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Title: The gold rock of the Chippewa
Author: Lange, D. (Dietrich)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The gold rock of the Chippewa" ***
CHIPPEWA ***
THE GOLD ROCK
OF THE CHIPPEWA
BY
D. LANGE
ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK T. MERRILL
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
FOREWORD
Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his essays on the art of writing,
says in substance that one of the methods of telling a story is to
choose a background and then build in harmony with the landscape
selected.
In The Gold Rock of the Chippewa the writer has followed this method.
The story opens in 1775, a dozen years after the Great Lakes region had
been ceded by France to England. But it does not attempt to tell of the
great war in which Wolfe and Montcalm gave their lives for their
countries. It might be called “The Robinson Crusoe of Lake Superior,”
as the events of the whole story take place among the rocky wooded
hills, on the cold streams, the clear lakes, the wild islands, and on
the deep blue waters of “Gitche Gumee,” the largest and most beautiful
of the great inland seas of North America.
D. Lange.
St. Paul, Minnesota,
August, 1925.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. The Council 11
II. Ganawa Speaks 17
III. Gitche Gumee 23
IV. Vague News 34
V. The White Boy Learns 45
VI. A Spooky Camp 54
VII. A Wolf 61
VIII. Tawny 68
IX. The Proving of Tawny 74
X. The Riddle 81
XI. Mystery and Danger 89
XII. Beginning the Search 97
XIII. At the Big Pool 105
XIV. A Puzzle 113
XV. The Smoke-House 121
XVI. A Double Surprise 129
XVII. Into the Unknown 137
XVIII. Real Trouble 144
XIX. On Wild Lakes 151
XX. Farthest North 159
XXI. Wild Fruit 166
XXII. On a New Tack 173
XXIII. The Beaver Hunt 179
XXIV. Much Work and a Clue 186
XXV. A Mystery 193
XXVI. Stalking a Moose 202
XXVII. The Storm Camp 211
XXVIII. Fighting a Wolf 218
XXIX. A Discovery 228
XXX. Ganawa Is Frightened 238
XXXI. Sailing The Pirate 247
XXXII. Caribou Island 254
XXXIII. The Last Search 260
XXXIV. A Bold Venture 268
ILLUSTRATIONS
One of the women handed to each a birch-bark
dish (Page 35) Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
On a big bare rock stood a wolf looking at him 66
He barely clung to the rock with hands and feet 132
A big black bear was coming straight for him 172
There he stood, a fine young bull moose, feeding
on some willows 210
He was some fearsome wild giant 262
THE GOLD ROCK OF THE CHIPPEWA
CHAPTER I
THE COUNCIL
There was great excitement in the Chippewa camp on a small lake near
the Sault Sainte Marie early in June, 1775. A council was going to be
held to decide the fate of two Americans who had ventured into that
part of the country as unwelcome visitors.
The prevailing opinion in the camp was that they should not be allowed
to stay or to continue their journey, but should go back to their own
country. However, there were a few warriors who demanded a much more
radical proceeding against the strangers; and the most clamorous
amongst these was Hamogeesik, who strutted about with his face painted
black and bragged that he was going to take the scalp of the two
Englishmen, as he called them, because twelve years before at the siege
of Detroit the English had killed his brother.
In the meantime, the two Americans, Bruce Henley, a young man who might
be twenty-five years old, and his brother, Ray Henley, a lad of
thirteen, kept rather close to the tepee of Ganawa, an old warrior who
ridiculed the claims of Hamogeesik, whom he called a coward and “a much
bad Indian.”
About an hour after sunset the beat of the tom-tom called the warriors
to council. There were about twenty-five of them presided over by a
chief who had seen many winters and had twice gone on the warpath
against the Sioux, even then the enemies of the Chippewas.
The council-house was a very simple structure. It consisted of poles
set in the ground, over which had been built a roof of boughs; but no
white man’s court or jury ever assembled with greater dignity and
listened with more gravity to the arguments of eloquent lawyers or the
charges of dignified judges than the unlettered warriors in Chief
Winnego’s camp near the Sault Sainte Marie listened to the speakers.
Hamogeesik was the first to speak. He pleaded that the Englishmen
should be turned over to him. That he should be allowed to keep them as
slaves or to take their scalps, because the English had killed his
brother, a brave Chippewa warrior, in the fights at Detroit, when the
great war chief Pontiac led all the Indians against the English.
When Hamogeesik had finished and sat down on his deerskin robe, Ganawa
arose. He was a man over six feet tall. His hair was beginning to turn
gray, but his shoulders did not stoop, and from his eyes flashed the
anger and fire of a young warrior.
“My brother,” he began in a low, deep voice, “has told you that his
brother was killed by the English at Detroit. In that Hamogeesik has
told you the truth. But I ask you now why Hamogeesik’s brother went to
Detroit. That place, as you all know, is many days’ journey from our
country, and we had no grievance against the English. You know that
many of our wise men and our own chief Winnego advised our young men
not to join in the great war of the Ottawas and their chief Pontiac,
but to stay at home and hunt deer and keep the bears and the coons out
of the cornfields, which our women were beginning to plant.
“If Hamogeesik’s brother desired so much to fight our enemies, why did
he not make up a war party against the Sioux?
“You know, brothers, that the young Englishmen are our guests, and live
in my tepee, and you know what the little Englishman did only a day
after he and his big brother came to our camp. You know that the little
son of my daughter was fishing from a canoe and that the canoe drifted
away with him. There was no other canoe on the beach and only our women
and some old men were in camp. When my daughter cried aloud and
believed that her small son must drown, the little Englishman took off
his shoes and plunged into the cold water. He showed that he was a
better swimmer than most of us are. He reached the canoe and pushed it
ashore, because there was no paddle with which to steer. You know that,
when he reached the shore, his eyes closed and his legs would not move
any more, so the women had to carry him to my tent. You know that the
water which runs out of the great sea Gitche Gumee is so cold that it
never gives up its dead.
“Here under this deerskin is a present for all of you, including
Hamogeesik, and I ask you that the Englishmen be given to me that I may
adopt them as my sons. They have shown themselves good and brave men
and true friends of our people.
“We do not wish it told at the camp-fires of the Chippewas and the
Ottawas that the warriors of Winnego have turned traitors to their
friends and have forgotten the sacred laws of hospitality that our
fathers have taught us. I have finished.”
Contrary to Indian habit and custom the case was not held open for
another council, but it was decided that the two Americans should
belong to Ganawa, a decision which Hamogeesik heard with scowling
silence.
Bruce Henley and Ray had surmised what the general drift of the two
talks had been, but did not know what had been said until Ganawa
translated the speeches to them after the council had broken up.
CHAPTER II
GANAWA SPEAKS
Bruce Henley knew enough of Indian etiquette to realize that his friend
and Indian father would not ask him why he and the boy had come to the
Indian country, and what their plans were for the future. He also
realized that he must tell Ganawa the whole story.
A few days later, when he and Ray were alone in the tepee with Ganawa,
Bruce unburdened his mind to the Chippewa hunter, who was now looked
upon by the Indians as the father and protector of the two Americans
who had for some mysterious reasons come to the region of the Upper
Great Lake.
“My father,” he began, “I must now tell you why your white sons have
come to the Chippewa country. We know that the Chippewas and the
Ottawas still love the French better than the English. We know that
many Americans, or Englishmen, as the Indians call them, lost their
lives at Mackinac twelve years ago, but we had a very good reason for
coming to your country, although we knew that we might meet many
dangers.”
“The English are brave men,” replied Ganawa. “I know that at that time
an Englishman, whom the whites called Alexander Henry, came to Mackinac
and to the Sault, and that our brother Wawatam adopted him as his son
and saved his life. He is a very brave man; he has now left my people
and has gone to trade with the Indians who live far to the west of us
in the buffalo country. But I will now listen to my son, so I may learn
why he and his little brother have come to our country. You have not
come to trade because you have not brought many goods like the brave
Englishman.”
“I shall truthfully tell my father why we have come,” Bruce then
resumed. “It is now about four years ago that my boyhood friend, Jack
Dutton, went to the country of the Big Lake to trade and to trap beaver
and marten. I wanted to go with him, but I had a mother and a sister
for whom I had to make a home. My sister is now married to a good man,
and my mother lives with her, and I was free to leave the colony of
Vermont, where my white friends are living.”
“My son, I hear your words,” Ganawa replied, when Bruce was silent. “If
you will tell me where your white brother is trading and hunting, it
may be that I can lead you to him, unless he is living in the country
of our enemies, the Sioux.”
“My father,” Bruce took up the story, “I cannot tell you where my
friend is living. After he had been gone a year, he sent me a letter
through some traders, saying that next summer he would look for me at
Mackinac or at the Big Rapids that run out of the Big Lake. He said in
his letter that I should not start till he wrote again, but he has
never written again. Now, my father, I have told you all I know of my
friend.
“I fear,” Bruce continued when Ganawa did not speak, “that some evil
thing has come to my friend. Perhaps he is sick and cannot travel.
Perhaps he is held as a captive among the Indians, or he may have lost
his life in the woods or in a storm on the Big Lake. Perhaps some bad
white man or Indian has robbed and killed him.”
“My son,” Ganawa took up the talk, “you have not told me much. Was your
brother tall, did he have brown hair, and did he walk with a long
step?”
“Yes, my father,” Bruce warmly assented, “such was my friend. A tall
man, thick brown hair, and he walks with a long stride.”
“I have seen your brother,” Ganawa declared. “But you, my sons, should
have looked for him on the island of Mackinac, where many Indians and
traders assemble every spring. But Mackinac is in the Lake of the
Hurons, more than a hundred miles by water from our camp.”
“My father,” replied Bruce eagerly, “we did visit Mackinac before we
came to your camp, and he was not there. We talked to Indians and white
traders, but none of them knew him or had seen him either this spring
or last spring. A trader told us to travel to your camp on the lake
through which runs the cold river between the Big Lake and the Lake of
the Hurons. We travelled to your camp, you have become our father, and
now we pray you that you tell us when and where you saw our brother.”
“I saw your brother at the Great Sault at the time of the strawberry
moon. It was twelve or more moons ago. He had with him a Canadian, and
Hamogeesik and his friends tried to rob him of his goods. But your
brother showed a bold heart. He talked to the Indians while he was
leaning on his gun and in his belt he showed two pistols and a
hunting-knife. He told them if harm came to him and his men and if his
goods were taken from him, the English soldiers at Mackinac would hear
of it and would punish the guilty. He did not say with words that he
would fight for his goods, but he told them with his eyes that he and
his man would fight. Hamogeesik is a coward and he and his friends
slunk away like dogs.
“During the night the moon stood south of the Big Lake and when a
gentle wind sprang up from the east, your brother put all his goods in
his boat and he and his man sailed away.
“When the sun rose and the Indians learned that your brother had sailed
away, they laughed at Hamogeesik and said: ‘Hamogeesik, you are a fool,
but the white trader is wise and brave,’ and they gave him a new Indian
name, which means the Brave White Man. Now I have told you all I know
of your brother, but to what part or to which bay or island of the Big
Lake your brother and his man sailed away I cannot tell you.”
CHAPTER III
GITCHE GUMEE
Bruce Henley realized that the information Ganawa had just given him
was not encouraging; but if he had fully comprehended the size of this
inland sea, its sheer endless shore-line, which it would take years to
explore and search in detail, he would have been utterly discouraged at
the well-meant information of Ganawa.
On the usual small map of a school-book, Lake Superior looks quite
commonplace and harmless, but no man can stand on its shore without
feeling the overwhelming power and mystery of this sea in the heart of
a continent. It is different from every other lake on earth.
The distance a boat must sail from its west end at Duluth to the canals
which now pass the Sault Sainte Marie is greater than the distance from
St. Paul and Minneapolis to Chicago or from Buffalo to New York. Its
shore-line would stretch more than half-way across the continent
between New York and San Francisco.
On this shore-line there are great bays, more than fifty miles in
length, such as Nipigon Bay and Black Bay, where a canoe or small boat
might wind about for a whole summer in a maze of channels and among a
world of large and small islands, and bold, rocky headlands.
On the other hand, there are great stretches of more than a hundred
miles where the rocks, a hundred feet high, drop sheer into the lake,
and where it is difficult for even a canoe or a rowboat to find shelter
in a storm.
In area, Lake Superior is about equal to the combined areas of
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Its greatest depth runs
close to a thousand feet, and depths of three hundred to seven hundred
feet a few miles from shore are very common. The water is so clear that
in quiet bays one can see a fish at a depth of twenty feet, and the
waves and the white spray have the color and appearance of waves and
spray of the ocean.
The water is always ice-cold, except in midsummer within a few feet of
the surface and in quiet, sheltered bays. But even in midsummer, the
surface temperature does not pass fifty degrees.
The low temperature of the water is the reason that bodies of persons
drowned in Lake Superior very rarely rise to the surface or drift
ashore. The tradition that Lake Superior never gives up its dead is as
old as the navigation of the lake by white men, and it existed among
the Indians before the arrival of white men.
The writer has found no records of Indians ever travelling over the
middle of the lake. Several of the red tribes were bold and skillful
canoeists, but they were not sailors. They did, however, occasionally
visit the large islands such as Michipicoten and Isle Royale, and in
fair weather they paddled boldly along the shore from the Sault to
Grand Portage and Duluth, and in one recorded case the Chippewa woman,
Netnoqua, and her adopted white son, John Tanner, beat a trader’s
sailboat on the voyage from the Sault to Grand Portage at the mouth of
the Pigeon River. On this trip Netnoqua’s canoe must have travelled
nearly five hundred miles.
Unfortunately a school-book map cannot tell the story of the Big Lake,
but a look at the fine large map of Lake Superior published by the
United States Lake Survey suggests at a glance the spell of the Big
Lake, of the clear cold water, of calm sunny summer days, of thick gray
fogs, and of terrible autumn and winter storms.
Had Bruce and Ray Henley known all these things, their hearts might
have failed them and they might never have ventured on the waves of
Lake Superior and into the wild forests which, at that time, surrounded
the whole of the vast inland sea.
A few days after Bruce and Ganawa had had their talk, the Chippewa
suggested that they might travel up the Big Lake a little way.
“My sons,” he told his white friends, “we shall learn nothing more of
your brother and we shall never find him, if we stay in this camp and
fish in the lake and hunt deer in the forest. I have friends who
generally make their summer camp on Batchawana Bay. It may be that they
can tell us more of your white brother. They may have seen French
traders from the Grand Portage or even from a very distant place, which
the French call Fond du Lac, which lies many leagues toward the setting
sun and means ‘the End of the Lake.’
“You must have noticed, my sons,” he continued after a pause, “that
Hamogeesik and his friends have left our camp. I do not know where they
have gone. You should not be afraid of them, although I believe that
they are planning some evil, because their tongues are forked and their
hearts are black.”
A few days later, Ganawa and his two white sons paddled a large
birch-bark canoe up-stream. When the water became too swift, Ganawa
steered the light craft to a safe landing-place and stepped out into
the shallow water.
“My sons,” he said, “take our axes, our blankets, and other things and
follow me.” Then he lifted the canoe on his shoulders and walked away
with it on a plain portage trail. After he had walked about a mile he
put the canoe in the water again.
“My little son,” he said to Ray Henley, “you must now learn to travel
in an Indian canoe. Here is a small paddle which I have made for you of
cedar wood. It is very light and will not tire your arms.”
Then Bruce knelt on a piece of canvas in the bow of the boat. Ray took
his place in the middle, while Ganawa knelt in the stern, which is
always the place of the steersman.
“My sons,” spoke Ganawa, “I shall now steer you over the water of the
Big Lake to the beautiful and quiet Bay of Batchawana. You, my little
son, must not be frightened if a big wave lifts up our canoe, and you
must not put your hands on the sides of the canoe. When your arms are
tired you may rest, but you must sit very still, for you know that the
water of Gitche Gumee is very cold.”
The day was already well advanced when the three travellers started
north on the open lake. The sky was clear and there was no wind, but a
haze hung on the horizon and made the western shore invisible as Ganawa
skirted along the east shore. A broad swell from the north added to the
impression that the canoe was headed for the open sea.
“Bruce, I am afraid,” Ray whispered. “This lake is so much bigger than
Lake George and Lake Champlain in Vermont. It looks like the ocean. I—I
am afraid we shall all drown.”
“My son, you need have no fear,” Ganawa assured the young lad. “The
lake is not very big here. If there were no haze in the air you could
see the blue forest to the west. I can tell from the sky that no wind
is coming, and we are running so close to shore that we could land
before the waves grow too big, if a wind did spring up.”
They might have been going about three hours, when Ray became more
cheerful. “I can see land now,” he remarked, “ahead of us to the left.”
“You see an island, my son,” Ganawa told him. “The French call it Isle
Parisienne.”
When the sun stood low beyond this island, Ganawa headed the canoe
toward a point which is now called Goulais Point. “We sleep here
to-night,” he said. “It is not good to travel on the Big Lake after
dark.”
“My father,” asked Ray, “I thought you said it was only a little way to
that bay where we are going?”
“It is only a little way,” Ganawa replied calmly. “After we have slept,
we shall soon go to Batchawana Bay.”
Ray asked no more questions, but he wondered what distance Ganawa would
call a long journey, if he referred to a two-days’ trip as “only a
little way.”
When Ganawa had gone off to gather boughs for the night’s camp, Ray
could not resist expressing his anxiety to his older brother. “Bruce,”
he said, “this lake and the country are so big we shall never find
anybody. I am not afraid any more to go with you and Ganawa on the lake
if you don’t go in a storm. But you will see we shall never find Jack
Dutton. How can you find anybody here? There are no towns and no farms,
just water and woods, and rocks and big hills and islands and a few
Indians. Do you think there are wolves and bears in these woods? If
there are, I am going to ask Ganawa to let me sleep in the canoe.”
Just then Ganawa returned with an armful of boughs, but Ray could not
quite muster enough courage to ask him about the danger from wolves and
bears.
After a supper of venison, roasted on a fire of driftwood, Ray soon
slipped under the blankets on the bed of balsam boughs, and long before
Ganawa and Bruce stopped talking he was fast asleep after the many new
impressions and the fears and anxieties of the day.
The sun had just risen when Bruce called his young bedfellow. “Come,
Ray,” he said, gently shaking the lad, “Ganawa is waiting for us. He is
afraid the lake will get rough toward noon. There are clouds in the
west.”
The drowsy lad arose, quickly put on his clothes and walked to the
canoe with Bruce, and by the time Ganawa had pushed off, the sharp,
cool air of Lake Superior had fully waked up the sleepy boy, who was
not accustomed to start on a journey without breakfast.
However, they had started none too early. Before they reached the
entrance to the bay, the waves began to roll uncomfortably high. The
travellers, including Ray, plied a paddle with short quick strokes, and
although the young lad for a while suffered greater fear than the day
before, he did not say a word, but paddled hard, with his eyes fixed on
the quiet glistening bay ahead.
The sun indicated the approach of noon when they reached the north end
of the bay, where they stopped at a small Indian camp near the mouth of
the Batchawana River.
The thing that interested Ray most about this camp was a kettle of meat
hanging over the fire in front of one of the tepees, for by this time
the lad was ravenously hungry.
CHAPTER IV
VAGUE NEWS
Ray had learned at Ganawa’s camp that the Indians had no set time for
meals, but ate when they were hungry, provided there was something to
eat in camp. There was no set time for anything. The women, indeed, did
go in the afternoon to cut and bring in the firewood, but as it was now
midsummer and no fire was needed in the tepees at night, they were not
very regular in attending to this duty; although they were busy at some
kind of work all day long.
The men had no such regular hours for anything as a white man must
observe for his work. Their duty in times of peace was to provide the
camp with meat, and to secure enough fur or dried meat so they could
buy of the white traders whatever the family needed: blankets, knives,
needles, steel axes, traps, and especially guns and ammunition. There
were in an Indian camp, just as there are in a white man’s town, men
and families who were thrifty, and those who were shiftless and always
in trouble.
All trade was carried on by barter, no money circulated in the Indian
country, but a beaver skin was the standard of value.
Ray was much pleased when one of the women handed to each of the three
visitors a birch-bark dish and a wooden spoon and told them to help
themselves to meat in a large kettle in front of her tepee.
The ideas of Indians concerning things that are clean often differed
from those of white men. The kettle contained venison and two wild
ducks all boiling together; and the Indian woman had not been very
careful about picking the birds.
“I can’t eat that mess,” Ray said to Bruce when he saw Ganawa help
himself to a liberal portion. Ganawa smiled at this remark of the white
boy. “My little son, our friends offer us good meat,” he encouraged the
white lad. “Ducks keep their feathers very clean. Fill your dish and
eat, for I know you must be very hungry.”
Ray was indeed very hungry, and as he began to eat he found that the
meat was good, although it had been boiled without salt or other
seasoning.
Ganawa learned from the men in this camp that the brave young trader of
last spring had sailed his wooden boat along the eastern shore of the
Big Lake, that he had reached Michipicoten Bay, which is sheltered from
all winds except those that come from the southwest. They had also
heard that he had paddled up the Michipicoten River as far as the
rapids below the big falls. Whether he had made a camp at that place
and remained there during the winter they did not know.
A young man, however, who was known by the name of Roving Hunter, told
that about twelve moons ago he and a companion had met a family of
Wood-Indians, called by the Chippewas Oppimittish Ininiwac. These
Wood-Indians had told him that two white men had made a camp on the
Michipicoten River, nine or ten leagues above the big falls. They had
also a camp on one of the big lakes of that country. He thought from
the account of the Ininiwacs that they meant Lake Anjigami. But he
could not understand the language of the Ininiwacs very well, and they
might have referred to some other lake, because the Michipicoten
carries the water of many lakes down to Gitche Gumee.
He and his companion had paddled up the river to visit the white
hunters, but when they came to a stretch of rapids two miles long, his
companion became discouraged and said it was too much work to visit the
camp of these white men. Perhaps they would not find the camp, even if
they carried their canoe past the long rapids and the big falls. So
they turned back and did not see the white men. The Ininiwacs also told
him that there were many beavers on the small lakes and streams in the
Michipicoten country. The three white men were trapping beaver and
marten and otter, and they had also traded some beaver skins and marten
of the Ininiwacs for knives and beads and needles, but they had no
blankets and guns to sell and no fire-water. But Roving Hunter, like
the other Chippewas, did not know if the white men were still in the
Michipicoten country.
When Ganawa told his white sons what he had learned, Ray was much
discouraged. “I told you,” he said to Bruce when the two had gone to
catch trout, “I told you, Bruce, we could never find anybody in this
country. Every time we go anywhere, the country and the lake look
bigger and wilder to me. We might find a big island, if it is not too
far from shore, but how can you find a camp when nobody knows where it
is? None of the Indians know where Jack Dutton is now. And perhaps the
stories they have told Ganawa are not true; you know not all stories
you hear among white people are true.”
To one who has never lived in a wild and thinly populated country it
would seem that Ray’s conclusion was right, but the facts are that it
is much more difficult to disappear in a wild country than it is in a
big city. There are so few people in a wild country that a stranger,
coming in or passing through, is remembered for a long time by
everybody who has seen him. In the same way, both whites and Indians
who live in these regions know of each other, although their camps or
homes may be more than a hundred miles apart and they may seldom or
never see each other.
When Bruce told Ganawa of the fears of the young white boy, the old
hunter looked at the lad with a serious but friendly smile.
“My little son,” he told him, “you must not forget that in the country
of the Big Lake there are not as many people as there are in the white
man’s country. My friends in this camp have told me much, and they have
not told me lies. To-morrow or next day, when the wind has gone down,
we shall start for the river Michipicoten. If we find some of the
Ininiwac people there, they may be able to tell us where your white
brother is camping, and it may be that we shall find him very soon.”
The wind went down next day, but Ganawa did not say anything of
starting north. A hunter had come to camp with some moose meat and the
women had caught plenty of fish in their nets; lake trout, pickerel,
and some big brook trout, bigger than Ray had ever seen. These brook
trout had come into Lake Superior out of the stream. Such brook trout
are found along the shores of Lake Superior to this day. They thrive in
the cold, clear water along the shore, and in places where there is
little or no fishing they are at times very numerous. White fishermen
at the present time call them “coasters.”
As far as Bruce and Ray could tell, Ganawa and his friends did nothing
all day but eat moose meat and visit. “Indians certainly have a good
time,” remarked Ray to Bruce.
