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Title: Pilgrims of the Wild
Author: Grey Owl [Belaney, Archibald Stansfeld] (1888-1938)
Author of preface: Eayrs, Hugh Sterling (1894-1940)
Photographer: Pelletier [or Pellettier], Eugene (fl. ca. 1935)
Date of first publication: 1934 [Pilgrims of the Wild; Eayrs' foreword];
   1935 [Grey Owl's "special preface"]
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Lovat Dickson & Thompson, November 1935
   (sixth printing)
Date first posted: 25 March 2010
Date last updated: 25 March 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #508

This ebook was produced by: Al Haines




[Frontispiece: GREY OWL [Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin]]






[Frontispiece: Anahareo.  _Courtesy Canadian National Railways_.]





Pilgrims of the Wild


by

WA-SHA-QUON-ASIN

(GREY OWL)




With a Foreword by

HUGH EAYRS




LOVAT DICKSON & THOMPSON LIMITED

PUBLISHERS

LONDON




  FIRST PUBLISHED JANUARY 1935
  SECOND PRINTING JANUARY 1935
  THIRD PRINTING FEBRUARY 1935
  FOURTH PRINTING JUNE 1935
  FIFTH PRINTING OCTOBER 1935
  SIXTH PRINTING NOVEMBER 1935



LOVAT DICKSON & THOMPSON LIMITED 38 BEDFORD STREET LONDON
  AND ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE BOND STREET TORONTO

SET AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
  BY RICHARD CLAY AND SONS LIMITED AT THE CHAUCER PRESS BUNGAY

BOUND BY O. AND J. KITCAT LIMITED

PAPER MADE BY JOHN DICKINSON AND COMPANY LIMITED

SET IN BASKERVILLE MONOTYPE




DEDICATED TO MY FRIEND AND ADVISOR

J. G. CAMPBELL

WHOSE VISION AND SYMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING

ALONE MADE POSSIBLE THE FULFILMENT OF A

LONG-CHERISHED PURPOSE




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to the courtesy of:

Canadian Forest and Outdoors for the use of extracts from articles
previously contributed to them.

National Parks of Canada for the use of extracts from articles
previously submitted to them, and illustrations facing pages 3, 91,
198, 227 and 280.

Canadian National Railways for the use of the frontispiece photograph.

Eugene Pellettier for the use of the illustration facing page 162.

The United States Forest Service for the use of the illustration facing
page 11.

The Canadian Forestry Association for the use of illustrations facing
pages 106, 209 and 272.

All photographs of beaver and beaver works are from those different
groups mentioned in the story.  Photographs facing pages 23, 199, 237
and the sketches throughout, are the work of the author.




AUTHOR'S SPECIAL PREFACE

TO HIS

ENGLISH READERS

October, 1935

The generous reception accorded "Pilgrims of the Wild" by the British
reading Public has been such that I feel it to be my duty, and a mighty
pleasant one, to make this small acknowledgment, and to offer my humble
and sincere thanks for this kindly recognition.

This immediate and whole-hearted response to my appeal for a greater
consideration for our lesser brethren, caused me all of the elation
and, I must admit, considerable of the surprise of one who discovers a
gold-mine whilst picking up what he thought to be a stone.  Yet, had I
called to mind certain events of History, as well as other incidents
coming under the scope of more personal observation, I should have
remembered that the British have ever been the champions of the under
dog.

So, the chance seeds of what I hoped were wisdom, scattered before the
winds of adversity, fell on what was thought at the time to be stony
soil--which it was; but the rock proved to be gold-bearing, rich with
the treasure of human understanding.

This expression of gratitude is tendered not only for myself, who
happened, by some chance, to write the book, but also on behalf of
Anahareo, whose deep humanity, sense of justice and innate love of fair
play, eventually broke down the wall of self-justification that had
long resisted the beleaguerings of an outraged conscience--I mean my
own; and this circumstance stands as a direct refutation of the
extremely partial testimony, not always uncoloured by an arrogant
national prejudice, of earlier historians, in that it took a woman of
the Mohawk tribe, long considered the most merciless of all the nations
comprising the supposedly fiendish and bloodthirsty Iroquois
Confederacy, to point the road to forbearance and compassion.  And it
was this people who also gave us Tekahionwake (Pauline Johnson),
Canada's best known poetess, and Dr. Oronoteykha, who founded, and
during his life was head of the Royal Order of Foresters, the most
powerful fraternal Society in Canada.

And the Little People of the Forest, co-dwellers with us in this mighty
Wilderness, must not be forgotten in this tribute; perhaps they would
wish to send a message too, could they but understand.  For they too
can be grateful, in their simple way, and the least awakened, dim and
dreamy minds among them all, can recognize and appreciate kindness,
sympathy and a sanctuary when they find it.

And this generous interest, the more warming because it has been
bestowed by those of so different a race, creed and manner of living to
ourselves, has had the most profound effect upon our lives and outlook,
not the least notable result of which has been the confirmation of what
had been long suspected, that there are a great number of very
wonderful folks in this world of ours, and that those who cry that the
human race is bound for perdition have still very much to learn about
their neighbours.  This is attested, in part, by the sentiments
expressed so uniformly in this, to us, vast correspondence, of which
Tolerance was everywhere the keynote.

These letters are very heartening and inspiriting, and whether they be
the honest, carefully written script of the school-boy or girl, or the
well-worded communications from those of maturer years; the short,
business-like note of appreciation of the tradesman or the longer, more
personal missives of those whose leisure permits of a fuller
discussion; whether from a brother outdoorsman, a poet, or the
analytically minded professor from some University, they all, with few
exceptions, express a real understanding of our ideals and aims, and a
ready sympathetic acknowledgment of the obligations and
responsibilities of man towards his lesser brethren of the field and
forest.

They have awakened in us, these letters, a deeper realization of the
Brotherhood of Man that can, and should, exist between us all, of
whatever race or creed and for which I have the greatest hopes, in that
it can so survive the disadvantages of four thousand miles of space;
and I am trying faithfully to answer every one of them, so that all who
write may know just what these letters mean to us.  But the facilities
afforded by a log cabin situated here on a lakeside far in the
Wilderness are extremely limited, as is my skill; transportation is
intermittent, and the office staff, consisting of Anahareo, little
Dawn, the beaver, and myself, very much overtaxed.  The beavers, whose
part it is to remove the empty envelopes, are getting along quite
nicely, working with great enthusiasm, as the envelopes make
first-class bedding.  But I lately discovered that, having become
confused, not by "the smell of the ink" but by the various colours of
the stamps, I have sent out an entire batch of mail stamped with
two-cent stamps, when the regulations call for three.  Having now no
idea as to which of our correspondents the letters in question were
addressed to, we can only offer our apologies to them collectively, and
hope that we have not attracted the attention of the police.

So we sincerely hope that it will be understood why much of this
correspondence must, we fear, remain unanswered, greatly to our regret.

And now this coming Winter I am to have an even greater privilege, that
of addressing English audiences from the lecture platform.

Though no orator, and making no pretensions to the ability of a
well-experienced speaker, I hope that these defects will be overlooked
by those whose kind reception of my written work has encouraged me to
undertake this enterprise.  And one other thing I ask; that it be
remembered above all things that I come not as a showman, or as an
expositor of my own attainments as a woodsman, but as an ambassador
from those whom I perforce must leave behind, as a spokesman for that
vast, inarticulate, rapidly dwindling army of living things, our
co-dwellers in the Land of Shadows, our kin of the Last Frontier.
Perhaps I take thereby too much upon myself; if so, my only excuse is
my sincere desire to tell you something of their lives and ours, so
that you may know us all a little better.

Of the adventures that may await me across the sea, certainly the most
moving will be the renewing, after nearly twenty years, of some old and
valued friendships, happy reminders of those dark and dreary days when
the black eagle of War spread the shadow of his wings over half the
world.  Scarcely less fortunate will be the opportunity, so long
anticipated, of meeting some of those whose messages of goodwill have
so encouraged me to persevere in my attempts at literary work.

Jelly Roll and Rawhide, the two beaver personalities who are the
featured characters in the latter half of the narrative, are reaping a
rich reward in chocolate bars, peanuts and apples from admirers.  And
this remuneration they have most surely earned, for to them belongs
much credit--as to those others who came before them and now are gone,
who still serve though perhaps, somewhere, they only stand and
wait--McGinnis and McGinty, the Unforgotten Ones, without whom there
would have been no book, no Beaver People as we know them, no anything.

It feels good to us to know that their short lives were not vainly
spent and when, in these later days, we hear, in the calm of evening,
the quiet murmur of running water at the beaver dam, or watch the stars
paling to a new-born day, or perhaps when a sudden silence falls upon
us in the midst of merriment and we step out into the solemn,
splendrous hush of a snowy Christmas night, we wonder if they too may
see and know, and be content.

And if we seem in this to be too fanciful, if such thoughts remind you
that we hold strange, wild beliefs, should you have patience to read
our book perhaps you may forgive and understand.

GREY OWL.




FOREWORD

Good wine needs no bush.  This glowing narrative by my friend Grey Owl
scarcely requires a word of mine to bid people run and read.  To those
in Canada who know merely the bare outline of Grey Owl's achievement in
our Western country, his own story in detail of his magnificent work
(the phrase is mine--he would disagree with it) will be sheer delight.
To those beyond our borders it will come, I fancy, as a revelation
alike of a character as lovable as he is unusual, and of sights and
sounds and scenes which will entrance them.  But his story will speak
for itself.

I may be allowed to say one or two things, by way of explanation, of
the narrative and the man who wrote it.

This is Grey Owl's book.  It appears between these covers precisely as
he wrote it.  His publishers in Toronto, London and New York have
suffered no hand to touch it.  Written in the Wilderness (a capital W
for you, Grey Owl!) he loves so well, in the time he could spare from
his Little People and their care, it came, copied into typescript, to
me.  Grey Owl's eye was on it, page by page, to watch that from pen and
ink to typewritten copy no word, no phrase, even no slightest
punctuation mark should have been introduced into what was, in every
particular, his own story.  "It may be doctored by nobody," said Grey
Owl.  "It is to be published, if it is worth it, just as I wrote it.
It is my work, good or bad, and nobody else's.  Nobody else is going to
tamper with it."  He was, of course, quite right.  To attempt to shape,
to edit, to dress such a story as this in any way whatever, would
result in robbing it of its simplicity and its beauty.  Grey Owl wrote
his own story.  Nobody else could write it.  Nobody else has written
it.  Nobody else may, in any way, seek to varnish it.  This is to be
said because all sorts of wild legends have grown up about him, about
his first book, "Men of the Last Frontier," and about this, his second.

The, to me, delightful sketches which are reproduced in this volume are
also Grey Owl's own work.

I can think of few books more revealing of their writer than this.  The
very essence of our Canadian hinterland is in these pages because Grey
Owl is so completely of it, and one with it.  All his years, but for
the briefest of intervals, have been spent in his beloved Wilderness.
He loves it with a deep and abiding love.  Somehow it is part of him
and he part of it.  "The only way I can live happily," he says, "is
wandering over the face of the Wilderness."  He is almost missionary
about it.  Nothing delights him so much as to try to communicate to
those who don't know them at first hand something of his own affection
for our forests and lakes and streams and those who dwell in them.  He
will forever be restless till every last one of us shall come to know
for ourselves the loveliness which he knows.  He would have us all be
in truth "Pilgrims of the Wild."

Grey Owl was born in 1888 of Scotch and Indian parentage.  He went to
England for a little, and returned to this side quickly thereafter,
taking part in the Cobalt silver rush of 1905.  He was then, as he has
been ever since (but for the space of his War service), a canoeman and
packer.  He never forgets his great debt to the Ojibway Indians.  He
was still a youth when he was adopted into their tribe.  It was they
who named him Grey Owl because of his habit of nocturnal travelling.
He learned their language.  From them he derived his forest lore.  He
lived their nomadic life.  Early becoming one of them, he feels that
they are his people and that all he is and has he owes to them.  They
taught him to love Northern Ontario and to think of it as his homeland.
Their land was his land and their folk his folk.  The Indian influence,
or rather the Ojibway Indian influence, is naturally very marked in all
his reminiscences and portrayals of wilderness life.

A canoe is to Grey Owl what a horse is to a cowpuncher or a good vessel
to a sailor.  Prior to his becoming so deeply interested in what has
turned out to be his life work, namely the preservation of the Little
People, his days were spent in guiding, exploration and transportation
of supplies up and down and across and about the north country.  He
trapped every winter, and for a few summers served as a forest ranger
for the Ontario Government.  He was singularly successful, and his
ability to penetrate easily through unexplored territory gained for him
a roving commission.  The War stopped his activities for three years.
He returned from it pronounced unfit from wounds in 1917.  As soon as
he was able he resumed his former manner of living, and his speed and
endurance and extraordinarily intimate knowledge gained for him the
post of assistant Chief Ranger over a large area in the Mississauga
Forest reserve.  After a few years during which he came to know every
nook and cranny of this region to his own satisfaction a ranger's life
became monotonous and far-off horizons beckoned.  He closed his old
trapping camp on the Spanish river, threw together a light outfit and
set out on new wanderings, hiring out, canoe and man, wherever guiding,
packing, and the like provided means of renewing supplies.  He tramped
over a new hunting ground every winter.

He tells his own story in the present book.  You learn how he came to
realise that our wild life was becoming scarcer and scarcer so that in
certain areas native game was almost extinct.  This was particularly
true of beaver.  In 1928 he gave up trapping altogether and devoted,
indeed consecrated, his life to conservation of game generally and
beaver in particular.

I have spoken of him as being almost missionary in his quality.  He is.
The cause of preservation and conservation of the Wilderness and its
folk is his life-work, and he feels himself as surely called to it as a
man of the cloth is called.  He might paraphrase John Wesley and say,
"The Wilderness is my parish."  In Grey Owl's own words, "Give me a
good canoe, a pair of Jibway snowshoes, my beaver, my family and ten
thousand square miles of wilderness and I am happy."  He does not add,
but I may for him, that he has in ample measure another requisite for
happiness: he is a happy man because he has learned to help others to
happiness, and amongst those others not the least, his friends the
Little People.

HUGH EAYRS.

_Toronto,_
  _October_ 1934.




PREFACE

This is primarily an animal story; it is also the story of two people,
and their struggle to emerge from the chaos into which the failure of
the fur trade, and the breaking down of the old proprietary system of
hunting grounds, plunged the Indian people, and not a few whites,
during the last two decades.  Their means of livelihood destroyed by
fire and the invasion by hordes of transient trappers and cheap fur
buyers, these two, a man and a woman, newly married and with no
prospects, broke loose from their surroundings taking with them all
that was left to them of the once vast heritage of their people,--their
equipment and two small animals as pets.

Outcasts in their own country, wandering in what amounted to a foreign
land, they tried desperately to fit somewhere into this new picture.
Their devotion to these creatures that represented to them the very
soul of their lost environment, eventually proved to be their salvation.

All the places are actual, the story known to not a few; characters are
real, and if named receive, save in one instance, their proper
appellations.

In order to properly grasp the spirit in which this book is written, it
is necessary to remember that though it is not altogether an Indian
story, it has an Indian background.  The considering attitude towards
all nature which appears throughout the work, is best explained by a
quotation from John G. Gifford's "Story of the Seminole War."

"The meaning of sovereignty is not very clear to primitive peoples,
especially to the Indian.  He rarely dominated the things around him;
he was a part of nature and not its boss."  Hewitt says of the Indian:

"In his own country ... he is a harmonious element in a landscape that
is incomparable in its nobility of colour and mass and feeling of the
Unchangeable.  He never dominates it as does the European his
environment, but belongs there as do the mesas, skies, sunshine, spaces
and the other living creatures.  He takes his part in it with the
clouds, winds, rocks, plants, birds and beasts, with drum beat and
chant and symbolic gesture, keeping time with the seasons, moving in
orderly procession with nature, _holding to the unity of life in all
things_, seeking no superior place for himself but merely a state of
harmony with all created things ... the most rhythmic life ... that is
lived among the races of men."  This viewpoint is not peculiar to
people of native blood but is often found in those of other races who
have resided for many years in the wilderness.

The idea of domination and submission, though now passing out of date
in nearly every walk of life, is hard to disassociate, in the minds of
some, from the contact between civilized man and beings in a state of
nature.  This was forcibly illustrated in a late radio broadcast during
which, in a play dealing with frontier conditions, an actor who
portrayed the part of Indian guide was heard to address the head (not
the leader, as is generally supposed, the guide being of necessity in
that capacity) of the party, in an awed voice, as "Master."  But the
more tolerant and unaspiring, though perhaps less ambitious view-point
of the Indian must be taken into consideration, if the reader is to
fully appreciate the rather unusual tenor of the narrative.

Interpretations of the more obscure mental processes of the animal
characters that run through the story, are of necessity comparative;
such attempts at delineation are difficult, and often inadequate,
without some parallel to draw them by; but the great majority of the
descriptions of animal psychology are very clear and positive.  Those
manifestations that were at the time inexplicable have been construed
in the light of later investigation and experience, so as to preserve
the unity of impression of the narrative.

In the rather ill-considered rush we have been in to exploit our
natural resources, we have taken little trouble to examine into the
capabilities and possibilities of the wild creatures involved in it,
save in so far as the findings were of commercial value.  Therefore
much that is interesting has been overlooked.  The kinship between the
human race and the rest of our natural fauna becomes very apparent to
those of us who sojourn among the latter for any length of time;
alarmingly so to those whose attitude has hitherto been governed by the
well-worn and much abused phrase that "Man shall have dominion over
all."  However I do not draw comparisons between man and beast, save in
a few instances which are too remarkable to be overlooked.  Nor do I
ascribe human attributes to animals.  If any of their qualities are
found to closely approximate some of our own, it is because they have,
unknown to us, always possessed them, and the fault lies in our not
having discovered sooner that these characteristics were not after all
exclusively human, any more than are a number of others to which we
have by long usage become accustomed.

My fingers, well toasted at many an open fire, and stiffened a little
by the paddle and the pull of a loaded toboggan, are ill suited for the
task I set them to.  In this writing game I find myself in the
dangerous situation of a man who has played his first game of poker and
won a small jackpot, and who is now sitting in on another round having
rather disastrous possibilities.  To each his craft and calling, nor
should we grudge another his ability; none the less, did I have the
power to expertly carry out what I have here attempted, or had another,
more skilled in letters and who knew this story well, have undertaken
it, it would have been better done.

To me the rifle has ever been mightier than the pen.  The feel of a
canoe gunnell at the thigh, the splash of flying spray in the face, the
rhythm of the snowshoe trail, the beckoning of far-off hills and
valleys, the majesty of the tempest, the calm and silent presence of
the trees that seem to muse and ponder in their silence; the trust and
confidence of small living creatures, the company of simple men; these
have been my inspiration and my guide.  Without them I am nothing.  To
these and to my teachers, men of a type that is rapidly passing from
the face of the earth, belongs the credit for whatever there may be
that is worthy in this work of mine.

And should any part of it provide an hour of pleasure to just a few of
those who love the Great Outdoors, or who have a kindly thought for a
simple people or for a lowly animal, or should I perchance touch
somewhere a chord of sympathy, or make some slight appeal to the sense
of fair play of any of those true Sportsmen to whom Wild Life owes so
much to-day, I will count my work, with all its imperfections, as
having been worth while.

