, but down here most of us are willing to let grizzlies alone when we see them.”

“This white-face bear, he’ll be bad,” Moise nodded vigorously.

“Are there many in here?” asked John, curiously, looking at the dense woods.

“I don’t know,” Alex replied. “I’ve seen a few tracks along the bars, but most of those are made by black bear. Injuns don’t look for grizzlies very much. I don’t suppose there’s over six or eight grizzly skins traded out of Fort St. John in a whole year.”

“Injuns no like for keel grizzly,” said Moise. “This grizzly, he’ll be chief. He’ll be dead man, too, maybe. Those grizzly he’ll be onkle of mine, maybe so. All Injun he’ll not want for keel grizzly. Some Injun can talk to grizzly, an’ some time grizzly he’ll talk to Injun, too, heem.”

“Now, Moise,” said Rob, “do you really think an animal can talk?”

“Of course he’ll talk. More beside, all animal he’ll talk with spirits, an’ man, not often he can talk with spirits himself. Yes, animal he’ll talk with spirit right along, heem.”

“What does he mean, Alex?” asked Rob.

“Well,” said Alex, gravely, “I’m half Injun too, and you know, Injuns don’t think just the way white people do. Among our people it was always thought that animals were wiser than white men think them. Some have said that they get wisdom from the spirits—I don’t know about that.”

“Do you know how those cross fox he’ll get his mark on his back that way?” asked Moise of Rob.

“No, only I suppose they were always that way.”

“You know those fox?”

“We all know them,” interrupted John. “There’s a lot of them up in Alaska—reddish, with smoky black marks on the back and shoulders, and a black tail with a white tip. They’re worth money, too, sometimes.”

“Maybe Moise will tell you a story about how the fox got marked,” said Alex quietly.

“Oh, go ahead, Moise,” said all the boys. “We’d like to hear that.”

“Well, one tam,” said Moise, reaching to the fire to get a coal for his pipe, and leaning back against a blanket-roll, “all fox that ron wild was red, like some fox is red to-day. But those tam was some good fox an’ some bad fox. Then Wiesacajac, he’ll get mad with some fox an’ mark heem that way. He’ll been bad fox, that’s how he get mark.”

“Wiesacajac?” asked Rob. “What do you mean by that?”

“He means one of the wood-spirits of the Cree Indians,” answered Alex, quietly. “You know, the Injuns have a general belief in the Great Spirit. Well, Wiesacajac is a busy spirit of the woods, and is usually good-natured.”

“Do you believe in him?” asked Jesse. “I thought you went to church, Alex?”

“The Company likes us all to go to church when we’re in the settlements,” said Alex, “and I do regularly. But you see, my mother was Injun, and she kept to the old ways. It’s hard for me to understand it, about the old ways and the new ones both. But my mother and her people all believed in Wiesacajac, and thought he was around all the time and was able to play jokes on the people if he felt like it. Usually he was good-natured. But, Moise, go on and tell about how the fox got his mark.”

Moise, assuming a little additional dignity, as became an Indian teller of stories, now went on with his tale.

“Listen, I speak!” he began. “One tam, long ago, Wiesacajac, he’ll be sit all alone by a lake off north of this river. Wiesacajac, he’ll been hongree, but he’ll not be mad. He’ll be laugh, an’ talk by heemself an’ have good tam, because he’ll just keel himself some nice fat goose.

“Now, Wiesacajac, he’ll do the way the people do, an’ he’ll go for roast this goose in the sand, under the ashes where he’ll make his fire. He’ll take this goose an’ bury heem so, all cover’ up with ashes an’ coals—like this, you see—but he’ll leave the two leg of those foots stick up through the ground where the goose is bury.

“Wiesacajac he’ll feel those goose all over with his