“Yes,” admitted Bruce, “playing Indian is not so bad in summer, but it
must be a tough life in winter.”
At the close of the third day, Ganawa and his friends had eaten up most
of the moose meat and Ganawa told his white sons that in the morning
they would leave, provided the lake was quiet.
“Bruce, you had better ask our father,” Ray whispered to his friend,
“to take plenty of meat along. You know we were all starved when we
came to this camp, and I heard our father say that it is twenty-five
leagues to the place we are going. Twenty-five leagues, that is
seventy-five miles, so you see it will take us two or three days.”
The next morning Ganawa started at break of day without apparently
thinking of eating any breakfast. This was the usual way for Indians to
travel, and the voyageurs of the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest
Company adopted the same method of travel.
A very light fog lay over the water of Batchawana Bay when the
travellers started, but it had been dispelled by the time they rounded
the point which marks the end of the bay. Here the open lake lay before
them in all that splendor of a summer day, which one can experience in
such perfection nowhere else but along the wild rocky shores of Lake
Superior, when waves and wind seem to have gone to sleep for a long
time, and when no fog hides the sight of green hills far and near.
White gulls sailed in the air on almost motionless wings, and from the
spruces on shore came the clear whistle of the white-throat, one of the
hardiest little songsters of the North, whose cheering voice may often
be heard through a thick fog, in which one cannot see ten yards ahead.
Ray was glad to see the lake so quiet, but the feeling that he was
travelling along the shore of the ocean came over him again. “My
father,” he asked timidly, “are we travelling now where the lake is
very big?”
“Yes, my son,” replied Ganawa, “on our left toward the west the lake is
very big, sixty leagues or more; but it is still much bigger, twice as
big toward the northwest, toward the large island of Menong and Thunder
Bay, where the Sleeping Giant lies on the rocks.”
The boy asked no more. He dipped in his light paddle in unison with
Ganawa and Bruce, and his fear left him as he came under the spell of
the scene which was at the same time beautiful and sublime. Mile after
mile they glided along in silence. Some small islands to the northwest
had been left behind. Westward the lake stretched out endlessly to the
horizon, where the water seemed to rise to blend and unite with the
sky. However, the nearness of the shore on their right made the lad
feel that they were safe, although the steep brown rocks looked
forbidding enough and the forests on the high hills appeared almost
black, because the travellers had to look at them against the light of
the sun. After a while, the lad grew dull toward the beauty and
sublimity of the scene, and his healthy physical nature asserted
itself. He had hoped that Ganawa would stop for breakfast at the end of
the bay, but the old hunter had not even thought of stopping, to judge
from the way he steered out of the bay. The lad was therefore more than
glad when Ganawa steered toward a point and remarked, “My sons, we land
there to eat.”
It seemed to Ray as if it must be almost noon, but Ganawa told him that
it was still early in the morning, that they had made about eight
leagues and that the place, where by this time they had landed, was
called by English traders Coppermine Point. The Indians, he said, had
no name for it, because there were too many points like it all along
the shore of the Big Lake.
CHAPTER V
THE WHITE BOY LEARNS
Ganawa seemed now to have plenty of time. He and Bruce lifted the canoe
out of the water so that the lapping of the waves would not cause it to
chafe on the rocks, for a canoe is very easily injured, and an Indian
birch-bark is even more sensitive to rough handling than a white man’s
canoe.
Much to the surprise of Ray, Ganawa even built a fire, which he did by
striking the edge of a piece of flint with a small piece of steel and
catching the sparks on a piece of dry soft punk. This method of making
fire was an improvement on the bow and fire-stick, which the Indians
used before they came into contact with white traders. Steel, flint,
and tinder are much more portable than the bow, stick, and block of dry
wood used during the Stone Age of the human race, and now revived for
an interesting and valuable exercise in woodcraft by the Boy Scouts. It
was also easier for a hunter to keep dry a small piece of tinder than
to carry or make the older fire-making tools, especially in rainy
weather.
Ganawa had another surprise in store for Ray. He produced a small
package of tea and a little brown sugar. To have a drink of sweet tea
was more of a treat to Ray than a box of the best candy is to a modern
boy or girl, and Ray danced and shouted with joy when he saw what
Ganawa was doing. Since Bruce and Ray had been with the Indians they
had eaten nothing but meat and fish.
Indians were seldom more provident than white boys are in camp. The
Indians around Lake Superior knew of only two kinds of vegetable food
which they could gather and keep in quantities: wild rice and
blueberries. The supplies of both had been exhausted in Winnego’s camp
and the new crop was not yet ripe.
There was, however, no scarcity of food in camp. Moose meat, venison,
grouse, and ducks were all plentiful. With the Indians, there could not
be a closed season, because they lived largely on game; but as a
general rule, they did not waste any wild meat. If for instance it was
too difficult to carry the meat of a moose to camp, the camp was moved
to the moose and remained there until the moose was eaten up.
No decent white man or boy, however, should ever kill game in the
closed season. The Indian days and the frontier days have passed, and
to obey the game laws is as much a duty of a good citizen as to obey
other laws. Unless that is done there will soon be no game left to hunt
at any time.
One may, however, always hunt with a camera. Animals and birds shot
with a camera will keep and be a treasure for a lifetime, and hunting
with a camera is a finer and harder sport than hunting with a gun.
As told before, Bruce and Ray did not go hungry, for moose meat or
venison, either fresh or dried, is very good food, and there are no
better fresh-water fish in the world than the whitefish, lake trout,
and brook trout caught in Lake Superior, but Ray often wished for some
flour and hominy.
Ganawa gave his white sons about an hour to eat and rest at Coppermine
Point. Then he steered the canoe almost straight north and he told them
that for the night he intended to make camp at the mouth of the Agawa
River.
“That is a long river,” he told his sons, “and it runs through a deep
and beautiful canyon, where the trout live, those that are colored like
the rainbow. My little son should be able to catch some big ones at the
mouth of the Agawa,” he added with a friendly smile.
“How big are they?” asked Ray.
“That big,” answered Ganawa, holding his hands about two feet apart,
“and they should weigh five or six pounds, and maybe more than that.”
“What big ones!” exclaimed Ray. “I never saw such big ones. I am going
after them;” and involuntarily he made a jump and swung his arms so as
to rock the canoe.
“My little son,” Ganawa reminded him, “we are not in a white man’s
rowboat. You know the water of Gitche Gumee is very cold for swimming.”
“I forgot, Father, I forgot,” Ray apologized. “I’ll sit still. I know a
birch-bark canoe is very cranky, and I don’t wish to swim again in this
cold water,” and Ray started in to paddle as if he alone had to take
the canoe to the mouth of the Agawa; until Bruce brought him up short,
saying:
“Ray, what are you trying to do? Please keep time with us. You will be
tired enough by the time we get to camp. It is nearly thirty miles to
the mouth of the Agawa.”
There was very little conversation after this. Once or twice Ray asked
how deep the lake was along this coast, to which Ganawa could only
reply that it was very deep, because in those days no survey of the
lake had been made. Modern surveys have shown that the lake is indeed
very deep along that shore, in some places dropping to a depth of four
hundred and even six hundred feet close to shore, but there are a few
shoals, where in still weather one can see the bottom, for they are
covered with only seven to fifteen feet of water.
The three kept steadily on their course, and about noon an island
became visible just above the horizon straight ahead. On their right,
the wooded hills of the shore, rising about a thousand feet above the
lake, were constantly in sight a few miles off; but on their left
toward the west and the northwest there was nothing but the open lake
which to the eyes of the travellers looked as endless as the ocean.
The day had turned very warm and as the sun passed the noon line, the
air above the gentle glassy swells of the lake became filled with a
hazy vapor.
The island began to look larger as the travellers approached, and Bruce
judged that it might be a mile, perhaps two miles in diameter.
“My father,” he asked when he noticed that Ganawa was not steering for
the channel between the island and the lake, “are we going to camp on
the island?”
“My son,” replied Ganawa, “do you see that the air is no longer clear
on the water, but only high up in the sky? I am afraid we may run into
a fog and then we might not be able to find the mouth of the Agawa. The
fogs on this lake are very thick.”
Ganawa’s fear was realized all too soon. In about half an hour the
shore disappeared, and then even the island, which a little while ago
had seemed to be very close, straight ahead of them, disappeared
completely from sight.
For some little time all kept paddling in silence, and Ganawa steered
against the cold breeze that had come with the fog. But soon after the
breeze had failed Ganawa stopped paddling.
“Wait, my sons,” he spoke, “we must make sure that we are going right.
It is very dangerous to be lost in a fog on the Big Lake.” And then he
suddenly uttered a deep rolling yell: “Hoah—hoah!”
“Hoah—hoah,” a faint echo came from their right.
“We were headed for the open lake, my sons,” remarked Ganawa. “Now
paddle carefully straight ahead to our right. We must not miss the
island.”
Within a few minutes Ray gave a yell, but no echo returned from his
weaker and more highly-pitched voice.
Then Bruce tried it and back came the voice: “Oh—hoh!” but not very
strong.
“I hear the scream of some gulls,” remarked Ganawa. “I think they are
sitting on the rocks near shore. We must go slow.”
Then Ray tried it again and back came the echo quickly and clearly:
“Hi-yi, hi-yi!” and a few minutes later a rather low wooded island
suddenly rose out of the fog as if it had just come up from the bottom
of the lake.
“Thank God,” Bruce said in a low voice. “I knew we were close to the
island, but it seemed as if we should never reach it. Thank God we
found it. It is the best-looking island I ever saw.”
In reality the island looked quite forbidding. Bold, jagged rocks
seemed to form the whole shore, and it took some time before Ganawa
found a safe pebbly landing-place. Rather small spruces, balsam firs,
and birches formed a dense forest and were all dripping wet, and there
was not a sign of any human habitation either white or Indian. As far
as Bruce and Ray could tell, there had never been a human being on the
island.
“We camp here, my sons,” Ganawa informed the white lads, “and we must
set up our tepee, because the woods and the ground are too wet and cold
without a tepee and a fire. White men call this place Montreal Island,
and it measures about a league if you go north and south, and a league
if you go east and west.”
CHAPTER VI
A SPOOKY CAMP
Ray had a feeling that they had narrowly escaped from the horrible fate
of being lost in a fog on Lake Superior. He had seen fogs in his native
province of Vermont, but this was his first experience with a fog such
as he had just seen. That a fog could come up so suddenly and could
almost change day into night was a revelation to the lad. But he
understood now why Ganawa had been so anxiously watching the sky for
signs of a change in the weather and why he had steered for the island
instead of for the mouth of the Agawa, which was about twelve miles
farther to the northeast, and where Ganawa would have had to hold a
true course over open water about ten miles wide.
“My sons,” remarked Ganawa, “I was afraid we should get lost if we
tried to reach the mainland even if we had used our little compass.
When a fog comes up, every wise man paddles as quickly as possible to
the nearest land.”
There was something spooky about the place where they had landed. They
had carried their tepee-skin and other things a few rods through the
dripping forest over very rough rocky ground and had laid them down in
an open grassy spot, where to the surprise of both Ray and Bruce, they
found two sets of tepee-poles already set up. But the fog had now
become so thick that, if Ray walked over to one side of the clearing,
he could not see the tepee-poles at the other side. He walked a few
rods along a game trail in search of dry punk wood, but in the dense
timber he had a feeling that the sun had set and that at any moment it
might grow pitch dark. With a feeling of fear he turned back toward
camp. He was puzzled when he came to a fork in the trail, which he had
not noticed in coming from the camp. He took the fork to his right and
followed it for a time, which seemed to him to be twice as long as he
had taken going away from the camp. But no open place and no
tepee-poles came in sight; on the contrary the timber grew more dense
and the trail began to lead up-hill. He stopped and called, “Hoh,
Bruce!” He listened for an answer but none came.
The blood rushed hot to his face. “I believe I am lost,” he thought. He
listened a moment and heard the sound of some one chopping wood, but
the sound came from the wrong direction, and Ray called lustily for
Bruce.
“Come back here, you youngster!” came the reply. “Can’t you get wet
enough without slashing around in the brush?”
When the badly scared boy returned to the camp site, Ganawa was just
putting the last touches on setting up the tepee. Bruce was hard at
work cutting wood. He had some dry spruce and balsam, but most of it
was green birch, and under a large piece of old dead birch-bark he had
gathered a pile of fairly dry sticks and fine twigs, which Ganawa would
use in starting the fire.
“My son,” Ganawa warned the flushed boy, “if you wander away from camp
in a fog, some night you will sleep in the wet bush.”
Then Ganawa started to make a fire. He took a piece of tinder and a
piece of flint between his left thumb and forefinger and with a sort of
steel ring held in his right hand, he struck a few sharp quick blows at
the edge of the flint. Ray was not sure that he had seen any sparks fly
off the flint, but the tinder had caught fire and began to give off a
little smoke. Ganawa placed it in a handful of dry moss, spruce needles
and very fine dry twigs and swung the whole over his head. The smoke
increased at once, and in a very short time a red, smoky flame burst
forth, and Ganawa put his little fire under the dry sticks and twigs
prepared for it. The fire started a little slowly, because none of the
material used was as dry as it would have been on a bright, sunny day.
However, in about ten minutes the campers had a bright cheerful blaze,
which only a heavy rain could have put out.
If one should camp on Montreal Island in a fog at the present time, he
would hear through the fog the deep roar of the whistle of steamers
headed for the canals at Sault Sainte Marie with iron ore or grain, and
of other steamers that have come up through the “Soo” Canals with coal
or merchandise from the east or from Europe. At the time of our story a
few very small sailboats belonging to French or English traders were
the only ships on Lake Superior larger than Indian canoes. Ganawa also
built a small fire in the center of the tepee, “to take the cold out of
it,” as he said. The fire on the outside he and Bruce built up until it
was quite big; and on several stumps around it they piled up the spruce
and balsam boughs, which were to serve for their beds.
“Wet boughs make a poor bed,” observed Ganawa. “We shall dry them
before we take them in.”
Ganawa was not in a talkative mood. Most of the time he sat and gazed
into the fire, or seemed to be listening to the songs of white-throats
and hermit-thrushes, which are not silenced in the North Country either
by fog or cold weather.
When Bruce finally ventured to ask, “What is my father thinking of so
long?” Ganawa replied: “I am thinking of your brother that sailed away
on the Big Lake, and I am also thinking of Hamogeesik. He is a bad man,
and I do not know where he has gone. He may have gone the same way that
we are going. Two winters ago, he went with a white man from Quebec to
Lake Manitowik and Lake Missinaibi to trap beaver and otter and marten.
When the streams ran free of ice Hamogeesik came back with many furs,
but the white man did not come back. Hamogeesik told that he had broken
through the ice on Lake Missinaibi. Some of the Indians believed the
story, but many of them did not believe it.”
It grew dark early, so pitchy, inky dark that Ray was afraid to go out
of sight of the camp-fire. He soon grew sleepy, rolled up in his
blankets inside the tepee, and slept soundly till morning. But for
Ganawa and Bruce the night was not so restful. For some time the white
lad was kept awake by the thumping of the rabbits, which were numerous
on the island. But several times during the night some larger animal
prowled about the tepee. It never uttered a sound, but Ganawa said it
moved through the brush like a wolf. “But I do not know why a wolf
should stay on this island during summer,” he added. “They cross over
on the ice in winter, but they leave this island and other islands
before the ice breaks up.”
CHAPTER VII
A WOLF
When the campers awoke, the fog was beginning to lift and a gentle wind
was blowing from the northwest. The lake seemed to be quiet, but Ganawa
suggested that they walk along a game trail to the southwest corner of
the island, where they could have a look over the open water, which was
not sheltered by being in the lee of the island. Here an unexpected
sight met the eyes of the white boys. Past the rocky point of the
island was sweeping a wild sea; at least that was the impression
produced in the minds of the white boys by the ceaselessly rolling,
swishing, breaking, splashing and pounding waves that kept rolling on
and on from the great open sea to the northwest and were ever crowding,
crowding in upon the shore and the islands of the southeastern part of
the lake over a stretch of open water of some two hundred miles.
“Ugh, look at them smash against the shore!” Ray exclaimed to Bruce.
“You will see, Bruce, some day they will eat up the whole island.”
Ganawa, however, was not at all excited by the dashing and breaking
waves. With a far-away gaze he stood and looked out upon the restless
sea, and Bruce wondered where the thoughts of the old hunter were
roaming. Perhaps he was thinking of Hamogeesik. Or was he trying to
work out in his mind the best route, where they might search with some
probability of finding a trace of Bruce’s lost white friend? Bruce
himself felt utterly helpless and hopeless in this sublime great
wilderness of lake, islands, rocky shores, and grand sweeping wooded
hills, over which the silent forest stretched clear to Hudson Bay and
the Arctic regions.
“If I had known,” he said to himself as he was standing alone under a
weather-beaten spruce and looking out over the waves, “I never should
have had the nerve to come out to this region and try to find anything
or anybody; but I should have expected to lose everything, including my
life. On Lake George and Lake Champlain out east, one can see shores
and water and woods, and everything has an end; but here everything
stretches away into an endless vast; the lake, the shore, the hills and
forest, and I suppose the rivers will do the same if we ever begin to
explore them.”
While Ganawa and Bruce had each been busy with his own thoughts, Ray,
after the manner of a young boy, had seen all that Ganawa and Bruce had
seen; but upon him the grand sublime scene had a different effect. He
drank it all in, and his young mind was eager for more new impressions.
The past and the future did not worry him; he was living in the
present.
The sun was out by this time, the white gulls were sailing and
screaming near shore, and from the thickets came the whistle of
white-throats and the wild melody of the hermit-thrushes, but in the
sunshine now the songs were much more vigorous and vibrant than they
had been in the fog yesterday.
“My father,” asked Ray, “are we going to travel to-day?” On being told
that the lake was too rough for a canoe, Ray asked if he might run
about for a while on the game trails and along the shore. The sun was
out now, he assured Bruce, so he would not get lost again.
Neither Ganawa nor Bruce objected, and Ray started out along an old
moose or caribou trail. He did not expect to see any of this big game,
because Ganawa had told the white lads that all the large animals leave
the islands near the coast before the ice breaks up in spring. One
thing, however, Ray did not know, the visit of the strange animal to
the tepee during the preceding night. If he had known of that strange
beast, he would have been afraid to go exploring by himself.
He followed briskly a somewhat dim trail that led northward near the
west coast of the island, where waves and wind exerted their greatest
force and where the island has for several thousand years received the
most severe battering of the waves.
Ray followed this trail for the same reason that animals and men of all
ages have followed trails; because it is so much easier to travel along
a trail than to cut across the brush. The footing on a trail is much
more secure than it is across brush, roots, and rocks, and one does not
have to watch his direction so carefully.
Ray had walked, whistling and singing, about a mile, when the trail
turned a little away from the coast to an almost bare area of several
acres. At the end of this open space Ray saw something that for a
moment almost made his blood freeze.
On a big bare rock stood a wolf looking at him. Ray’s first impulse was
to turn and run; but he was too scared to run. He knew that if the wolf
followed him he would soon overtake him. So in sheer desperation and
make-believe courage Ray stepped up on a rock, swung his arms over his
head and yelled. But this wolf did not do what wolves are supposed to
do when they see a man in summer. He did not run, but he stood right
there, and he even wagged his tail, and Ray could see that he had a big
bushy tail.
And then before Ray’s very eyes, the wolf on the rock became
transformed. He suddenly lost the appearance of a wild wolf of the
Great Lakes country, and took on the shape and almost the color of a
creature with which Ray had often roamed the hills of Vermont, and Ray
had cried bitterly when Bruce had insisted that Ray could not take him
along.
Ray dropped the club he had picked up and for a moment he stood
spellbound. Then he called: “Shep! Come here, Shep! Come here!” And he
ran toward the animal. The animal also came bounding toward the boy.
The boy threw his arms around him, and the animal, as if mad with joy,
danced around the lad, and jumped up on him and almost knocked him over
in his unrestrained expression of joy.
“Come on, Shep, you go home with me.” The boy spoke as if he were
talking to a human being. “Don’t you get lost again. You stay right
with me. You are going with us. If they won’t let you go with us, I
shall stay right here on the island with you, and Ganawa and Bruce can
go alone and hunt up their man.”
And then the boy started back on the trail, the dog following close on
his heels, as if the two had been friends for years.
CHAPTER VIII
TAWNY
Ray approached the camp with his face flushed and his heart beating
fast. He had been lonely on this trip thus far, but now he had found a
companion.
“Oh, Bruce! Oh, Bruce!” he called when he had approached within calling
distance. “I found somebody on the island, and I want to keep him.”
“What in the world did you pick up!” Bruce exclaimed, when he saw the
animal that looked so much like the collie which Ray had been forced to
leave behind in Vermont. Only this dog was bigger and appeared more
wolf-like. Bruce felt almost a little afraid of the beast, but Ray
stood with his right arm around the neck of the big tawny animal, who
seemed to be as content and happy as the young boy.
“I am going to keep him!” Ray spoke with his face set, without
explaining just how he found the animal.
“There must be some Indians camping on this island,” Bruce suggested,
when Ganawa stepped out of the tepee.
“No, my sons,” Ganawa replied, “no Indians camp on this island more
than a few days, and this dog is no Indian dog. I have seen this dog
with some miners that worked for the brave trader Alexander Henry, and
they must have lost him on this island. It may be that he was hunting
on a trail or was digging out a woodchuck, when the miners had to
leave.”
Ganawa was, however, not at all pleased with Ray’s desire of keeping
the dog. “We shall have to find food for him,” he said, “and we may
have to be on our journey a long time. The country and the lake are
very big, there are many islands and many rivers run into the Big Lake.
Yes, my sons, very many rivers race and tumble into the Big Lake with
much cold and noisy water. These rivers,” he continued after a pause,
“look very small on the maps which white men make of them and of the
lake, but when you go to the place where they run into the lake, or
when you try to cross them in the woods, you find that they are big
rivers with swift currents. Some of them are big only at the time the
snow melts in the forest on the hills, but some of them bring the water
from many lakes and are big at all seasons even if no rain falls from
the clouds for many moons.”
Ray had listened with only one ear, so to speak, to Ganawa’s talk on
the many rivers that fall into Lake Superior.
“My father,” he replied timidly, “I could hunt for my dog. Maybe he
will also eat fish and maybe he can catch rabbits for himself.”
“My son, he may do that,” Ganawa admitted, “but I am afraid he may
upset our canoe and that he may bark at a time when he should keep
still. It is hard to teach a dog anything after he has grown up.”
Both Ray and Bruce had to admit the truth of these points, but now
Bruce came to the assistance of his small brother by saying: “My
father, let us try this dog. Some dogs lie still in a canoe and do not
bark much. If this is not a good dog, we can leave him on the mainland,
where there is more game and where he may find some Indian camp or make
his way back to the traders at the Soo.”
“Bruce, I tell you something,” Ray spoke up when the two brothers were
alone, “if you are going to leave my dog behind in the woods, I am
going to stay behind, too.”
“Don’t talk foolish,” Bruce replied sharply. “Do you suppose I would
leave you stranded in this wilderness with a half-wild dog? Remember
you promised that you would do what I told you when I took you along.
Can’t you understand that nobody would ever see your face again or even
your bones, if you were set out on this wild shore? Remember that there
are no white men on the whole shore from the Soo to the Michipicoten
River, and Ganawa told us he did not know of any Indians except at
Batchawana Bay and at the mouth of the Michipicoten, and he was not
sure that we should find any at the Michipicoten.
“Then you want to remember that travelling overland is not as easy as
gliding along in a canoe. You would have to go up-hill and down-hill,
over rocks and fallen timber, through swamps and across many streams.
Don’t you remember what Ganawa said when I asked him how we could reach
the Michipicoten? He smiled when I told him you and I should like to
travel through the forest on an Indian trail and said: ‘My son,
travelling on land to the Michipicoten would be very hard work. You
could carry only your gun, one blanket and very little food, and your
moccasins would wear out on the rocks. The black flies and the
mosquitoes would eat you up and would not let you sleep. There is no
trail from the Soo to the Michipicoten, because no Indians ever go that
way on land. They always go in canoes on the lake. At night they camp
near the lake on shore or on an island where the cool air keeps away
the black flies and the mosquitoes, and when the lake is stormy they
camp till it is calm again.’”
“I did forget about the black flies and mosquitoes,” Ray admitted
somewhat humbly, “but I don’t want to leave my dog. I am going to call
him Tawny. Don’t you think that is a good name?”