WA-SHA-QUON-ASIN (GREY OWL)

BEAVER LODGE,
  PRINCE ALBERT NATIONAL PARK,
    SASKATCHEWAN.

_November 7th._




CONTENTS

BOOK ONE -- TOULADI

        Prologue
    I.  How Anahareo had her way
   II.  How we undertook a new responsibility
  III.  How the Pilgrimage commenced
   IV.  How we came to Touladi
    V.  How we crossed the Slough of Despond
   VI.  How we built the House of McGinnis
  VII.  How McGinty and McGinnis opened a new door
 VIII.  How we made Christmas
   IX.  How we came to the Depths


BOOK TWO -- QUEEN OF THE BEAVER PEOPLE

    I.  How Anahareo left Touladi
   II.  How the Queen and I spent the Winter
  III.  The coming of Rawhide
   IV.  The Dark Hour and the Dawn
    V.  How we left Rawhide Lake
   VI.  How the Pilgrimage was ended
        Epilogue




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Anahareo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

Grey Owl's Cabin--"The cabin stands at the water's edge, surrounded by
a palisade of heavy forest.  The lake appears to sleep.  There is no
sound..."

"The fame of its canoemen was widely known"

"Civilization ... fire ... were tearing the old life apart.  No man
felt secure"

"Anahareo soon became adept at this rather strenuous occupation"

"A week old, and utterly helpless, they gave themselves completely into
our hands"

"Six weeks old, and with a great air of knowing what it is all about"

"His yarns were attractive and well told"

"They cannot know why this great trouble has come upon them"

The spring-pole

"A country with the soul torn out of it"

"Guiding was a new and interesting job"

"At no place was it possible to carry more than a hundred to one
hundred and fifty pounds"

"They came tumbling out of their caboose ... so that the dishes flew in
all directions"

"The presence of big timber is always inspiring"

"The smoke going up from the new cabin had a very comfortable look"

"... side by side, down the water trail, and vanished ... we never saw
them any more"

Jelly Roll asleep on Grey Owl's knee.  "She would rest her head on my
knee ... talking meanwhile in her uncanny language"

"Soon the snow was deep enough for good snowshoeing"

"The pageant of the High North ... marching as in an avenue of ghosts"

"... Man, whose coming and going, whose very existence, was of such
small significance..."

"At New Year's ... the skirl of fiddles ... and the clever and
intricate step dances of the French Canadians"

"Straight up the side of the house Rawhide marches"

"They proved up on their possession ... by building themselves a
house."  (The picture shows a mother beaver at work on a house.)

"Shook and twisted her body in queer contortions of delight"

"So if one was called they all came, a very convenient arrangement"

"My quarters have been invaded"

"When the last buffalo stood before the guns of the hide-hunters"




BOOK ONE

TOULADI

  My road calls me, lures me
    West, east, south, and north;
  Most roads lead me homewards,
    My road leads me forth
        To add more miles to the tally
          Of grey miles left behind,
        In quest of that one beauty
          God put me here to find.
                   --JOHN MASEFIELD.




[Illustration: Grey Owl's Cabin--"The cabin stands at the water's edge,
surrounded by a palisade of heavy forest.  The lake appears to sleep.
There is no sound..."  _Courtesy of National Parks of Canada_.]




PROLOGUE

Outside a window from which the sash has been removed stands a man,
alert, silent, watchful.  The cabin beside which he keeps post faces
out onto a lake, its frontage at the water's edge.  The slopes of the
surrounding hills are covered with a heavy forest, the tall grey
poplars and giant spruce standing close in a dark and serried palisade
about the camp.

The water is calm and unruffled; the lake appears to sleep.  There is
no sound and no movement save the desultory journeyings of a squirrel,
engaged in salvaging cones he has been dropping from the spruce tops.

In front of the man, and directed through the aperture into the
building, is a motion picture camera, trained on the door, which is
closed.  The interior of the building is equipped with the rude but
comfortable furnishings, and the simple utensils of a woodsman's home,
for the greater part of the dwelling is given over to human occupancy,
and is a permanent abode, although it has one peculiarity.  Across one
end of it is a large erection having the appearance of a massive
earthwork, shoulder high and occupying easily one-third of the floor
space.

Outside, in strategic positions commanding the door and the approach
from the lake, are other men, holding cameras.  Inside the building a
man sits in a chair, waiting.  Suddenly:

"All right! here he comes," cries a watcher.  The man at the window
sights his machine afresh, makes small adjustments and stands poised,
ready.  There can now be heard, approaching the entrance, a heavy
measured tread.  The camera man's face becomes suddenly tense, the
camera commences to whir and simultaneously with a resounding thump the
door is thrown widely open and there steps over the threshold, not the
leading lady of a cast of players, not the handsome hero of a screen
romance, nor yet the villain, but a full-grown beaver, erect, and
bearing in his arms a load of earth and sticks.

Walking upright like a man, steadily, purposefully, looking neither to
the right nor to the left, past the stove, round the table, between the
benches, he pursues his undeviating way towards the earthwork,
advancing with the resolute step of an unfaltering and unchangeable
purpose.  The camera swings, follows him, grinding.  But for that sound
and the thudding of the beaver's heavy steps, there is silence.
Straight up the side of the lodge, for such the earth work is, the
beaver marches, deposits his load, tamps it in with his hands; he
pushes in a stick to bind it, cuts off the protruding end and potters
at some small repairs.  At this moment another and a larger beaver
enters hauling a six foot stick which she skilfully manoeuvers through
the opening, drawing it over to the house and up the side of it.  The
two animals work with the heavy pole, placing it; they are very
particular and take some time at this.  Meanwhile the man in the chair
rises, shuts the door and resumes his seat.

The camera drones on.

Another beaver, small, brisk, business-like, emerges from a hole in the
side of the lodge, places two sticks very carefully, looks around,
becomes fidgety and scampers in again.  The operator's face is a study;
he is getting it all.  Yesterday he got a moose passing through the
door yard, the day before a group of muskrats.

The two big beaver at last finish their job to their complete
satisfaction; and now their purposeful, sober mien deserts them.  On
all fours and at a little trot, they run over to the seated man and
stand erect beside him, looking up at him.  Their enquiring faces reach
waist high on him as he sits.  They must weigh one hundred pounds
between the two of them.  The larger one, the female, plucks at his
sleeve trying to attract his attention.  The camera grinds steadily and
the beavers undoubtedly hear it.  But they pay no heed; this is their
fourth year at the business.

The man strokes the animals' heads.

"Well! how is it going today, old-timers?" he asks.

A series of short, sharp, ejaculations from the larger one as she pulls
impatiently at his hand with her forepaws.

"All right, here's your apple," says the man, and seizing the offering,
she runs, hops, and trots over to the door, opens it inwards, with a
quick pull at a leather loop, and runs outside.  The other, her
consort, patient, more sedate, gently takes his apple, and slips
quietly out.

The camera at the window stops.  Outside other machines click and drone
according to their kind, as the expert passes from one to another of
his sentries; for down at the so-lately deserted waterfront, a scant
thirty feet away, are more beavers, swimming, playing, eating.

All at once one of them stands upright, sniffing the air, listening, a
stiff brown pillar of attention; a foreign scent has drifted down from
that dark unknown forest with its threat of a thousand dangers.
Without warning the beaver leaps into the water with a terrific plunge,
slaps his tail.  Immediately there is a violent commotion, cries,
splashes, heavy thudding of broad flat tails, and in a moment not a
beaver is to be seen.

Silence falls, the water quickly subsides.  There is nothing visible,
though the machines are cocked and ready.  But their work is finished.
They will get nothing more today.

Far out on the lake, but out of range, black heads bob up; V's stream
away from them as the workers, not seriously alarmed after all, proceed
to the scene of their various occupations.

It has all been very casual, in a way.  No rehearsing has been done, no
commands given; the actors have done just about as they liked.  The
beaver are free and unrestrained and could be gone beyond all hope of
recovery in an hour.  But they prefer to stay here, and year by year
have made this place their home, have even built their domicile within
the human habitation, a subterranean passage leading from it to the
bottom of the lake.

Extraordinary behaviour for an animal supposed to be wild and
unapproachable!  Perhaps it is.  But the story that lies behind this
little scene is even stranger.

Yet it is a very simple one, of happenings and small but queer events
that did not much affect the history of the world, or of a whole town
full of people, or even a room full, but which were so very important
to those who played a part in them.

It is not a tale of heroism, or hazard, or very high accomplishment,
but has more to tell of loyalty and tolerance, and gentle wistful
beasts; and of the bond between a woman and a man.  There is much joy
in it, a little sorrow, some loneliness and struggle, and some rare
good fun.  It plumbed the depths of human souls and sometimes touched
the heights, and much of everything that goes between.

I know that story very well, and how it all began, in the Unforgotten
Days of Long Ago.

And because it is a tale of ways and means and a manner of living which
you may be unfamiliar with, its strangeness may compensate in some
degree for my lack of skill in the telling of it.




1

HOW ANAHAREO HAD HER WAY

The town of Bisco was dropping fast astern as I dipped and swung my
paddle, driving my light, fast canoe steadily Northward to the Height
of Land.  It was not much of a town as towns go.  It had no sidewalks,
and no roads, and consisted mainly of a Hudson's Bay store, a saw mill,
probably fifty houses scattered on a rocky hillside, and an Indian
encampment in a sheltered bay of Biscotasing Lake, on the shores of
which this village stood.  But it was rather a noted little place, as,
being situated within measureable distance of the headwaters of a
number of turbulent rivers such as the Spanish, the White, the
Mississauga, the Mattawgami, the Ground-hog and others, and being
moreover the gateway to a maze of water routes that stretch Southward
to lakes Huron and Superior, and Northward to the Arctic ocean, the
fame of its canoemen was widely known.  That part of the District of
Algoma, in the Province of Ontario, had until lately been one of the
best fur-producing territories in Northern Canada, but an influx of
get-rich-quick transient hunters had depleted the fur-bearing animals
almost to the point of extinction, and times were not what they had
been.

Reduced though it might be, none the less this isolated post had been
my home town for the fifteen years since I had drifted down from the
North, if coming out to sell fur and replenish supplies twice a year
can be said to establish citizenship.  I had seen my best years in the
vast forests and on the intricate waterways that commenced at its back
door and stretched many hundreds of miles into the interior, and was
leaving behind me friendships with both red men and white, that had
been cemented by year after year of trial by ordeal in the crucible of
hardship; and I was feeling a little choked up and lonely.

The farewell celebrations had been a little lively, and I was not the
only one leaving town that evening, but none of the others were coming
my way; they were all headed in the opposite direction, to their
stamping grounds on the distant Mississauga whose pine-crowned cliffs,
maple crested ridges, and wild fierce rapids I might never see again.
So I thought as I plugged along, the little swirling eddies that slid
from my paddle singing a low whispering dirge in the silence of that
Spring night.

Less than a dozen miles brought me to the first portage.  Certain hints
dropped by the Hudson's Bay Manager, who was also Chief of Police (he
was, in fact, the whole force; he could serve a warrant so you'd never
feel the jar, but was, in certain circumstances, a gentleman to be
avoided), made it seem advisable to cross this immediately.  It was
four miles long and I had two loads, outfit and canoe.  But the footing
was good and there was a moon.  In the ensuing labour a lot of my
depression of spirits oozed through my pores in the form of
perspiration.  It was an arduous trip, eight miles loaded and four
empty on the middle return journey; but it was completed soon after
sunrise when I made camp, slept till noon, and then proceeded on my
pilgrimage.  A disastrous bush fire had swept my hunting ground leaving
it a barren area of cracked rock, burnt out stumps and tortured tree
trunks, and I was bound North and East to the far off, supposedly
fruitful ranges of the Abitibi district in Northern Quebec; a vast
country which, so rumour had it, was little explored and was populated
only by a few wandering bands of Ojibway[1] Indians.  Much of my route
lay through a country I had known.  It was now almost unrecognizable.
A railroad had been built through part of it.  There were huge burns,
areas of bare rocks and twisted rampikes, miles of staring desolation.
Riff-raff bushmen, dirty, unkempt; stolid European peasantry tearing
down the forest; settlers on stone farms (two crops a year--one snow
and the other rocks) existing, no more.  The change was nearly
unbelievable.  Immured in the fastness of the Mississauga I had not
known what had been going on.  I passed on uneasy, fearful, wondering
what lay ahead.  There was plenty!

[Illustration: "The fame of its canoemen was widely known." _Sketch by
Grey Owl._]

Old Fort Mattawgami, the river dammed, was flooded out, all under water
save the little Mission Church which stood awash on a knoll; I had a
noon meal on its steps, sorrowfully.  Another trading post, a startling
new pale-looking affair, stood on the far shore on high land.  I passed
it by at half a mile; Old Man Miller wasn't there anyway, he was living
in Gogama on a pension from the Company,[2] still worrying about his
old Post.

[Illustration: "Civilization ... fire ... were tearing the old life
apart.  No man felt secure."  _Courtesy U.S. Forest Service._]

I met some old-time faces, men who had made history in these parts; I
got the news such as it was.  It sounded to me more like a Book of
Doom.  Flying Post was on its last legs, its Indians dispersed.  Alec.
McLeod, factor at Elbow Lake, who so wore his thigh with the paddle
that cancer had set in and the leg had to be amputated--cursing,
roaring, mighty McLeod that no man could ever outface and few could
follow--dead.  Ancient John Buffalo on the Montreal River, a trapper of
the old rgime, almost a landmark in the country, dead these many
years.  Snape, who ran Moose Factory at a time when a round trip from
the front took six weeks fast voyaging, now manager of a Company[2]
store in a small town, his ankle broken and badly knit--off the trail
for keeps.  Andy Luke, who habitually carried 400 lbs.  on a portage
and who had made big hunts that were a byword in the land, _working on
the railroad as a labourer_, his son Sam, lean, wiry Sam with the speed
and endurance of a greyhound, a wizard in a canoe, doing odd jobs.  Big
Alec Langevin, six feet two in his summer moccasins to whom fifty miles
on snowshoes was a small matter, gone away to Quebec for marten.  I
later met him there--on his way back.

Tommy Saville, the White Indian, adopted by the Ojibways when young and
who had made and spent a fortune in a gold rush, living in a house in a
town, eating his heart out for the trail, sneaking down cellar to boil
a pail of tea over a little fire of shavings--to get the feel of it
again: people thought him queer--

What did it all mean; was the whole Wilderness falling about our ears?

I kept going.  Further on the tale improved but little.  Shining tree
and Gowganda, rich camps of earlier days, far from the railroad and
undisturbed by the hodge-podge and the hurly-burly of the march of
progress, were still kept alive by many of the old originals, waiting
for a break, hoping with the perennial optimism of the dyed-in-the-wool
prospector, for a new strike to keep the old camp going.  The whole
Gowganda lake area had been burnt to the bare rock.  White Duck, who
had carried the mail in the early days, had passed into a legend.

One reunion was notable and all too short, with Billy Guppy, that king
of all woodsmen, respected by all men, red and white, and whom the
Indians called Pijeense--The Little Lynx.  Time had changed him in no
discernible way; he alluded to the subject of our last conversation,
held fifteen years before.  He still clung to his traditions and always
would.

I encountered Indians, white woodsmen, real prospectors, each meeting
an experience.  But when their conversation turned to future plans
there were evidences of a vague foreboding in their speech.  No man
felt secure.  Fire, railroads, power projects, the aeroplane, they were
tearing the old life apart.  The Frontier was rolling back like a
receding tide.  I must hurry.

Four hundred miles travel brought me to a town on the Temiskaming and
Northern Ontario Railway which, when I first saw it, had been a
frontier post.  Before the coming of the steel, rare sportsmen and
adventurers, seeking the freedom and spiritual satisfaction to be found
in an untouched virgin territory, had come here at intervals.  We
guided them, a strange, new, interesting job; these men had been our
comrades on the trail.  We talked about such a trip all Winter, and
showed each other the letters we got from our patrons.  The place was
now a populous tourist resort.  An automobile highway was in the
making.  I took a job here; the party was a good one, people from New
York, with all the genial good fellowship of the American on a
vacation.  But there was a false note.  Guides were no longer
companions, they were lackeys, footmen, toadies; a kind of below-stairs
snobbery had sprung up among them,--kid-glove guiding; some of them
actually wore white cotton gloves at their work.  Old-timers talked
about it, shook their heads--but they had to follow suit; fur was gone
and this now emasculated occupation was their only means of subsistence.

My main outfit had been sent around to this place by freight; I shipped
it ahead three hundred miles, replenished my supplies and left, in my
heart rebellion and disillusionment.  This place held memories I had
hoped to renew.  I pitied the pine trees standing there.  They had to
stay.

The Frontier was on its way.  So was I.

I had billed my freight to a point on the Transcontinental where I
arrived a month later, renewed my food supply and sent the outfit
another stage ahead.  In this manner, touching the railroad at
strategic points, a journey was made that covered approximately two
thousand miles.  This occupied two years, during which time I wandered
on in the summer time, and trapped with more or less success wherever
Fall caught me.

The waters began to go crossways of my projected line of travel rather
than with it, necessitating an inordinate amount of portaging; so that
the last leg of the journey was made ignominiously on a train, with the
outfit in the baggage car, out of which the canoe regarded me
reproachfully at every stop.  There was, however, another very
compelling reason for this dereliction; my correspondence, usually
non-existent, now demanded constant attention.  At a summer resort
where I had guided for a short time the year before, there had been a
girl, a cultured, talented and personable young woman of the Iroquois,
a cut or two above me perhaps, but not, I hoped, on that account
unattainable.  The affair was quite wanting in the vicissitudes and the
harrowing, but stirring episodes that are said to usually beset the
path of high romance.  The course of true love ran exasperatingly
smooth; I sent the lady a railroad ticket, she came up on a pullman and
we were married, precisely according to plan.  The complications
started afterwards.

In order that the blame will not attach in the wrong places, I must
here give a brief outline of two very conflicting personalities.  We
were, in many ways, exact opposites.  In my young days I had received
some pretty intensive home tuition from an ever-blessed aunt, but had
shown little aptitude save in geography, history and English.  In the
latter subject the ground work had been solid, and as I now see, very
skillfully laid.  But I had so far taken no trouble to build on it.
Most of my time from middle youth on, had been spent in solitude or
largely amongst a people whose language was not English, and confused
by regional dialects.  Only a retentive memory and a passion for
reading had kept alive this early training, and my precise and somewhat
stilted English was, like a stiff and ceremonious suit of Sunday best,
something to be taken out of the closet and worn on occasion, and its
use ended, returned to the limbo of unneeded things.  I was careless in
my speech and quickly resented any infringement on what I considered to
be my personal freedom.  This last trait had been intensified by the
discipline endured in the army.  I had been one of those unusual
people, so seldom met with in stories, who was not an officer, did not
attract the attention of the higher command, entered the army as a
private and left it as one.  I had come back to the woods with my
efficiency much impaired, and my outlook on things generally had been
in no way improved by the job of sniper that I had held, and the sole
educational effect the war had been to convince me of the utter
futility of civilization.  Most of my views, whilst free and
unconventional were correspondingly narrow.