“It is a good name for him,” Bruce agreed, “and I hope he will be a
well-behaved dog in the canoe and in camp. Perhaps he will leave us of
his own accord as soon as we camp on the mainland.”
“He will not leave us,” Ray replied indignantly. “He has no master and
no place to go. I would like to know how he happened to be left on this
island. Perhaps the boat of some white man, who owned him, was swamped
near here, and Tawny swam to the island. The mainland is over three
miles away and he never could have reached that through the ice-cold
water of this lake, but he is not going to leave us!”
CHAPTER IX
THE PROVING OF TAWNY
Ganawa decided that they might as well camp another night on Montreal
Island, because the lake was still somewhat rough with big long swells
beating against the island from the northwest. But on the following
morning the great clear sea lay spread out calm in all its summer glory
under a clear sky. White-throats and song-sparrows were singing in the
spruces on which the sunlight sparkled and was reflected from a myriad
of dewdrops, while the forest on the high mainland toward the east
bounded the clear glittering lake like a dark wall of mystery, and
aroused in both white lads a strong desire to climb these dark,
forested slopes and learn what there might be in the great inland
behind.
Ganawa started early and steered a course which left a group of small
rocky islands now known as Lizard Islands on their right. At a distance
of some twelve miles from Montreal Island they came to another island
about a mile and a half by two miles in size. This is now called Leach
Island.
Ray expressed a wish to land and explore this island. “Are you going to
look for another dog?” asked Bruce. “This one will give us trouble
enough.”
The younger lad replied that he did not want any more dogs. “Do you
think I am so stupid that I think there is a dog on every island?” he
protested vigorously.
Ganawa laughed at the tilt of words between his sons and told them that
this island was much like Montreal Island.
“We shall camp early this evening,” he said, “in a fine little harbor,
and maybe my small son will catch some big fish for our meal.”
After they had passed Leach Island, Ganawa steered the canoe within a
mile or less of the shore, and never had the lads seen a more
magnificent view. They were headed north. To their left lay the endless
blue sea with no land in sight; but to their right stood the big
forested wall of rocks, rising to a height of several hundred or even a
thousand feet within a mile or two of the lake. The sun was now shining
on this great forest so one could see clearly the mixture of spruce,
balsam, fir, and birch, with isolated white pines that were taller and
seemed to belong to an older generation of trees.
It was still early in the afternoon when Ganawa rounded some cliffs to
the right and landed the canoe, as he had promised, in a sheltered bay
of shallow water, now known as Indian Harbor.
“We have come ten leagues,” he said, as he lifted the canoe to a safe
place on land; “it is ten leagues more to the Michipicoten. My big son
and I will make camp. My little son should catch us some trout for our
meal.”
“I do want to catch them,” Ray replied, “but I have no bait.”
Then Ganawa took a piece of red flannel out of his hunting bag. “Here,
my son,” he told the lad, “that will catch them, if they are here.”
Ray was in high spirits. His dog had behaved well. When gulls and
eagles soared rather close to the boat, Tawny did not even lift his
head, and now after the canoe had landed, he showed no inclination to
leave but literally dogged Ray’s footsteps. The fish were biting, too,
and the lad was soon wild with excitement. Never had Ray seen such big
rainbow trout. “Oh, Bruce, come and look,” he called; “they are too
beautiful to eat,” after, with much splashing and yelling, he had
pulled out three of the flashing, jumping fish, weighing from two to
three pounds each.
And then came the climax of the day for the lad. A big five-pounder
took a vicious bite at the red flannel, and pulled with much more
strength than Ray had anticipated. The lad held to his pole but in his
effort to reach the line, he slipped on the rock and tumbled in amongst
the boulders. Tawny uttered just two loud barks before he jumped after
the lad, and when Bruce came rushing to the spot, boy and dog were
struggling in the water and Bruce could not tell which one was trying
to save the other. But in all the excitement Ray held to the line, and
when the giant trout at last flashed his great mass of pink and his red
spots on the rock, Ray fell on the wildly jumping fish, seized him
behind the gills and then ran to the tepee yelling: “Look, Father,
look, I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”
By this time a good fire was blazing near the tepee, and Ray was soon
in dry clothes and as comfortable and warm as if he had never had a
plunge-bath in Lake Superior. When Bruce taunted him with being pulled
in by the big fish, Ray only laughed and said, “The fish was worth a
cold bath, and I should be glad to fall in again if I could catch
another five-pound rainbow trout.”
“My father, this evening I shall make a feast,” Bruce told Ganawa. The
big trout was soon cleaned and now Bruce made use of a piece of bacon
he had bought of a trader at the Soo and taken along as a surprise for
Ray and as a kind of emergency ration, for he knew that even the best
of Indians are likely to trust to luck for their next meal.
Bruce placed a strip of bacon inside the big fish. He slit the meat
along the back and placed a strip of bacon in the cut, and to the
outside of the fish he tied several strips of bacon with fine strips of
willow bark, and he also used a little salt on the inside and outside
of the fish. Then he fastened a smooth clean stick lengthwise through
the fish, and for about fifteen minutes he kept the fish slowly turning
over a hot fire of live coals, while each end of the rod used as a spit
was supported in the fork of a stick set into the ground near the fire.
When the bacon began to sizzle and drip and the fish began to turn
brown, Ray could hardly wait until Bruce declared that the fish was
cooked through and well done.
“It is a good feast,” Ganawa declared as soon as he tasted the dark
pink meat, and how Ray and Bruce liked it was shown by the fact that
nothing was left for Tawny but the head and the bones.
But Tawny did not go hungry at the feast. In addition to several trout,
Ray had also caught a pickerel, which the lad cooked over the coals
before he gave it to Tawny for his feast.
“I don’t like to see him eat a raw pickerel,” Ray declared when Ganawa
told him that dogs in the Indian country would eat anything that is
given them.
When the three campers rolled up in their blankets in the tepee, Tawny
curled up between the entrance and the fire and did not move all night,
although some rabbits thumped outside the tepee and some wild mice
scurried about.
“He is a good dog,” Ganawa said in the morning, “and my little son may
keep him.”
CHAPTER X
THE RIDDLE
Before the travellers started next morning they had more broiled trout
for breakfast, and Ray caught and cooked another pickerel for Tawny.
Ray and Bruce had not expected to catch brook trout and pickerel in
Lake Superior, but Ganawa informed them that these fish may be caught
in many places near shore in shallow water, but that they are never
caught in nets set in deep water far from shore.
Rainbow trout found along the shore in Lake Superior are called
“coasters” by fishermen and explorers at the present time, as has been
told. These trout as well as pickerel come into the lake from the many
streams that enter Lake Superior. They continue to feed along the
shore, but never go into the deep water away from shore.
It was a surprise to Bruce and Ray to catch pickerel and brook trout in
the same pool, but Ganawa told them that the big brook or rainbow trout
are not afraid of either pickerel or pike and are often found in the
same pools in some of the streams that flow into the lake.
Brook or rainbow trout must not be confused with the lake trout that
live in both deep and shallow water of Lake Superior, as well as in a
number of other northern lakes. Lake trout, whitefish, and lake herring
are to this day important commercial fish of Lake Superior.
“It is ten leagues to the mouth of the Michipicoten,” said Ganawa when
they were ready to start. Ganawa generally gave distances in leagues,
because he had become accustomed to do so during his contact with the
French traders and voyageurs. France had lost her vast North American
possessions only two years before, and the Indians had not yet become
used to English ways and English measures, but Bruce and Ray had
learned by this time that a league was equal to about three English
miles.
The weather continued fine, so that Ganawa steered the canoe straight
across from point to point, and while approaching Brule Point, they
were three miles from shore. Beyond Brule Point the wooded hills rose
to a height of seven hundred feet above the lake and made both lads
feel that they would like to go inland and explore the mountains as Ray
called them.
“Maybe we shall explore plenty of mountains,” Ganawa promised the lads,
“after we have reached the Michipicoten.”
“There is a house!” exclaimed Ray, as they entered the mouth of the
river, which at that time was not obstructed by sand-bars as it is at
the present time. The log house to which Ray had pointed stood on a
clearing south of the river. It was not occupied, but above the door
were painted the letters H. B. C., which Bruce knew meant Hudson Bay
Company.
Those were the days when this great English company tried to extend the
monopoly in the fur trade, which it enjoyed farther north, also along
the Great Lakes. But it was never very successful in this attempt.
Independent individual traders, and later the Northwest Company and
American traders were active competitors of the Hudson Bay Company.
A little farther up-stream, on the north side of the river on a level
sandy plateau, where now stands a small village of whites and Indians
known as “the Mission,” the travellers found a small camp of Indians,
consisting of Ininiwac people and a few families of Chippewas.
The arrival of the visitors caused a great stir in the lonely camp. A
dozen cur dogs barked savagely at the men and at Tawny, who, however,
treated the whole pack with an air of contempt. He walked erect close
to Ray, with his hair bristling and his teeth flashing and uttering now
and then a fierce low growl, when one of the half-starved curs made a
move as if to snap at him. A few small children scampered into the
tepees at the sight of the strangers while several men arose from their
seats outside the tepees, drove away the yelping dogs and shook hands
with the strangers.
Ganawa was delighted to find some of his own people at the camp, for he
did not understand the talk of Ininiwac people very well, and the
Indians of the Great Lakes region were not good sign-talkers like the
Indians of the plains.
By this time Ray and Bruce had picked up quite a number of Chippewa
words, and when they joined the circle of Ganawa and his friends, they
could understand enough of the conversation to learn that Ganawa was
asking if they knew anything about Jack Dutton, or if they had seen
him.
Later in the evening, when the three were inside of their own tepee,
with a small bright fire of dry sticks burning in the center, Ganawa
told the lads in English what he had learned.
Jack Dutton with another white man had been in the Michipicoten country
about twelve moons ago, last winter. There had been a rumor that the
two men had made a valuable cache of fur within one or two days’
journey of this place, the mouth of the Michipicoten. A hunter, who had
been following the track of a moose, had accidentally discovered the
camp and the fur cache of the two white men, because they had made
their camp on a little stream near a moose trail which led from a big
lake to a small lake farther back in the wilderness of rocky wooded
hills that stretch northward from the Sault Sainte Marie and Lake
Superior for a distance of fifty to two hundred miles, where they run
out into a flat country of the greatest black spruce forest in North
America, a sombre dark forest which extends northward almost to Hudson
Bay and eastward a thousand miles from Lake of the Woods to Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick.
The two white men, the hunter had told, had collected and bought of
some Indians only the most valuable furs, such as silver foxes, dark
prime beaver, and marten. All lower-grade furs they had traded to the
Indians for a few high-grade furs or had used them for clothing and
robes. “They had a big canoe-load of furs worth ten hundred beavers,”
the old hunter had told, holding up the fingers of both hands to
emphasize his story. “The white man gave me lead and powder so I could
kill the fat moose, and my squaw and I had plenty of meat till the
ducks came north and the ice left the streams so we could catch fish.”
The Indians had understood that the lead and powder had been given the
old hunter on the condition that he would not betray the location of
the white men’s fur cache. He had not even told them the distance of
the cache from Lake Superior, but he had returned within four days and
had then taken his squaw with him. “Where is the hunter now?” asked
Bruce. “Perhaps he would tell us more, so we might learn if one of the
white men was my friend, Jack Dutton.”
“He and his squaw have gone to visit a married daughter, who lives on
Lake Winnipeg,” Ganawa replied.
“My father,” asked Ray after a brief silence, “do you know the way to
Lake Winnipeg? Perhaps we might find the hunter and ask him to tell us
more.”
“My son,” Ganawa answered kindly, “I know the way to Lake Winnipeg, but
it is so far away that I fear the lakes and streams would be frozen
again by the time we returned to this camp.
“And now, my sons, it is time to roll up in our blankets. To-morrow I
shall tell you more news; and, maybe, we shall paddle up the
Michipicoten, which is a good river, with clear cold water in which
live many good fish of the color of the rainbow.”
CHAPTER XI
MYSTERY AND DANGER
In the morning Ganawa told the lads some news which he had kept to
himself the evening before.
“There was a visitor at this camp only a few sleeps ago,” he said. “It
was Hamogeesik. He is no good Indian, he is no good white man. He is a
bad Indian and a bad white man in one. He asked my Chippewa friends if
they had seen two white boys and he tried to find out from the Ininiwac
people where two white men had made a cache of fur, and if the white
men had been looking for any gold rock. Most white men, he said, were
looking for gold rock all the time. The Ininiwac people told him they
did not know where the two white men had cached their fur more than
twelve moons ago; and none of the Indians here know whether the two
white men are still back in the hills or whether they have left and
taken their furs away.
“But I know what is in the black heart of Hamogeesik. I think he is
trying to follow us, for he has learned that we are trying to find the
two men who made a cache of fur and looked for gold rock in the hills
from which the waters run to the Michipicoten.”
The three travellers remained several days at the camp with the
Ininiwacs and the Chippewas, because Ganawa thought he might discover
more definite information about the place where the two white men had
made their cache, whether they had found or had been looking for any
gold rock, and whether they were still in the country.
On the fourth morning he said: “My sons, we must leave this camp. I
have learned very little from the people here, and I know now that I
shall learn nothing more; so we must travel among the hills up the
river and look for signs of our friends. But I fear we shall find
nothing, unless the Great Spirit sends me more light. The country is
very big, and there are as many hills and streams and lakes as there
are leaves on a tree. There are many big lakes and many more small
lakes. No Indian has ever found all the small lakes and small streams,
only the beaver people have found them and the fish that shine like a
rainbow. But we must now paddle up-stream among the high hills and
trust in the Great Spirit that he may let us find some sign that may
tell us where to look for your friends.”
Had the three travellers been on a pleasure or camping trip, they could
hardly have chosen a finer and more beautiful river. For a mile or two
they passed through a level sandy country into which the river has cut
its channel, making on the north side a steep bank more than fifty feet
high. This level country was covered with a growth of jack-pine,
spruces and balsam firs; and to this day a most beautiful, natural
jack-pine park extends some miles up-stream toward the big falls of the
Michipicoten, of which we shall soon hear more.
The area of this jack-pine park was covered by the waters of Lake
Superior a long time ago, when the big lake was even bigger than it is
now; and over the whole Lake Superior region is written a most
wonderful story of great ice-sheets and floods for those who can read
the story of lakes and streams and hills and of the great deposits of
gravel and small stones and large boulders.
While Ganawa and Bruce were paddling the canoe up the fairly swift
current, Ray sat in the stern and had a line out, baited with a piece
of flannel; and by the time Ganawa stopped for a meal and for rest, Ray
had caught enough rainbow trout for the men, and a pike and a pickerel
for Tawny.
The Michipicoten is carrying about as much water as the Wabash or the
Minnesota, but its water is clear and cold with just a tint of brown in
it, and pike and pickerel and large rainbow trout may still be caught
in its waters in the same pool. It is not to be thought, however, that
they will always bite on a piece of flannel; for, like fish in other
waters, at times no bait will tempt them.
If any of my readers should ever paddle up the Michipicoten from the
mouth toward the big falls, they would naturally use a fly or they
might keep a trolling-line out and enjoy the thrill of catching a big
rainbow trout, for the country of the Michipicoten is still a
wilderness and its waters still flow cold and clear.
In 1775 spoon hooks had not yet been invented and, of course, no
trout-flies could be bought of any Indian traders.
Whenever the three travellers came to a place where some one had
camped, they landed and examined the spot with great care.
“My father,” asked Bruce, “how would you be able to tell whether
Indians or white men had camped on the river?”
“If I found a button,” Ganawa replied, “or a coin, or paper with
printed words, I should say that white men had made the camp.”
They spent the better part of a day in paddling some ten or twelve
miles up-stream. They examined minutely three camping-places near the
river. At each place the Indians had left their tepee-poles standing,
as is their custom to this day. None of the places showed signs of very
recent camps; however, at one camp Ray picked up a scrap of printed
paper; but the words were French and the sign, therefore, gave no clue
as to the whereabouts of the friend of Bruce.
At the foot of some rapid water, Ganawa made camp for the night, and
the lads now saw the advantage of leaving the tepee-poles standing at
each camp, for within a few minutes Ganawa had their long strip of
deerskin wound around the poles, fastened it to the ground, and the
tepee was ready.
“We had better sleep in the tepee,” he remarked, “for the night will be
cool and the air damp in the deep shaded valley near the river.
“To-morrow, my sons,” he added, “we must push our canoe with a pole or
drag it on a rope, and in some places we must carry it, for it is a
league from here to the big falls and the water is very swift all the
way and many rocks have rolled into the river from the hills.”
That evening Ray lay awake a long time listening to the talk of the
river, which gurgled and bubbled, roared and rushed and rippled past
the camp, as if a crowd of living men or spirits talking in a strange
language were for ever and ever marching past the camp.
Then the lad was bold enough to turn aside the tepee-flap and step out
into the night. If Tawny had not come out with him, he would have been
afraid. A strange sight met his eyes. Above the stream, which now
looked uncanny and forbidding, hung a fog which in the moonlight looked
like a long gray cloud. Patches of moonlight lay bright on the trail
and the high tree tops on the hills opposite stood out in bold relief,
while the tree trunks near by stood like black spectres. A big owl was
hooting in the distance. Or was it the howling of a wolf? And some
small creature rushed from the trail into the thicket.
The spookiness of the moonlight night seized Ray. He turned and walked
quickly back to the tepee, crept under his blanket, head and all, and,
listening again to the talk of the river, he soon fell asleep.
CHAPTER XII
BEGINNING THE SEARCH
Ray was surprised next forenoon at the ease with which Ganawa managed
their journey up-stream. For the greater part of the distance the old
Indian knelt in the stern of the canoe, and by means of a pole steered
and pushed the craft safely past many rocks and through much swift
water, while Bruce walked along the south bank and pulled on a long
rope. In a few places they lifted the canoe out of the water and
carried it a short distance over land. Ray, with his gun and his dog,
walked along the trail as if he were furnishing the safe conduct for
the two canoeists. Although Ganawa and Bruce worked the canoe up-stream
with great caution, they nevertheless made such good progress that they
reached the great whirlpool at the foot of the falls during the
forenoon.
The falls of the Michipicoten have the character of a mountain
cataract. The water does not drop over a projecting cliff as it does at
Niagara, but in some half dozen turns and twists it rushes down a steep
cliff of granite. Over the last step the water rushes at an angle which
makes a mad whirlpool, in which the water turns and turns like a caged
animal that is vainly looking for an escape from its prison. At certain
stages of the water, the outflow from the whirlpool seems to come
entirely from below, while the whirling surface water will hold logs
and other objects in its grip for days to leave them finally stranded
on the rocks. When the water is at this stage, even the lumbermen find
it at times impossible to break the whirling and milling movement of
the logs.
From the whirlpool the travellers had to carry their canoe and packs up
a steep trail of a hundred and fifty feet and some distance beyond,
until it was safe to put the canoe in the water again; for above great
falls and rapids the water of a river acquires a vicious gliding
swiftness, which seizes men and animals as with a vise-like grip from
which they can seldom escape. The water above the falls of the
Michipicoten is especially treacherous. The river is wide and quite
smooth and one may wade into it near the shore, but in the deep water
in the middle of the stream the river is madly rushing to the first
chute of the falls, and a boat or canoe once caught in the midstream
rush rarely escapes destruction. Even in recent years several white
men, who did not gauge right the danger of the smoothly gliding stream,
have lost their lives by being carried over the falls.
About a mile above the roaring, thundering falls, Ganawa stopped at a
camping-place close to a quiet pool in the river.
“My sons,” he said, “here we shall stay, maybe several days. You, my
sons, may now set up our tepee and make us a good camp.” As in this
place also a set of poles was standing in position, making camp was
quick and easy work; but Bruce and Ray, after the tepee was up, went to
work at cutting a goodly lot of firewood. For this and other work,
Bruce had brought a good heavy ax, because, as he said, it seemed
foolish to him for a full-grown man to work with a small boy’s hatchet.
He admitted that these small axes were valuable weapons for the Indian
warriors and hunters and for the squaws in cutting firewood. “But for a
white man,” he insisted, “give me a real ax, the kind used by the
wood-choppers and farmers of New England. Ray may use an Indian
hatchet; it is about the right weight for him.”
The lads chopped two kinds of wood. One pile consisted of short and dry
pieces of pine, spruce, mountain ash, white elm, white cedar, a little
black ash, and small sticks of dry willow, moose-maple, pin-cherry, and
choke-cherry.
The moose-maple so common north of Lake Superior is not a real tree,
but only a good-sized bush. The lads did not cut any dry birch, because
dead birch wood found in the forest is nearly always both wet and
rotten and valueless as fuel. The bark of the birch does not allow the
wood to dry, and within a few years the dead wood has changed to a kind
of punk, which is good for smoking fish and meat, but quite worthless
for a real fire. Sugar maple, soft maple, oaks, butternut, black
walnut, and other trees common farther south and east do not grow along
the Michipicoten River nor are they found in the region of Michipicoten
Bay. Common broad-leaved trees in this region are the aspen, or common
poplar, the balsam poplar, or balm of Gilead, and the white birch. The
white birch is the most common; it grows to a good size and, if cut
green, makes the best fuel found in the North woods.
After the lads had cut a supply of dry wood for purposes of cooking and
for a fire in the tepee, they started to cut a lot of green birch for
their outdoor camp-fires. Birch is the only kind of broad-leaved wood
found in the northern forest which will burn green. It will not sputter
and throw sparks, but after it is well started by the use of some dry
wood it can be kept going indefinitely with a steady red glow by adding
fuel as it is needed.
All the evergreens will burn green, but they are unpleasant to handle
on account of their pitch and they make much black smoke; while green
poplars, elm, oak, and ironwood are so sappy, especially in the summer
season, that they will steam and sizzle on the fire and can hardly be
made to burn with the aid of dry wood.
After the lads had cut enough wood to last them for a week or so,
Ganawa told them that they must now secure food for several days before
they could go and look for signs of the cache of their friends. Bruce
was more than willing to do this, because he saw with much anxiety that
the small supply of food which they had brought with them would soon be
gone, if they touched it at all.
The great country north and northeast of Lake Superior is very poor in
wild plant food suitable for human beings. There is little or no wild
rice, and there are no roots or bulbs which can be gathered in large
quantities. There is, however, an abundance of blueberries and
raspberries in good seasons; but a man who has no bread or meat cannot
live long on berries.
In the matter of animal food, however, the case stands better for the
North Country. The great swamps, valleys and hills of this region have
long been and still are the home of the moose, the biggest animal of
the deer family now living. At times woodland caribou are found in the
region, and generally there is a supply of snowshoe rabbits. At the
present time, deer are fairly common in the region, but the journals
and stories of the old voyageurs and traders do not mention deer, which
at that time had not spread so far north.
The most reliable food supply of the region is fish, and Bruce and Ray
now set about securing enough fish so they might later on give all
their time to exploring and looking for some clue of the whereabouts of
Jack Dutton.
CHAPTER XIII
AT THE BIG POOL
Few streams in North America furnish a better place for rainbow trout
than the Big Pool just below the falls of the Michipicoten, so Bruce
and Ray naturally decided to try their luck in its black whirling
waters.
“You should catch some big trout in that pool,” Bruce commented as Ray
put a piece of red flannel on a hook which looked large enough to hold
a three-pound bass. For a little while the trout, if there were any in
this pool, seemed indifferent to this fake bait, as Ray called it. “If
I could only find some worms in this country, you would soon see me
pull them out,” he remarked a little impatiently.
“Well, you know, Ray, that there are no angleworms in a wild country,
and you might as well try patiently to catch one on the flannel bait.
After you catch the first one, you will soon catch more.” After trying
patiently in several places, Ray did land a small trout. “Now,” Bruce
advised him, “dress this fish right away, and use its fins for bait and
see what will happen.”
It has often been claimed that fish do not know one kind of bait from
another, and that they will strike at anything that moves or is
conspicuously colored. To a great extent that is true of such voracious
fish as the pickerel, but rainbow trout are perhaps the most
intelligent of all fresh-water fish. They may bite at times on a piece
of cloth or on bacon or pork-rind; but the man who uses flies, worms,
minnows, fins, or other parts of a fish for bait will catch more trout.