My wife Gertrude, who will be referred to from now on by her tribal
name of Anahareo, was not highly educated, save in that broader sense
which is much to be desired, and is not always the result of schooling.
She had a passion for advancement, uplift, and a proper use of words
and took a lively interest in world events.  She was a direct
descendant of hereditary Iroquois chiefs, and her father was one of the
original Mohawk river-men who had helped to make history along the
Ottawa in the days of the great square-timber rafts; she came of a
proud race.  She was strictly modern, as modern went at that time, a
good dancer and conversationalist, and, a particular dresser herself,
she naturally wanted me to always look my best.  My idea of looking my
best was to wear my hair long, have plenty of fringes on my buckskins,
to allow one tassel of my Hudson Bay sash to hang behind like a tail,
and to have the front of my shirt decorated with an oblique row of
safety pins on each side, as a Cossack wears his ammunition, to be
intriguingly glimpsed at times beneath a leather vest.  These things
were very dear to me, and as to the safety pins, why, they were real
handy and served a useful as well as an ornamental purpose, being used
to hang up my clothes to dry at night.  Other peculiarities born of
long habit, and hitherto unnoticed, now became very obvious.  I could
not, or would not, carry on any conversation at all whilst in a canoe,
and preferred to walk in single file, trail fashion as, like most bush
people, I continually bumped into anyone who walked beside me; as a
concession the lady was, in this case, always allowed to walk in front.
These features were brought to my attention one by one, and it is
easily seen that our honeymoon, spent with a load of supplies on the
way into a hunting ground, must have been unusual and interesting.

Out at the front[3] it had been found that I could never learn to dance
ball-room style, but could in an emergency, with proper assistance, get
through the figures of a quadrille without any serious results.  I
could also dance the Grass Dance[4] to a drum, and sing the Wabeno[5]
very creditably.  In the other matters I submitted, rather tamely as I
now remember it, and as a reward was allowed to retain the fringes and
the braided hair.  I was being made over for my own good, and it was a
bitter pill.  But far, far more was yet to come; though even today I
sometimes furtively wear the safety pins and the tail, and get great
comfort from it.

I speedily discovered that I was married to no butterfly, in spite of
her modernistic ideas, and found that my companion could swing an axe
as well as she could a lip-stick, and was able to put up a tent in good
shape, make quick fire, and could rig a tump-line and get a load across
in good time, even if she did have to sit down and powder her nose at
the other end of the portage.  She habitually wore breeches, a custom
not at that time so universal amongst women as it is now, and one that
I did not in those days look on with any great approval.  The apparel
of our own women ran heavily to voluminous plaid skirts and gay tartan
head shawls.  This one wore top boots and a mackinaw shirt, and somehow
achieved an appearance of rough and ready competence, borne out in her
behaviour, that was quite without that odious suggestion of mannishness
which only too often accompanies these departures from feminine
tradition.  As a wedding present I had bought her some yards of heavy
serge or broadcloth, or something of the kind, but in view of her
rig-out I began to feel that a rifle or an axe would have been more
appropriate.  But she pounced on the dress-goods at once, and with a
pair of scissors in her mouth and a pencil in her hand, she suspended
the cloth against her body, where it was held by a stiff breeze that
was blowing, and marking the outline where the wind shaped the goods
against her form, proceeded to cut them out.  I stood by in rather
apprehensive silence and viewed the apparent slaughter of this very
excellent material, for which I had payed a very excellent price, but
out of which there was presently constructed (the word aptly describes
the process) one of the best fitting and most elegant looking pair of
breeches anyone could wish for; and while she was not very much of an
expert at out-door cooking, I soon found that I had procured me a
really first-class needle-women.

She had brought up with her, as a dowry, a large packsack well stuffed
with clothes, an ominous-looking volume entitled "The Power of Will,"
five small tattered booklets comprising "The Irving Writing System,"
under the mistaken impression that they were "Hints for Housewives,"
and an exceedingly good felt hat which I gained possession of and still
wear on special occasions.

The literary booklets were an oversight and belonged to her sister, who
had a husband with a flair for writing, and we had considered sending
them back, though we never did; which, it afterwards turned out, was
just as well.

This new wife of mine must have been very lonely at times, though she
never said so.  Once she suggested that we have a radio.  This made me
vaguely uncomfortable.  We all had an idea in those days that radio
caused electrical disturbances that had a bad effect on the weather, so
that on account of some gigolo with corrugated hair singing
"Ting-a-ling" or "You've got me crying again" in Montreal or Los
Angeles, a bunch of good men had bad snowshoeing all winter.  So I
tactfully sidestepped the idea and we viewed the sunset through the one
window of our cabin for relaxation; at that, these sunsets were often
pretty good to look at.  Eating was lots of fun too.  We arose before
daylight and often travelled all night.  Snowshoes and toboggan, or
canoe, were cared for almost like they had been horses, while the
little woman waited patiently, wishing it was time to eat.  She was,
she said, becoming jealous of the bush.  There was one particular ridge
that I visited often and spoke highly of (value about two hundred
dollars) as it was the abode of a number of marten, and my frequent
visits there occupied whatever spare time I had.  For this spot she had
a special hatred and I, in my blind stupidity, could not see the reason.

We ate, slept, and dreamed lines of traps, and in the evenings laid out
trails and pored over maps, or made preparations for the next day's
excursion.  I was engrossed by my work and talked of little else.  The
stern discipline of the trail ruled also in the cabin.  The trail was
my religion, and like any other fanatic I tried to force my views on
even the one I loved.  Altogether there were the makings of a first
class domestic tragedy.

But the exigencies of constant travel and the demands made by our
manner of living, left little time for temperamental readjustments, and
the hurry and drive of the Fall and early Winter trapping occupied the
full of our days, until one evening just before Christmas, I returned
from a short trip to find my proud and gallant Anahareo in a
dishevelled and disconsolate heap upon the bunk, with a tear-stained
face and her eyes swollen and red from weeping.  And then the whole
thing came out, everything, piece by piece.  At first I could not
understand; everything had seemed to be going first class.  I had been
a most appreciative husband, not at all indifferent or unattentive as
the real Indians often were.  This woman had won my lasting respect and
admiration with her courage in the face of unaccustomed hardships, and
I had let her know it.  But that, it was now revealed, was not at all
what she wanted.  Respect!  The dead got that.  Admiration!  What was
that!--You admired scenery.  We lived, it appeared, with all the
sociability of sleigh dogs: we ate our meals with the same relish we
enjoyed throwing wood through a stove-door.

And I listened amazedly to this strange contradictory creature that
could sleep out in the rain with a smile, and cry over a lack of
ceremony at meal times.

There was more, much more.  Trap lines, plans! plans!--plans to inflict
torture and death and then to go out and boast of it!  I was startled
at this latter accusation, and a little indignant.  I was trying my
best to earn us a living; a man had to kill whatever way he could, and
all he could; fur was getting low.  But the truth peered out in a most
unwelcome fashion from between the lines of this recital, and when it
was done I marched out of the house to visit my pet ridge, hurt,
bewildered, and not a little angry.  I made a fire up there and sat and
smoked and thought the matter over while I skinned a marten, and fought
my battle out alone as Anahareo had done this many days.  And all at
once I saw myself as I was, saw clearly the selfishness that had been
bred in me during a life of solitary wandering, and realized how narrow
was the rut that I had got into.  Even my niggardly attentions had been
only the scraps, the leavings, the tag ends left over from the spent
emotions of the day, that I was offering to this woman who had given
her happiness into my hands.  And I went down that mountain trail at a
run, my dignity, my accursed self-assurance thrown to the winds, and
arrived home with my snowshoes nearly smoking, hoping I was not too
late.  You guessed it; I was not.  And from that day, on which I
recognized to some extent my woeful shortcomings and what they might
have led to, and made some effort to overcome them, could be counted
the first steps in a regeneration that worked a revolution in our whole
scheme of existence.

Don't imagine that there was any sudden and complete renunciation such
as overcomes the luckless and often temporarily aberrated victim of a
highly emotionalized revival meeting; this would have been, at best,
but temporary.  It was a slow, hard process fraught with many mental
upheavals and self-examinations, and numerous back-slidings and
reversals to type, and it involved a self-discipline as severe as any
that the trail, with all its stern severities, had ever imposed upon
me.  But I emerged from each conflict, I hoped, the better for it, and
was not without assistance.

And so the threatening clouds of disaster that were darker and more
real than I at the time suspected, rolled clean away.  We worked as
hard as ever, but I left the job outside the home where it belonged and
we took a pride in our little cabin and made ornaments for it, and
talked of many things that we had never before had time to even
mention.  We found our necessary partings longer now, and in our
travels, where our trails forked, the one who arrived at the crossing
first, spelt out a foolish message for the other in the snow; and we
were very happy, at last.  And Anahareo became her old self once again.
But I never did.  And the lesson never was lost, and from it sprang
results such as we had never dreamed of, and it had a bearing on all
the strange events that followed after.

Anahareo from now on followed the trap trails regularly and we were
boon companions.  Although it was her first Winter at this rather
strenuous occupation, she soon became so adept that she was able to
take her turn at breaking trail, took care of side lines herself, and
was altogether a good deal more of an assistance than some men partners
I have had.  She was strong and hardy, but this did not prevent her
from realizing more and more keenly the cruelties of her new
profession.  The sight of frozen twisted forms contorted in shapes of
agony, and the spectacle of submissive despairful beasts being knocked
senseless with an axe handle, and hung up in a noose to choke out any
remaining spark of life while the set was being made ready for a fresh
victim, moved her to deep compassion.  And worse, to her mind, were the
great numbers of harmless birds and squirrels caught accidentally and
to no good purpose, and often still alive, some screaming, others
wailing feebly in their torment.  And strangely, it was to be noticed
that some of these animals seemed to sense her feeling, and on more
than one occasion a doomed animal would look not towards me, to the
death that was so near, but at her, staring as though in dumb hopeless
appeal to her for the mercy it must have known that I would never give.
I remember particularly a lynx that after the stroke screamed out like
a woman, and not yet dead, tried to crawl to her in the anguish of its
last extremity.

[Illustration: "Anahareo soon became adept at this rather strenuous
occupation."  _Photo by Grey Owl_.]

These things made her very unhappy, which was a mild surprise to me, as
I had supposed that, being of full Indian blood, she would have at
least as much apathy for the sufferings of these animals that were
providing us with the means to live, as had I myself.

I had long ago invested the creatures of the forest with a personality.
This was the inevitable result of a life spent wandering over the vast
reaches of a still, silent land in which they were the only form of
animate life, and sprang from early training and folklore.  Yet this
concession gained them no respite, and although I never killed
needlessly and was as merciful as was possible under the circumstances,
the urge of debts to be paid, money to spend, and prestige to be
maintained, lent power to the axe handle and cunning to the hands that
otherwise might have faltered on occasion.  Always I had pitied, but
had closed my mind to all thoughts of compassion save in retrospect.

But my point of view was slowly changing.  Forced at last to stop and
look around and take stock, obliged now to think of someone else
besides myself, I stepped out of my case hardened shell and rubbed my
eyes to get a clearer vision, and saw many things that had hitherto
escaped me in my remorseless striving for achievement.  My surroundings
began to have a different aspect.  Up till now the fate of those
creatures amongst whom my life had been spent had mattered only in so
far as they contributed to my prowess as a hunter.  Now my newly
awakened consideration for something else besides myself, was branching
out most disastrously it seemed.  I began to have a faint distaste for
my bloody occupation.  This was resolutely quenched, though the
eventual outcome was inescapable.

Even in those less enlightened days, at a time when I actually believed
that radio was spoiling the hunt by affecting the climate, I was
perhaps not without a certain sense of justice which, though not
recognized as such at the time, evinced itself in strange ways.  A
primitive and imaginative ancestry had not been without its influence.
There were certain precepts, amounting to superstitions, that were
strictly adhered to at no matter what cost in time and trouble.  You
may not take them very seriously, but to me they amounted to a good
deal, and were often performed with quite a solemn ritual.  No bear was
killed without some portion of the carcass, generally the skull or
shoulder bones, being hung up in a prominent place somewhere in his
former range.  The bodies of beaver were laid in supposedly comfortable
positions and the hands, feet and tail, severed for convenience in
skinning, were laid beside or on the body.  Whenever possible the body,
with these appendages securely tied to it, was committed to the water
through a hole laboriously cut in the ice.  Those eaten had the
knee-caps, unusual adjuncts for an animal, removed and most religiously
burnt.  All these ceremonies are practised by semi-civilized, and even
more advanced Indians over a wide area; and should anyone be tactless
enough to enquire the reason why they do these things, the answer if
any, will be:

"Ozaam tapskoche anicianab, mahween--because they are so much like
Indians."

I had however other customs of my own invention, and kept rigidly two
self-imposed rules.  I would allow no sportsman I guided to photograph
a wounded animal until it was dead, and any animal that should chance
to be brought to camp alive, must be resuscitated and let go.  So when
I one Spring captured a month old wolf cub I took him home to the cabin
and kept him alive, intending to free him when he was old enough to
fend for himself.  He was a forlorn little creature, and although I was
kind to him he was never happy.  He had two sole amusements: one was
chewing an old moccasin under the bed, the nearest approach to playing
that he ever got; the other was staring by the hour at the cabin walls,
staring with his slanting, inscrutable eyes unfocused as though gazing,
not at the dark walls of his prison but on beyond them, on into the far
distance, to some far distant prospect of his earlier memory.  He paid
me scant attention save to accept food, but kept on gazing with his
veiled eyes until his view was shut off by the sides of the box in
which he lay and died.

And so perhaps he came at last to his Promised Land, upon which he had
looked so wistfully and so long.

At the termination of the Winter trapping season we went out to sell
our fur.  Prices had fallen, and were going down every week or so.
Although we did not realize it, the day of the trapper was almost done.
The handwriting was on the wall, but although it had been painstakingly
inscribed there by ourselves, none of us were able to read it.

The hunting ground we were working had been previously trapped over by
a noted hunter the Winter before, and between that and the low prices
we only took fur to the value of about six hundred dollars; not a great
sum in comparison to what I had been in the habit of making during
these boom years.  There would be little left over after the debt was
settled and a summer's provisions purchased, not enough to start out in
pursuit of that willow-the-wisp, the virgin, untapped hunting ground
that every trapper sees visions of, gets reports about, sees on maps,
but never quite catches up to.  So I decided on a Spring hunt to
replenish the exchequer, something that went a little against even my
principles, as a hunt at that time of the year was looked on as both
destructive and cruel by the better class of trapper.  But there was a
family of beaver remaining over from the organized slaughter of the
year before, and like too many of my kind, I salved my conscience by
saying that I may as well to clean them out before someone else stepped
in and took them.

Delayed over a week at the post by the late arrival of a buyer, and
more time being consumed by the journey in, we did not arrive back at
our ground until the last of May.  The hunt should have been over by
now, and I was a little disturbed over the hardship I could not now
avoid inflicting, as the young beaver were most certainly born by now,
and would perish after the old ones were removed.  This proved to be
the case.  Whilst making a set at an old, renovated beaver house where
I knew the female to be, I heard faintly the thin piping voices of
kitten beavers.  In apparent clumsiness, I allowed my paddle to drop
with a rattle on the canoe gunnell with the intention of hiding the
sound, but Anahareo had heard it and begged me to lift the trap, and
allow the baby beaver to have their mother and live.  I felt a
momentary pang myself, as I had never before killed a beaver at this
time on that account, but continued with my work.  We needed the money.

The next morning I lifted the bodies of three drowned beaver.  The
mother was missing however, one trap being unaccounted for.  I found
where the chain had been broken, and dragged for the body
unsuccessfully, later breaking the dam and partly draining the pond,
but without avail.  She would be the largest and most valuable, so I
bemoaned my loss and forgot the life that had been destroyed for
nothing, and the helpless kittens left to starve.  After a whole day
spent in a fruitless search, I removed all traps and equipment and
proceeded to camp, having no intention whatever of returning; but the
next day, after skinning and stretching the catch, for no reason at all
I changed my mind.  So inauspiciously do important events intrude
themselves into our lives.  I portaged back to the ruined pond that
would never again be good for anything, and we paddled over to the old
beaver house in an effort to discover if the female had succeeded in
getting back there, but could find no indication either by sight or
sound of her presence.

So we turned to go, finally and for good.  As we were leaving I heard
behind me a light splash, and looking back saw what appeared to be a
muskrat lying on top of the water along side of the house.  Determined
to make this wasted day pay, I threw up my gun, and standing up in the
canoe to get a better aim, prepared to shoot.  At that distance a man
could never miss, and my finger was about to press, the trigger when
the creature gave a low cry, and at the same instant I saw, right in my
line of fire another, who gave out the same peculiar call.  They could
both be gotten with the one charge of shot.  They gave voice again, and
this time the sound was unmistakeable--they were young beaver!  I
lowered my gun and said:

"There are your kittens."

The instinct of a woman spoke out at once.

"Let us save them," cried Anahareo excitedly, and then in a lower
voice, "It is up to us, after what we've done."

And truly what had been done here looked now to be an act of brutal
savagery.  And with some confused thought of giving back what I had
taken, some dim idea of atonement, I answered,

"Yes; we have to.  Let's take them home."  It seemed the only fitting
thing to do.

This was not such an easy matter as the kittens were well able to take
care of themselves in the water, being older than I had thought.  By
the exercise of considerable patience and ingenuity we eventually
caught them, and dropped them aboard, two funny-looking furry creatures
with little scaly tails and exaggerated hind feet, that weighed less
than half a pound apiece, and that tramped sedately up and down the
bottom of the canoe with that steady, persistent, purposeful walk that
we were later to know so well.  We looked at them in a kind of
dumbfounded bewilderment, feeling much as if we had caught a pair of
white elephants, hardly knowing what to do with them.  And certainly we
had not the faintest inkling of the far-reaching effects their
unceremonious entry into our affairs was to have.

Had my finger pressed but lightly on the trigger that fateful morning,
these two tiny creatures, whose coming saved from slaughter so many of
their kin who followed them and materially changed the lives of several
people, would have passed like two wisps from some wandering breeze,
back into the Great Unknown from which they had so short a time before
set out.



[1] Pronounced O-_jib_-way, accented on the second syllable.

[2] Hudson's Bay Company.

[3] The "front"; a term used by trappers and others to designate the
railroad, jumping-off place, or other border of civilization; an
abbreviation of "frontier."

[4] Grass Dance: Part of the War-Dance.

[5] Wabeno: Indian Ceremonial Dance accompanied by singing.




2

HOW WE UNDERTOOK A NEW RESPONSIBILITY

It is only fair to say that at the time we did not now what we were
letting ourselves in for.  From the very commencement it was plain that
this experiment was to be no picnic.  Any preconceived ideas either of
us had on the raising and handling of pets had to be radically changed.
These were no cringing terror stricken wild things with feral eyes that
cowered fearfully in dark corners, but a pair of very wide awake,
aggressive personalities, who fastened themselves on us as their
protectors.  They gave themselves completely into our hands, and
proceeded to levy unceasing demands on our attention.  They allowed us
at no time to forget the responsibilities that we had incurred, and
before long they had us trained to sleep with one eye open and one hand
on the milk can.  Feeding them was a problem.  They would not drink the
diluted milk out of a dish, and having no feeding bottle we conceived
the idea of loading a slim twig with the sweet milk out of the can,
closing the beaver's mouth over it with our fingers, and pulling out
the stick.  Masticating this sticky mass kept them interested for long
periods at a time, and they did not need much of it, so this scheme
simplified matters considerably.  They were very gentle, and they had a
kind of naive disarming friendliness of disposition that took it quite
for granted that they belonged, and that we were well disposed towards
them and would see them through.