After Ray had baited his hook with a fin, it was not long before the
fun began, and the lads were soon in the midst of more exciting fishing
than they had ever dreamed of. Ray caught no more small fish. They were
all bigger than any trout he had ever seen in the streams near his
Vermont home. Of course, Ray had no reel, no dip-net, no creel or
stringer to take care of his catch. When the line suddenly tightened
and began to cut the swift, whirling current, Ray grew wildly excited.
“Get him, Bruce, get him!” he would call, while he made an effort to
swing the line around so that Bruce could get hold of it, and the older
lad in turn became almost as excited as Ray; and in truth to catch
brook trout that run from two to three pounds and over in weight is
exciting enough to make the blood of even an old man run fast again.
“Oh, Bruce, you let him get away,” Ray exclaimed, after they had been
pulling out the most beautiful and lively fish for an hour. “It was a
big one, a real giant. I saw him come after the bait almost to the
surface. I was going to hit him with the pole, because I thought it was
a big pickerel. He was almost a yard long. Honestly, Bruce, he looked
as big as that!” and Ray indicated the size of the fish by holding up
both of his hands.
“How many have we? About thirty? Bruce, it’s lucky we had a sack,
otherwise most of them would have jumped back in the river. I never saw
such wild fish.”
“And I never saw such a wild fisherman,” Bruce remarked.
“I want to catch one more real big one,” declared Ray without replying
to the older lad. “Bruce, I never want to catch any more sunfish and
bullheads.”
For a short time the trout seemed to be taking a rest; but then
suddenly there came a strike and a pull as if the hook had caught on a
wildly spinning log. The limber cedar pole bent and the tip almost
touched the water, as the fish rushed into deep water and toward the
opposite side of the whirlpool.
“Help me, help me!” Ray called. “I can’t hold him. Maybe I’m caught on
a log. No, I’m not. It’s a fish, Bruce! It’s a fish! I can feel it.
It’s a big one!”
Bruce took the pole, for the younger boy was tired out with the
excitement of the afternoon. “Look out, Bruce, look out!” he called.
“He will pull you into the whirlpool and drown you! Maybe I have caught
an otter or a beaver.”
But Bruce had now gained control of the situation. For some ten or
fifteen minutes he skillfully played the big fish on a taut line.
Several times the desperately fighting fish broke water, but the line
held and the hook could not be shaken out.
“Now then,” called Bruce, when the giant had calmed down. “Now, Ray,
take the line and run up the bank.” And out of the black pool came a
real rainbow giant, the like of which neither lad had ever seen. Bruce
quickly caught the wildly jumping fish behind the gills and carried him
up the bank.
“Look,” he called, “we came near losing him the last minute. He was off
the hook when I caught him.”
“Oh, but he is a big one! Let me hold him a minute,” Ray pleaded. “The
boys in Vermont would never believe that he was so big. What do you
think he weighs?”
“He weighs six pounds if he weighs an ounce,” Bruce asserted, “and he
is over two feet long. Ray, these trout are too beautiful to take home.
I declare, if this black foaming pool were a big glass tank, I should
put them all back, just to watch a host of rainbows swimming around.”
Bruce was just about to shoulder the load of fish when something
happened that made them forget for a short time the wonderful time they
had had catching that unheard-of mess of trout.
Tawny, who had acted a little bored at the sport in which he could not
partake, suddenly rushed down the trail. The lads heard him bark
viciously, as if he had cornered some wild beast and the creature had
turned at bay on him. The lads, who had not taken their guns along, ran
down the trail, but they could not overtake the dog, who for a short
time was out of hearing. As the lads walked more slowly along the
trail, the dog, still mad with excitement, met them. His hair was wet,
but still bristling and he evidently wanted them to come with him,
which the lads did with some hesitation, because they were not armed.
“I am afraid a bear turned on him,” Ray suggested, “and we couldn’t
fight a bear with sticks.”
“I have an idea that it was a moose,” Bruce suggested. “The animal
probably crossed the river and Tawny jumped in after him.”
But when on examining the trail and the river bank very carefully, they
found neither tracks of moose nor bear, nor tracks of any kind, they
were still more puzzled.
“Perhaps he only saw or smelled something on the other side of the
river and got himself wet in trying to swim across. He is just fool
enough to try that; but let us go home now, Bruce. Perhaps Ganawa can
tell us what Tawny was after.”
They found Ganawa sitting in front of the tepee, as if deeply absorbed
in thought. He was much pleased with the big catch of trout the lads
brought to camp, but when they told him of the strange behavior of
Tawny, Ganawa’s eyes flashed and he asked, “Did you look for moccasin
tracks? Moccasin tracks are hard to see on a trail where there are many
stones.”
“We did not see any,” Bruce replied, “but we did not think of looking
for them; we thought only of moose or bear.”
“We shall go and look for them in the morning,” said Ganawa. “It is
getting too dark now.”
CHAPTER XIV
A PUZZLE
Thus far the three travellers had enjoyed a long spell of that perfect
fair weather, which during some seasons is common in the North Country,
while at other seasons summer comes near missing the great wilderness
which lies between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay.
By the time Ganawa and the lads had each finished a pink-fleshed
broiled trout for supper the western sky was overcast and they could
see the reflection of distant lightning on the far-away clouds,
although above them the stars were shining, and a westerly wind soughed
somewhat uncannily through the tops of spruces and birches and played
about the crowns of old white pines which far overtopped the dense
mixed forest of spruce, birch, balsam, fir, and white cedar, which
campers and fishermen may find over much of the great North Shore
country to this day.
“My father,” Ray had asked, “why are there only a few big pines in the
forest?”
Ganawa thought a few moments before he answered. “I cannot tell you, my
son. As long as I remember, and during the time of my father, this was
always a country of a few big pine-trees, but south of the Big Lake,
where there was for a long time the country of the Chippewas, there are
large forests of very big pine-trees.”
The question which Ray asked of Ganawa is somewhat of a puzzle even to
the scientific foresters and naturalists of to-day. If one asks the
oldest present-day Indians for information, he receives about the same
answer which Ganawa gave to Ray. As long as the oldest of them
remembers and far back into the time of their grandfathers, isolated
giant white pines have towered over the other forest trees that do not
grow to the size of giants.
In some regions, as those in the poplar forests of the Big Fork country
in Minnesota, and in the Itasca Forest, the big pines are probably the
only trees that survived a destructive fire between seventy-five or a
hundred years ago. Of the time of these fires neither white men nor
Indians have now any definite recollection, but unfortunately forest
fires have not been rare in this great region of variable rainfall and
much wind.
North of Lake Superior and in the Michipicoten country, the big pines
may really tell another story. Perhaps they are an advance guard in the
northward spread of the forest trees, after all that vast region had
been covered by ice. Some of these big white pines are very old. They
have been slow growers. Three hundred narrow rings of growth are not
rare, and if one could carefully examine the rings close to the ground
he might find four hundred. These rings mean that the trees are between
three hundred and four hundred years old. There is no doubt that many
of these lone giants were struggling seedlings or even lustily growing
youths when John Smith was saved by Pocahontas and when the Pilgrims
landed on the coast of Massachusetts. Careful investigation might even
show that some of these lone sentinels were already beginning to reach
up to the sunlight when Columbus landed on San Salvador.
It may be that the red squirrels retarded the spread of the white pines
northward. In regions, where these pines are not numerous, the
squirrels are likely to strip every cone and eat practically every
seed.
Ganawa knew of this habit of the red squirrels and he also told Ray
that perhaps the winters were too long north of the Big Lake. “About
thirty leagues farther north,” he told the lads, “begins the great
forest of the spruce, and no white pines grow there, but only
spruce-trees; and where the land is high and sandy, the jack-pine
grows, the pine that keeps its little crooked cones for many years. And
there is only one other tree that you would find plentiful, if you
would paddle your canoe down one of the rivers which flow into the cold
salt water bay; that tree is the poplar, whose leaves whisper and talk
in every little wind. The poplars grow on good soil near the rivers,
where a fire has killed the other trees.”
By this time Ray was glad to slip away into his blankets. A small fire
was burning in the tepee to keep the place dry and warm and also to
prevent any mosquitoes from coming in at the top; for almost every year
through June and July the mosquitoes are a fearful pest through the
whole Great Lakes region, and they are often worse north of the lakes
than south of them.
Bruce and Ganawa sat for an hour or more at the camp-fire, which Bruce
kept supplied with green birch logs, while they talked over the events
of the day and discussed plans for finding a clue to the whereabouts of
Jack Dutton.
“We must look sharp along the river for signs of a white man’s camp,”
said Ganawa, “and if we do not find any, then we must go to another
river or to some lakes where the hunting is good for fur animals. And
we may find some Indians that can tell us where a white man made a
camp, but this country is very big and very few Indians live in it, and
only few of them travel through the region on their way to the English
traders who live far to the north on the shore of the salt water.”
By this time the storm had come up from the west, not with the violence
that often accompanies rainstorms on the plains and along the Missouri,
but quietly, with almost no wind. Bruce poured water on the camp-fire
and for a short time he stood in the darkness enjoying the view of the
hills and the wild forest as it was illumined from time to time by the
lightning that played back and forth on the clouds, and he listened to
the thunder which rumbled and crashed and echoed from hill to hill, and
it seemed as if at times the very rocks were trembling. Then a steady
roaring noise began, and Bruce wondered what it was, as it seemed to be
approaching rapidly. It was a heavy rain moving eastward without any
wind, and when the first big drops began to play on the tepee, Bruce
slipped inside and carefully closed the tepee flap behind him.
Ray was sound asleep, and Ganawa, who had experienced many storms in a
wild forest, also seemed to be asleep. But Bruce lay awake for some
time listening to the play of the rain on the tepee and to its strange
music on the river and in the trees, a music which people who always
live in cities and white men’s houses never hear. Thus wondering and
half dreaming about the vast uninhabited region, the big trout in the
pool, and the strange unknown man or beast which had made the dog so
madly excited, Bruce also fell asleep.
When Ray went to bed the dog had also curled up in his place and the
two had been asleep now for several hours. To rain, thunder, and wind,
Tawny paid no attention; they were sounds that meant nothing to him. In
the morning the wild forest appeared in all its summer glory under a
clear blue sky. White-throats were whistling, the song of the
hermit-thrushes rang from the thickets with its peculiar ecstasy, and
the bumblebees were at work among the white flowers of the wild
raspberries.
After the brush had dried off, the three campers went down to examine
the trail below the big pool; but if there had been any tracks or
marks, the heavy rain had obliterated them all. Tawny sniffed at the
ground here and there, but found nothing to excite him. However, he
seemed to know what the investigation was about, for again and again he
looked at his human companions with a funny quizzical expression, as if
he would say: “This is the place where he was last night. If you will
just tell me where he is now, I will go after him.”
CHAPTER XV
THE SMOKE-HOUSE
“I do not know what made the dog mad,” said Ganawa, when they had
returned from the pool. “Perhaps he smelled a bear or a wolf, or a
moose came to the river to drink. Some dogs do not know enough to leave
a porcupine alone, and then they get mad when they smell one. Or it may
be that the dog smelled an Indian, although I do not know why a good
Indian should have run away when the dog came. If it had been a bear, I
think the dog would have held him at bay and would have done much
barking, and a young bear would have climbed a tree. If it had been a
moose, I think the dog would have followed his trail a long time,
perhaps all night. So I think it was either a wolf or an Indian. One
dog cannot fight a wolf, and an Indian might have gone down the river
in a canoe. But now, my sons, you must take care of the fish you
caught.”
The trout had all been cleaned in the evening, and Bruce had laid them
in a big basin of birch-bark and put just a very little salt on them.
Bruce had taken along about a peck of salt, because he knew that it is
hard for most white men to learn to like meat and fish without salt.
The lads had planned to smoke the fish, so that they would keep
indefinitely. Then they could take smoked fish on trips when they would
have no time to hunt or fish, or when they would have no luck with
hunting or fishing.
The lads proceeded to smoke the fish in a way which any campers or
fishermen may follow. It is a method which the Indians discovered long
ago and it is well known to many white campers and hunters.
Bruce drove some stout poles into the ground so they made a rectangle
about three feet wide and six feet long. Then he tied two slender green
poles to the uprights, one on each side of the rectangle.
Ray quickly cut a number of thin green sticks and laid them crosswise
on the poles which Bruce had tied to the uprights. When Ganawa saw what
the lads had done, he said, “My sons, you have made a good scaffold for
smoking the fish.”
“We shall make it better,” Bruce replied. “We shall make a little
smoke-house, so they will be smoked more evenly than on an open
scaffold. Go and get some large pieces of bark, Ray; any kind of bark
you can find.”
In a short time the lads had enclosed three sides of their smoke-house
with pieces of birch-bark and other bark. Then Bruce dug a shallow
trench in the ground, and in this he built a small fire of sticks and
chips. As soon as this fire had a good start he covered it with damp
birch punk, rotting birchwood, which he gathered from a dead birch that
had been lying on the ground for several years. The wood had rotted to
such an extent, as birch on the ground always does, that one could have
dug it out with a stout shovel.
The fish had all been split along the back, and Ray had carefully
spread them out on the frame above the fire, from which a thick smoke
now began to rise.
“Say, Bruce,” exclaimed Ray, “the thing begins to work like a
smoke-house on a New England farm. I guess we won’t starve if we can
catch enough fish or find game.”
The lads now covered the top of their smoke-house with birch-bark, and
partly closed the front with a piece of buckskin. After this they took
turns watching the fire, taking care that there was always enough fire
to make a good dense smoke. By this method, meat and fish are slowly
cooked and cured in such a way that they will keep for a long time,
even in warm weather, if they are protected from flies and other
insects.
Bruce and Ray smoked fish till dark, and then Bruce took the fish into
the tepee and let the fire go out.
“A hungry bear might steal that whole business,” Bruce remarked. “We
must take no chances like that.”
In the morning Bruce started the fire again, and about noon the fish
were declared well smoked and cured. The outside felt hard and dry and
the dark pink meat had been nicely browned. The fish not only looked
but smelled appetizing, so that the lads were sorely tempted to eat a
piece at once.
Ganawa had made a birch-bark tub and in this the lads stored their
smoked fish, and after carefully closing the tub with a piece of
canvas, they hung the tub up in the tepee, for in this way the fish
would keep indefinitely.
They had now time to explore the country several miles up the river,
searching for indications of a white man’s camp or a cache of fur.
“The cache or the camp,” said Ganawa, “will not be far from a lake or
stream. It may be on a very small stream, but you need not look for it
far from water. Both Indians and white men never make a camp more than
two or three hundred paces from water, and at most camps the distance
to water is much less.”
For about a week the three campers devoted their time to exploring the
wild country for some ten miles up-stream. Sometimes all three went as
one party, at other times Ganawa went in one direction and the two
white boys went in another direction, but neither of the white boys
ever went alone any great distance from camp, for Ganawa was always a
little afraid that the lads might get lost.
“You must remember, my sons,” he told them, “in what direction you went
from the river and from the tepee. If you can find the river, you can
find the tepee. If you get lost you must not be scared and begin to
run, but you must camp, build a fire that will make a big smoke and
then you must wait till I have time to find you.”
On every trip they carried a piece of smoked fish, a small ax, steel,
flint, and tinder; and hooks and fish-lines. They also never went
without Bruce’s small compass. About the use of the compass Ganawa had
laughingly cautioned them on one point, saying: “My sons, I have seen
several white men get lost with their compass. The compass is wise and
can always tell you where the north star is and where the sun is at
noon, but it cannot tell you where your tepee is; so you must always
remember in what direction and about how far you went from your tepee.”
In this manner they examined every creek, lake, and pond that might
have tempted trappers and traders to camp. They found several places
where at some time Indians had camped, but in all their search they
discovered just one spot which Ganawa pronounced to have been a white
man’s camp. It was close to the river at the mouth of a cold-spring
stream.
“The men who camped here cut big wood and built a big fire,” explained
Ganawa. “Indians do not cut big wood and do not build a big fire. The
dry balsam boughs of their bed show us that there were two men, and
they made camp about twelve moons ago after the balsam-trees had begun
to make a new growth. They camped here more than one night, because
they cut and burnt a good deal of wood.”
Bruce and Ray tried hard to read more from the signs of the camp. In
what direction were the men travelling? With what object did they come
to this wild part of the continent? The lads even looked with great
care for some written message, but they found absolutely nothing to
give them more information than Ganawa had read from the signs of the
camp.
“I wish something would happen,” Ray said one evening as he and Bruce
were returning tired and hungry from one of their fruitless exploring
trips. “It isn’t much fun to be eaten up by the black flies in the
brush,” and a few days later something did happen.
CHAPTER XVI
A DOUBLE SURPRISE
The thing happened on a fine quiet summer afternoon. Ganawa and Ray
were enjoying the fine weather near the tepee. Bruce had taken the
canoe and the dog across the river and was sitting on a knoll from
which he had a fine view of a short stretch of the river. He was
thinking over the plan that Ganawa had proposed for the future. “We
must either travel up the river,” Ganawa had said, “or we must start
off for another part of the country, perhaps to some big lake.”
The whole plan seemed sort of bootless and headless to Bruce and he
felt decidedly blue about the whole outlook. “We might as well,” he
thought, “hunt for a certain pebble somewhere on the shore of Lake
Superior, as expect to find Jack Dutton or anybody else in this endless
wilderness of a million lakes and streams and rivers and rocky hills.
If anybody lived in this God-forsaken country, the black flies and
mosquitoes wouldn’t be so hungry. I think Jack and I were a couple of
big ...” and then the train of his thought was suddenly broken by
something he saw coming around the bend in the river. Bruce stood up to
make sure he was not mistaken. No, there it was. An Indian in a small
birch-bark canoe was paddling hard up-stream, and the fellow had a gun
leaning in the bow of the canoe. He was close to the other shore, and
would see Ganawa’s camp before Ganawa or Ray were likely to see him.
Bruce knew that Ganawa expected no friendly visitor, in fact, he
thought he recognized the Indian. Bruce was too far from camp to call
to Ganawa. For a moment he did not know what to do, and then he did a
desperate thing. He fired his gun and let out as wild a yell as he
could utter.
At the sound of the gun the Indian stopped, turned his canoe and
paddled down-stream as fast as he could go. Bruce and Tawny did their
best to follow along the bank, but as there was no trail on that side
of the stream they could not keep up with the fleeing canoe. It was
with some difficulty that Bruce restrained the dog from jumping into
the swift current. Several times Bruce almost kicked the dog back into
the brush. “Get back, you fool dog,” he called. “You will go over the
falls!” And while Bruce tried to keep the fleeing Indian in sight, he
wondered if Ganawa and Ray had heard his shot and his yell, and he felt
much provoked that they did not turn out to capture the fellow when he
had to land above the falls.
Only once the fleeing Indian looked around and Bruce yelled in
Chippewa: “Stop! Stop! Get him, Ganawa!” And again he had to restrain
the madly barking dog from jumping into the treacherous smooth current
just above the falls.
And then Bruce felt as if his heart was going to stop beating. That
Indian was losing control of his canoe. He was straining every muscle
to land on the left bank; but, as if pulled by invisible hands, that
canoe was drawn to the right and was approaching that terrible narrow
chute, which is the beginning of the roaring falls. For a brief half
minute Bruce watched the struggle between the man and the river. But
just as Bruce expected the man and the canoe to be drawn into the
chute, the Indian stood up, dropped his paddle and, with a mighty
effort, sprang to a rock at the very head of the chute. He barely clung
to the rock with hands and feet, but the recoil of his spring pushed
the canoe into the chute, where a second or two it seemed to stand on
its head, and then it disappeared. For a moment it looked as if the
Indian was hurt and would not be able to move; but he recovered
quickly, bounded over the rocks, and ran down the steep trail to the
Big Pool.
Bruce walked back swiftly to the place where he had left the canoe and
crossed over to the camp. “I bet,” he thought, “Ray and Ganawa are both
asleep in the tepee.” But he was mistaken; the two had gone fishing to
the mouth of a small creek. Bruce at once followed them and found them
about a mile up-stream. When Ganawa heard what had happened his eyes
flashed, he dropped his pole and said, “We must go and follow the man’s
trail.”
On the way to camp he asked a number of questions of Bruce. “How did
the Indian look? What did he wear? Did he have a gun?”
“He was short and squatty,” Bruce told. “He wore his hair sort of
half-long, not in a braid. I did not get a good look at his face, but
when he looked around I thought he looked like a bad man, but I thought
he also looked scared.
“I was surprised to see him jump out of the canoe. He missed the rock
with his feet, but clung to it with his hands. He wore moccasins,
leggings, and a hunting-shirt of buckskin.”
“Did he have a gun?” Ganawa repeated somewhat eagerly.
“Yes, he had a gun,” Bruce asserted. “It was leaning in the bow of the
boat, but he jumped for the rock without it, and the gun went over the
falls with the canoe.”
“We must follow him,” repeated Ganawa. “If he had been a friend, he
would not have run away. He was a man who had some evil in his heart.
You must take Ohnemoosh, but you must tie a rope to him so he cannot
run away from us and make a big noise with barking and tell the man
that we are coming.”
On the way down the steep trail to the Big Pool, Ganawa pointed to some
tracks and whispered, “Wet moccasins,” and when Tawny smelled at the
tracks his hair bristled and he tried hard to break away from Ray.
If the lads had expected to find the Indian at the Big Pool, they were
disappointed. Several pieces of the canoe were travelling round and
round in the pool, and Ray caught a cedar-wood paddle, but of the gun
they found no trace. They followed the trail past the two miles of the
rapids below the pool with the dog eagerly leading and straining at the
rope, but a few rods below the rapids where the water flows along
placidly, carrying patches of foam on its surface, the dog lost the
trail.
Ray led him back several times and then released him so he could range
as he pleased, but it was all in vain; the trail either ended suddenly
or, for some reason, the dog could not follow it any farther.
The three sat down to think it over. The dog also sat down and with a
puzzled whine looked at his human friends as if to say: “I don’t know
what this means. Can’t you tell me?”
And then Ganawa arose and said: “My sons, I can tell you why the dog
cannot follow the trail beyond this point. The man stopped here, jumped
into the river and swam across. It is good that he lost his gun, for we
know now that he cannot come back and harm us during the night. We
should not follow him across the stream. It may be that he will never
come back, for he knows that his gun is lost and that his canoe was
broken where the river leaps over the big steps of the rocks to the
whirling pool. And now we must return to our camp, for we have not
tasted food since this morning, and we are all very hungry.”
CHAPTER XVII
INTO THE UNKNOWN
After the evening meal, the two lads built a big camp-fire of green
birch logs, mixed with such dry sticks as they could find, so as to
make a ruddy blazing fire, which grew so hot that both men and dog had
to back away from it. Ganawa smiled as he watched the lads pile on wood
and then back off.
“White men do strange things,” he said laughing. “Here, my sons, you
have been working hard at cutting wood, and now you have built a big
fire, which is so hot that we all have to back away from it. Why did
you not build a small fire and sit close to it?”
The lads looked at each other, but neither of them had a good answer.
“I suppose, my father,” Bruce replied after a moment of silence, “white
men just like to see a big fire, and most white boys would rather cut
and gather much wood and watch a big camp-fire than sit close to a
small fire.”
The lads had expected that Ganawa would talk about the man who had
almost gone over the falls and whose trail had abruptly ended below the
rapids, but after his remarks about the camp-fire of the boys, the tall
lean hunter lapsed into silence. He sat motionless looking at the fire
or gazing into the black darkness which surrounds every camp-fire at
night. The lads had learned that it was useless to try to make him talk
when he had fallen into this mood. “There will be no talk,” Ray had
remarked some days ago, “when Ganawa starts looking at the fire without
batting an eye.”
One who is used to the noisy summer evenings of more southern regions
where crickets, locusts, katydids, and tree-frogs open their noisy
nocturnal concert as soon as the red orb of the sun has sunk below the
horizon cannot help being strongly impressed by the solemn mysterious
silence of the Great Wild North.
As the fire began to burn low, Ray went into the tepee and brought a
blanket for each man, for as usual in the north the night was growing
cool. After each man had wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, they
sat again in silence. There was the murmuring and rippling of the
river, for like all rivers that drop into the north shore of the Big
Lake, the Michipicoten runs almost everywhere with a swift current.
These cool, clear northern streams live, and they sing as they run.
Crickets and tree-frogs are not found in the North Shore country, but
the night-hawks flew screaming over the glowing fire, a lone
whippoorwill called near the stream; from a large pine behind the camp
came the spooky call and the guttural notes of “kookookehaw,” the big
owl; and from the hill across the river came the long-drawn howl of a
wolf.