[Illustration: "A week old, and utterly helpless, they gave themselves
completely into our hands."]

After feeding times they desired to be picked up and fondled and it was
not long before they made this a regular habit, falling asleep in odd
places such as the inside of an open shirt, half way up a sleeve, or
draped around a person's neck.  Should they be removed from these
places they would immediately awaken and return in the most determined
manner, and if placed in their box they awoke at once, and with
piercing outcries demanded to be again taken up, grasping our hands and
lifting themselves up by means of them.  If their cries were
disregarded they would eventually lapse into unconsciousness, but the
passage near the box of either one of us restored them to immediate and
vociferous wakefulness.  They soon got to know our voices, and would
answer concertedly with loud exclamations when spoken to.  We allowed
them to roam around the tent at will, and occasionally on their rambles
they would become lost and parted.  Their bold self-confidence would
then quickly desert them, and they became lonely and would call
frantically for help, and on being placed together they would throw
themselves on their backs with wiggles and squeals of joy, and lie down
together holding tightly on to each other's fur.  Often as they lay
sleeping we would speak to them for the fun of having them awaken and
answer us, which they invariably did, in their shrill childish treble.
Should this, however, occur too often they would become very impatient
and express their annoyance in no uncertain terms.  Their voices were
really the most remarkable thing about them, much resembling the cries
of a human infant, without the volume but with a greater variety of
expression, and at all hours of the day and night there was liable to
be some kind of a new sound issuing from the interior of the box.  The
best known and easiest to recognize of these was the loud, long and
very insistent call for lunch, which chorus broke out about every two
hours.

These whimsical little creatures early showed evidence of qualities and
capabilities that at once arrested our attention and it was not long
before our diminutive charges became attached to us, and, I am free to
confess, we to them.  Each had a special liking for one of us, and
continued faithful to his choice.  They lavished this affection on us
in a number of curious ways, such as upsetting the box, as soon as they
were big enough to do so, and rushing out at us as we passed, or
creeping into our blankets at night and cuddling up to us.  They would
generally lie on our bodies, one on each of us, the favoured position
being a rather inconvenient one across the throat.  If alarmed whilst
out and around, they would come gliding along belly to the ground, each
to his chosen friend, and sit quietly as two mice until the supposed
danger had passed.

[Illustration: "Six weeks old, and with a great air of knowing what it
is all about."]

They were continually escaping, and the first few times this happened
we hunted for them high and low, feeling ourselves pretty smart to
ferret out two such small objects from the underbrush.  But our anxiety
and subsequent gratification were both quite unnecessary, as we
discovered that on hearing us in the brush they would run towards us of
their own accord.  On this account we became over-confident, and one
morning, having failed to close the box before retiring, we awoke to
find their chamber empty, and no sign of a beaver any place in the
tent.  A prolonged and wide search failed to locate the wanderers.  We
hunted all that day both by canoe and on land, and remained out all
night, going back to the tent every so often in the somewhat vain
expectation that they might have returned in the meantime.  It seemed
hard to believe that they would desert us like that, attached to us as
they seemed to be, but after all they were wild animals, they were well
able to travel and feed themselves, and could now probably get along
without us.  We felt a little hurt about it.  Maybe too, they could not
return; there were plenty of hawks and owls, and an otter would make
short work of them.  Realizing at last that they had been gone over
thirty hours, and that if living, they would now be far beyond our
reach, we gave up the search and went home to get some sleep, not a
little sad--and there in the tent, all unconscious of the excitement of
which they were the cause, sat the two deserters on the bed, soaking
wet, and squeezing the water out of their coats on to the blankets.

After this experience we simply pitched our camp near any old lake, and
with due regard for predatory birds and beasts, we let them come and go
as they pleased.  They would walk down to the lake with that methodical
step of theirs, bathe, swim, and play in the reeds awhile and return,
plodding solemnly up and down the water trail together, like two little
old men out for a constitutional.  They were good housekeepers too.  By
this time they were beyond the milk stage, and to supplement their
natural diet we fed them once a day on porridge and each had his dish,
which when empty, was pushed over to the side of the tent, and the
instinct for stacking used material as far out of the way as possible
caused them to try and rear the plates against the wall.  This was not
easy to do, but they persisted at it and very often succeeded.

At three months of age they ceased to be of any further trouble to us
save for the daily feed of porridge, an insatiable and very active
curiosity regarding the contents of provision bags and boxes, the
frequent desire for petting that seemed to fill some great want in
their lives, and the habit they had of coming into our beds, soaking
wet, at all hours of the night.

They were scrupulously clean, were gentle and good natured, they gave
out no odour whatever, and were altogether the best conducted pair of
little people one could wish to live with.  They were very
self-effacing, and a good deal of the time were neither to be seen nor
heard; but always there came moments, generally about sun down, when
they seemed to feel the need of some attention, and getting to know of
this we made a point of giving it to them.  And they would give little
bleats and play with our hands, nibble our finger tips and climb on us,
so far as climbing was possible to them, with many absurd but genuine
evidences of real affection.

This desire to be made much of, the appeal in their voices, the habit
they had of playing with a lock of hair, a button or a buckskin fringe,
made them seem very childlike to us.  These mushy spells did not as a
rule last very long, and soon satisfied they would go about their
business and perhaps not show up till daylight, weary, wet, and very
sleepy.

That Anahareo should become devoted if not actually addicted to them,
is not at all remarkable; but my own attitude towards them was
something quite beyond my expectations, and was even likely to have a
compromising effect on our chief means of livelihood--the beaver hunt.
I wondered at times if it was quite manly to feel as I did toward these
small beasts.  But I was able to call to my rescue the recollection of
an ugly pock-marked Indian, a huge, evil appearing man I had always
disliked, but who spent a whole day in the rain searching for a young
beaver he had lost; and when he recovered it, he came home in the
pouring rain in his shirt sleeves carrying the shivering little
creature wrapped up in his coat.  Yet another had shot a good lead-dog
for killing a beaver he had kept for two years as a pet.  Evidently the
little devils had a way of working on a person's sympathies, and at the
commencement I was a little sly and furtive about them when Anahareo
was around.  Their utter dependence on our good will claimed all of any
chivalry we had.  Their little sneezes and childish coughs, their
little whimpers and small appealing noises of affection, their instant
and pathetically eager response to any kindness, their tiny clinging
hand-like forepaws, their sometimes impatiently stamping feet, and
their little bursts of independence, all seemed to touch a chord of
tenderness for the small and helpless that lays dormant in every human
heart.  Riotously happy for the most part, they were at odd times
subject to fits of peevishness and irritation, during which they
quarrelled and slapped at one another and at us, but these moods were
of short duration and were, we found, the result of improper feeding,
which was later to have more serious results.  Their hands--one can
call them nothing else--were nearly as effective as our own more
perfect members would be, in the uses they were put to.  They could
pick up very small objects with them, manipulate sticks and stones,
strike, push, and heave with them and they had a very firm grasp which
it was difficult to disengage.  When peeling a stick they used them
both to twist the stem with supple wrist movements, while the teeth
rapidly whittled off the succulent bark as it went by, much after the
fashion of a lathe.

They were greedy little fellows and were constantly trying to steal
from one another.  These attempts however were never very serious, and
seldom were successful, as the owner of the stick was always well
prepared, and on the approach of his companion, welcome enough at all
other times, he would set up a vigorous vocal protest which continued
long after the object of them had given up all thought of plunder.
They would none the less allow us to approach and handle them freely
whilst eating, without any complaint, but if we attempted to lay hold
of their wooden sandwich they would let out a sharp ejaculation or two,
and promptly turn their backs on us.

Should we be away up the lake for any length of time, we would, on our
return, call them whilst yet some distance away, and they would come to
meet the canoe, answering the call with long high-pitched cries, and on
close approach would reach up to us with outstretched hands in eager
expectancy, grasping our fingers and looking up at us and making the
most uncommon sounds.  For we always made it a practice to bring along
little bits of sweet things we made for them, and they would lie in the
water eating them with loud enjoyment and a very audible smacking of
lips.  This usage gave us nearly as much pleasure as it gave to them,
the more especially when we found that whether satisfied or not they
did not leave us, but would try to get aboard the canoe, and on being
lifted in, the tail providing a very convenient handle for the purpose,
they would clamber over our persons with every sign of pleasure.  And
if the treats in any way improved the welcome we received, show me the
very good friend whose heart is not the warmer towards you when you set
him at your table!

Yet, on reflection, it struck me as passing strange that we,
representatives of two tribes who, above all others, had each in their
day made the war-trail a thing of horror (an art, by the way, in which
the whole world is at present busy in perfecting itself), should be
wearing ourselves to a frazzle over the likes and dislikes of two
miserable little creatures that were not, according to civilized
standards, worth the powder to blow them to hell.

Towards the middle of Summer it became necessary to go out to the
railroad to confer with others of my calling on the possibilities of
the coming Winter.  On this journey, whilst in the canoe, we let the
beaver run loose as they were not able to climb out of it.  On the
portages they were dumped into a grain bag and dangled from a thwart of
the inverted canoe.  One of these carries was two miles in length, and
they cried the whole way while mosquitoes settled on the bag in swarms.
Having no longer a box, at camping grounds we hung them up in the bag
near a fire to keep the mosquitoes from them, so they were at times
pretty well smoked.  They slept nearly all the time and ate nothing,
but arrived in fair shape except that they were a little groggy.  An
Indian who came to see them said they were dying, but an hour or two in
the water restored them.  It was now necessary to confine them both day
and night, owing to the presence of a multitude of idle sleigh dogs
that formed the larger part of the population of the village.  They
expressed their disapprobation of this treatment by promptly eating
their way out of everything we tried to keep them in, so that they had
me busy providing boxes which lasted, if they were good, one night.

Another trip had yet to be made to the trapping camp for some equipment
that remained there, so we left the beaver in care of a friend who
locked them carefully into an outhouse built of logs.  We returned a
few days later with our load, and as soon as we disembarked Anahareo
went to visit the beaver, whilst I crossed immediately over to the
store to obtain a good strong box, as we expected to board a train that
evening.  I was met on my way back by a pale and distraught
Anahareo....  The beaver were gone!  They had eaten through the timbers
at the thin place where two logs rested one on the other, and gone on a
tour.  Our friend was greatly disturbed at their loss, knowing how we
prized them.  He muzzled a beaver dog, an animal especially trained to
hunt them, and set out to trail them down.  I commenced to comb the
surrounding woods, covering the ground in the direction of the lake
which was some considerable distance away.  The beaver had not been
gone long, and could, under ordinary circumstances, have been easily
recovered; the danger was grave only on account of the huskies of which
there were dozens, and cheap-skate hunters who would kill anything on
sight.

We were not long away before one of the beaver, the female, showed up
in the yard, and when seen was picking her way nonchalantly amongst
several dogs, some of whom were commencing to circle warily behind her.
With a shout and a wild leap Anahareo threw herself between them, and
grabbing up the startled beaver ran for the nearest door, pursued by
the enemy.  This I learned on my return from an unsuccessful search.
And when the hunting dog returned and was found to have also failed,[1]
we, Anahareo and I, looked at one another silently and with one common
thought--the little male whose curiosity and wandering habits had got
him into hot water continually, had made just one trip too many.  The
big strong box looked pretty large and empty with one small lonely
kitten beaver crouched unhappily in a corner of it.  They had never
been apart more than a few minutes all their short lives, and this one
was wailing querulously in the way they had when lonesome, or in some
trouble.

I hunted all evening without avail.  The train we were to have taken
passed on without us, and it would very soon be dark.  The place was
swarming with huskies, hunting dogs and ---- dogs, most of them half
starved, and the kitten would have made no more than a mouthful for any
of them.  The chances were poor.  I had never realized until now how
much the little fellows had gotten in under my skin.  The lost waif was
my own particular chum, and I was going to miss him.  Yet I could not
believe but what he had somehow made the grade and got to the lake,
distant though it was.  They had blundered complacently through a
number of tough situations from the time of their birth on,
and--there--sure enough, across a narrow bay I saw a dark brown object
on the shore line, dimly seen in the rapidly falling dusk--just in
time!  I gave several loud calls and instantly, not from the direction
of this brown object at all, but from a spot not a stone's throw ahead
of me, came an answer, a most dolorous wailing.  The willows were very
thick and I could see nothing, but I advanced, calling every few steps
and getting an answer each time, until with eyes bulging and hair
erect, the wanderer burst through the leaves and threw himself at my
feet.  I picked up the little furry body and held him close to my
shirt, while he uttered barely audible whimpering sounds and burrowed
his nose into my neck.  He was bone dry, so that although he must have
been on the point of entering the water, he had allowed himself to be
called away from it by the sound of a voice that he knew.  Never
before, and only once since, have I had the same feeling of relief at
the recovery of anything lost.

Anahareo of course was overjoyed.  And now the so-big box had its small
quota of inhabitants, and from it there arose sounds of strife as the
reunited couple quarrelled lustily over some sweet biscuits we had
bought to celebrate the occasion.  And as I watched them disporting
themselves in happy unconsciousness of any danger past, present or
future, I found it strange and a little disquieting that these animals,
that had seemed heretofore to have only one use, and that I had
destroyed by hundreds, should turn out to be so likeable, should so
arouse the protective instinct of a man who was their natural enemy.

From a purely economic viewpoint, I had long been opposed to the
wholesale slaughter now going forward, which was indeed almost at an
end for want of victims.  But this was different.  These beasts had
feelings and could express them very well; they could talk, they had
affection, they knew what it was to be happy, to be lonely--why, they
were little people!  And they must be all like that.  All this tallied
with the incredible stories I had heard in younger days, and perhaps
accounted for the veneration that our people, when savage, had held
them in, calling them "Beaver People," "Little Indians" and "Talking
Brothers."  Indian mothers, bereaved of an infant, had suckled baby
beavers at their breasts and thus gained some solace.  I had seen them
myself cared for tenderly by those whose hands they had fallen into.
And I would have left them to die with never a thought, an intention
that seemed now to have been something nearly barbarous.  Well, we had
to live, and anyway they were all right.  To make sure I looked inside
the box, and carefully securing the lid, went to bed.

That night they gnawed their way out of their new domicile and, weary
with this, and that, and one thing and another, were found the next
morning fast asleep along side of it.

Having again missed our train, with the freakish irresponsibility
common to our kind when not seriously employed we decided to miss a few
more and stay for the weekend.  The news concerning our menagerie had
spread, and we were approached by a fur dealer who wanted to see what
we had.  There were, he said, a pair of other young beaver that an
Indian had turned into a store keeper in part payment of his debt, and
he himself had intended to buy them.  They were not, he said, in good
shape and might die, and he would not touch them unless shipped to him
at the present owner's risk.  He was much taken with ours, as they were
in first class condition, and he made us a good offer.  This of course
we did not accept; although we were getting short of money we had no
notion of parting with them.

But we did go to see the other kittens, first putting our own under a
heavily weighted galvanized wash tub, and setting a guard over them
with orders to show them to nobody.  The place we were going to was a
combined general store and hotel, but its principal source of revenue
was the sale of contraband liquor.  This bootlegger was not a bad
fellow at heart, and he gave away as much whiskey as he ever sold.  He
was a very devout man too, and had in his private chamber a kind of
altar with a candle burning continuously before it.  Here he was in the
habit of holding family worship, and it was no uncommon thing for him
to rise from his knees and repair behind his grocery counter, sell a
bottle of liquor to a customer, and return to his devotions, being
careful to bless himself before entering the sacred chamber.  These
people, who had bought the new kittens, had no idea of how to look
after them, and the little creatures were in utter misery.  They were
plainly in a dying condition, crying weakly without ceasing.  When we
reached inside the box they clutched our fingers in their tiny hands
with pitiful cries of distress, as though begging the best they knew
how for somebody, anybody, to take away this great trouble that had
fallen upon them, to keep them from the black abyss into which they
were sinking.

I could pity, but not condemn.  I had not the right; at the old beaver
house I had nearly done this very thing myself.

"If only they would let us have them," whispered Anahareo, "Just to die
in the box with ours beside them, so they wouldn't be lonely."

"We'll buy them."  I turned to the store keeper, "How much do you want
for them?"

"Plenty," he countered.  "How much you got?"

I told him.  "Not enough," he said.  He had to live too.

Anahareo offered to care for them, suggesting shrewdly that they would
be worth more if they recovered.  This overture also was refused.  The
merchant had sent for a license to enable him to ship them to the
dealer we had met, and would, he stated, be satisfied if the beavers
lived until the deal was settled, and they safely on their way.  If
they then succumbed it would be, he considered, a good joke on the
buyer.  This, I might add, was a fair example of the ethics of more
than a few of the bucket-shop fur buyers that the late boom in prices
had produced.

But the kittens did not live, fortunately perhaps, and without water,
proper food or care of any kind, one little prisoner was found on the
Sunday morning lifeless in his cell, and the other lay dead beside a
water pail that he had crawled to for the life-giving fluid that he
could not reach.

And it seemed to me like very close to desecration, when the two little
wasted forms that belonged in the clean sweet freedom of the Silent
Places were thrown, dead and despised, into a dirty bucket of slops.

And later, as I looked in on the two small creatures that were so
dependent on me, I knew that never would I sell them into bondage, and
that living or dead they should be forever free.  I thought too, of
that other brown body lying squandered and lifeless on the bottom of
their home-pond with its paw, so much like a hand, clamped in one of my
traps.  My gesture of atonement, made half in earnest at the time, now
began to have a deeper meaning.  And let times be never so hard in days
to come, rather than be a party to such a scene as I had just witnessed
in that sordid bootleg joint, I would myself go hungry.

I think it was at that moment that I finally decided to quit the beaver
hunt for good.



[1] The very young of most animals, as a protection against predatory
beasts, are odourless.




3

HOW THE PILGRIMAGE COMMENCED

This decision of mine to give up beaver trapping was not a hasty one.
Beaver was an animal on which I had depended almost entirely for my
living.  They had been so identified with my own destiny as to be
something in the light of a patron beast, far more so than an owl, a
detestable bird whose name had been imposed on me only on account of my
nocturnal habits.  Although I had ably assisted at the destruction of
this beast, now that he was in danger of extinction in the North, I had
a sudden feeling of regret, something of that vacant feeling of
bereavement that comes upon us on the disappearance of a familiar land
mark, or on the decease of some spirited, well-respected enemy.  Thus
the hide hunters must have felt as the last buffalo dropped, so that
some of them abjured forever the rifle and the knife, and strained
every nerve to bring them back again.  Even as veteran Indian fighters,
better able to appreciate the qualities of their late foe now that he
was down, reached out a helping hand to raise him up again.

One hundred thousand square miles of country in Ontario was dry of
beaver, and save for their deserted works it was as if there never had
been any.  I had travelled nearly two thousand miles by canoe through a
reputed beaver country to find only here and there a thinly populated
colony, or odd survivors living alone.  I had sat in council with the
Simon Lake Ojibways and had talked with other bands from Grand Lake
Victoria.  Waswanipis from the Megiskan, Obijuwans from the head of the
St. Maurice, wide-ranging half-breeds from far off Peribonka, they all
carried the same tale.  The beaver were going fast; in large areas they
were already gone.  Was this then, to be the end?  Beaver stood for
something vital, something essential in this wilderness, were a
component part of it; they were the wilderness.  With them gone it
would be empty; without them it would be not a wilderness but a waste.
And I, to whom the railroad and the plough were anathema, had done all
I could, along with the vandals, cheap fur traders, and low grade
bushmen, to help put the country into shape for their reception.

The exuberant recklessness of my earlier days was past and gone, those
lonely, wild and heedless days in the vast and empty silences, when I
had been sufficient unto myself, leaving death behind me everywhere.  I
was beginning to ponder more and more deeply on the unfairness and
injustice of trapping these animals.  The influx of hordes of
incompetent amateur trappers that high fur prices had inflicted on the
country, I had looked on with uneasiness for some years past as a
menace to the profession, and had constantly deplored the brutality of
their methods.  The regular trapper, if he knows his business at all,
sets for beaver only under the ice, so the animal is invariably and
cleanly drowned, or else escapes the trap uninjured.  A dead animal,
decently killed was no great matter, but a crippled beast was a crime
and the woods were full of them.

A number of incidents had contributed to this line of thought.  About
the first of these was the sight of a mother beaver nursing one of her
kittens whilst fast by one foot in a trap.  She was moaning with pain,
yet when I liberated her, minus a foot, she waited nearby for the tardy
and inquisitive kitten, seeming by her actions to realize that she had
nothing to fear from me.  Suspended in the air by a spring-pole, I
found another female--a beast that cried out in a voice strangely human
when I took her down, and died with one of my fingers tightly grasped
in her uninjured paw.  She had been about to become a mother.  This
spring-pole is a particularly fiendish contrivance that jerks the
unfortunate creature out of the water to hang there.  The animal is
uninjured and may remain there for days until it dies of thirst and
exhaustion.  Frequently birds will pick out the eyes before the animal
is dead.  These and other methods equally brutal are adopted by
unskilled hunters who can get their beaver no other way, and these
instances were only two out of dozens to be seen on every hand.

These inhumanities aroused in me a strange feeling; it was that these
persecuted creatures no longer appeared to me as lawful prey, but as
co-dwellers in this wilderness that was being so despoiled, the
wilderness that was so relentless yet so noble an antagonist.  They too
fought against its hardships and made their home in it; we all, man and
beast, were comrades-in-arms.  To see them so abused awoke in me a kind
of loyalty or esprit-de-corps, so that for me to continue my own
operations against them along with these alien interlopers who had
nothing in common with any of us, now seemed like some form of treason,
almost as though I were a renegade who assisted an invader to despoil
his unarmed fellow-country men.  It would be more fitting that I should
sue for a permanent peace with all the Dwellers Amongst the Leaves and
throw in my lot with them against this unprincipled enemy that stooped
to such dishonest meanness.  There seemed to be something grossly
unfair and unjust about the whole affair.

Besides the decimation of game, there were other deplorable features of
this infestation.  Stealing commenced, beginning with pilfering on
trap-lines; soon caches were being robbed of equipment, and trappers
came in to their grounds to find themselves without snowshoes, stoves,
blankets or traps.  Camps were cleaned out of supplies and were left in
a filthy condition; even canoes were stolen.  The old traditions began
to crumble.  Men began to be wary and mistrustful; some locked their
cabins, a thing that bit very deeply into the old free spirit of
hospitality of the real woodsmen.  In those days we figured that a man
who built his camp in a hidden spot or locked his door, was not only an
outlander, but he was not to be trusted.  Now, and shamefully, it
seemed to have become necessary.  To rob a cache was the unforgivable
thing, and the odd man was shot.  It was a sign of the times--the
country was getting civilized.

The little beavers are born any time from the middle of May to the
first week in June.  Beaver hides are still prime at that season in
Northern areas.  So the Spring hunt is still on, and transients swept
through the country like a relentless scourge, invading the territories
of others, killing off the mother beaver who are easily caught at that
time, and passed on to fresh fields leaving the baby beavers to starve
by hundreds.  Apart from the barbarity of this method, it had done more
in a decade to annihilate the beaver, than the Winter trapping of
centuries.  Often the woebegone little creatures, already some time
without food, would attempt to follow the hunter's canoe as he paddled
away with the body of their mother, wailing despairfully but
ineffectually.  It is to be said in favour of natives that they nearly
always adopted these orphans.  But their story had always been pitiful,
even to the apathetic Indians--a craving for attention, a clutching of
little forepaws, confinement, neglect, and after a few weeks almost
inevitable death, wailing to the last, with unforgettable voices that
seemed somehow to yet be faintly audible long after they were still and
the little thwarted lives had passed into the discard.

I had rescued a number myself.  I remember one little fellow, who used
to sleep rolled up in a furry ball on the side of my head, all night;
and when I turned over he would awaken, and passing across my forehead
as I rolled, would arrive at the other side all set, there to fall
asleep again.  He used to climb up on my shoulder, and as I worked
around, cooking or whatnot, he would lie draped across the back of my
neck and I often ate my meals with him there.  But he was a sick little
beaver, and became at last too weak to do these things and died one day
in my hand, still trying feebly to climb up to his old familiar place.

Two others were with me for three weeks and were exceptionally playful
and chummy, and could not bear to be three feet apart.  They used to
follow me around, tight to my heels, coaxing plaintively to be noticed,
until they too, suddenly drooped and died.  Right to the last they had
their tiny paws clutched in each other's fur, as though to be sure they
were not parted even on this the last of all their journeyings.

I had watched fat little beavers sitting up like queer diminutive
Buddhas on a river bank, solemnly wagging their heads at the rising
sun, while the mother lay by and crooned at them, plucking them towards
her at intervals and rolling on her back from time to time, murmuring
with contentment, happy with her young and the sheer joy of living.

The spectacle of a crippled beaver with only one hind leg and three
stumps, doing his best to carry on, had moved me to put him out of his
misery.  Every year in March, when they sometimes came out on the
surface, I had laid in wait for beaver and killed them with a club, and
their resignation in the face of death was always disturbing; some of
them had tried to shelter their heads from the blow with their hands.
One, badly wounded with shot, had swam ashore within a few feet of me,
and had lain there looking up at me so that I had boggled the execution
most horribly.  The incident had haunted me for days.

I was getting sick of the constant butchery, and the sight of the
ruined works so toilsomely erected, the accusing loneliness of the
empty beaver ghost-towns, and the utter desolation of the ravaged
colonies was saddening to any thinking man.  But this had not, however,
prevented me from going on to the next lodge and setting my traps as
carefully as ever; and like many another good business man I had
justified myself, and had resolutely closed my mind to any thought of
the hardships I might be inflicting in the course of my profitable
undertakings.  They had seemed to me to be just foolish dupes who took
my proffered lures, beasts that were put on earth for my convenience,
dumb brutes that didn't know the difference.  And now had come these
small and willing captives, with their almost child-like intimacies and
murmurings of affection, their rollicking good fellowship with not only
each other but ourselves, their keen awareness, their air of knowing
what it was all about.  They seemed to be almost like little folk from
some other planet, whose language we could not yet quite understand.
To kill such creatures seemed monstrous.  I would do no more of it.
Instead of persecuting them further I would study them, see just what
there really was to them.  I perhaps could start a colony of my own;
these animals could not be permitted to pass completely from the face
of this wilderness.  I thought of Michael Pablo and the buffalo.  His
idea had borne fruit: why should not mine?  But this matter took some
figuring.  There was nothing simple about it.  I had first to discover
a family of beaver not already claimed by some other hunter, and then
hold them against comers, by no means an easy task.  I would tame them;
so far an unheard of proceeding, but I had faith in the crazy scheme,
and was convinced by what I knew of our little fellows that this was
possible.  It was like to be a hungry, thankless job, unless I could
locate in a good fur country that would provide us a livelihood, in
which case it would swarm with trappers and I would have to be my own
game warden, with consequent and highly unpleasant antagonisms.  I
would undoubtedly be looked on as a renegade; but my mind was made up,
and I would attempt to go through with it.

Meanwhile my equipment consisted of two small beaver and a bill at the
grocery store.

I broke the news to Anahareo with some misgivings.

"Well!" I informed her, with what assurance I could muster.  "We got a
new job.  I'm off the beaver hunt for good."

"I wish you meant it," she replied skeptically.

"It's true enough though; I'm through," I insisted.  "I am now the
President, Treasurer, and sole member of the Society of the Beaver
People.  How about a donation?"

"Donations are going to be pretty thin," she laughed, "but I am glad.
I never hoped you'd do that.  What'll you do now?"

I told her my plans, adding,

"It may go hard with us--we might have to pull in the belt a few
notches.  Are you game?"

"Of course," she replied.  "We'll both work at it."

Good old Anahareo!  Not much on the skillet, but right there with bells
on when work was required to be done.

Meanwhile other interests had arisen that might eventually have some
bearing on this question of a livelihood.  For some time there had been
staying with us an old Algonquin Indian by the name of David White
Stone, who came from Ontario as we ourselves did.  Though we had never
met before, we were acquainted with him and he with us, by means of
that far reaching and mysterious, but highly efficient moccasin
telegraph system, peculiar to primitive peoples, whereby a man's
character and history are known with uncanny accuracy over whole
territories where he has never even appeared.  He was representative of
that type of Indian that has assimilated much of the white man's
knowledge, whilst retaining nearly all the characteristics of his race.
He spoke English and French fluently, but with a marked accent.  He was
a tall, hard, wiry man, but had the moderate movements and retiring
disposition of his kind.  He was possessed of an unusual sense of
humour, a pair of extremely penetrating eyes, and could howl more like
a wolf than any man I ever heard.  When in his cups he could sing the
Mass very passably, and he had a shot gun which threw shot so close,
that "You could pick a man out of a crowd with it."  Whilst in these
fortunately rare fits of religious fervour he became very desirous of
demonstrating the powers of this unusual weapon.  In his youth the
famous Iroquois raids into Northern Ontario were still spoken of, and
he was not at all sure that some bands of them did not lay hidden in
some inaccessible fastnesses, planning further mischief.  He had
assisted in the laying out of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and had
been present when Edward Prince of Wales with his picked canoemen, had
started from Mattawa on his historic canoe trip along the old fur route
down the Ottawa River to Montreal.  He still believed that in some
mysterious, far-off, undiscovered region, there was game without
end--and gold.  For Dave was a prospector, and the year before had
found a mine, at present unstaked and unrecorded.  Now mining leaves me
cold as a rule and I know little of it; for though I had followed
several mining rushes including the spectacular Cobalt stampede of
1906, it had been as a packer and canoeman only, and I had felt, at the
time, slightly contemptuous of those misguided people who were grubbing
in the rocks and dirt with such eagerness.  But an essayer pronounced
Dave's samples to be so rich that they interested even me.  Evenings we
talked over this mine, and squinted knowingly through a glass at the
samples, and pored over maps.  And the old man's enthusiasm so fired
the imagination of Anahareo, who comes of a family of prospectors, that
I think the only thing that stopped them from starting out on an
expedition at eleven o'clock one night, was the impossibility of
obtaining supplies at that hour.  With some difficulty I persuaded them
to at least consider waiting till Spring, when we might have a stake,
and then we'd all go.  That was his plan, share and share alike.  Then
we'd cash in, get us a good outfit, and head North to take our pick of
the wild country beyond the reach of civilization; for we all still
believed that there was game "in them thar' hills."  We all soberly
discussed the arrangements that would be necessary for the beaver, who
would be big by then, quite as though they were two growing children
whose welfare had to be considered in any plans we made.  David used to
play with them by the hour, teaching them their manners and officiating
at their games.  I had not divulged my ultimate scheme to him, as I was
possessed of a superstition that any plan which was broached to a party
not directly connected with it would never be carried out.

It had been raining steadily in that part of Quebec for three straight
summers, and living in a tent we were always damp and none too
comfortable.  The Indians were dying like flies from tuberculosis and
other ills that this weather was greatly responsible for.  Their
hunting grounds had been invaded and depleted by "railroad" trappers,
and those that were not starving were so undernourished that they had
no longer any resistance against the diseases that civilization had
brought to them.  The Indian doctor from Ottawa had his hands full, and
he advised us to get away from these conditions before we fell a victim
to them.

A piece of luck in the shape of a hunting party, offered the
wherewithal to make the move, so we hired out with them, beaver and
all.  The beaver became at once the mascots of the party and had a
whale of a time, getting acquainted with the sportsmen, cutting holes
in tents and tarpaulins, stealing bread, getting into the butter and
eggs, and being a general nuisance.  We let them go at nights, and they
got lost pretty regularly, as we moved camp often and these constant
changes in the surroundings confused them.  But they always arrived
home somehow, entering the wrong tent at three o'clock one morning, one
of them clambering over a sleeping man and trailing his wet body from
nose to tail over the man's face.  This caused a passing sensation and
some momentary but caustic comment.  Toward the end of the trip the
party ran low in provisions, and the beaver were much envied, as, their
kind of food growing all around them, they were for several days the
only members of the expedition who had enough to eat.

About this time we met up with a Micmac Indian who hailed from New
Brunswick.  His name was, we will say, Joe Isaac.  He was actually
called by some other biblical appellation, but I refrain using it here
out of respect for his feelings, should he ever peruse this account.
However, he read, he said, nothing but the best of literature, so that
leaves me fairly safe.  In my wanderings I have met numbers of pretty
fair liars, artistic and otherwise, and of these he was by far the most
accomplished.  He was a natural and to the manner born; one of those
men who holds you in a kind of a trance, and whom you must believe as
you hear him, even though after you escaped the spell gradually worked
off, and you began to see the light.  He allowed it to leak out in
conversation that he was a professional athlete, and admitted that he
was pretty good, and "would go behind no man's back to say so."  And he
was good, there was no denying it; he was a very supple man.  He had
made his living at this profession, but he took first prizes so
consistently that at last he had been barred all over the continent.
He was at present merely passing the time till this ban should be
lifted, as working, he said, took the spring out of his bones.  No
place could be mentioned but he had been there at some time or another;
if you had been there yourself, and confounded his statements, he
escaped confusion by the simple expedient of changing the name of the
place.  He had scars supposed to have been received in battle, but
which turned out to be the result of a surgical operation.  His
experiences seemed a little crowded for his apparent years, but by
careful calculation on that basis we were able to compute his age at
about one hundred and eighteen.  Altogether a man of parts.

This is a portrait of the gentleman who was to be responsible for our
next adventure.  Amongst other regions, he had been in a district known
as Temiscouata, and as it happened he really had.  Of this spot he
talked long and lavishly.  He had boats on the Touladi lakes there,
owned a hunting lodge, his credit was good at all stores, and he had
friends who would welcome with open arms any friends of his.  I
discounted his possessions, and discreetly divided the sum of his
descriptions by about six, and found that even then this Temiscouata or
Touladi or whatever the place was called, must be quite a spot.  And it
was at that.

Anyway it was a new location, we had never been there before, and it
was far away, therefore as good a place as any.  And of course there
was bound to be a hunt there.  I don't know where we got the idea that
all of Canada was swarming with game; Lord knows we did enough moving
around trying to follow it up.  It appeared from what Joe told us at
one of his sances, that the settlements there were in an impoverished
condition owing to the encroachments of wild animals.  The deer were so
numerous that they destroyed much of the crops.  The fishermen on the
lakes were at their wits end owing to a plague of mink and otter that
had lately descended on the country.  Saw logs arrived at the mill,
after passing through this beaver-infested territory, all gouged up by
their teeth marks.  There was also a species of man-eating cat for
which the Government offered a rich bounty.  After this enumeration he
fell into one of his shorter, and more reflective silences, during
which, no doubt, further material was being gathered.  I took the
opportunity to put a little cross-examination.

"Did you say there was beaver there, Joe?" I asked him casually.  Joe
settled himself in his seat so as to better take up the recoil, and
cocked his lip for a broadside.

"Beaver!" said he, his eye kindling--and then he was away.  He was most
impressive; it was nice to hear him talk.  He warmed to his subject.
Yes, beaver were very numerous.  So numerous in fact that they were
over-crowded in some of the smaller streams.  It was said that some of
them, on this account had to live out, and grew as a protection short
hair on their tails, like otters.  These specimens, it appeared, were
known as "grass beaver."  On being further interrogated, he admitted
that he could not vouch for this from personal observation.  Why he
should balk at so small a matter was mildly surprising, but we supposed
that like any other master of his art, he knew his limits.[1]

This Temiscouata being near his native territory, he had not perhaps,
for that reason, viewed it through quite the same golden haze that
adorned the more distant areas, and some little part of his description
was supported by fact.  Otherwise this story could not have been
written.  But the discrepancies were many and varied, as will be seen.
But his yarns were attractive, I'll say that for them, and well told
too.  With my conservation idea in mind, I was a little insistent in my
cross-examining concerning beaver, and once he bared his arm and looked
thoughtfully at a scar.  I think he had a notion to tell me it was a
beaver bite, received in some fight with a herd, or band, or covey, or
whatever formation they went in, of the land or grass variety.  I
hastily changed the subject.  He was always very hurt if you
disbelieved him, and I didn't press the matter, as there were sure to
be a few of them anyway, and one family was all I needed for the
nucleus of my project.

So maps were got out again, routes were drawn with sticks in the sand,
and we talked and ate Temiscouata and Touladi for about a week.

Trappers' tales!  How well we know them, how we love to hear them--and
tell them!  How, knowing better, do we delight to sail away on some
wild goose chase that promises little profit and much
adventure--because Peter Handspike says he knew a hunter who was in a
country where beaver were so thick, mind you, and the cuttings so heavy
and piled so high, that in getting over them a man fell and broke two
of his legs--yes sir, broke his two legs and died there.  And (here's
the secret) no one had hunted there since!  And now beaver was as thick
as that--(the fingers of both hands held clustered before the face and
peered through with difficulty, indicating the closely packed masses of
beaver)--and the snowshoeing was the best you ever saw!

[Illustration: His yarns were attractive and well told."  _Sketch by
Grey Owl._

"They cannot know why this great trouble has come upon them."  _Sketch
by Grey Owl._]

Dave used to stand by and listen to these monstrous falsehoods,
chuckling quietly to himself, and although he was the wisest of us all
he never contradicted them--afraid, he said, to spoil a good thing.

The fact that these yarns could at best be only partly true, and were
only half-believed, made little difference.  Always there was the lure
of the Unknown, the appeal to the wandering spirit, amounting to a
passion, that possessed every last one of our kind to the core of his
being.  The suggestion was about all that was needed, and a sketchy
description or two, to start the ball rolling.  A map was considered
the choicest kind of literature, intriguing possibilities to be read in
every outline.  While men openly derided the tall tales they listened
to with such avidity, they made hasty and secret preparations to act on
them, and took a chance.

Gamblers all--let's go!!  And so to Temiscouata we went.