Next morning Ganawa told the lads to make breakfast and roll up the
tepee. “We move after we have eaten,” he added. “I go down and watch a
while for the man who ran away.”
Tawny wanted very much to go along, but Ganawa would not let him.
“Ohnemoosh,” he said, “you stay in camp. I go alone with my gun and
watch for him.”
Ganawa might have been gone an hour or two hours. To Ray it seemed two
hours, and he was just about to go and look for the hunter when the
tall red man came striding back into camp.
“I did not see him,” he told the lads, “and I do not think he is coming
back to follow us, because he has lost his gun, and it is hard for a
poor Indian to buy a new gun. But we shall go away now on a long
journey to some big lakes and many streams to the north and northeast
of our camp. The lakes are large, they lie in the rocks in the forest
and many little streams run into them, and the beaver people build
their dams and houses on these little rivers, and they also build
houses on many small lakes, which no hunter has ever found; for this is
the country which the Great Spirit has made to be a refuge for the
beaver people and the moose. In this country the hunters shall never
kill the last beaver and the last moose, because the animals can always
find a trail that leads them to a safe place.”
“My father,” asked Bruce, “shall we stop looking for the camp of my
friend while we go to explore many lakes and streams?”
“My son,” replied Ganawa, “we shall always be looking for the camp of
your friend and for signs that tell us where he may have gone; and if
we do not find him and find no signs of his camp, then, maybe, we shall
have to go back and tell our friends that the wilderness has swallowed
the white man.”
Bruce and Ray wanted very much to know if Ganawa knew who was the man
that had followed them, but on this subject Ganawa did not utter a word
and the lads knew it would be useless to ask him. He talked of moose
and caribou they might find in the country ahead, of many big lakes,
some of which he had never seen himself; but the strange Indian, who
had fled from them as if driven by an evil conscience, he seemed to
have forgotten.
“We must look for moose,” Ganawa told the boys when they entered the
narrow bay of a large lake one morning. “My sons are getting thin from
eating nothing but fish.”
Ray’s heart began to thump when half an hour later Ganawa pointed
toward the north shore of the lake and called in a low voice, “Moose!”
and began to steer the canoe so as to approach the animal without
alarming him.
“He is too big,” said Ganawa when they had approached within gunshot.
But now the moose, a big bull with antlers in the velvet, became
suspicious. He left the shallow water, in which he had been feeding on
aquatic plants, and circled around far enough so he could get the wind
of the hunters. Then he stepped out of the spruce forest, gazed at the
hunters and sniffed the wind, and Ray thought he saw him shake his
head. Then he disappeared among the big black spruces which grow around
the shallow bays of almost every northern lake.
“Let him go,” said Ganawa. “He is old and poor. Did you see his ribs?
The black flies and the deer-flies and the big bulldog-flies have
worried him, and he needs much food to make his big horns grow. We must
try to get a young moose.”
CHAPTER XVIII
REAL TROUBLE
It was now midsummer and Bruce and Ray learned something which even to
this day few eastern people seem really to know. They became more
acquainted every day with two terrible pests of the North Country, two
pests which make some parts of North America practically uninhabitable
during the time these pests are at their worst. During this time even
the Indians, who are not thin-skinned when it comes to enduring
mosquitoes and black flies, keep out of the worst infested regions.
Mosquitoes breed in shallow stagnant water, where small fish and
minnows cannot destroy their larvæ, the wrigglers; while black flies
breed in rapidly running water. As the three friends travelled
northward, Ganawa was careful to select camp-sites that were not near
shallow warm bays but were exposed to such breezes as might be blowing.
Mosquitoes are weak fliers, and do not venture out in a good breeze,
nor do they like hot sunlight, but on warm muggy days and during fairly
warm nights, they are a fearful pest to both man and beast and to some
extent even to young birds in the nest. At several camping-places,
although Ganawa had chosen the best sites within reach, the mosquitoes
were so bad that immediately after sunset the travellers had to
withdraw into their tepee, in which they kept a smudge going, so the
mosquitoes would not come in through the opening at the top. On warm
nights there were, however, always some mosquitoes in the tepee. Ganawa
protected himself against these by sleeping, Indian fashion, with his
head under the blanket, but the white boys spent several bad nights
before they could get used to this way of sleeping.
When the lads asked Ganawa where mosquitoes and black flies were during
winter, their guide looked puzzled and admitted that he did not know.
“The Indians do not know,” he said, “where the little biters go when
the frost comes. It may be that a bad spirit makes them every summer.”
If the mosquitoes caused the boys to spend several miserable nights,
the black flies annoyed them much during the day. Whenever they had to
make a portage, or when they explored a brush-covered region, these
little pests attacked their faces and hands. Many people do not at once
feel the bite of a black fly, but the insect leaves a puncture from
which the blood will run, and on several days Ray and Bruce looked as
if they had been in a big fight.
During the next few days, the travellers saw many moose, but they were
all so poor that the lads claimed to be able to count their ribs.
Nearly all the moose they saw were in the water and Ganawa explained to
them that they feed on plants in the bottom of the lakes only on warm
days when the flies are bad. “On cool days,” he told the lads, “they
eat brush, and they eat brush during the winter.” On one short
exploring trip Ray suddenly let out a yell as if he had stepped on a
rattlesnake. Then he rushed away brushing his ears and face with his
hands. “Don’t go there!” he called to his friends; “a moose has been
lying down there and he has left a million black flies.”
These were hard days and weeks for Ray and Bruce; they both lost much
weight and grew almost as thin as the moose they saw in the lakes.
The months of June and July are what woodsmen call the “fly season” in
the country of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. But this is
also the time when the birds sing and the early flowers are in bloom
and when the fish bite most actively. By the first of August, the
beautiful fire-weeds are still in bloom, but the birds are silent and
the fish are more sluggish. By this time the lake trout, for instance,
have retired into deep water, where it is difficult to catch them.
However, with modern protection against flies and mosquitoes no boy or
man need fear to go into the North Woods in June and July. And the one
condition on which he must not fail is complete and absolute protection
from mosquitoes at night. Flies and mosquitoes may worry a man in the
daytime, he may get much heated on a long march, or he may fall into
cold water, but if he can have a good sleep at night, a man in good
health can laugh at all hardships.
And here is the way to do it, the recipe, so to speak, for happy
camping. If you are going to live in a cabin, take with you a small
screen tent, bobbinet is best, to put over your bed or bunk. If you are
going to live in a tent, that tent must be absolutely mosquito-proof,
which means that it must have a sod cloth all around the bottom and
that the opening must be protected by a double piece of
mosquito-netting or by a piece of good bobbinet. The mosquito-netting
or the bobbinet is sewed to one flap and is pinned to the other flap
with safety-pins. If a hole is left one inch square, the tent will fill
up with mosquitoes and make sleep impossible.
Some mosquitoes will always find their way into the tent. Every one of
these must be killed before the campers try to sleep. They should be
burnt with a candle as they are found sitting in the tent. With
reasonable care, canvas and bobbinet will not catch fire in this
process, but a lighted candle must not be brought in contact with the
ordinary mosquito-netting or with cheese-cloth. A person who fights
mosquitoes at night does not know the A B C of camping.
There are other pests in the woods in early summer: wood-ticks,
horse-flies, deer-flies, and once the writer was besieged in his cabin
for a whole day by the common barn-fly. There are also the little
“no-see-’ems,” but they never last long. The arch-demon in the whole
list of abominations is the mosquito; the female mosquito. Mosquitoes
come early in the season, stay late, and work day and night.
One is sometimes asked about the danger from snakes and wild animals in
the North Woods. There are no poisonous snakes in the North Woods. The
most dangerous wild creature in summer is the mosquito, and the only
good mosquito is a dead mosquito. There is one thing that may be even
worse than mosquitoes, and that is the toothache; therefore, every wise
camper sees his dentist before he leaves town.
It is now fitting that we should again take up the thread of our story.
CHAPTER XIX
ON WILD LAKES
On a lake, which is now called Whitefish Lake, the travellers secured
the young moose they had been looking for, and here they stopped a few
days to smoke and dry the meat and to rest. Until now they had been
living on fresh and smoked fish and on rabbits.
Ganawa then told the lads that they would now travel northward. An old
Indian at Michipicoten Bay had told him that two white men had gone
northward to look for gold rock on a high cliff on one of the big
lakes. He thought it was Oba Lake. Now Ganawa wanted to try to find the
white men and the gold rock and he also wished to see several big lakes
on which his father once made a great hunting trip, but which Ganawa
had never seen. His white sons could now go with him, he said. He did
not have to provide any longer for his Indian sons and daughters, and
so he wished to see these big lakes before he was too old to go on long
hard journeys.
It was the middle of July when they reached Lake Manitowik. From this
lake they portaged to Dog Lake, and from Dog Lake they crossed a mile
overland to Lake Wabatongushi.
Whitefish Lake and Manitowik Lake are narrow lakes with simple
shore-lines which run from southwest to northeast; but on the other two
lakes the lads felt completely lost. They passed an endless number of
bays and not a few islands, and several nights they camped on an island
where they were entirely free from mosquitoes.
“Bruce, I think we are pretty close to Hudson Bay,” remarked Ray when
they had been several days travelling along the west shore of
Wabatongushi. “It is right that this lake should have a long name,
because it is so long that I think we shall never reach the end of it.
“We shall never find Jack Dutton, Bruce. This country is so big that
you might as well tell me to find a carpet-tack you lost in Vermont as
to expect to find Jack Dutton. I wonder if Ganawa knows where we are.
Pretty soon it will be winter and then we shall freeze to death in our
tepee.”
As they travelled along under the lee of the west shore where the water
was quiet, they saw the whitecaps breaking on the east shore, although
the lake is in most places less than a mile wide, but it is about
twenty miles long and runs straight north and south.
While they were travelling northward, they were constantly looking for
a camp or signs of a camp, but the whole country seemed an endless
wilderness, uninhabited by either Indians or white men. They discovered
several old camp-sites of Indians, but only one where white men had
camped on the northwest bay of the lake.
“Look, my sons,” said Ganawa. “It was a white men’s camp. They built a
big fire and let it run up the hills and it killed all the pines and
other trees, but we shall go up there and look for gold rock.”
If the lads had thought that looking for gold rock, which is now called
prospecting, was easy, they learned something new. Ganawa led them up a
steep rocky hill where hundreds of dead trees lay in all directions,
and where birches and pin-cherry bushes had begun to cover the
destruction wrought by the fire. At last Ganawa stopped on the top of a
ridge over a vein of white quartz about a foot wide. “This should be
the gold rock,” he said. “It looks as my father and a white man
described it to me; but I cannot see the gold.”
They followed the vein over the hill until it was lost in some green
timber in the valley beyond, then they returned to the bay and made
camp for the night.
Next morning Ganawa sat a long time thinking, then he rose up and
pointed to the northwest. “My sons,” he said, “there is another large
lake, Oba Lake, in the direction of the setting sun, and if you are not
tired of travelling with me, we shall go there, but there is no portage
trail to it and it is more than a league away. There are many beavers
on the streams that run into that lake and your friend may be on that
lake, but I do not know if we shall find any gold rock near its shore.”
“My father,” replied Bruce, “if you think our friend might be on that
lake, we should go there and look for him. We might build a raft and
leave our canoe at this place.”
“My son,” Ganawa answered, “it is much hard work to build a raft on
which three men can travel and, when you have built it, you will find
it hard to travel on it, because it travels very slowly and you cannot
steer it against the wind. And sometimes your raft will float to-day,
but to-morrow it will sink, because the logs have sucked up much water
during the night. If we go we must carry our canoe across the hills to
the lake. We can leave our tepee here and take only our blankets and
some dried meat.”
So they tied their blankets and provisions in the canoe and started
out. Ganawa and Bruce carried the canoe while Ray was told to walk
behind and mark the trail, which he did by blazing some trees and
breaking the tops of some brush.
“It will be much easier for us to return over a blazed trail,” said
Ganawa, “and we shall be sure to strike the place where we left our
tepee and other things.”
Ganawa held a northwesterly course, directing himself by the sun. “We
cannot miss the lake,” he remarked, “because it is six leagues long.”
As Ray worked along, blazing more trees and breaking more brush than
was necessary, he had the feeling that they were all hopelessly lost in
a trackless wilderness. “We shall never find Jack Dutton in a hundred
years,” he thought. “I wish I were back home in Vermont. I could never
find my way back to the Big Lake, and I don’t believe Ganawa knows
where we are. We have passed a thousand bays and I can’t tell one from
the other.”
They might have been travelling three hours when Bruce gave a shout,
and he and Ganawa set the canoe down for a rest, as they had done many
times.
“What have you found?” called Ray and ran over to see.
“Look ahead,” answered Bruce, “and see.” Before the travellers lay
spread out a most beautiful sheet of blue water, for the sky was clear
and the wind had not yet sprung up, as it nearly always does in the
middle of the forenoon.
“But there are no big hills around the lake as there are around Lake
George and Lake Champlain back home,” remarked Ray. “It is all just a
wild country, not a soul living in it. I wish we were home, Bruce.”
The country of Dog Lake, Wabatongushi, and Oba Lake is still nearly as
wild as in the days of our story. A few Indians, trappers, miners,
lumbermen, and railroad men now live in the country, but it is still a
great playground of lakes and forests, although fire has ruined much of
the fine green timber. All three of the lakes may be reached by rail,
and any one who wishes to do so may follow the trail of Ganawa and his
white sons.
CHAPTER XX
FARTHEST NORTH
Ganawa quickly built a brush lean-to in a place where the campers had a
fine view of the lake. There were no mosquitoes and black flies at this
camp, and after a good meal of smoked moose meat and sweet tea, Ray
rolled up in his blanket and slept all afternoon with Tawny curled up
at his feet.
The tea and sugar had been a treat; for the supply of both was so
limited that they could use these luxuries only on special occasions
when they felt that they had deserved some kind of a feast. Any one who
has helped to carry a canoe three miles across “the bush,” as
present-day woodsmen call this kind of country, will admit that he has
earned a treat of some sort.
Bruce and Ganawa felt no more inclined to further exertion than Ray, so
they sat in the shade, enjoying the gentle westerly breeze and the
beautiful panorama of blue water and dark green forest spread out
before them.
There was very little talk, for each was busy with his own thoughts.
Bruce shared to some extent the fatigue and discouragement of Ray. He
also had a feeling that they had, so to speak, come to the ends of the
earth without finding as much as a real clue to the whereabouts of Jack
Dutton. “I reckon I shall never see my old friend again,” he thought.
“I have a feeling that he is dead. Death and danger lurk everywhere.
One may drown in a storm or in some wild rapids or waterfall almost any
day, he may freeze to death, and unless he is a good hunter and
fisherman, he might in winter even starve to death; and in summer the
terrible pests of mosquitoes and black flies might almost kill a man or
drive him crazy. Thank God, there are none of the pests at this camp!”
And then Bruce spread his blanket on a bed of lichens and moss that
covered the rock, and very soon he was as sound asleep as Ray.
The next thing he knew Ganawa was gently shaking him and saying: “Wake
up, my son. I have caught a mess of trout in a small stream and it is
time that you build a fire and broil them for our evening meal, for the
sun will soon sink behind the forest.”
The white lads ate their trout with a little salt, but Ganawa ate them
just as they came off the green willow sticks without salt. “The
Indians cannot get salt in this country,” he said, “unless they buy it
of the traders, so we often eat our meat and fish without salt as our
fathers did, before the white traders came to our country.”
After a long nap and a good supper, the lads felt more cheerful. For a
while they sat and watched the most gorgeous sunset they had ever seen.
The western sky was covered with scattered clouds, which the sun
painted at first with a golden orange which gradually changed to an
indescribable red, such as one sees only in the great wild forests,
where no smoke and dust fill the air. “It may rain to-night,” said
Ganawa rising and looking at some dark low clouds in the west. “My
sons, we must make our shelter larger and put more boughs on the roof.”
Then for half an hour the three worked diligently on their lean-to.
Bruce and Ray cut and carried long boughs of balsam, and Ganawa laid
them in place like shingles and tied them with strips of willow bark.
When it grew too dark to work, the lads built a camp-fire of driftwood
and for an hour or longer they all sat enjoying its gentle warmth and
listening to the voices of the forest. Some night-hawks were screaming
overhead as they hunted for flying insects over the lake. A bat circled
back and forth near the fire and now and then uttered its faint
high-pitched squeak. From across the lake came the call of wolves, and
kookookehaw, the big owl, made Ray’s hair stand up when he suddenly
uttered his unearthly hoot and deep guttural notes almost above the
camp-fire, as if he were protesting against the invasion of his realm.
These sounds, however, were not unknown to the lads, but there came a
new sound which brought Ray to his feet.
“Listen!” he called. “There is somebody coming. They are throwing rocks
in the lake and slamming the water with a paddle. Let us get away. They
may shoot at us if we stay near the fire. I’ll throw some water on the
fire.”
“Stop, my son,” Ganawa spoke. “They are not going to attack us. They
are the beaver people and they are making signals to their friends. The
wind has changed and their keen noses have caught the man scent. They
do hit the water with paddles, but their tails are the paddles, and
then they dive with a plunge which makes a noise, as if a man threw a
rock into the water.”
It did rain during the night, but the thatch of boughs had been so well
built that no rain fell on the sleepers; in fact Ray did not know it
had been raining until he saw little pools of water on the rocks next
morning.
On an ideal summer day the three paddled slowly northward to the outlet
of the lake without seeing a sign of other human beings, except a few
old Indian camp-sites, as indicated by the usual tepee-poles. At the
outlet they spent a day exploring the region. Bruce and Ray each
climbed a tall tree from which they could look miles away to the north.
The rough rocky hills had disappeared, and as far as their eyes could
see the country seemed to be one great monotonous level forest of black
spruce, the pulpwood trees of the present time.
“My sons,” said Ganawa, “I believe this little Oba River joins the big
river Missinaibi far to the north. My father and I once travelled to
the English traders on Hudson Bay by way of the Missinaibi. It is a bad
river with many falls and rapids, and it took us all summer to make the
journey. Your brother is not camping on this lake and I have seen no
white streaks of gold rock. To-morrow we start back for the
Michipicoten and look for your brother and the gold rock in other
places.”
The lads were glad to hear these words, for, although after plenty of
rest and sleep, they had lost the feeling of fatigue and
discouragement, they still felt as if they might travel on and on
forever and never get out of the level black spruce forest where one
tree looked like another, and where even the small brown creeks wound
about as if they were lost in an endless monotony of trees, and thick
soft knolls and patches of moss and Labrador tea without a piece of
solid ground anywhere for miles and miles.
CHAPTER XXI
WILD FRUIT
After a swim in the clear water of Oba Lake the travellers turned their
canoe to the south.
“I am glad we are going home,” remarked Ray. “The black spruce forest
looked so big and so much the same everywhere I just could not help
feeling that we should get lost if we ever went into it.”
Bruce smiled at Ray’s mention of home. “We are very far from home, my
boy,” he answered with a sad smile. “I sometimes think that we shall
never see our Vermont hills again. It seems to me that we have been
gone for years and that we have just turned around at the end of the
world.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean home in Vermont,” replied Ray. “I meant the country
along the Michipicoten River. I just felt homesick for that country
when I saw the endless spruce forest north of this lake.”
Both lads were surprised when in about four hours of easy paddling they
had skirted the west shore of the lake and had also crossed the lake
back to their carrying-place or portage on the east shore, where their
lean-to was still standing just as they had left it.
“Bruce, I wonder if Ganawa would stay here over night,” asked Ray. “I
like this camp very much and we could have another camp-fire of
driftwood. It is lots of fun to make a fire when you don’t have to cut
a lot of wood.”
Ganawa was quite willing that they should spend another night at this
fine camp. “I have now travelled on the blue lake that I have wished to
see for a long time. We can travel back slowly, but we shall still make
good time, because we know where we are going and we do not need to
stop to look for signs of your brother. My little son may play or fish
at this camp till evening.”
Ray first took a swim in the warm water in a cove with a sandy bottom.
Then he picked a kettleful of berries; raspberries, pin-cherries, and
blueberries all mixed. It was now past the middle of July and all the
North Woods berries seemed to be ripe at the same time. There was
another berry which hung in beautiful red bunches on the bushes, but
they were tasteless and Ganawa said that the Great Spirit had made them
for the wild birds, and the lads observed that about every kind of bird
in the woods was feeding on them. They were the red berries of the
elder, which in the latitude of Central Minnesota are ripe early in
June, but in the region north and northeast of Lake Superior summer
comes about six weeks later, thus crowding all wild fruit into a much
shorter season.
Ray did not care to play all by himself and he did not feel like
sleeping so he asked Ganawa to show him some Indian woodcraft, and
Ganawa showed him the willow, whose bark the Indians use for strings.
“It is a tall bushy willow,” he said, “and it grows almost everywhere.
The Indians also use the inner bark of basswoods and white elms for
strings, but these trees do not grow here. However, I know that we can
find a few elms on the Michipicoten.”
All native willows have a tough stringy bark, but the common pussy
willow, Salix discolor, furnishes very good strings. All these bark
strings are tough and flexible only while green or wet. Even
present-day Indians always keep a supply of these bark strings on hand.
All of them are brittle and useless when dry, but they regain their
toughness and flexibility when they are soaked in water for a short
time.
Then Ganawa showed Ray how the leaves of the low, white-flowered bush
called Labrador tea might be used to take the place of the tea sold by
the traders. “This plant,” he explained, “and a plant which the white
people call sweet fern, make a good tea in camp if you have some sugar.
The sweet fern does not grow here, but it covers much sandy land south
of Lake Superior.”
The Labrador tea grows in every northern swamp, but the sweet fern the
Indians often tie in bundles and take with them as they travel about to
their favorite summer camping-places for picking blueberries or
gathering wild rice.
The lads were surprised at the progress they could make now that they
no longer paddled into every cove and wasted no time examining old
camp-sites. Three days of easy travel brought them to a high and level
camping ground, where a railroad now crosses the Michipicoten River.
“My sons,” spoke Ganawa, when they reached this spot, “at this place we
should camp and make a store of food. For it may be that we shall have
to spend a winter in this country, and you, my sons, will often wish
that you had some of the berries that are now ripe in the woods, so you
could eat them with your meat and fish.
“To-morrow you must each take a basket of birch-bark and pick
blueberries, which you will find in the hills and under the pines,
where the sun shines through the branches.”
Blueberries were so abundant that each lad could pick about a bushel in
a day, because they found many patches where the ground was literally
blue.
While the boys were away gathering this wild fruit, the best in the
whole of North America, Ganawa sewed together several large pieces of
birch-bark and spread the whole in a sunny open place. On this
birch-bark the lads emptied their filled baskets. Ganawa stayed in camp
and with an improvised wooden rake he stirred and turned the berries
from time to time so they would dry faster.
“It may start to rain,” he remarked, “and then our berries might spoil
before we can dry them.”
When the lads went out picking berries on the third day, Ray had grown
a little bit tired of harvesting berries, and near the top of a ridge
he lay down and fell asleep and Tawny lay down near him. The lad was
awakened from a sound sleep by a loud barking and a strange growling
noise, and when he sat up and opened his eyes, a big black bear was
coming straight for him, while Tawny was madly barking at the animal
but was afraid to close with so large a beast. For a moment the bear
seemed in doubt whether he should cuff the dog or punish the being whom
he had smelled up the wind and who had suddenly risen up before him.
And when he walked toward the dazed lad, and arose on his hind legs and
uttered a vicious growl, Ray’s nerves gave away. He ran for the camp as
fast as he could go, and when he reached it he was ready to drop and so
out of breath that he could utter only a few words: “A—bear! He chased
me! Run with the gun, Father. He—he’s killed my dog.”
CHAPTER XXII
ON A NEW TACK
As soon as Ray had recovered from his fright he seized his gun and ran
after Ganawa. He wondered why Ganawa had not fired, but now he saw the
Indian point to a tall pine, from which two bear cubs were coming down,
just as a boy comes down out of a tree, feet first.
“There, my son,” said Ganawa, “you see why the bear attacked you and
the dog. She was afraid you would harm her cubs. You must never kill a
mother animal that has young. We must not harm these bears. We do not
need the meat, and killing them would bring us bad luck.”