Poor old Dave nearly cried when we left.  We felt like deserters
leaving him, but we couldn't rake up the amount of his ticket.  We had
barely our own fares and other expenses, and must ourselves depend on
getting a hunting debt in a strange place.  The old fellow was
negotiating the sale of his canoe and the famous "crowd-gun" to raise
the price.  I had myself just traded in an old canoe, companion of a
good few years on the trail, for a new pair of snowshoes, and I knew
about how he felt.  So we said goodbye to our friend, promising to send
for him as soon as we had made a couple of good lifts on our trap-line.

We took a complete outfit--canoe, snowshoes, guns, cookery, everything.
The beaver went in a tin-lined box with a dish for water secured in one
corner, and we had a large bundle of poplar for them in the baggage
car.  When it became necessary to change cars, I carried them in the
box on my back, by means of a tump line.  In Quebec city we fed them on
the station platform, attracting thereby a large crowd, and there was
talk of "wild animals insufficiently caged."  We hustled them away from
there, and took refuge in a kind of a one-man restaurant, where the
waitress in charge kindly offered me sanctuary.  A reporter gouged us
for our life history, refused to believe us and gave us his opinion
that we were cleverly masquerading, warning us that there was a law
against it.  The beaver, restive from long confinement and excited no
doubt by the noise, commenced to gnaw at the lining of their box, and
only ceased when it was in motion.  Fearing they would damage their
teeth, I rigged my tump line and walked up and down with them.  We
crossed the river on the ferry steamer, and while on board I had to
stand with the box of beaver on the tump line, whilst they cried out in
long continuous wails and scrambled around, and spilled water down my
back.  We drew a lot of attention, some of it unwelcome, but most of it
friendly.  We got a lot of fun out of watching the expression on the
faces of those close to us as they tried, without seeming to do so, to
locate the source of the crying.  One gentleman, being at the time well
lubricated, asked us why, in the name of God did we not let the child
out of the box like Christian people.  Eventually we were all safely
stowed away on a train again and this was very little the result of any
skill or management on my part, although I belong to that class of
traveller who is always very much on time, but was greatly owing to the
kindness to strangers, and the desire to help out, that we were to find
characterises the population of the Eastern part of the Province of
Quebec.

The train pulled out, the beaver quit lamenting, and we began to look
about us.  To my uneasiness I saw that the train was headed more and
more South and East, and through a well settled country; a dismal
outlook.  Here and there stood occasional lone trees, recognizable in
their build as originals remaining from the vast forests that must have
once possessed this region, and reflecting in their lonesome and
forlorn appearance something, I thought, of our own case.  Crossing the
St. Lawrence, that great river that in its lower reaches so definitely
divides highlands of the wild Laurentians from the tamer low country to
the South, had seemed an irrevocable step, and I had felt as though we
were cutting ourselves off forever from our country and friends.  It
had been like crossing a bridge into a forbidden country, or passing a
milestone on a road leading to destruction past which it was impossible
to return.  The hypnotic effect of Joe Isaac's oracular utterances had
pretty well worn off, and now, as the swiftly revolving wheels clicked
off the hurrying miles with deadly finality, we were penetrating deeper
and deeper into what was to all intents and purposes a foreign country.
This, I reflected with bitter irony, was how a captured animal felt
when he was torn from his native heath and shipped away in a crate.

A train ride was no new experience to me.  Beneath the sheltering wing
of irascible but benevolent old Bill Cody, or under the stern
protective discipline of an army, I had seen plenty territory through
the windows of a day coach, and in later days, on the occasional trips
made to such small centres as Sudbury and Chapleau, I had considered
myself a pretty seasoned traveller.  The looks of the country through
which the train had passed on these occasions had been of little
interest, and had been surveyed with the feeling of rather detached
complacency with which we had always viewed the somewhat abortive
intrusions of the settlers.  But this was a different matter; it was to
be no joy ride.  There was the serious consideration of a livelihood,
and there was more than myself to think of.  The difference was that
between seeing a mock battle in the movies, and suddenly finding
oneself under fire in a front line trench.  My accustomed manner of
living had in no way equipped me to earn a livelihood under the
conditions that obtained here.  We were going South-East and it would
get worse.  I looked towards the three living creatures for whose
well-being I was responsible, and began to feel considerable doubt as
to the wisdom of this venture.  Anahareo looked up from an aperture in
the beaver box in which her face was buried, and caught my anxious
glance.  Instantly she asked:

"What are you worrying about now?  We are going to make out all right."

"But the country, look at it.  Is that your idea of a hunting ground?"
I asked, supplementing, "And the train swinging Souther all the time."

"It'll change," she said.  "I bet Temiscouata is just all bush."

"Maybe, maybe," I said, adding cheerfully, that is, as cheerfully as
possible, "Oh! but sure we'll make out, sure we will."  I thought a
while.  "I'll go see the conductor."

We thought this might be a good idea, so setting out I trailed this
official down to the news agent's stand, and there cornered him up.  He
turned out to be a genial person with very optimistic views, and I got
some reassurance there, but not too much.

"Your ticket calls for Cabano," he stated, "and all your stuff is right
with you on the baggage car, so you can't do much about it.  I know
that Temiscouata country, it's not bad at all.  Not much to hunt mebbe,
but easy to live in.  Good folks down there."  He then added
considerately, and I hoped truthfully, "If it's bush you're looking
for, you'll find plenty.  That's the trouble with it, too much bush."

Too much bush!

I returned to Anahareo.

"Well, what does the conductor think of it?" she asked.

"Says there's too much bush down there," said I.  "The man's dotin';
probably thinks a few miles of poplar scrub is a forest."

And the farms, and towns, and factories, and macadamized roads
continued to go streaking by, and we sat mighty close together on our
seat, Anahareo and I, looking pretty pale around the gills, and viewing
with increasing disquietitude this country that was so different from
our own wild friendly Northland.  And the two little creatures in the
box at our feet, our sole living tie with the woods and waters that
were now so far away, seemed very close to us in spirit.  They were
part and parcel of this adventure now, members of this expedition that
was not just two humans and two small animals, but a little company of
four, pilgrims together in an alien land.

We changed trains again at Rivire du Loup, and although we swung due
South from there, we began to glimpse heartening, though as yet distant
views of purple wooded hills and the glimmer of an occasional lake.  We
even saw an Indian, but had no chance to speak to him.

Our two small companions in tribulation now began to show the effects
of the journey, and the sympathetic conductor permitted us to break
some train rules on their behalf, allowing us to turn them loose in the
nearly empty coach, where they paraded solemnly up and down the aisle.
He suggested that we go into the baggage car with them, where the air
was fresher.  This change and some fresh water (the entire contents of
the cooler) brightened them up considerably.  Water and fresh air
seemed to always have a more revivifying effect on them than food.
They had not eaten for a long time, nor for that matter had we, in our
anxiety.  On learning of this the train crew shared their lunches with
us and helped feed the beaver, and I think, between the beaver and us,
they gave away most of their dinner.  Thus the noblesse of Old Quebec.

This friendly treatment and the sight of big Temiscouata Lake, flanked
on the opposite shore by a high green mountain that was shaped like an
elephant's back and crowned with pine trees, had a very cheering effect
on our spirits.  And as we neared our destination we saw stretching
from the East shore of the Lake, and as far away as the eye could
reach, the rolling sweep of a sure-enough, honest-to-God forest.


I loaded the outfit on the wagon that was to take us to the lake, and
we moved off.  The town was small, obviously a bush town.  There were
farms on this side, but there across the water was our environment, and
plenty of it apparently.  Things were beginning to shape up a good deal
better.  But I had still a lot of contriving to do.  We had only about
a month's provisions with us, and we would have to eat this Winter
until we brought out some kind of a hunt.  Everything depended on my
getting a hunter's debt.

After I had paid the teamster I put back into the pocket of my buckskin
coat our entire fortune, consisting of exactly one dollar and
forty-five cents.



[1] The writer has since read an account by V. B. Cawston in which he
describes just such an animal, existing in the southern interior of
British Columbia.  He intimates that they need little water, and states
that they cut grass and dry it for hay.  They are he says, the size of
a ground-hog and have a short tufted tail.  An opportunity is offered
here for some interesting research.




4

HOW WE CAME TO TOULADI

The town of Cabano was a typical French Canadian village, rambling
picturesquely along the lake shore in the lee of a high forested ridge.
It was a pleasant sunny place, and had none of that chilling aloofness
about it that so daunts the newcomer in many towns of its size; nor did
the people who walked its streets have that harried look so often seen
on the face of the city dweller.  The very appearance of its
tree-shaded board sidewalks and unpretentious but neat wooden
dwellings, somehow suggested a spirit of good will and hospitality, as
houses and clothes not unusually reflect the personality of those who
occupy them.  The town's most prominent features were a saw-mill,
without which it would have had no reason for being, and a tall stone
church that stood high on a knoll above the rest of the village, which
seemed to nestle in the shelter of it.

As we passed through the streets with all our worldly goods piled on
the accompanying wagon, we encountered numbers of people, all of whom
were speaking French.  No English was to be heard, and it was apparent
that what little of the language I had picked up in France, consisting
of about forty words, would have to be brushed up and the forty words
put through their paces before very long.  We heard the word
_sauvages_--Indians--repeated several different times as the speakers
looked us over.  Evidently we were objects of interest, but although
they were frankly curious, there was nothing impolite or unmannerly in
the demeanour towards us of even the most inquisitive amongst them.  On
the contrary it was characteristic that once, when we tried to pass a
group that had been conversing on the sidewalk with the whole-hearted
vivacity common to their nationality, they stepped down into the road
to let us by, while the ladies bowed and murmured their excuses and the
men tipped their hats to us.

The far or Eastern shore of the lake was solid bush without visible
habitations.  Across there somewhere was Touladi,[1] gateway to our
hopes, the river we had come so far to see.  We decided to go there
immediately and make camp.  A heavy sea was rolling, and a party of
people who were boarding the ferry boat, expressed concern that we
should attempt the crossing in our, to them, frail canoe.  We figured
to put our canoe wherever a boat could go, and a whole lot of places no
boat could ever go, so taking half our load and the beaver, we paddled
across and landed in a quiet bay just around a point from the ferry
landing.  This ferry, under the name of St Jean Baptiste (nearly
everything carried the name of some saint in this country), plied back
and forth over the mile wide crossing, and was the connecting link
between Cabano and a single road that wound for fifteen miles through
the woods to another and far smaller town.  This hamlet consisted of
about a hundred families, and was the last outpost of civilization;
situated on the Touladi river, it was also accessible by canoe.  St.
John the Baptist followed us across, making heavy weather of it,
bringing the remainder of our outfit and a few passengers.  Meanwhile
we turned the beaver loose for the exercise they sorely needed.  They
at once scrambled down to the lake where, awed perhaps by the presence
of so much water after the rather arid interlude of the past week, they
contented themselves with running up and down along the edge of it, and
making occasional dashes into the lake and out again.

Not long after, we heard voices approaching around the bend, and the
same people who had advised us against attempting the lake, came over
to us in a state of the greatest concern as to our welfare, they having
lost sight of the canoe and supposing us wrecked.  They were cultured
French people, and one of them spoke English fluently.  And their
expressions of genuine relief and their friendly interest, coming after
the forebodings and utter loneliness of the past few days, and the
thought that these people really cared what happened to us, gave me a
queer unaccustomed feeling in my throat, and neither of us could find
any words.  But when they opened up a basket they had brought and
spread out cookies, and sandwiches and candies, saying that we must be
hungry after our long trip, and offered them to us so graciously that
it was impossible to refuse them, I saw Anahareo's eyes glistening with
tears that were very near the surface.

The beaver, who had so far remained unobserved, created a diversion at
this point by coming up from the lake with a view to inspecting the
gathering, and the ladies cried "Oh! oh! look at the pets.  Oh! _voyez
les babettes!_" and stooped to fondle them with swift little pats, and
then became afraid of them and ran from them, and the kittens, of
course, scampered after them.  Then the beavers in turn became also a
little alarmed, and took to the lake and splashed water over the people
with their tails, which caused more excitement.  So that it was quite a
merry party that day on the shores of Old Temiscouata; but I fear that
our visitors found us very dumb and boorish in our bewilderment.  They
had a journey to make and presently took their leave, first getting us
to write down our names in Indian and in English, and persuaded us to
draw each a picture of our patron beast or namesake.  So that Anahareo,
who is called Pony by those that know her, made the outline of a little
horse, and I portrayed a solemn and rather cadaverous looking owl.  And
as a parting gift they left with us a box full of cakes and a bottle of
wine--"For _souper, pour_ your sup-per--think of us----" and their
exclamations to one another could be heard long after they had rounded
the point.

And as we watched them go we did not feel so lonely any more, and these
kind people perhaps never knew how much they had helped to cheer the
hearts of the two exiles that were out on this pilgrimage--or was it a
crusade?--of which the end was not yet in sight.  We had not, so far,
made even a beginning, and our stuff was scattered all over; so we
busied ourselves making camp, and built a pen for the "babettes," as we
had heard some shooting and feared to leave them loose too long at a
time.

The lake calmed down and that evening we had another visitor, a man in
a skiff who brought us some small trout.  He spoke not at all, having
apparently no English, but smiled and nodded and offered his fish as he
stood in his boat.  I endeavoured to thank him as best I could in what
I took to be pretty fair French, my proficiency in the language
existing mostly in just such polite phrases as were suitable to this
occasion.  I knew the words conveyed my meaning correctly, but he
evidently did not understand me.  I repeated, slowly and distinctly,
but he merely smiled and shook his head.

"That's queer," I said to Anahareo, perplexedly.  "I'm saying it all
right.  He doesn't understand his own language."

"I guess maybe he does," she replied, "perhaps if you tried what you
know of it he might."

"Well, what's wrong?" I asked, getting a little indignant.  "I'm
talking French ain't I, and correct too."

"Of course it was correct," she agreed, "but you were talking Indian."
Well, I had known it wasn't English anyway; but our guest spoke up.

"That is quite all right," he said, in perfect English, "the mistake is
mine.  I thought you spoke only Indian."

During the time we camped there we had a number of visitors, people
coming over in boats to see us, some of them, we subsequently
discovered, important citizens of the place.  Apart from a certain
amount of natural curiosity, these people seemed to feel that here were
strangers within their gate who must be made to feel at home, and they
went out of their way to do it.  Moreover some of them came bearing
gifts.  One brought us some potatoes, another a bottle of very
creditable moonshine whiskey; yet another supplied us with the names of
certain people he thought we should be aware of.  A fur buyer from a
neighbouring town came across with overtures to trade for the beaver,
offering supplies sufficient to last till the New Year.

But whether impelled by curiosity, business, or pure friendliness,
nearly all were courteous and considerate.  There were a couple of
unfortunate incidents, but that was to be expected, and without them it
would all have been quite too good to be true.  All this was a little
unexpected, as my experiences with the few French Canadians I had met
in the far North had not always been so fortunate.  This may have been
on account of the contact with a very unsavoury class of so-called
trapper, greatly recruited from the draft-evading class of 1917-18,
that had invaded the wilderness, and the Frenchman, with his mercurial
temperament, was quick to take new and not always desirable
impressions.  But these people were different.  This was old Quebec of
the seigneuries with three centuries of _noblesse oblige_ behind it.
They were in their own environment, and spent their lives in a little
universe all their own, and as is common with any living creature under
the sun in like circumstances, were at their best.  We may philosophise
and moralise concerning the short-comings of man when submitted to the
acid test of adversity, and thereby perhaps we may get the measure of a
man.  Yet hardships make a dour people as a rule, and it is mighty
pleasant to sometimes consort with those who, being in happier
circumstances, are better able to present the world with a smiling
face, and whose possible reactions to our own particular code are
really none of our concern.

[Illustration: The spring-pole.  _Sketch by Grey Owl._]

I had not as yet approached any store for a debt, and so far no
merchants had contested for the honour of supplying me with a hundred
dollars' worth of provisions on long term credit.  This was apparently
not that kind of a town, and I saw no sign of any regular fur buying
establishment.  The store keepers here probably did not realize that
there was such a thing in business as a hunting debt, and I knew that
this was going to be a hard one to raise.  Time was moving along, and
the leaves were already turning; I would soon have to get down to it.
Meanwhile I had amassed a considerable amount of information regarding
the country.  This did not quite tally with the glowing accounts we had
heard, but its sources were more reliable.  We were told the forest
that commenced at the crest of the elephant-like mountain, stretched
from the mouth of the Touladi river clear into New Brunswick, and
almost to the Atlantic Ocean.  This was all to the good.  But
Mr.--ah--Jacob, or Solomon, or Beelzebub, had been a little too
enthusiastic, and was astray in a few minor details.  He had owned no
hunting camp, let alone a lodge; his fleet of boats was non-existent,
farmers were not complaining of any depredations by fur bearing
animals, (though deer did actually steal a little hay) and as to
man-eating cats,--come to think of it, there was a man who had a
grandfather that--but why spoil a good story; he may want to tell it
again.

An Irish timber cruiser who knew the surrounding country inside out,
informed us that if we went in forty or fifty miles we _might_ get a
few mink and foxes, and the odd otter.  There were, he stated, a few
families of beaver at widely separated points; they were the only worth
while hunt.  And I was not to hunt them, by self-imposed, unbreakable
decree.  It was plain that I was going to keep my pledge under no very
easy terms.  Anyhow I was now sure of my colony, and with the rest of
the fur to work on we perhaps could live.  That was about all a fellow
did anyway in this happy-go-lucky existence,--live, and see lots of
country, and work mighty hard at it, and enjoy it too.  A big stake or
a small one, the results were about the same.  I have never yet in all
my travels met a retired trapper living on his means.

And now a fresh trouble hove into the offing.  The beaver went bald,
and in a big way.  For a long time they had been rubbing and scratching
continuously, day and night, pulling out their fur by handfuls, and in
a short time they were as innocent of hair as a pair of snakes, save
for a narrow mane that extended out of reach down the centre of their
backs.  This gave them rather the appearance of the shaven-headed
Indians we see depicted in the history books, Anahareo's own particular
tribe being generally specified.  So we gave them the first of all the
many names they later had, and called them Little Iroquois.  However,
the matter was serious enough.  They became listless, refused to eat,
and began to fight shy of water, all bad signs with these animals.  We
sought the advice of a doctor.  It was his opinion that we should feed
them no more porridge as it was no doubt over-heating their blood, in
their inactive state, and might eventually kill them.  It was bad
enough the way it was.  Winter was not far off and they had no coats.
The doctor gave us a box of salve, and recommended a well known baby's
food that would relieve their condition.  He charged nothing for either
the advice or the ointment, saying, in his precise scholastic English,

"I am an old soldier; I never take money from any of the boys.  If you
are sick come and see me, it will cost you nothing.  I am always your
friend."

Which was lucky.  I had just thirty cents, enough perhaps for the baby
food.  And to-day I would have to negotiate that debt.  A neighbouring
store had the kind of tonic food we needed for our invalids, and the
merchant wrapped it up.

"_Soixante et quinze_," he said.  Seventy five cents.  I looked at it.
It might have as well been seventy five dollars.  And across the lake
our two little buddies were waiting in their misery.  We had to have
it, and with a courage I had not known I possessed,

"Will you charge it?" I asked.  I tried hard to radiate an air of
confidence, but felt a good deal like a man waiting for the well-known
sudden stop at the end of the fall.

"_Mais certainement Monsieur--en suite?_" I turned to Anahareo who
seemed to have the better ear for French.

"What's that he says?" I asked her.  He answered the question himself.

"Is there anything else?"

I crossed my fingers, touched wood, changed feet, and could have used
some prayers if I'd had any.  He was asking for it, so I took the bull
by the horns.

"I'm going in to hunt on the Touladi.  I want a Winter's provisions."
Well, there it was.

"What part?" he asked.

"The Horton branch," I answered, and that was all I knew about it.

"Oh! yes," said the merchant, "nice country," and reaching for his
order book, stood with his pencil poised--ready.  Just like that.

I went out of there owing a hundred and twenty odd dollars, fixed for
the winter.  When we got outside,

"Let's open up the champagne," said Anahareo.

      *      *      *      *      *

When we returned to camp we found the little beavers as we had left
them, sitting pitiful, silent and naked, drooping in their pen.  There
was none of the grotesque gambolling with which they had formerly
welcomed our home comings, and when the pen was opened they showed no
inclination to come out of it.  Carefully we applied the salve,
spreading it over their little scabby bodies.  This treatment induced a
fresh attack of irritation, and their rubbing and scratching at this
served to massage the ointment well into the hide.  We cooked up a
decoction of the tonic.  Beaver are an impossible animal to feed
forcibly, and we were greatly relieved to find that after picking up a
few tentative handfuls and smelling it, that they ate a quantity.
Before that day was over they perked up considerably and took the
medicated food with relish, and in a couple more days had regained much
of their former good spirits.  I have never known anything alive having
the recuperative powers these two animals possessed.  From my
subsequent experience with kitten beavers, I now realize that with the
heroic treatment that we, in our ignorance, meted out to them, they
should have been dead long ago.  Inside of a month they had their full
complement of hair, and it was to be noticed from then on, that they
were no longer subject to fits of peevishness.  But this was later.
Just now, two trips with a heavily loaded canoe would have to be made
into the woods with our formidable commissariat, and as we did not yet
know precisely where we were headed for, no further time was to be
lost.  After giving the convalescents three days to get on their feet,
I drew the half of our supplies, and one clear Fall morning we broke
camp.

And with a touch of frost in the air, a light mist on the water, and
with the golden and crimson leaves falling all about us, we eased the
nose of our canoe into the current of Touladi, and our gallant little
company of four headed for Over the Hills and Far Away, bound for an
unknown destination.



[1] Pronounced Toolady.




5

HOW WE CROSSED THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND

The river was not one of deep water and frequent heavy rapids such as I
had been accustomed to working on, but was shallow and very swift, and
the poling, whilst neither difficult nor dangerous, was pretty steady.
Standing for hours at a time in a canoe, the usual position in poling,
can become very tiresome.  We were a little overloaded, and it took us
a full day bucking the current to make the reputed nine miles to a
chain of waters known as the Touladi Lakes.  This very welcome change
provided an opportunity to kneel down and paddle a while.  Another half
day in slack water brought us to the hamlet where we were to get the
precise information that would determine our further route.

Here again a church, seeming very large for so small a population, was
the predominating feature of the landscape, affording by its
omnipresence a standing promise of that benign moral support that the
habitant finds so helpful in his toilsome existence.

On the outskirts we met the real habitant type, some of them with their
knowledge of the world confined to the area of their tiny farms and the
utterances of their spiritual advisers.  Those that might be aptly
termed the headmen of this community were kindly, hospitable and
progressive; one of them, despite the handicap of having only one arm,
was a nimble fellow who took automobiles apart and made them into motor
sleighs, had erected a small electric light plant, and built and owned
the ferry boat on Temiscouata.  But there were not a few who looked
askance at the passing Indians from behind half closed doors or
windows, or else stood staring in utter and silent curiosity; some of
them, if on the road, went so far as to check their horses to our pace,
and drove slowly beside us as we walked, getting a good eyeful while
they could.

On the river bank was a Company store belonging to the mill owners, and
they allowed us to cache our stuff in their store-houses.  Enquiries
elicited the information that we would have to go in another thirty
miles to the mouth of Stony Creek.  At the head of this stream was a
lake that was recommended as a good location, as the immediate district
had not been lumbered over.  There were said to be a few mink, otter,
and foxes in the country and the lake was the abode of a family of
beaver, reputed to be the only one in the entire region.  It was
noticeable that as we penetrated deeper into this country, so the game
retreated before us, spread out, and grew less.  We learned also that
the river forked here, and the branch that we were to ascend was so
swift and shallow that a heavily laden canoe was out of the question,
and we must have the bulk of our outfit taken by team over a lumber
road that followed the river.  Coming from a country where roads and
teams do not flourish, I rebelled inwardly at thus having to back down,
but a look at the river convinced me that it was the only course.  It
was not a country where people travelled by the methods we were using,
and the reasons for this were later to become very apparent.  The team
was to cost ten dollars, which we did not have.  But optimism is
contagious, especially if it be extremely cheerful, and this country
seemed imbued with it; so we felt that we would raise it somehow, and
we did.  On the way back to collect the remainder of our outfit, we
came on to a red fox swimming across the river.  He had nearly gained
the opposite shore when, our canoe suddenly appearing around the bend,
he did what a wolf or a fox will nearly always do if alarmed whilst in
the water, he turned and swam back as fast as he possibly could to his
starting point.  We captured him, put him in a bag, and later sold him
alive for a ten dollar bill.  It seemed somehow like a betrayal; he had
been free, like us, and the money had no sooner changed hands than I
wished I had killed the poor beast outright, and sold the hide instead.
The dealer, who had made a special trip for the fox, was the same one
who previously had wished to make a trade for the beaver, and at this
time, whilst he supposed us to be in selling humour he made a further
offer, raising his bid to a hundred dollars, cash.  He was very
insistent and not an easy man to refuse, but the beaver were now five
months old and had become so much a part of our lives, that I think no
sum of money however large would have tempted us.  They now weighed
about eight pounds apiece but were not up to normal size, being stunted
by lack of exercise, swimming especially.  But their teeth had not
suffered on this account, and having outgrown their tin-lined box, they
had become something of a problem while in transit.  Once while we were
crossing a lake they opened up their receptacle, spilling out into the
lake, and we had to lose nearly half a day waiting until they were
pleased to give themselves up.  As snow already lay on the ground, and
ice was beginning to form in sheltered spots we could not afford any
loss of time; so we hit on an entirely new idea.  We put them in the
tin stove we had, an oblong box-like arrangement without an oven,
lashing the lids on tightly and securing the door.  We fed them through
the stove-pipe hole, out of which the loud, long, and well-known lunch
call would issue from time to time.  This expedient was the most
convenient arrangement we had so far devised, as they roamed the
surrounding waters all night while the stove was in use, and in the day
time, when it came time to move, they disappeared into it and became
simply a part of the regular load.  They got to look on this as their
routine, going obediently into their tin house and settling down to
sleep on their brush beds.  And only for this device they would most
certainly have lost their lives.

Having made arrangements to have our load go round by sleigh to the
mouth of our home-stream-to-be, we proceeded up river in the canoe.
There had been several heavy snowfalls and Winter had arrived in good
earnest.  The canoe became quickly coated with ice, and the
accumulations that formed on the steel shod pole thickened it into a
club that splashed water at every stroke, so that the gunnell was a
solid mass of ice and the bottom of the canoe was like a skating rink.
Under these conditions, standing in the narrow slippery stern, the
usual attitude for the sternsman in poling, was a ticklish business.
We had aboard only a camping outfit and the beaver in their tin prison.
These few things, including the canoe, could have gone on the load, but
our dignity would not permit this, and I think that nothing can be so
humiliating to a good canoe as to be ignominiously hauled, upside down,
alongside of a perfectly navigable body of water.  But worse was to
befall it, and not at all in accordance with the best traditions.
Putting extra pressure on the pole in an especially stiff piece of fast
water, my moccasins, frozen and slippery as glass, shot from under me
on the icy canoe bottom and I fell flat on my face in the river.  I
managed to twist clear of the canoe to avoid upsetting it, but this
availed little as the light craft, out of control, swung side on,
filled, and was forced to the bottom by the pressure.  Anahareo, who
was kneeling rolled clear, head first.  Instantly we both regained our
feet--swift work to be done, a matter of seconds!  Somewhere under that
rushing icy flood, perhaps already gone, was the stove and in it the
beaver were securely locked without a chance for their lives.

Packs, some air remaining in them momentarily, commenced to float up,
and soon the canoe, becoming empty would shift and begin to buckle.  We
disregarded all this and groped desperately, shoulder deep.  Anahareo
was swept off her feet once, recovering by some miracle of agility.  A
beaver suddenly immersed drowns as quickly as any other beast, and we
had searched for a full minute.  And I think we lost our heads a little
for a moment, for suddenly we were holding up the dripping stove
between us, although we could never remember the act of finding it, and
Anahareo was crying out

"They're alive! they're alive!" while I stood stupidly, clutching in my
free hand, as though it were a talisman, the handle of our new tea
pail, while the pail itself, with the lid on, was bobbing merrily off
with our immediate supply of lard, on its way to New Brunswick.  The
temperature was far below freezing; the water was icy cold and tore at
our legs, so that we were like to lose our foothold and be swept away.

The river-bank was some five rods away but Anahareo, by the judicious
use of her pole, arrived there safely with the stove and its now
frantic occupants.  Three times she ran the gauntlet of the frigid
racing torrent, getting all our stuff ashore, while I, being of longer
gear, did the salvaging and raised the canoe.  Fortunately it was a
staunch craft, and although some sheathing and several ribs were
smashed, the canvas was whole and the canoe still serviceable.

But we had little time for congratulations.  It was freezing hard, and
ice was forming on everything including our clothes.  We were both
soaked to the hide and the beaver in their almost hairless condition
were in danger of perishing.  Some of the blankets were partly dry,
having been in the centre of the bundle, so I wrapped up Anahareo and
the beaver together in them, and left them lie there in the snow while
I rustled some wood and got an immense fire going, working on the run
while the clothes froze on my back.  Once the outer clothing is frozen
a certain measure of warmth is possible inside them, but I must have
resembled a frenziedly active tin-man, and no doubt the whole business,
if viewed from a warm safe spot would have been highly entertaining to
an onlooker.  It had been a narrow escape for our pets, for if they had
been in a light wooden box they would have been swept away immediately
and been battered to death before they could have gnawed their way out,
or I have got the canoe ready and under way.  Anyhow it was all over
now, and such is life in the woods that what with the great warm fire,
a cooking pot half full of tea and a pan full of deer meat, we were
again happy and as well off as ever; while the two deep-sea divers sat
warm and comfortable on new bedding in their tin hut, eating some
candies that were reserved for special occasions, and making a great
noise about it.

We had lost nothing save the tea pail and a small package of lard, and
even two panes of glass tied on to a washboard were recovered intact
some distance down stream.  My self-esteem, however, had received a
severe set-back, for I had committed what, to a canoe-man, was in the
light of a major crime, which I am here expiating by telling about it
from the house-tops.

Inside of a couple of hours we were again on our way, partly dry and as
confident as ever, and looked on our mishap as now amounting to a
little more than a slightly longer dinner hour than we usually allowed
ourselves.  We spent most of that night drying our equipment, while our
two furless companions showed no disposition to enter the water, having
probably had enough of it for the time being; but seemingly hard put to
find some other outlet for their abounding energies, they dug
themselves a long tunnel in the side of the hill before they went to
sleep.

Early the next day we arrived at our cache, left there by the team,
which had gone back.  Across the river from it was Stony Creek at the
head of which was Birch Lake, our final stopping place.  Here we
received something in the nature of a surprise, and also an explanation
of the reason why canoes were not as popular in this country as we
thought they should be.  Those who had recommended this stream as a
means of reaching our hunting territory had told us that it was eight
miles long, but had omitted to mention that it was three feet wide and
possibly six inches deep.

We could no longer use the canoe.

This was, as the fella' said, not a situation but a predicament.  It
was six miles overland to the lake, there was half a foot of snow on
the ground, we had at least eight hundred pounds of freight which would
now have to be carried the entire distance piecemeal.  The joke was on
us.

The country in the immediate vicinity had been heavily lumbered, and
the slash, we knew, extended to within a short distance of the lake in
question.  The green country commenced there and our hunt would lay
from there on, so we had little choice but to keep going.  Packing is
one of my regular occupations, but the idea of taking this terrific
carry all in one bite, especially in a cut-over country, was a little
staggering.  And there was more than myself to consider.  I had already
had sufficient example of the indomitable spirit of Anahareo to know
that she would never stand tamely by and see me pack that load six
miles alone.  And so it proved.  I ferried the goods across and had
them neatly piled in a sheltered spot by night fall, cacheing the canoe
on high land out of reach of any Spring flood.  The next day I uncoiled
my tump line and the fun commenced.  A hundred or a hundred and fifty
pounds, according to bulk, was the biggest load that could be juggled
through that jungle of timber, slashed tops and almost impenetratable
second growth, thus increasing the number of trips, and there was also
the snow to contend with.  And when I set down my load at the first
stage,[1] I looked back and saw Anahareo behind me with a load of her
own, following faithfully in my carefully chosen footsteps.  On her
arrival I looked pretty straitly at her, but she was so pleased with
her achievement, and was so proud to find that she could be of
assistance in this notorious jam, that I wisely decided to keep my
mouth closed.  Moreover she is a full-blood and can, as I have told
her, be very obstinate at times.  So she had her way, and I compromised
by picking her loads, and shortening the stages, and but for her
assistance I am certain that some of that load would still be on its
way to Birch Lake.

We packed all that day, back and forth, load by load, without speech or
rest save at noon for a drink of tea, climbing over piled up
tree-trunks slippery with snow, forcing our way through tangled
underbrush, plunging into snow-covered pitfalls--but never
falling--until nearly dark, returning to camp wet with sweat, tired and
hungry, but with that feeling of contentment and well being that comes
with a knowledge of useful work successfully accomplished.

We had moved the entire load of eight hundred pounds a half a mile.

[Illustration: "A country with the soul torn out of it." _Sketch by
Grey Owl._]

The next day we did not do as well.  The going became so rough owing to
fallen timber that progress without a load would have been no easy
matter.  In some spots we were obliged to leave the bank altogether,
and walk along the stream bed, stepping from one stone to another, or
walking in the mixture of ice and water.  It at last became necessary
to take out a day and cut a trail, time that could be ill spared; but
by the end of the third day the stream wandered away off our line of
advance, and we had in its place an old tote-road that offered some
fair travelling.  We had progressed about a mile all told, and were now
pretty well organized.  We each had our own pile which we handled in
our own way.  Besides our main dumps, we had always one or two
in-between loads scattered at strategic points ahead.  These were the
lighter stuff that could be carried perhaps twice as far as the heavier
burdens, and on these advance trips we were able to spy out the lay of
the land.  These isolated loads eventually fell behind, so that instead
of having to lose time resting after a stage was completed, we could
cool off dropping back for them, again forging ahead with them,
spotting out our route as we went, and so arrive back at the cache
after a long easy walk, all rarin' to go.

[Illustration: "Guiding was a new and interesting job." _Courtesy of
National Parks of Canada._

"At no place was it possible to carry more than a hundred to one
hundred and fifty pounds."]

Anahareo was getting hardened down to the job in the most remarkable
way.  She explained this by stating that she was so lightly built that
she had little to carry but the load itself.  The fourth day we moved
camp, carrying the full outfit a mile beyond the last stage, thus being
ahead of our work and not behind it, so as to move less frequently.

That same night our load was sharply reduced.  Two bags of potatoes out
of less than three that we owned, as well as our fifty pound bag of
onions, were frozen solid.  Well, that was about two hundred pounds
that we didn't have to carry any more.  We got considerable consolation
from figuring how this helped us.  Allowing five more days to get in,
at the rate of two hundred pounds a day saved, we had made a net gain
of a thousand pounds.  It was very encouraging; if we had had twice as
far to go we could have saved a ton.  Too bad though that it hadn't
occurred to those stupid spuds to freeze at the river five days ago; we
would now have been two thousand pounds ahead.  In the woods a man has
often to turn reverses to what good account he may, but this was the
first time that I had ever figured myself out of trouble by means of
arithmetic.

It could be seen that the country had once been well timbered, and this
presaged well for what lay ahead of us in the un-cut areas, but we
would have been better encouraged by the occasional sight of animal
tracks.  But there were none save those of deer which were exceedingly
numerous, and rolling fat.  We would at least live well this Winter,
and a well fed hunter is likely to be a successful one.  An old lumber
camp stood beside the tote-road, and it had considerately been erected
at the exact spot where a raging snow storm struck us, so that neither
our goods nor ourselves were the worse for it.  Here we discovered a
twenty-five gallon barrel, empty and in good condition.  This was a
lucky find, as it would afford first class sleeping quarters for the
beaver, and would not be just dead weight, as on the trail it could
conveniently be filled with the cookery and other odds and ends, and so
pay for its transportation in the day-time.

Since we had left the stream the beaver had made no attempt to wander
away, and slept with us under the blankets.  One would lie with each of
us, snuggled up close, nearly always with their heads on our shoulders,
or with their noses pushed tight to our throats, where they would puff
and blow and sometimes snore, and grumble a little when we moved.
Over-tired as we often were during this rather trying period, there was
some danger that in our heaviness we might roll over on them, or that
they would become suffocated under the blankets.  In the barrel they
were safe and warm, and owing to its concave interior they were unable
to get their teeth into it very effectively.  Not being able to see
over the top of it, and feeling no doubt left out of things they put up
a violent protest at this new incarceration, signalling us with loud
cries, and doing all within their power to attract attention.  In
response to this commotion, which at times was little short of
terrific, we always lifted them out, but eventually they did succeed in
carving out a large square hole about half way up.  Here they would
stand looking out and jabbering away, reaching with out-stretched hands
and begging for pancakes, of which they were inordinately fond.  And as
they hung out over the edge of the aperture, with their droll gestures,
and that queer language of theirs that it seemed we could almost
understand, so human did it sound at times, they looked for all the
world like the travellers to be seen leaning out of coach windows at a
railroad depot.  And on account of this resemblance we no longer called
them Iroquois but named them Immigrants, which was all the name they
had for quite some time.

They seemed quite satisfied with this arrangement, and soon came to
look on the barrel as their home.  When they wished to come out and
spend the evening, generally about meal time, they shoved their bedding
up close to the hole so they could climb out, and they re-entered at
will by means of a box we placed for them.  They were as mischievous as
a couple of monkeys, and although they slept long hours, whilst awake
they allowed no grass to grow under their feet.  They were self-willed
past all belief, and they were untiringly persevering in the
prosecution of some purpose or other, whether it happened to be the
investigation of a box of groceries, or the dismantling of our domestic
arrangements.  Opposition only promoted a more feverish determination
to see the matter to the bitter end, and in the carrying out of the
more really interesting projects, which the cluttered contents of the
tent supplied without number, they exhibited, young as they were, an
ingenuity and zeal that held out alarming prospects for the future.
Had they ever been turned loose in a china shop, I'll guarantee they
would have been remembered there for a long time to come.