It took fully a week before the berries were dry enough so they could
be kept in two large birch-bark tubs, which Ganawa had made, and which
each held about half a bushel, although the lads were sure they had
picked at least four bushels. Blueberries hold their moisture with a
wonderful tenacity. Ripe berries will remain fresh and plump on the
vines for about two weeks, and even after they have been picked it
takes much time and patience to dry them; but after they are well
dried, they will keep all winter. Blueberries and wild rice and maple
sugar were the only wild vegetable foods which the Indians of the Great
Lakes region could gather in large quantities.
“My sons,” said Ganawa in the evening, when all the berries had been
dried, “we must decide what we shall do. If you, my sons, are very
homesick for your own people, then you should not stay with me through
the winter for we may never find your friend, even if we search for him
again after winter has passed.”
Ganawa was silent, but Bruce saw that he expected an answer, and Bruce
replied frankly, saying: “My father, it is true that your white sons
were homesick when we travelled far north to the great level spruce
forest. At that time we were very tired, because the mosquitoes and
black flies had worried us so much, the black flies during the day and
the mosquitoes during the night. But now the nights are cool and the
hungry flies and mosquitoes are gone. We are no longer tired and
homesick, we are strong and we wish to stay with our father as long as
he will keep us and search for our lost friend.”
Ganawa sat in silence for some time, his eyes fastened on the hills
down-stream as if he were trying to look into the future. “My sons,” he
said at last, “we have searched the big lakes to the north of this
river. There is one large lake and many small ones south of this river.
If we do not find your lost friend on one of them and find no sign of
his camp, then I cannot tell you where to look for him.
“But now the nights are getting cold. Very soon the leaves on the
poplars and birches will turn yellow. The north wind will blow them
down and will bring snow and storms from the great sea beyond the
spruce forest.
“My sons, we must find a camp for the winter. It must be sheltered from
the storms and it must be in a place where we can find food, a place
near which we can catch fish and find game. There is a lake about one
league south of this camp. To this lake we should carry our canoe and
all our things and then we should make a good camp for the winter.”
Both white lads were much surprised at the confidence with which Ganawa
travelled across the forest toward the winter camp. There was no trail,
but he seemed to be guided by a ridge of high granite cliffs, which ran
in a general north and south direction. In making a portage on a trail,
Ganawa generally carried the canoe alone, but on this long portage he
put one end on his shoulder and Bruce carried the other end, the canoe
resting bottom side up on the shoulders of the two men. In this way the
leader could look ahead and pick out the best going through a country
of many rocks, fallen timber and patches of thick brush and small bushy
timber.
When they had been going about two hours, with many short rests, they
struck a well-marked moose trail leading down a gentle slope to their
right, while to their left the high cliff of red granite arose steep
and bold only a few rods away. As they followed this trail Ray noticed
that it did not branch or grow dim, and suddenly they stepped into a
small clearing with several sets of tepee-poles, and before them a
beautiful lake spread out between two ranges of well-timbered rocky
hills.
“Anjigami! Anjigami!” Ganawa called. “My father and I camped here once
many years ago, and I have never forgotten the lake and its green
hills. Here we must make a good camp for the winter. There are plenty
of fish in this lake and there are some moose in the country, and on
streams and small lakes not far away we should find plenty of beaver.”
The three men had to make two more trips to the Michipicoten to bring
their blankets, meat, berries, and other things. They tried to make
Tawny stay at the new camp, but he did not seem to comprehend what was
wanted of him, and in the evening after a total march of about fifteen
miles, he was footsore. They had learned that it was useless to tie him
with any kind of rope. If Tawny were left alone, he would always gnaw
off his rope and follow the men, although he learned to stay far enough
behind to be unseen. On the return trip he went ahead, and when they
arrived Tawny would be lying quietly with his head on his paws, but his
appearance and the gnawed rope told the story.
“My little son,” Ganawa said, laughing, “Ohnemoosh is a great liar. He
thinks he can fool us. We have no white man’s chain, but some day I may
show you how to tie up Ohnemoosh so he has to stay in camp.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BEAVER HUNT
If Bruce and Ray had ever had the idea that Indians in camp led a lazy
life, they now found out their mistake.
Ganawa had made two chisels out of the big bones of a moose, and these
chisels the lads learned to use in peeling spruce and cedar bark for a
winter bark-house. They also secured some pieces of birch-bark, but
most of the birches would no longer peel. However, with the aid of
their bone chisels they soon secured enough spruce and cedar bark to
build a round hut of poles and bark, such as the Chippewa Indians have
built for many centuries. No nails were used in the construction of the
house, the pieces of bark being tied in place with watap, rawhide, or
thongs of willow bark.
“We need this house if our tepee gets too cold, and if we live in the
tepee we need it to keep our meat and other things so we do not lose
them in the deep snow,” Ganawa told the lads.
When the bark-house was finished, he told the boys that they must
secure some kind of skins to make themselves a robe for winter. “Our
women make very warm blankets,” he explained, “by weaving together many
strips of rabbit skins, but rabbits are very scarce around here. The
hide of a moose is too heavy, so we must try to get some beavers. But
we have no traps and we cannot wait till the ponds freeze over; we must
try to catch them when they are cutting trees. I think in this country
the beaver have not been hunted much, and we may find them working in
the daytime.”
A few days later, the Chippewa returned to camp and told that he had
found a beaver pond not far away, and on the following afternoon the
three campers started out to try their luck on the shy and wary
beavers. Tawny was also allowed to go along, for he was a good hunting
dog, and never broke until he was told to go. The hunters approached
with the utmost care, against the wind, the place where the beavers
were cutting their winter food supply of poplars. The pond had been
occupied for several years, the trees near the pond had all been cut,
and as a result the animals had to work more than fifty yards from
water.
In the water and in his house surrounded by water, a beaver can laugh
at all his enemies with the possible exception of the otter. But even
the otter, although like the beaver, he is an expert swimmer and diver,
probably has to be content with catching a careless young beaver now
and then. However, on land the beaver is less at home than any old-time
sailor ever was; he can neither put up a good fight nor make a good run
for safety.
When the hunters carefully peeped over a ridge to the beavers’
lumber-yard, the hearts of the white boys almost stopped beating. Close
by, within twenty yards they saw eight or ten beavers. “They are
working like beavers,” Ray whispered. And so they were. Some sitting on
their haunches were cutting down trees, others were busy cutting felled
trees into sections four or five feet long, and still others seemed to
be lopping off the smaller branches.
But there was not much time to watch a scene which very few white men
have ever been lucky enough to observe. When Ganawa gave the signal to
fire, four beavers toppled over, and Tawny caught and killed two more
before the frightened animals could scamper to the safety of their
pond.
Ray let out a shout and was going to run over to the game, but Ganawa
reminded him that a good hunter always reloads his gun before he does
anything else.
Neither of the lads had ever closely examined a beaver, and they had
many questions to ask about its peculiar structures. They were curious
about the flat hairless tail, which looks as if it were covered with
black scales; the short and stubby forelegs, the powerful hindlegs with
webbed feet, and the sharp front teeth with which the beaver people can
cut down trees much faster than any Indians with primitive stone axes.
But Ganawa fingered fondly the dense woolly fur under the long dark
brown hair. “The fur is good,” he remarked. “It will make a good warm
robe for my sons.”
On the way to camp, the lads received another jolt to their former idea
about the lazy life of an Indian hunter. Ganawa carried three beavers,
Bruce took two and Ray carried one. An adult beaver weighs from thirty
to fifty pounds, and when Ray dropped his game at the end of a
three-mile walk through brush and timber, he felt sure that his beaver
weighed a hundred pounds.
Ganawa quickly skinned the smallest beaver, cut up the best of the meat
and put it in the kettle. Then he scalded the black tail over the fire,
and the skin blistered and came off easily. He cut the tail into
several pieces and added them to the meat in the kettle.
“My sons,” he spoke, “put a little salt in the kettle and some of the
wild onions you have gathered. And when the meat is almost done, you
must add a little of the wild rice I have in my pack. To-night we shall
make a big feast. We shall have beaver meat and beaver-tail soup. Some
white hunters say they do not care much for beaver meat, but all are
very fond of beaver-tail soup. I have cut up the meat of a young beaver
and you will find it very good.”
The lads had grown accustomed by this time to a diet of fish and meat,
but they were glad of any change and both of them said that beaver meat
and beaver-tail soup were the best foods they had ever eaten. The meat
was dark and tasted much like the dark meat of a chicken.
The tail of a beaver does not consist of muscle, but of a peculiar
white, fatty, and gristly texture. When boiled it looks and tastes like
very young fat pork, and the boys left none of it in the kettle. It is
this part of the beaver which furnishes the beaver-tail soup, highly
praised in many old journals but never described in detail. The writer
of this story has cooked beaver meat and beaver-tail soup and can
testify to the fact that both are good.
If any of my readers ever have a chance to make a beaver stew, or
beaver-tail soup, I would advise that they boil the meat with a liberal
pinch of “mixed spices”—the kind one buys in paper boxes. Beaver-tail
soup with wild rice thus properly seasoned is much too good for a king,
but just the food for a tired and hungry camper.
Bruce and Ray could not get enough of the soup and when the feast was
over there was nothing left but some bones and scraps for Tawny. It had
been a real feast, and when the few dishes were washed, the lads built
a camp-fire and asked Ganawa to tell them of his own boyhood of long
ago.
CHAPTER XXIV
MUCH WORK AND A CLUE
Next day the lads learned still more about the work of an Indian
hunter. There were five more beavers to be skinned, and of all
fur-bearing animals the beaver is the hardest to skin. The skin will
not peel off like that of a rabbit, but almost every inch of it has to
be cut and great care is needed not to cut into the fur. It took Ray
and Bruce as long to skin one beaver as it took Ganawa to skin three.
When this work was done, Bruce built a scaffold to cure and smoke the
meat. “We cannot let so much good meat go to waste,” said Ganawa, “and
the weather is still too warm to keep it without smoking.” Each beaver
furnished from fifteen to twenty pounds of meat, and all of them were
fat, as beavers nearly always are, although they are strict
vegetarians, living on bark, brush, and aquatic plants.
Ray helped Ganawa to stretch the skins in hoops of willow. A beaver
skin, when thus stretched by thongs inside of a hoop, is set aside to
dry, but before it is dried all adhering flesh and fat must be
carefully scraped off, otherwise the skin will spoil.
“I don’t think I want to be a beaver-trapper,” remarked Ray, when he
saw how much work it took to prepare a skin for use or for the market.
A large beaver skin, when thus stretched and dried, is oval in shape
about three feet long by two and a half wide. It took about a week to
dry the skins, and then the lads found that there was still much work
to be done before they could enjoy a warm beaver robe. As there was no
time to tan the skins, Ganawa and the lads softened the dry skins by
other processes as much as possible. They worked them with their hands
and feet and beat them with sticks until they were quite soft and
pliable, although not as soft as tanned skins. Then Ganawa laid the six
skins flat on the ground and with a charred stick he marked them for
cutting. “The Chippewa women can do this much better,” he remarked
laughing, “but in this camp we have to be our own women.”
The lads wondered still more at the skill of an Indian when Ganawa,
after cutting the skin with his sharp hunting-knife, showed to the boys
the fine white threads he had made of the tendons of the moose. These
threads had to be moistened before they were used, but unlike threads
of bast, they remain very strong while they are dry. An awl and some
needles Ganawa had brought with him so that he could make and repair
moccasins. “A long time ago,” he told the lads, “my people used awls
and needles made of bone or thorns, but with the needles of the white
traders we can work very much faster.”
A few days later the campers secured four more large beavers, and the
skins of these were used to make a sleeping-robe for Ganawa, while they
cured the meat as they had done with the first lot of beavers.
While the last beaver skins were drying, the lads cut a lot of wood for
winter. Dry spruce, balsam, and mountain-ash and moose-maple, but also
much green birch, which they split and piled up to dry in the sun near
the camp-fire. All the dry wood was piled up in the bark-house, where
the smoked beaver and some smoked fish were also hung up, so that the
inside of it looked and smelled like a farmer’s smoke-house at
Christmas time.
The campers had now made the most necessary preparations for winter,
and they decided that some other work could wait until they had
explored Lake Anjigami and its neighborhood. The nights were growing
frosty, birches and poplars had turned a golden yellow, and a strange
silence pervaded the autumn woods. The gay-colored warblers, the merry
wrens, and even the white-throats had all left.
“We must explore the lake before ice begins to form,” said Ganawa. “To
explore this country by walking over it is very hard work.”
Bruce steered the canoe and Ganawa occupied the bow, as they began
skirting the eastern shore of the lake, while Ray and Tawny took things
easy sitting in the bottom. Ray had not been willing to stay in camp
with his dog, and Ganawa had looked at Bruce and said, “My little son
should come along; some evil might come to him if we leave him in
camp.”
Lake Anjigami is about eight miles long, running southwest and
northeast, and they paddled slowly to the extreme southern end, where
Ray caught a fine mess of small brook trout, but of any recent white
man’s camp they found not a trace. They were, however, not satisfied
with merely exploring the shore. They walked up a small stream till
they came to a beaver pond, where they carefully examined the dam, two
houses and the high land, where trappers or hunters might camp, but the
pond had not been visited by either white men or Indians for years.
They even picked their way laboriously to the top of the highest ridge
on the east side, some three hundred feet above the lake. From this
point they scouted carefully for tepees and bark-houses and for the
smoke of a camp-fire, but they saw no sign of any human being on the
lake except their own tepees and bark-house, which, at the distance of
two miles, looked quite small.
On the following day they skirted the north and west shore. They were
about to pull for camp with the same result when Ray examined with a
little more care a low rocky knoll near the outlet. “Oh, Father, oh,
Bruce,” he called, “come here and look! Somebody has camped here! I
know they were white men, too!”
Here indeed was a white man’s camping-place. “There were two white
men,” Ganawa told the lads. “They had a big ax and cut much wood. They
made a lean-to and slept here several nights.”
“My father,” asked Bruce, “how long ago did the white men sleep here?”
“They slept here about twelve moons ago,” replied Ganawa after he had
closely examined a few chips and ax-cuts near the fire.
Then the lads took up the dried balsam boughs of the campers’ bed; they
examined every inch of ground near the camp, but they found no further
clue as to the purpose or identity of the men who had made the camp.
CHAPTER XXV
A MYSTERY
When the three campers had explored the shore of Lake Anjigami, they
decided to extend their search to a smaller lake now called Pickerel
Lake, which is connected with Anjigami by a short channel. This latter
lake is crescent-shaped, and at its western end Bruce discovered signs
of a camp, which had been made by the same men that had camped near the
outlet of Anjigami. “How do you know that they were the same men?” Ray
asked. “You are just guessing at it, Bruce.”
“No, I am not guessing,” replied Bruce. “Come here, I shall convince
you. Look, the ax that made this cut had two nicks in its blade. The
nick marks here are exactly the same as those we found on Anjigami.”
“I’m convinced,” Ray admitted. “Bruce, you are a real scout.”
Ganawa agreed with Bruce as to the identity of the campers on the two
lakes. “The two camps were both made about twelve moons ago,” he
asserted, “and they were made by two white men.”
“And I believe,” Bruce added eagerly, “these two camps were made by
Jack Dutton and his companion. And I think they were doing what we are
doing; they were exploring the lake and looking for a good place for a
winter camp. But why didn’t they camp where we are camping? It is the
best place on the lake. Perhaps they camped some distance back from the
lake in the brush for some reasons of their own.”
“Indians always camp near water,” remarked Ganawa with a smile, “but
white men sometimes camp in strange places.”
“If these men did not lose their lives,” asserted Bruce, “they spent
the winter within ten miles of our camp. The season was too far
advanced and travelling in this country is too difficult for them to go
far before they made their winter camp. Perhaps they wanted to find
both a good camp and a good hiding-place.”
“From whom should they want to hide?” asked Ray.
“I don’t know,” admitted Bruce. “Their action is a puzzle to me.”
“I tell you something else that is a puzzle to me,” Ray said in a
half-whisper, when he and Bruce were alone. “Who was that fellow that
you pretty nearly chased over the big falls? And why was he snooping
around after us? Maybe he will come again. Believe me, Bruce, if I did
not have the dog you would not get me to stay alone in camp for one
hour. Maybe that fellow isn’t an Indian; maybe he is one of the evil
spirits that Ganawa tells us about.”
“Ray, don’t you know that the belief in evil spirits is just an Indian
superstition? It is time I should get you back to Vermont and send you
to school. The idea of your believing in evil spirits!”
“But why doesn’t Ganawa tell us who the fellow was, and why he was
following us? I almost wish you had chased him over the falls. I am
afraid of him.”
Ganawa and the boys searched the whole shore of Anjigami once more.
They traced every small stream entering the lake some distance back
into the timber, and they even followed several game trails that led
away from the lake. It was all in vain; they found no other clue. If
those two men had planned to vanish without leaving a sign, they had
completely succeeded.
Some time ago Ganawa had prepared the frames for three pairs of
snowshoes, using for this purpose the wood of young black-ash trees he
had found near their last camp. He had also prepared enough rawhide
strings for the web, and all three of the campers now spent a few days
finishing the work. “They are not very good snowshoes,” Ganawa
admitted, “but they will last through the winter.”
About the first of November the weather turned cold. Ice began to form
along the shore of the lake, and small lakes and beaver ponds were
entirely covered with their ice.
“My sons, to-day we must go and catch some more beavers,” said Ganawa
one morning. “Winter has begun and we shall soon need warm mittens and
caps, or we cannot leave the camp in cold weather.”
When they arrived at the pond, Ganawa asked the boys to walk with him
as quietly as possible around the edge of the pond. “We must learn
where their washes are,” he told the lads, “before we make any noise at
their houses.”
Neither of the lads knew what beaver “washes” are, but they soon
learned that this is the name used by Indians and white trappers for
the burrows which the beavers excavate in the banks of their ponds. The
pond was a large one and the hunters found half a dozen washes.
“Now, my sons,” said Ganawa after they had explored the whole pond,
“each of you pick up a good stick and then we shall go to the two
beaver houses.”
“Make a big noise,” he told the lads at the first house. “Strike the
roofs with your sticks and make a big yell, then the beavers will think
we are going to break into their house.”
Ganawa had scarcely finished his directions when down came three clubs
on the pole-and-mud roof of the beaver house, and the boys uttered such
piercing yells that Ganawa laughed aloud and said, “My sons, you can
yell like Sioux warriors. You almost scared me.”
The beating and the yells certainly scared the beavers. Eight or ten of
them, big ones and little ones, dived out of the house and swam for the
washes. “There they go! There they go!” cried Ray, and he ran after
them on the clear ice.
The same process was repeated at the second beaver house, and Ray
became so excited at the beaver hunt that he had a narrow escape from
breaking through the thin ice near the house.
The lad wondered how they were going to get the beavers out of the
washes. “We have no traps,” he thought, “and no hooks or snares.”
When the hunters reached the first wash, they knew at once that one or
more beavers had taken refuge in this burrow, because the water which
had been perfectly clear a short time ago was now roiled. Ganawa broke
the ice with his hatchet and pushed a pole under the bank to find out
how far back the beavers were, and with a paddle, which he had brought
along, he dug a hole into the cavity near the end where the beavers
were hidden. Then, to the great surprise of both lads, he lay down flat
on the ground, and before the lads realized what was happening, he had
reached into the wash and had flipped out three beavers, which Tawny
caught and killed as quickly as a good terrier disposes of rats.
“An Indian surely knows how to do and get things in the woods,”
exclaimed Ray. “Don’t they ever bite you?”
“Yes, my son, they bite,” replied Ganawa laughing, “if you give them
time. But this is the way our fathers always caught beavers before the
white traders brought us iron traps.”
By opening two other washes, the hunters caught a total of eight
beavers, but some of them were small, being the young of the previous
spring. Ganawa said they had now enough beaver skins so he could make a
cap and some warm mittens for each of them.
“After the snow has come, I think we can find a moose to furnish us
meat during the winter. If we had to live on beaver all winter, we
should have to catch some more now, for when the ice gets thick and the
ground is frozen, we cannot catch them in their washes.”
During the week that the beaver skins were drying and were being made
up into caps and mittens, the boys tried fishing through the ice, but
they had very little luck, because pickerel, pike, and lake trout
seldom pay any attention to dead bait, and the boys could find no
minnows, although they had made a crude dip-net out of a piece of gunny
sack.
A few days later there was a light snowfall, and the three campers
began to look for moose tracks. However, there seemed to be more wolves
in the country than moose; for, almost every night, they heard wolves
howl and they found wolf tracks within a few rods of their camp.
CHAPTER XXVI
STALKING A MOOSE
One morning, when the lads awoke at day-break, Ganawa was gone. The
lads arose, started the fire in the tepee and boiled some fresh beaver
meat. The night had been quite cold and some hot broth seemed good for
breakfast.
The boys had guessed right that Ganawa had gone scouting for moose
tracks, and in a short time he returned to tell the boys that during
the night a young moose had crossed the lake near their camp and had
travelled east against the wind.
“We must eat,” he said, “and then we must follow the moose. We must
wear our warm winter moccasins and we must take our blankets, for no
hunter can tell how far he may have to track a moose.”
It took some time before the hunters were ready to take the trail. “The
moose may be a long way ahead of us,” Ganawa told the lads, “because I
cannot tell at what time of the night he passed our camp. We must
follow him slowly and you, my sons, and the dog must travel a good way
behind me so we do not scare him. If we scare him, he will start
running and we shall lose him.”
The animal had been going at a walk. He had followed the general
direction of a small spring stream that enters Lake Anjigami near the
camp of the hunters. This spring brook heads in a spruce swamp about a
mile from the lake. “If he has gone into that swamp it will be very
difficult to follow him,” remarked Ganawa, as the hunters started on
the trail.
It was found that the game had passed along the spruce swamp. At the
end of the swamp it had turned leisurely a little more easterly until
it came to a high ridge within sight of one of those small lakes which
are scattered by the tens of thousands over a region north and south of
Lake Superior.
On the high ridge the moose had fed on the twigs of young poplar trees,
breaking down some of them of the thickness of a man’s wrist. At the
north end of the lake it had crossed the outlet and had stopped to feed
on some low willows and juneberry bushes. It had not touched pin-cherry
and choke-cherry, but it had fed freely on young white birches and on
the bushy moose-maple, which never grows to tree size.
“How can an animal grow big and fat when it eats nothing but wood?”
asked Ray.
“The little twigs, my son, which the moose eats are not all wood,”
replied Ganawa. “There is much food in them and in the buds. Moose and
deer live on browse in the winter, grouse and fool-hens live on buds,
rabbits and mice live on bark, and if the squirrels have not enough
hazelnuts and seeds they also eat buds.”
After they had cautiously followed the trail for about two hours,
Ganawa sat down on a log.
“My sons,” he said, “take a rest. This track was made last night. In
some open spots the wind has filled in the footprints and in some
sheltered spots the sun has melted the edges of the snow just a little
bit. I fear he is a long way ahead of us, but if it does not begin to
snow, we must follow him till we find him; for when the weather gets
cold the wolves may drive all the moose out of the country.”
During the afternoon, the hunters found several places where the moose
had lain down. As the wind had veered toward the north, the game had
also turned north. “He smells danger ahead of him,” Ganawa told the
boys, “and he listens for danger behind him. He has not been scared and
does not know that hunters are following him.”
About an hour before sunset, the hunters made camp in a sheltered
hollow near a small stream, and built a fire on the leeward side of a
big log.
“We may build a fire,” said Ganawa, “but we must not use our axes. If
the moose hears the sound of an ax, he will get up and run a league.”
After the hunters had eaten their meat and drunk some hot broth, they
scraped away the snow from the ground and made a bed of spruce and
balsam boughs. Bruce and Ganawa gathered some more dead wood for the
fire, but Ray was so tired that he wrapped himself in his blankets, and
very soon he fell asleep with Tawny curled up at his feet.
For some time Bruce and Ganawa tended the fire in silence, for the
ever-changing flames of a camp-fire seem to incite the imagination to
recall the past and to peer behind the veil of the future. During the
night Bruce and Ganawa took turns replenishing the fire, for no
camp-fire can be built in such a way that it will keep a man warm all
night without being replenished several times. This is especially true
if dry and dead wood has to be used. But even under the most favorable
circumstances, when the camper has cut stout back-logs or can use rocks
as a back-wall and can use green birch, hickory, ash, or hard maple as
fuel, he will have to get up once or twice, for even the green woods
mentioned burn fast with the free access of air.
The night was not cold, as winter nights go, and when, after a hearty
breakfast of toasted meat, boiled meat and hot broth, the hunters again
took up the trail, each of them felt fit to follow the trail all day.
It was just light enough to see the tracks when they started, and
Ganawa cautioned the lads to avoid all noise. “Be very careful not to
break any sticks, and you must not talk. It may be,” he explained,
“that the moose is leagues ahead of us, but we cannot tell; he may not
be far away. You, my sons, should walk about fifty paces behind me, and
you must be sure not to let Ohnemoosh break away when I see the moose.”
They had travelled about a mile when the lads were made to realize that
their guide had not needlessly cautioned them against making noise. He
now halted suddenly and motioned the lads not to come nearer. Then he
peered carefully through some bushes just ahead, but presently motioned
to the lads to come up to him.
“Look!” he said, pointing to the bed of a moose. “It is almost warm
yet. I think we scared him.” The tracks showed plainly that the moose
had stood for a moment facing his back trail. Then he had turned around
short and trotted off in a northwesterly direction against the wind,
for during the last twenty-four hours the wind had swung around from
northeast to northwest.
“We must wait here,” Ganawa advised, “so he will get over being
scared.” And as the hunters stood and looked around, they saw that the
evening before the moose had fed freely on poplar and birch brush close
by, and had then selected a well-sheltered bed behind a thicket of
spruce, where he had been apparently lying down all night.
After an hour’s rest, the hunters again took up the trail, and they
found that the moose had soon slowed down to a walk.
Early in the afternoon the moose suddenly appeared in plain view, as
the hunters peered over a ridge. There he stood, a fine young bull
moose, feeding on some willows. By crawling a few rods westward behind
the ridge, Ganawa approached within thirty yards and brought down his
game with one carefully aimed shot. Ganawa carried an old Hudson Bay
smooth-bore gun, and he seldom fired at moose or deer at a longer
range.
Lead and powder were so very expensive to the old-time Indians that
they could not afford the wild shooting of many present-day white
hunters, but were compelled to stalk their game until they had
approached within close range.
The hunters set to work at once to dress their game, but the afternoon
was well advanced when the meat was cut up and hung up in trees out of
reach of the wolves. Certain choice parts they had laid aside for a big
hunters’ feast: The tongue, a piece of the stomach which makes
excellent tripe, the kidneys, a piece of liver and some choice fat
steak and a piece of suet. The hunters had walked some ten miles; they
had not eaten fresh moose meat for weeks and they felt ravenously
hungry.
In a very short time there would be meat broiled, meat fried, and meat
boiled, and they would have a feast such as only hungry hunters and
explorers ever enjoy.
So busy had the boys been cutting out the meat and hanging it up in
trees that they had not noticed a change in the weather. And now a
great disappointment was in store for them. Ganawa climbed up on a big
rock and pointed toward the northwest. “Look, my sons,” he said
earnestly. “Do you see the black clouds? They will bring snow and a
big, cold wind; and very soon it will be dark. Take up the meat for our
feast and follow me. We must walk fast to find a good shelter, or we
shall freeze to death. This ridge and the small bushes will give us no
shelter in a storm and no wood for our fire.”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE STORM CAMP
They had gone about a mile when Ganawa put down the moose-hide and his
blanket at the foot of a high granite cliff in the lee of a dense
spruce forest that sloped down to one of those innumerable small
streams that wind their way through every valley and ravine of the Lake
Superior region, little streams that are destined to feed the Big Lake
as long as the northern forest shades their pools and ripples. The
trees of the north: pine, spruce, balsam, birch, poplar, and alder;
they are indeed the keepers, the preservers of the small brooks in
whose pools the wild violets are mirrored in June; and if the forests
are ever destroyed, the music of the little brooks will die away.
“Here we must camp till the storm has passed,” said Ganawa. “We must
lean our tepee-poles against the cliff.”
The lads understood at once what was wanted. Bruce swung his big ax,
and with one or two blows a pole came down. As Bruce felled the poles,
the other two hunters trimmed them and leaned them against the cliff.
“We must make a long tepee,” the Chippewa told his white sons, “long
enough for two beds.”
In a surprisingly short time the frame of the long tepee stood
complete, and now Ganawa again displayed to the lads the
resourcefulness of the Indian in the wilderness. He first tied the
moose-hide to the lower part of the poles, with the hair side in. “It
will soon freeze hard,” he said, “and will not slip.” Then he tied
several slender poles crosswise to the upper half of the leaning
tepee-poles, and with the aid of a supply of rawhide strings, he
fastened a thatch of spruce and balsam boughs to the upper part of the
long tepee.
The most difficult part of the work was making a bed for the boys.
There was a fairly level sleeping-place for Ganawa, but the rest of the
tepee floor was a jumble of angular rocks, and over these the lads had
to build a pole platform. However, as young spruces and poplars grew in
abundance close by, even this was finished in a short time. When in
addition to all this an abundant supply of spruce and balsam boughs had
been cut and spread on the two beds, the camp itself was ready for the
night, but more work had to be done before it would be a safe place for
the hunters during the coming storm. Such severe weather would require
a good shelter.
Bruce now set to work cutting firewood: green spruce and birch, with
some dry stuff mixed in for giving the fire a good start or for making
it come to quickly when it was low. While Bruce was cutting wood,
Ganawa first made the beds and then carried the heavy billets to the
camp, where he piled them up, some inside and others just outside the
entrance. Ray also had work to do. He brought a kettleful of water from
the stream, washed the moose tripe in the brook, started a fire under
the slanting granite wall and began preparations for the feast.
The tongue, the kidneys, and a piece of tripe he set boiling in the
kettle. On a grill of green sticks, as soon as he had enough live
coals, he broiled some choice steak, while he fried other pieces of
steak and liver in a panful of melted suet.
Daylight was just beginning to fade outside when the three hunters were
ready for the feast. Ganawa, who was the last one in, closed the
opening with a piece of buckskin and the boys could not help wondering
at the shelter they had contrived to put up in this lonely uninhabited
wilderness. The fire burnt freely in front of the red granite and the
smoke drew off perfectly through an opening between two poplar poles.
The hot bed of coals and the heated rock spread a gentle warmth through
the camp which, for the time, made this makeshift shelter as
comfortable as a log-house with a fireplace.
“My sons, you must not eat too fast,” said Ganawa, “because we have now
much time to eat and to sleep and to talk.”
The broiled and the fried steak was soon disposed of, and the boys
agreed it was the best meat they had ever eaten. The young moose had
been in good condition and the meat was tender and well-flavored.
Within an hour the meat in the kettle was done; and with his
hunting-knife every one fished out what he liked, using a piece of bark
for a plate. The white boys ate their meat and drank the hot broth with
a little salt, but Ganawa ate his meat and drank his broth without any
salt.
“I can’t eat any more,” Ray admitted, after he had sampled every kind
of meat and had emptied his second cup of soup, “and I’m as warm as I
ever was at home in Vermont.”
To both of the lads it seemed a little unreal that they should be
sitting here warm and cozy at a bright fire, inhaling the odor of fresh
spruce and balsam. The long, weary trailing after the moose seemed like
a dream of something that happened long ago.
Outside over the tops of the spruces and through the scattered pines on
the cliff above, the storm began to roar with that peculiar dull
monotone which makes one be truly grateful for a safe and warm camp.
Ray put his head out for a few seconds. “Ugh,” he exclaimed. “It is
pitch-dark, the snow is coming down fast, and it is getting awfully
cold. We should surely freeze to death if we had not put up this camp.”
As the hunters were very tired they soon stretched out on their beds of
spruce and balsam. The moose-hide kept the cold air from their beds and
both dog and men were soon sound asleep. Bruce and Ganawa each arose
once to replenish the fire. Ray had also intended to take his turn at
this work, but when he woke up, daylight was shining through the
smoke-hole, and over a fire of birchwood coals Bruce was broiling moose
meat for breakfast, while Tawny was sitting up, intently watching the
cook, in anticipation of his own breakfast.
Ray muttered as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, “I never slept as I did
in this storm camp. I tell you, Bruce, a good Indian hunter certainly
knows how to take care of himself in the woods.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
FIGHTING A WOLF
The storm had not abated, but so well had the hunters built their camp
that the snow and the cold had even improved it; for the snow had
drifted in around the bottom of the tepee making the shelter much
warmer than it would have been without the snow. Some of the snow had
partly melted on the spruce thatch, but with the falling temperature it
had frozen and thus made the thatch of boughs almost as tight as a roof
of shingles; of course some of the fine snow had drifted in, but that
had been expected, and the lads scraped it together and threw it out.
The outside of their cover blanket was a little damp from snow that had
sifted in and melted, and the lads hung up the blankets so that the
reflection from the fire and the warm rock would dry them.
There was now plenty of time for everything at this camp. Cutting wood,
fetching water, cooking, and eating were all the campers had to do
besides sleeping and talking. For two days the storm continued and it
grew so cold that Bruce spent two hours a day cutting wood for the
fire. As long as the fire was kept burning, the camp was very
comfortable, but naturally when the fire went out, the camp grew
chilly; however, the lads had a feeling that they had miraculously
escaped freezing to death, and minor discomforts did not annoy them.
On the third morning, the weather had cleared, although it was now
colder than ever.
“We must start for our lake camp to-day,” Ganawa said, after he had
taken a look at the weather. “We must each take some meat with us, but
we cannot carry much, because it will be hard travelling.”
Travelling was much harder than the lads had anticipated. Their
snowshoes were, as Ganawa had said, not of the best, and the going was
very tiring, because a crust had begun forming over the surface of the
snow, but it would not yet support the weight of a man.
They struck straight out for their camp, which was not more than twelve
miles southwest of them, but it took them all day to complete the trip,
and Ray was so tired that he claimed he could not have walked another
mile. They found their home camp not at all inviting, and the five days
they had been away seemed like a long time. Much snow had blown into
both the tepee and the bark-house; however, after they had cleared out
the snow, built a fire in the tepee and saw the smoke come curling out
of the top, the camp looked like home again.
There was only one thing that disturbed the boys, and Ganawa did not
seem to like it, either. On the trip from the hunting camp they had not
seen a track or sign of a living thing except a few woodpeckers; but
near their home camp they saw many fresh wolf tracks, and one of the
beasts had boldly walked up to the bark-house.
“The mahungeens are hungry and they smelled our meat in the
bark-house,” Ganawa told the boys. “If we had much powder and lead we
should kill some of them, so they do not get too bold.”
The three hunters were now snowed in for the winter. “We have denned up
like the bears,” Bruce told Ray, “and now is your chance to make up
rest and sleep.”
However, the campers were not idle. Wood had to be cut and carried in,
two meals had to be cooked and eaten, and moccasins, clothing, and
blankets needed attention. There was very little dishwashing, because
the hunters had no dishes outside of a kettle, a frying-pan, and three
tin cups. The lads tried fishing, but they had no luck.
All the campers made three snowshoe trips after the moose meat. On
these occasions they always spent a night at the storm camp, which made
a pleasant break in the monotony of their winter life, and robbed the
trip of all hardship.
On these trips they saw grouse, rabbits, and squirrels, but no big
game. The moose had left the country. On the last trip, several wolves
followed them almost to the home camp. “We ought to shoot them,” Ganawa
said again, “if we had more powder and lead. Hunger is making them
bold.”
“How often does a wolf eat?” asked Ray.
“My son, a wolf does not eat often in winter, when game is scarce,
because on many days he cannot catch game. If he can make ten good
meals or twelve all winter, he will not starve, but he will be thin.
The wolves are hungry. We have seen no tracks of moose or caribou.
There are not very many rabbits in the country, and wahboos and his
tribe are wise. They know enough to live in the thick brush of swamps,
where it is difficult for mahungeen to catch them.”
A few days later Bruce had an experience with a wolf which made him
sorely regret that he had not heeded Ganawa’s warning never to go away
by himself without taking his gun along.
Near the spruce swamp, which they passed on their way to the hunting
camp, Bruce had seen a number of grouse. The three hunters had really
lost all count of the days, but after they had moved into their winter
camp they decided to keep one day a week as Sunday. So one Saturday
afternoon Bruce started with a bow and some blunt arrows to get a few
grouse for their Sunday dinner, for all felt that they would be a
welcome treat.
About a mile from camp he saw a lone wolf come out on the trail. The
beast had heard and smelled Bruce and now he came slowly forward, his
teeth flashing and his shaggy hair bristling on his back and shoulder.
The brute looked lean and hungry, and Bruce felt his own hair rise on
his head. He had never seen a wolf act so bold as this one, and he
reached instinctively for his hunting-knife, and found to his horror
that he had forgotten to put it back in the sheath after he had cut
some birch brush for a new broom.
To shoot blunt wooden arrows at the wolf would have been useless, to
turn and run for home would mean sure death if the hungry beast
followed and attacked him. There was only one thing to do. Fight for
his life barehanded. Bruce had done considerable boxing with the boys
in Vermont, and now he squared himself for the attack.
The wolf made a high leap for the man’s throat, but with the skill of a
trained fighter, the man thrust the open jaw upward with his left arm
and delivered a heavy blow on the chest of the beast with his right.
The blow threw the wolf back but his heavy fur and loose skin protected
him from being knocked out. A second time the grim, hungry beast sprang
to the attack and again the man parried the open jaw and drove home a
blow with his right. This time with so much force that the ugly gray
beast reeled and fell on his back. But he was not stunned, and before
the man realized that he might have fallen upon the prostrate brute,
the wolf was up again and was coming to repeat his attack.
However, there had been just enough of a pause to enable the man to
form a plan, and when the wolf sprang at him for the third time, he did
not merely ward off the gaping jaw, and he did not try to deliver
another blow. His mind had hit upon a plan of closing with the fierce
hairy monster. He shot out his right hand, seized a firm hold on the
skin just behind the wolf’s left jaw, and brought his full weight down
on the beast as he fell on top of him in the snow. The man let out a
wild yell as for a second he felt the wolf limp under his weight. But
he had rejoiced too soon. A wild animal, when cornered, never stops
fighting until he is dead or completely overpowered and made helpless.
The wolf was fighting again. True, his formidable vise-like jaws he
could not use and the man had clenched his powerful hands around the
wolf’s throat. It was a battle to the death, with neither wolf nor man
as yet the victor. The claws of the wolf are dull tools as compared
with the sharp steel-like claws of the panther, but driven by hard,
powerful muscles they are no mean weapons. Had not the man been
protected by tough buckskin clothing, his skin would have been
lacerated and he might have bled to death, holding his savage victim.
The man was winning now. The struggles of the gray beast grew less and
less violent, then they became like cramps and spasms, and then the
long gray body lay still.
The man was sweating and bleeding; he still clenched the throat of the
wolf as if unconscious of the fact that the animal no longer moved. And
then he heard a long-drawn-out howl, the hunting call of the wolf pack.
That brought him to. He sprang to his feet. He snatched off a young
poplar, brittle with frost, and with it he crushed the skull of the
beast, for he was still mad with the fear and rage of the battle.
Then he seized the dead beast by the forelegs, flung it over his
shoulder and ran for camp. The joy of victory seemed to give him
unlimited strength. Half-way down to camp, he heard again the call of
the pack. They were nearer now. He turned back and shouted, “Stay back,
you dirty brutes!” and ran on.
He reached the camp when it was almost dark. “Father, I killed a wolf,
I killed him,” he called as he staggered into the tepee. “He is right
out there! I killed him, but he pretty near got me.” And then he fell
into a dead faint like a runner who has used up his last bit of energy
in winning a race.
CHAPTER XXIX
A DISCOVERY
Ray at once made his older brother comfortable by placing a rolled
blanket under his head. “Good gracious, Bruce!” he exclaimed, “you
certainly look as if you had been in a fight.” And with these words he
began to wash the blood from Bruce’s face, and Bruce came to very soon.
But he could not tell how his left hand had become lacerated, nor did
he even know that he had several bad scratch-wounds on his legs and
body. Ray washed the wounds with warm water, dressed them with softened
moose tallow and bandaged them with strips of clean bandanna
handkerchiefs, the only thing in camp suitable for this purpose.
Ganawa had rushed out with his gun, and in a few minutes Ray heard him
shoot. “I killed two,” he reported when he returned. “The others ran
away, and I think they will not trouble us again.”
The wolf which Bruce had killed was very lean. Bruce estimated that he
weighed at least seventy pounds, ten pounds more than a bushel of
wheat. In good condition he would have weighed about ninety pounds.
Fortunately the wounds which Bruce had received in his fight with the
wolf did not fester, and a week later the campers had boiled wild
chicken with wild rice and hominy for their Sunday dinner. It was Bruce
who had brought a little hominy from the “Soo” to be used on very
special occasions. Bruce had not found it very difficult to secure
three grouse with blunt arrows, but he had not forgotten to take his
gun and knife along, although no wolves had been seen or heard near the
camp since he had had his great fight.
Ganawa was very proud of the victory of his white son. “If you were a
Chippewa,” he told Bruce, “you would be allowed to wear an eagle
feather for killing mahungeen. I know of only one Indian who killed
mahungeen in a hand-to-hand fight, but he had a knife.”
Winter lasts a long time in the North Country, but the campers always
found something to do, and as Ganawa could tell stories and Indian
legends by the hour, the lads had no time to be unhappy, although they
eagerly watched and waited for signs of spring. From time to time they
tried fishing through the ice, but by the middle of February the ice
was three feet thick and cutting a hole through it meant a great deal
of labor.
At last, about the middle of April, the margins of the lakes began to
thaw, ducks and geese began to come north, and on warm, sunny days the
sap of the white birches ran freely. The sap of birch-trees runs as
freely in spring as the sap of maples, but it contains so little sugar
that it is not suitable for the making of syrup or sugar.
It was on a warm afternoon late in April, when Ray came to camp greatly
excited by something he had discovered.
“Father,” he called out of breath to Ganawa, “I have found a log cabin.
It is a very small cabin. Nobody lives in it, but it must have been
built by a white man.
“Come along, Bruce; let me show it to you. It is in the Wolf Swamp,
only about a hundred yards from the spot where you killed the wolf.”
This was indeed real news to the camp. Could this be the clue to Jack
Dutton’s camp? Why should anybody want to hide himself in the Wolf
Swamp, as Ray had called the place, when there was a good camping-place
on Lake Anjigami?
Ray proudly led the way to his discovery. Sure enough, there was the
log cabin, but it was not a cabin any man had lived in.
“It was a cache,” Ganawa told the lads. “A place where somebody kept
fur. But they must have had a camp close by,” he added. A dim trail led
away from the cache to the other side of the narrow swamp, and there
was the camp-site plain enough, and several signs indicated that the
campers had been white men. The camp showed a larger outside fireplace
than Indians would have used, and they had cut much wood.
Bruce began at once to examine the cuts on the stumps near the
camp-site, and very soon the young man, who was generally very calm,
sprang up, swung his arms around and called: “I have found it, Father!
I have found it! Look, here is the same ax-mark we found last fall at
the camp-site on Lake Anjigami. I noticed the same marks on the logs in
the cache cabin.”
“No, Bruce, you are mistaken,” Ray argued. “The ax-marks are not the
same. The ax at this camp had a much smaller nick.”
“It had a smaller nick,” Bruce admitted, “and I can tell you why. The
campers, of course, had no grindstone. They may have had a file or a
small whetstone, or they may have used an ordinary rock to keep their
ax in fair condition. Had they had a grindstone, they would have given
their ax a complete keen edge, but as it was they only reduced the nick
in size. But you will notice that the nick is in the same place, near
the front part of the ax.”
Both Ganawa and Ray were convinced that Bruce was right, but the
question who these mysterious campers were was not at all solved by
what they had found. Were they Jack Dutton and his partner or some
unknown strangers? Perhaps two adventurous Frenchmen had penetrated
into this region while it still contained an abundance of the most
valuable fur-bearers: marten, beaver, and otter. All three of them
searched carefully for signs to solve this riddle, but darkness came on
before they had discovered any further clues to the solution of their
problem.
“If this was Jack Dutton’s camp,” Bruce remarked as they walked along
the trail, “something must have muddled his head. He does not meet us
at Mackinac nor at the Soo, and he leaves no letter or word with
anybody. If there were whales in Lake Superior, I should say he
suffered the fate of Jonah. A trader at the Soo told us that a man
cannot disappear in the Indian country. It seems to me Jack Dutton did
the trick to perfection.
“If the camp-sites we have found belonged to him, why didn’t he leave
some kind of message? I have had a vague hope that we might find him in
this region. It is the kind of country he and I used to talk and dream
about when we were boys on the farm. But now I begin to fear that Jack
is dead. Perhaps the wolves finished him as they came near doing with
me. Jack was always a dare-devil and he would not realize that the
wolves in this wild country are much bolder than they are in Vermont.”
Soon after daylight, the three hunters were again diligently searching
for some clue that might point to the identity of the mysterious
campers. Ray was the first who pointed out something that aroused some
discussion. Who tore off half of the birch-bark roof of the log cabin
cache? A bear might have done it, but no claw-marks were visible. If it
had been done by a storm, why were there no indications of a violent
wind on the trees close by?
“Somebody tore off the roof,” Ganawa gave as his opinion, “but I cannot
tell why he did not open the cache by pulling out the logs that were
put in loose to serve as a door.”
Bruce followed a plan of his own in the search for a clue. He slowly
walked around the old tepee poles of the camp-site in a gradually
enlarging spiral. “If there is anything,” he thought, “I am bound to
find it in this way.” And he did find a broad blaze on a rough old
birch-tree and on the blaze was some lettering, but it was hard to
read. The letters seemed to have been scratched in with the point of a
knife and then blackened, or rather made dull gray, with a piece of
pointed lead. Bruce’s heart beat fast and he forgot to call his friends
as he tried to decipher the scrawls, and no discoverer of long buried
records has ever been more absorbed in deciphering their meaning than
Bruce was in reading the words on the blaze:
GONEAWEATHIEFSTOLE
MARTENFYRROTTENLVCK
LOOKYOVNGBIRCHTREE
Bruce could make nothing out of the lettering until he discovered that
the writer had run two or three words together and had misspelled
“week”; after that the message suddenly flashed out plainly enough.
“Gone a week. Thief stole marten fur. Rotten luck. Look young
birch-tree.”
It took Bruce but a moment to find the young birch-tree with smooth
white bark, on which a longer message was written a little more
plainly.
“We go back to lake,” read the message. “Bad luck here. Intend to
go to Michipicoten Island, and to Island of Yellow Sands. Rotten
luck here. Maybe the yellow sand is gold. If we catch the thief, he
will never steal again.
J. D.”
And then Bruce gave a yell. “Come here, friends!” he called. “I have
found a message from Jack Dutton.”
CHAPTER XXX
GANAWA IS FRIGHTENED
“Where is Michipicoten Island? Where is the Island of Yellow Sands? How
far is it? Have you ever been there?” These and other questions the
lads asked of Ganawa.
Fortunately the writer of the message had signed his initials in
script, which Bruce recognized as Jack Dutton’s signature. But one
thing Jack had forgotten; the message bore no date. Ganawa said the
blaze on the tree had been made last spring, before the trees stopped
growing for the season, and he added: “If your friends were foolish
enough to go to the big island Michipicoten and to the small island of
the Yellow Sands, they would not go before the Moon of Strawberries,
because before that time the Big Lake is too rough. Only foolish white
men paddle out on the Big Lake in a canoe.”
After this discovery there was no holding the boys in camp any longer.
Within a few days they had carried everything to the nearest point on
the Michipicoten River, and with Ganawa in the stern they glided down
the swift stream, in which the water was running so high that most of
the dangerous rocks and rapids were covered with a swift gliding
current. So rapidly did they travel that they reached their old camp
above the big falls in less than a day.
After the camp had been set up, they walked down to the falls, which
roared much louder than they had done at the time of low water in
autumn, because the river was now high from the melting snow, of which
much was still left on north-facing slopes.
Ray could not resist pushing a stranded log into the current and see it
go through the chute and over the falls. The big white log shot like an
arrow over the first two drops, then it turned on end and was hurled
almost clear of the third and fourth steps, and when it arrived in the
big pool it was broken in two and one part followed the other in the
mad whirl of the pool, as if the spirit of the tree were still alive in
the battered and broken logs.
Another day brought the travellers to the mouth of the river, to the
camp of the Ininiwac people, whom they had last seen in the autumn
before. Of these people they learned one thing of much interest to all
of them.
Hamogeesik had also gone up the Michipicoten last autumn, but he had
soon returned without his canoe and his gun. He had told that a storm
had set his canoe adrift down the falls. The canoe had been broken and
he had not been able to find his gun. He had then bought an old gun of
one of the Indians and had promised to return in the spring and pay for
the gun with furs. Thus far he had not returned and the Indians did not
know where he had made his winter camp.
Bruce and Ray had been fully determined that they would follow Jack
Dutton to the islands in Lake Superior, but when they saw the immense
white waves break on the rocky shore and then looked at their little
frail bark canoe, both of them lost heart.
As Ray looked at the sad face of Bruce he felt like crying, but he
swallowed hard and only said: “I guess we can’t make it, Bruce. She is
too big, just like an ocean. If we only had some boards and tools so we
could build a big boat. I know, Bruce, that you could sail her.”
“Yes, brother, I could sail her,” Bruce replied sadly, “but we have
only an ax, no nails, no auger; I don’t see how we could build a boat.”
That night the boys went to bed early to sleep off their grief, but
Ganawa visited with the Indians and sat long at the camp-fire talking
to them and letting them talk to him.
“My sons,” he had told the boys, “Indians are not like white men, who
say a few words quickly. Indians need much time to talk. If you try to
hurry them, they will tell you nothing.”
The old-time Indians were very superstitious, and each tribe and clan
observed a kind of taboo on certain places. A lake where some one had
drowned, a place where somebody had been killed or had met a serious
and strange accident, was likely to be avoided for years or even for
generations.
In his talk with the Ininiwac people, Ganawa had learned that a small
island near shore about three miles east of their camp was one of those
tabooed places. Years ago an Indian in a canoe who had been caught in a
sudden squall had tried to take refuge on this islet, but a wave had
thrown his canoe on shore and dashed him against a sharp rock, injuring
him so severely that he died a few hours after the accident. Since then
no Indian had set foot on the island and they had not even taken away
the canoe of the dead man.
“My sons, would you be afraid to go to this island with me?” Ganawa
asked the boys. The lads assured him they would not be afraid, but they
wondered what might be on the island to attract their guide, but Ganawa
only smiled and said, “Come with me and see!”
The island itself is a beautiful spot, covered with trees and shrubs
and the common northern flowers and small plants. It lies only a few
rods from shore, and the three explorers found hidden under some bushes
of this islet something which they wanted much more than a boat-load of
gold rock. They found a staunch twenty-foot wooden boat on this
uninhabited island.
“Father, how did you know it was here? Who left it?” Ray asked as soon
as he saw it.
“The Ininiwac people told me about it, and it was left here by some
white miners who dug for gold rock on shore. They found no gold rock
and they went back to the white man’s country.”
Bruce was busy examining the boat. If it was seaworthy or could be made
so, there was a solution to the problem of reaching Michipicoten Island
and the Island of Yellow Sands, the latter a small island in the middle
of Lake Superior.
The boat did not look hopeless. It was dried out and showed a number of
big cracks, but it was all sound. As Bruce looked around for oars, he
discovered something which made his heart give a leap. There was a box
with some three dozen nails, a hammer and a cold-chisel, and an old
linsey-woolsey coat. “I can fix that boat! I can fix it!” Bruce
exclaimed when he made this find; for Bruce had built and sailed boats
on Lake Champlain. He caulked the cracks in the boat with strips of
linsey-woolsey. He hewed a keel out of a young pine, and nailed it to
the bottom of the boat. “She will sail safely now,” he said. He made
other needed repairs and then hewed out two pairs of oars, so the islet
looked like a pirate’s shipyard.
Michipicoten Island lies only ten miles from the north shore of Lake
Superior, but the distance from the mouth of the river is fully
thirty-five miles in a southwesterly direction. The island, as seen
from the deck of steamers, stands out boldly as a wooded mountain
rising between eight hundred and a thousand feet above the level of the
lake. Its north side drops steep into the lake without a single cove or
bay to shelter even a rowboat.
Sailors fear a shelterless coast much more than they fear storms and
waves of the open sea. Although Ganawa was afraid to sail over the open
lake for thirty-five miles, Bruce persuaded him that with the wind in
their favor, it would be much safer to sail directly for Quebec Harbor
on the south side of the island rather than creep along the harborless
north shore, then approach the island on the wind and wave-swept north
side and then paddle or sail around to the harbor on the south side. On
such a trip, Bruce convinced Ganawa, they would surely have to travel
against the wind or even in the trough of the waves part of the time.
“Look, Father,” Bruce closed his argument, drawing a figure in the
sand, “we should have to go something like this:
| =======#
V | ^
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-->
Let us sail straight with the wind.”
Bruce had put a mast in the boat and made a sail out of a blanket; and
when he showed Ganawa how quickly he could unfurl and reef his sail,
the old hunter was convinced.
“My son,” he said, “a good Indian can paddle a canoe on a mad river and
a good white man can sail a boat over the mad waves of the sea and the
Big Lake. My sons, we shall sail straight to the island over the open
lake.”
CHAPTER XXXI
SAILING THE “PIRATE”
A few days later with a gentle easterly breeze Ganawa and his white
sons sailed for Michipicoten Island with their bark canoe in tow. Bruce
handled the sail, Ray steered, and Ganawa used his paddle.
Ganawa’s heart nearly failed him when he found how strongly the wind
blew after they had cleared the sheltered bay. The sky was almost
cloudless, and a few white gulls lazily accompanied the travellers as
if they were curious about the strange craft that had appeared on their
own blue sea. As Ray watched them gracefully sailing around the boat,
he wondered very much how they could sail up and down, back and forth
without any apparent motion of their wings.
The faster the boat sailed, the harder Ganawa paddled, for he knew only
too well how quickly a breeze on Lake Superior may change to a
dangerous gale. In fact when the sailors came abreast of the east end
of the island, the spray began to fly over the stern, and Ganawa
applied his short quick strokes faster than ever. The distance from the
mouth of the river to Montreal Harbor is close to fifty miles, but the
pirate boat sailed the course in about six hours. Bruce furled his sail
and rowed the Pirate, as Ray had named the boat, into Quebec Harbor
soon after the sun had passed the noon line.
All three of the sailors were in high spirits after their successful
trip and, after enjoying a hearty meal, and setting up their camp, they
lost no time exploring the harbor and a part of the island. They found
no signs of caribou or moose on the island, but the snowshoe rabbits,
now in their summer pelage, were extremely abundant. When the
travellers discovered a grove of good-sized sugar-maples, Ray regretted
that they had not camped on the island in April or early in May, when
the sap was running, for he was very fond of maple syrup and maple
sugar.
They spent two days exploring a number of small coves and bays on the
south side of the island while the open lake was too rough for their
boat. Bruce and Ray had great fun catching both lake and brook trout,
and Tawny caught a big rabbit, but what they desired most they did not
find. They discovered no message anywhere from Jack Dutton. There were
plenty of signs that the miners of Alexander Henry and other white men
had camped on the island at Montreal Harbor, but the ax-mark of Jack
Dutton they could not find.
Ganawa also looked carefully for signs of Indians and especially for
signs of Hamogeesik, but he found none. As far as the three explorers
could tell, there were no other human beings on the island.
However, the white lads, as well as Ganawa, were by this time fully
determined to reach the Island of Yellow Sands, which is now called
Caribou Island. Ganawa had never been there, but he knew that it lay
six leagues straight south of Quebec Harbor. On very clear days the
island is visible from high points on Michipicoten, but there is nearly
always a little haze over the water and the three sailors, on a day
when there was a gentle breeze from the north, set out for an island
which was not visible and which neither of them had ever seen.
On this trip the wind did not increase, but after they had sailed a few
miles, the sail dropped on the mast and the Pirate lay becalmed on the
glassy swell of a lake that seemed the most peaceful of all waters in
the world. Rowing a boat on Lake Superior out of sight of land gives
one the feeling of being lost at sea. They rowed one hour, they rowed
two hours, and now the thickening haze made it impossible for them to
see either Michipicoten in their rear or Caribou Island ahead of them.
Bruce pulled the oars with all his strength, Ray paddled, and Ganawa
used his paddle in the stern.
“Bruce, what are we going to do if a fog catches us?” asked Ray, for he
had noticed that the haze was getting thicker and the sun was not as
bright as it had been in the morning.
“Better paddle, and stop asking foolish questions,” Bruce replied
curtly. And Ray concluded that Bruce was worried as much as he was. It
seemed to Ray that they had been rowing and paddling many hours, when
at last a low black patch hove in sight directly ahead of them. “Yellow
Sands! Yellow Sands!” Ray called out. “Thank God, we are not lost!”
The Island of Yellow Sands, or Caribou Island, is a bit of ancient rock
left in the middle of the eastern part of Lake Superior. It lies just
north of the International boundary, and it is uninhabited and seldom
visited even to this day. But there is a lighthouse built on an islet
just south of Caribou, and on this islet the lighthouse-keeper lives
during the season of navigation from May till November. While lying
almost in the path of steamboat lines between Lake Superior ports and
the “Soo” canals, Caribou Island still remains in its ancient solitude.
Very rarely do any people or any boats except lighthouse-tenders visit
the island.
If one would feel strongly the beat of the great northward and
southward surging waves of migrating birds, he could not do better than
spend a season with the lighthouse-keeper of Caribou Island, and some
day the island may become as famous in this respect as the island of
Helgoland in the mouth of the Elbe. At the time of our story there were
no lighthouses on the whole of Lake Superior.
Caribou Island is about three miles long from north to south and about
a mile wide from east to west. Its eastern shore runs almost straight,
the western is more broken, but there is no natural harbor on the
island.
Ganawa and his boys steered for a hill, about a hundred feet high, in
the southeastern part of the island, and they rowed and paddled with
all their might, for the haze was gradually changing to the dreaded
Lake Superior fog. For a little while the top of the hill remained
visible, while the near-by shore was lost in the fog. By this time the
sailors had turned the southeastern point of the island, and they could
hear the white-throats and thrushes sing in the woods of the island,
although for a few minutes they could see only the gray fog around
them. But guided by the song of a white-throat, as by the whistle of an
invisible pilot, they carefully used oars and paddle until the bow of
the Pirate grounded on the reddish-yellow sand of the island. Then they
laid down three short birch logs in front of the boat and using the
logs as rollers, they pulled the heavy boat up on land, and secured
their canoe, while each man silently offered a prayer of thanks to Him
Who had delivered them from the night of the fog and the perils of the
sea.
CHAPTER XXXII
CARIBOU ISLAND
No place in the heart of North America could be more suited for a real
game of Robinson Crusoe than Caribou Island; but books were scarce in
most American homes of the Colonial period and neither Ray nor Bruce
had ever heard of Crusoe and his island. Nor did they know that the
famous trader Alexander Henry had visited this island only a few years
ago, attracted by the strange name, for Henry had at that time caught
the “mining fever,” and he thought that the “yellow sand” of which the
Indians spoke might be gold. Henry and his companions found the island
well stocked with caribou and provided themselves with plenty of meat;
and since Henry’s time, the island became known as Caribou Island and
as such it appears on all modern maps.
The fog lasted all night and all next day, and the lads felt as if they
and Ganawa were the only people on earth and that they had been cast
away on an island in the sea. Even Ganawa, who was no stranger to
solitude, confessed that he would be afraid without his white son that
could make and sail a white man’s boat, and as the white boys sat and
listened to the lapping of the waves, for Lake Superior like the ocean
is never entirely quiet, and as they tried in vain to peer through the
fog, the words of the Bible ran through their minds: “And the earth was
without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
The second morning broke clear and warm, and as the lake was quiet, the
three sailors launched their canoe and started to paddle around the
small island. The first thing that attracted their attention was the
host of big rocks, as Ray called them, that they found scattered over
the shallow water south of the island. If they had struck one of them
they might have been wrecked within a stone’s throw of the island.
With eyes and ears keenly alert and with throbbing hearts, the lads
peered toward the land for signs of human beings. Unless they found
some sign of Jack Dutton on this island, they would have to give up the
search. Once Bruce thought he saw a man slip out of the spruce timber,
but it was an animal, a deer. No, it was a caribou, Ganawa told them.
And then Ray spied something that made them all stop. “Look there!
Look!” Ray cried, and pointed to the top of the hill. “There is a rag
tied to a pole. Some man must have been there.”
They landed at once and climbed the hill. They found the signal. It was
a piece of a butternut-dyed shirt. To the pole was also tied a piece of
birch-bark with a message:
“Am stranded here. My partner is gone. I have no ax. Camp on east
shore, near south point. J. D. April 26.”
The lads cheered and danced around the pole and then all of them
started for Jack Dutton’s camp. For the moment all their hardships and
dangers were forgotten.
They found his camp-site, but the camp had been moved, and they found
no message. What did it mean? Had he been taken off by somebody? A man
without an ax cannot build a raft or boat. If he is still on the island
they ought to be able to find his camp-fire. Ganawa knew that there
were several small shallow lakes in the interior, but a man who wishes
to be taken off an island would not camp in the interior. He would set
up his tent or tepee near shore and he would keep a fire going. So the
three men paddled around the whole island and looked sharp for signs of
a camp or a human being. From time to time they sang out Jack Dutton’s
name, but no sign or sound greeted them in reply to their calls except
the echo of their own voices. The mystery, which for a brief hour they
had thought solved, had grown only deeper and darker. Jack Dutton must
either have been taken off the island by some chance trader, or he was
lying dead somewhere in a thicket or swamp of the island. It seemed not
probable that he had been taken off, for so rarely was the solitary
island visited by either Indians or white men that neither traders nor
Indians knew that the island was stocked with caribou. Although the
existence of the island was known to the Indians with whom Alexander
Henry traded, their information was vague and none of them had ever
been to the island.
That evening Ganawa and his sons were more downcast than they had ever
been on their whole long journey. Even the rare treat of sweet tea with
their supper of broiled lake trout failed to revive their spirits. Each
drank his share of the tea, but most of the fine broiled fish was left
on the birch-bark platter. And after the meal was over, hardly a word
was spoken, as each man sat and stared blankly into the fire. And this
time, the spirit of the white lads had even drooped deeper than that of
the old Indian hunter.
“My sons,” he said when he poured water on the camp-fire, “to-morrow we
shall hunt again for Jack Dutton. If he is alive we must find him, and
if he is dead we must find him. If he is alive, maybe Ohnemoosh can
find him, if we cross his tracks.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE LAST SEARCH
In the morning the three friends started on foot to search the island.
They made Dutton’s old camp their starting-point and from there went
north on the east side of the island. There was no doubt about the
place having been the lost man’s camp-site, but all the signs about the
camp were old. The dog sniffed at some caribou bones, but showed no
indications of scenting recent footprints. They had gone about a mile
north, following a plain caribou trail, when Bruce raised his hand and
stopped short. “I smell fire,” he announced, turning back to his
companions. “Do you smell it, too, or is my imagination deceiving me?”
Ray and Ganawa could not smell it, but Tawny sniffed the air, and
looked at Bruce as if he would say, “You are right, I can smell it.”
The young man increased his pace, and very soon he turned back a second
time, his face flushed and his nostrils dilated. “Can’t you smell it?”
he asked anxiously. “It is getting stronger. I am sure now that I am
not mistaken.”
Ganawa smelled it, too, in fact the pungent odor of burning peat was
now quite plain. “My sons,” he explained, “I think it is a peat fire
started by lightning.”
But Bruce scarcely heard the old hunter’s explanation. “Let us go on,”
he spoke in a low voice. “It may be Jack Dutton’s fire.” And he walked
forward so briskly that his companions could hardly keep pace with him.
In a little while he stopped again. “Listen, friends,” he asked with a
trembling voice, “do you hear a noise? A man working in the timber?
With an ax? Listen! Can’t you hear it?” And Bruce walked ahead without
waiting for an answer. The sound ceased, and he remembered that Jack
Dutton had lost his ax. “I must be dreaming,” he thought. “I certainly
smelled a peat fire but I must have heard a caribou break through the
brush. Poor Jack is dead and gone!”
No, that was not a caribou. The sound came plainly now. Once, twice,
half a dozen times. It was the sound of a man breaking or cutting
branches with an ax or sledge or some other tool. Bruce forgot his
companions. He rushed forward until he stood within sight of a small
clearing. A man was swinging a stone sledge or ax breaking the branches
off a number of spruce-trees. And there were small peat fires burning
all around him. But the man swinging the stone ax was not Jack Dutton.
He was some fearsome wild giant. He was naked, except for a caribou
skin tied about his waist. His long dark hair was tied at the back of
his neck, and his face was covered with a heavy dark beard; and the
color of his skin was almost as dark as that of Ganawa.
Now the man raised up and drew his arm across his forehead to wipe off
the perspiration and for the first time Bruce caught the deep blue
color of the man’s eyes. And suddenly the whole man changed in the eyes
of Bruce. Gone was his tanned skin, his beard, and long hair. Bruce
rushed up to him, crying: “Merciful God! Jack Dutton! Is it you? Or is
it a wild man?”
When Ganawa and Ray came running to the clearing, Bruce and the wild
man were having a wrestling match, with Tawny savagely barking and
dancing around them, ready to take sides in what looked to him like a
real fight.
And then Jack Dutton had to tell his story. “We hunted around so long,”
he related, “after the thieves who stole our best fur and our gold ore
that we did not reach this island before the first part of September.
We had recovered the fur, but we never caught the thieves and our
specimens of gold we did not recover. When we had explored this island
and become convinced that the reddish sand wasn’t gold but just
ordinary sand, the autumn storms set in and we were afraid to risk
crossing the open lake in our canoe; and as the island was well stocked
with caribou, we decided to do something which no man had ever done: We
decided to winter on Caribou Island. It was lots of fun. We lived on
the fat of the land. We not only had an abundance of caribou meat, fat
and lean, just as we liked it; we also laid in a supply of smoked
geese, ducks and swans. We caught the finest whitefish and lake trout.
Early in fall we caught them with hook and line and after the lake
froze over we speared them through the ice, Indian fashion. We also had
a little flour and corn-meal and had a bushel of dried blueberries. We
lived like kings and had more fun than a hundred Indians.
“We had almost made up our minds to spend another year on the island,
for I never heard from you, and thought you had given up coming to the
Indian country. Then about six weeks ago something happened. One
morning I went up the island after a young caribou and my partner,
Pierre Landeau, took out the canoe to catch a few trout among the big
rocks south of the island. And that was the last I ever saw of Pierre
Landeau and his canoe.
“The first night I spent alone in camp I didn’t worry much as I came
home very late myself. I thought Pierre had just run in somewhere and
lain down to sleep. We often did that, because black flies and
mosquitoes never bothered us on our island. Next day I circled the
island in search of Pierre. I spent a week looking for him in every
corner of the island. He might be somewhere with a broken leg. I was
beside myself with grief, for Pierre and I had become close friends.
When I regained my balance of mind, my clothes had been torn to shreds
in my search through the brush and thickets, but I never saw a sign of
him.
“Pierre was one of the best canoeists in the country, but he had the
habit of ballasting his canoe with rocks when he went fishing alone. I
had often asked him to use logs instead of rocks. I have thought it all
out many times, and I think this is what happened: A squall filled his
canoe, it sunk to the bottom, and Pierre drowned in the ice cold water.
He had left our ax in the canoe. I was marooned on an island, which
nobody ever visited. I had no canoe, and no ax to build even a raft. I
had my gun and ammunition, but my only tool was a hunting-knife.
“For a few days I was in despair. I thought of building a raft of
driftwood, but most of the material was too small. The large logs were
still attached to the roots and I had no way of cutting and clearing
the trunks. Then I braced up. ‘I am going to get off,’ I said to
myself. ‘I will find a way.’ I had no ax, but I had fire; for each of
us always carried flint, steel, and tinder. I found a place where
lightning had started a fire and killed two or three dozen black
spruces big enough for a raft. These dry logs were just what I needed.
I built a fire around a tree near the ground, and when the tree fell, I
burnt off the top. With rawhide I tied a handle to a sharp rock, and
with my stone ax I knocked off any remaining branches. After I had
worked on this plan a day, I was sure that I could build a raft. I
planned to tie the logs together with watap, spruce roots. Rawhide
stretches when it gets wet, but watap does not. I wanted dry logs
because they float much better than green ones, and they are not nearly
so heavy. Remember I could not use logs that were too heavy for one man
to drag or carry.
“I figured that it might take me two days and a night to reach the
mainland with a favorable and gentle west wind. I intended to hoist a
sail, and I had planned to build a kind of bunk above the wash of the
waves, so I might snatch a little rest and sleep, if necessary. I don’t
know how my raft would have worked, but in about a week I should have
been ready to start, if you had not found me.
“Now, friends, come along to my camp. We’ll make feast and celebrate.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
A BOLD VENTURE
The feast lasted until the morning sun reddened the waters of Lake
Superior and awoke the white-throats and thrushes of the island, for
Ganawa and his sons had as much to tell to Jack Dutton as he had to
tell to them.
On Michipicoten Island, Jack Dutton and Pierre Landeau had stopped only
two nights; but by this time Jack had so completely given up the idea
that he should ever see his friend Bruce on Lake Superior, that he and
Pierre had struck out for Caribou Island without leaving any message or
blazing any trees near their camp.
On the first quiet day the four rowed their boat among the big rocks in
search of Pierre Landeau’s canoe. They found it on the bottom in
fifteen feet of water, sunk by the rocks Pierre had used to balance the
craft while he was fishing. If the canoe had not sunk, Pierre might
have reached shore. But for the body of the drowned man they searched
in vain; wind and waves had carried it into deep water.
Jack Dutton put up a cross on the southern point of the island with the
brief inscription: “Pierre Landeau, Partner of Jack Dutton. 1776.”
Bruce and Jack salvaged the sunken canoe. By means of a long pole with
a hook at the end, they raised the craft on end. The stones rolled out
and the canoe rose to the surface by its own buoyancy.
Two canoes and a sailboat gave the campers more than enough room to
take away all their furs and other things. So they remained an extra
week for drying and smoking a canoe-load of caribou meat.
There was some discussion as to the route they should take to the
mainland. They rejected the plan of returning by way of Michipicoten
Island, because that route would have landed them on a shelterless
coast nearly two hundred miles from the Soo. With a steady northwest
breeze they struck out boldly for Whitefish Point, over a stretch of
open water of some sixty miles. Every man was keenly alive to the risk
they were taking. One man steered and managed the sail, while the other
three used paddle and oars. The summer breeze blew steadily in their
favor, and although the two canoes which they towed decreased their
speed, the Pirate rounded Whitefish Point when the sun was still two
hours high. They remained several days at this camp to fish and rest.
Although the adventurers brought no gold rock with them, they sold
their fur and dried meat at good prices to the traders at the Soo.
The three white men decided not to return to New England, but to remain
as traders in the Great Lakes country; and for years till the time of
his death, Ganawa camped near the post of his white sons, who saw to it
that his old age was made comfortable.
There was a strange story told by Indians and Frenchmen, which the lads
at first could not understand. The Bostonnais had made war on the
English and the king was sending over many redcoats to conquer them,
but the Bostonnais under their chief, George Washington, had driven the
English war canoes out of their harbor.
It took some time before the three white men learned the real meaning
of this story; but after some months they understood that the
long-threatened Revolutionary War had broken out, that the battle of
Lexington had been fought and that Washington had compelled the British
to evacuate Boston.
Of Hamogeesik no news ever reached the Soo. Bruce and Ray felt sure
that he had been the man that had followed them on the Michipicoten.
When Hamogeesik left the Ininiwac people a white man of bad reputation
was with him. There was a rumor that the two had planned to go to
Caribou Island. If they went, they never returned. In some way the
great wilderness of lake and forest had swallowed them up, and there
was nobody to mourn their death.
During the trying years of the Revolutionary War, Jack Dutton and the
Henley brothers did much to keep the Northwestern Indians from actively
joining the British as the Iroquois had done under their great chief
Joseph Brant.
Many streams have been polluted and many lakes have disappeared since
the days of Ganawa and his white sons, but the waters of Lake Superior
are as clear as they were at that time, and the islands of the big lake
and many parts of the shore are as wild and beautiful as they were more
than a hundred years ago.
May Gitche Gumee, the Big Blue Sea Water, its wild islands and wooded
shores remain for ever a playground and a land of joy and adventure for
All America!
THE END
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