These two irresponsibles were fast becoming a very material part of our
existence, and with their clowning, their bickering and their
loquacity, they invested the proceedings with an air of gaiety that
would have been sadly wanting without them, and had they been suddenly
taken from us they would have left a gap that would have been very hard
to fill.  We began to wonder how we had ever got along without them,
and the shrill cries and ridiculous clumsy gambols with which they
welcomed our return from the slavish labour of the pack-trail, did much
to cheer and enliven us.  And then too we had, on the way home, the
exhilarating mental exercise of wondering what new form of devilment
had been set afoot in our absence, as it was impossible for anyone not
a magician to know what they would be liable to do next.  But they gave
us far greater pleasure than they ever did trouble, and the discovery
on our arrival that the stove was down, or the dishes hidden in out of
the way places, or that a fresh bannock carefully cooked against our
homecoming, had been taken out of the grub-box and chewed and tramped
into an unrecognisable pulp, did not, after all, seem to matter so
much; that is, not after the first shock of discovery was over.  The
time never dragged while they were awake, for there was always
something going on, and we never knew from one minute to another when
some novel form of entertainment would be provided us.

There was something infinitely touching in their affection for each
other, and their complete dependence on us, and there were moments when
their gentleness and soft appealing ways were in marked contrast to
their usual rather impetuous behaviour.  They gave us the same
recognition as if we had ourselves been of their own kind, and we were
the haven of refuge to which they came in times of stress, which were
frequent, as they were always getting minor injuries in their contacts
with these unnatural surroundings.  They were hostile to anything they
deemed to be an intruder and became very angry at the continued visits
to the tent of a weasel, one of them eventually making a pass at him,
the agile weasel, of course being in two or three other places by the
time the blow landed.  And I once brought a small deer carcass into the
tent to thaw out, and they both fought valiantly with the body all
night.

They were the most adaptable creatures imaginable and were probably the
only pets that could have been happy, or perhaps even have survived,
under the severe conditions in which they were living.  An amphibious
animal, they were none the less undismayed by the lack of their natural
element, and were content to drink water from a cup which we held for
them; though the water pail had to be kept out of their reach, as they
evidently mistook it for a plunge hole and continually tried to dive
through it, with disastrous results.  Being unable to collect bedding
on account of the snow which was now nearly a foot deep, they took dry
wood from beside the stove and converted it into shavings for the
purpose.

As each new camping ground was reached they soon became busy with their
small arrangements, exhibiting a workman-like ability to take advantage
of whatever materials were to hand, building barricades, finding
bedding and sometimes, if not too cold, cutting small poplar saplings
outside and bringing them in for food.  So that often we were all
working together and at times got in each other's way, and on more than
one occasion one of us had to stand waiting with perhaps an armful of
wood, or a pail of water, while some busy little beast manoeuvered for
position with a stick in front of the door.  They adjusted themselves
quite effectively to changing weather conditions.  When it was warm
they ran around in the tent, never leaving it without they had business
outside, and when it was cold they stayed in their compartment and
plugged the window, whilst we put a lid on top of it and thought no
more about them.

It was now bitterly cold and bannock froze solid in the tent most
nights.  The snow was growing deeper every day, yet we were denied the
use of snowshoes as packing on them with the loads we were carrying,
will ruin the best shoe made.  The packing was becoming increasingly
arduous, and the work of breaking and making camp in the snow with bare
hands was a recurrent hardship more to be dreaded than the actual
moving, as the tent, continually damp with melting snow, froze stiff as
a board the minute the stove was out and was as difficult to handle as
if it had been made of iron.  The constant grind was beginning to tell
on us, and Anahareo was becoming exhausted.  I at last prevailed on her
to quit the pack-trail altogether and content herself taking care of
camp.  I was able to convince her, as at this time some one was needed
to keep fire all night on account of the beaver.  Fortunately the
country was blessed with plenty of good wood.

It was getting late and the Fall hunt should have been well under way.
I did set some traps in likely spots so as to have at least a few of
them working, but they yielded nothing, nor had we seen a track or any
other sign of a fur bearing animal since we had left the settlement at
the forks.  This ill-advised trip began to look more and more hopeless
as we progressed on it, but I reflected that we had not covered much
territory since we had left the river ten days ago, and pinned my hopes
on the country ahead.  There were days when we made no more than a few
hundred yards between the snow and the bad going, and working as I was,
alone, progress was desperately slow.  And I now began to be uncertain
as to the exact location of Birch Lake, as the country did not pan out
as described.  A scouting trip ahead revealed no lake or any
indications of one, and only a dreary, almost impenetrable slash was to
be seen on every side.  I later found we had been misinformed as to its
location, but at this late date I determined to swing over to the
creek, now some miles to the Eastward, follow it up to the lake and
pick out a good route back to camp.  As I proceeded, the country fell
away a little to the North and lake formations were soon in evidence,
and after fighting my way through one of the densest cedar swamps I had
ever encountered, I worked across to a narrow body of water less than
half a mile in length.  The family of beaver, a small one, was there
all right; in fact the lake would have been little better than a marsh,
but for the presence of these animals who had dammed it at the outlet.
The lumber-works extended no further than the foot of the lake; a most
welcome discovery.  A haul-way led back from it, a swamp road that lay
in muskeg, which being snowed under, was not frozen and was about as
treacherous a piece of going for a laden man as could be desired.
Anyway it was a trail, and fairly clear of down timber, and my present
passage over it would freeze it down a little and provide a certain
amount of solid footing, so I carefully walked over it as though loaded
so as to have my foot tracks in the right places.  Every successive
trip would improve this, so it would get better rather than worse.  I
followed the road as long as its direction served, and then switched
off to a fairly clean ridge of hardwood, and was able to spot out as
good a route through it as was possible by moonlight, coming out on the
crest of a lofty hill that overlooked the valley we were camped in.

Here I stood awhile, leaning on my rifle and gazing out over the
staring white silence.  My mind was oppressed by a deep foreboding.
Our problems might seem to some who read to have been of little
account, but against the background of the simple life we led, they
assumed momentous proportions.  This expedition, entered on so
blithely, began now to have all the appearance of a forlorn hope.  I
owned what was, considering the apparent chance of paying it, a heavy
debt.  The jealously guarded stack of provisions we had been so glad to
get had now become an incubus under which, tired beyond measure, we now
moved at the rate of a quarter of a mile a day, if that; and it hung,
like an Old Man of the Sea about our necks, sleeping and waking, and
was like to overpower us before we finally were rid of it.

Further, at the outlet of the lake there should have been mink and
otter signs, but there were none; and no fisher, lynx, or marten roamed
the hills.  There were a few foxes and weasels but there was no price
for them.  True, I had discovered a family of beaver, a pitiful remnant
of perhaps four individuals that instead of protecting, I might even
yet have to destroy that we ourselves might live, and so break my
covenant at the outset.  And with my altered views this would be little
short of murder.  Was my change of heart after all only the
unsubstantial vision of a dreamer, offspring of the folk-yarns of an
imaginative and half-savage people, a chimerical, impractical piece of
idealism that would wilt and wither under the pitiless searching glare
of stark reality?

And far below I could see the tiny glow of the lighted tent that
sheltered all I cared for in the world, a weary waiting woman, and two
small orphaned creatures, sole living reminders of the halcyon days
that had so suddenly slipped away from us.  I looked down for a long
time at the little spot of light, so small, so puny and
inconsequential, giving out so bravely and perhaps so ineffectually,
its feeble illumination in the midst of this vast and terrible
desolation of a ruined and broken forest.  And I visualised our return
to that friendly town humbled, dishonoured, and destitute; a town no
longer friendly.  And on its streets I saw Anahareo pointed out as the
wife of a man who could not pay his debts.  Perhaps we would be forced
to deliver our little friends into bondage, where there would be no
more fun, no more pancakes--no more love.  I went down with a heavy
heart.

But all seemed bright and happy within, and we all of us ate, and the
people smoked and relaxed in the warmth of the little tin stove that
was put to such a number of uses, and served them all so well.  And
while it roared and crackled and grew cheerfully red I related my day's
adventures; the finding of the lake, the discovery of the beaver house
that was to mean so much, and told of the so-good trail we had, and how
we were now all connected up with our winter home-to-be.  And being
started I told stories of the days before we met, of happenings and
queer characters in the distant forests beyond the Height of Land, and
of early Cobalt days; and Anahareo fell to laughing at the adventures
of one Bungalow Bill, who had lived in a shack so small that he had to
reach outside the door with his frying pan to toss a pancake.  And told
the story of how he had once gone out to pick blueberries, and how he
had his two pails full and was on his way back to the canoe when he saw
a cyclone coming.  He made for the canoe, putting down his pails to run
the faster, and got there just in time.  Sure of his canoe he looked
back to see how the berries were making out, and he saw them, sailing
right up into the air in two spinning spirals, drawn up there by the
suction of the "twister."  And then the wind dropped, just like
that--(a good sharp crack of the hand on the knee) and, would you
believe it, the berries, finding themselves suddenly with no means of
support, fell back down into the pails again, and not one was lost, no
sir, not a one!  And we laughed uproariously at the unbelievable tale,
and the beavers, who responded to our moods with apt consistency, were
greatly stirred by all the laughter and the fun, and came piling out
from the window of their caboose and staged an hilarious wrestling
match among the supper things, so that the tea pail was upset and the
dishes flew in all directions, all of which caused a real scramble and
more merriment.

[Illustration: "They came tumbling out of their caboose ... so that the
dishes flew in all directions." _Sketch by Grey Owl_.]

And all this did much to dispel the fog of apprehension that was
settling on me, but about which I said never a word.



[1] A stage is a convenient stopping place at which loads are dumped,
and they are generally about six or eight minutes apart, that being the
length of time that a man can walk with a good load without fatigue.
He recuperates on the way back for the next burden.  This is the Indian
system of packing and better time can be made by this method, carrying
a maximum load, than by taking smaller loads and going right through.




6

HOW WE BUILT THE HOUSE OF McGINNIS

Everything must come to an end, and one night at the falling of dark,
every last pound and parcel was stacked on the shores of Birch Lake,
where it would all have to stay until the ice improved.  Having neither
a sleigh nor a toboggan, we made a fire and constructed by its light a
V-shaped rig that could be dragged, and loading our camp outfit on it,
with the barrel, we hauled it in the darkness over some very tricky ice
to the camping ground I had previously selected, and which was not far
from the live beaver house.

And that night we slowly dozed to unconsciousness with the one
all-pervading thought, the surpassing realization, that to-morrow there
would be no trail to break, no more relentless pressure of a frozen
tump line on numbed temples, no breaking of camp in the iron bitterness
of a snow bound dawn, no more slavery, no more intolerable struggle.
There had been real suffering this past two weeks, and much of the time
the journey had been little but a hideous nightmare.  But it was
finished and was now become Experience; and much had been learned.
Thinking thus, and unable to rest with these persistent and unsettling
thoughts, I arose and threw open the door of the stove, and sitting by
its light I smoked and pondered, while all my people slept.  And the
illumination from the narrow stove-door fell upon the weary sleeping
face of Anahareo, this woman who had followed me through this grim
ordeal with such uncomplaining courage and fidelity.  And out of it
there had been born a bond between us, deeper and more binding than any
that marriage tie or duty could impose, the steel-tempered, unbreakable
bond between comrades who, side by side, have fought a hard won victory
over nameless tribulation.

And as I watched she stirred uneasily and half awaking said, "We're not
away back there, packing in the snow, are we,--not any more?  We're
here now, eh?"

"Yes," I answered, from behind my smoke-cloud.  "We are here."  And
then she smiled and fell asleep again.

We had arrived, yes--but where?  And for a long time after, I sat and
smoked and wondered.

There was now a cabin to be built.  The site we had decided on for our
Winter home was in a grove of dark majestic pine trees amongst which
stood, decorous and graceful, a few slim white birches.  The grandeur
of these impressive surroundings rather dwarfed us and our efforts, and
made us seem a little like pigmies, and the results of a day's work
looked discouragingly infinitesimal in proportion.  But the presence of
big timber is always inspiring and this remnant of the primeval made us
feel free and wild, and somehow exalted, and it helped us to forget
that civilization was, so to speak, just around the corner, and that a
scant mile or so away was a dreary ruination of stumps and slash.

But there was little time for philosophical reflection.  It was the
second week in November, and there was well over a foot of snow on the
ground.  The frost was in the timber, making for hard axe work.  The
size of trees required for building purposes were found to be far away,
and most of them had to be hauled long distances with a tump line, on
skids.  It would of course have been easier to erect the camp near the
most convenient timber, but the grove of pines and birches appealed to
us, and we were willing to pay rather heavily for the privilege of
living amongst them.  Under these disadvantageous working conditions
the shack went up very slowly and as it snowed nearly continuously,
most mornings we had to shovel out the inside of the cabin before we
could go to work.  We were quite fussy about everything, the front
exposure, the position of the door, and the way the windows faced;
these latter were cut so as to give a view of the finest groups of
trees.

Operations were being carried on across the lake from the tent, in
which we lived meanwhile, and one evening we came back to it to find
the barrel empty, and two winding and irresolute-looking trails leading
in separate directions out on to the lake.  The beaver had been gone
some time.  Our first thought was that, sensing the close proximity of
their own kind, they had deserted us, as there was a patch of open
water that the native beaver had kept open before their lodge.  But the
tracks led off erratically in another direction, down the lake.  Beaver
have a homing instinct that takes them unerringly back to a place they
have taken a liking to.  Though they have a remarkable sense of
direction, young beaver appear to have no idea of distance, and I
feared that they had set out for our last camping ground, where they
had done a considerable amount of work.  The weather had been soft all
day but it was now freezing hard, which not only had formed a crust on
which they would leave no further tracks, but if they were persisting
in this attempt they would most certainly perish in their half furred
state.  But it transpired that they had no particular object in view
except to wander, and they had left a maze of tracks along one shore
that it was impossible to follow to any definite spot, save by the slow
process of covering them all.  Armed with a lantern we began the hunt.
We worked as fast as possible, as they had been exposed to the cold a
long time and would have to be found soon.  We called continuously as
we searched and were at length rewarded by hearing a feeble cry at a
point nearly half way down the lake.  When found the little beast was
headed toward home but was lying there in the slush, having apparently
given up hope.  It was the male, in trouble again, and Anahareo hurried
home with him while I continued the search.  Very soon, however, I
received a signal that we had agreed upon, given with a light, and
returned to find that the other had already been back in the barrel on
Anahareo's arrival.  Before leaving on this hair-brained expedition,
these enterprising adventurers had undermined and upset the stove, so
it was some considerable time before all hands were restored to their
normal good humour.  From then on we took the barrel and its occupants
over onto the job with us, having to keep a fire alongside of it.

[Illustration: "The presence of big timber is always inspiring."
_Courtesy Canadian Forestry Association._]

Even with both of us working on the building, it was eleven days before
it would be pronounced ready for occupation.  Conditions were becoming
a little disagreeable in the tent owing to the cramped quarters, the
steadily increasing cold, and the fact that it snowed almost without
ceasing.  So one night we were mighty glad to move into the new cabin.
It was at present much like an ice-house as the small stove had little
effect on the frozen timber, and the apertures between the logs were
not closed.  The moss for this purpose, which I had had to chop out in
solid blocks, would be some time thawing, and I arranged it around
three sides of the stove, so as to accelerate matters as much as
possible.  On waking the next morning we found to our great
astonishment, that the beaver had removed a quantity of the thawed out
moss, and had made a very passable attempt to chink the crevices as
high as they could reach, for a considerable distance along one of the
walls.  It is the nature of a beaver to plug any air leak or draught
into his living quarters, and we were to find that this not only
included cracks in walls, but extended to the apertures for doors and
windows.  But this taking over of a task that I had planned for myself
that day was at first glance a little startling to say the least,
especially to one just awakened.  All that day I chinked and banked and
made everything secure without, while Anahareo built racks and a table,
and put up shelves and made all snug within.  And it was quite a proud
looking place when it was all finished, with its smooth red spruce logs
with green and yellow moss between them, and its white plume of smoke
streaming up like a banner from the stove pipe, to spread in a blue
shifting haze far overhead amongst the dark boughs of the pine trees.
We both stood outside watching this column of smoke as it poured forth,
which all bush people do when the first fire is kindled in a new cabin.
The fire had been lighted the night before of course, but we had not
been able to see the smoke.  We enjoyed the spectacle.  It had a very
comfortable look, and gave an air of life and movement to the place.
And inside, in spite of the moisture that formed on the walls and
rafters as the logs thawed out, and dripped into everything, as it
would do for a day or two, we held a small celebration, and if the
neighbours had been closer we'd have had a dance.  The stove pipe was a
little narrow and sometimes when the wind was wrong the stove did not
draw so well, and when on such days we inadvertently opened the draught
too full, we had a smoke-storm.  But that was easily dispersed by
opening the door and waving it out with a blanket.

[Illustration: "The smoke going up from the new cabin had a very
comfortable look."  _Sketch by Grey Owl._]

The cabin once completed, I hauled over the contents of the cache,
procured a supply of wood, killed and brought in a deer, and then
commenced to look over the country.  It was by now early in December,
and the mink hunt, if there was such a thing to be found here, was
about over.  So I must depend on foxes, fisher and lynx, if any, and
these I went in search of.  For days I tramped the surrounding hills,
swinging wider and wider each day as I sought for signs, until I was no
longer able to return nightly to the cabin.  There were a few, very few
fox tracks, but of other fur never a hair.  With a sheet of canvas for
shelter, half a blanket, some tea, flour, grease, and my rifle, I
ranged far and wide over hill, valley, and ancient beaver meadow,
traversing gullies, crossing small watersheds, and following streams to
their head.  I crawled through tangled swamps, swung across whole lines
of ridges, and searched out every available spot where an animal might
pass, killing my meat as I went, and sleeping out where night found me;
but to no purpose.

Strangely, I was no longer discouraged.  Somehow the matter had gone
beyond that, and was now become a joke.  I became interested in a
detached sort of way, to know just what this country would do to a man.
The whole thing was preposterous.  Anyway things couldn't very well get
much worse, so any change there might be, must, I considered, be for
the better.

In that I was wrong.  It turned soft and the going got desperately bad.
Wet, heavy, clammy days, such as I had not believed possible at that
time of the year, settled down over the land, smothering it; days when
the snow packed and sagged, clogging the snowshoes so as to reduce
walking to little more than a struggle to successfully shift the weight
from one unstaple [Transcriber's note: unstable?] foot-hold to the next
before punching through to the bottom.  This was followed by cold that
covered the dripping trees with an icy coat, and crusted the snow with
a brittle glassy shell that would not support the weight of a man.  So
that no matter how warily I walked I now broke through at each
successive step, and with a crash that jarred my whole body,
effectually breaking the steady rhythm so essential to the proper
manipulation of snowshoes.  The crust caught at the shoes with a jerk,
throwing them out of control, and sometimes bringing me to my knees.
This crust also precluded any chance of ascertaining the movements of
possible animals, as they could leave no track on it.  Whilst this
shrinkage of snow might give satisfaction to some, with the large
snowshoes I was wearing it became only a handicap, and in any event
mild weather and the conditions that follow it are no boon to a
woodsman.  These softening and debilitating conditions that made a
mockery of efficiency and turned artifice to naught, were detestable in
the extreme to one conditioned to the sterner but more appropriate
circumstances of the High North, where a man passed smoothly,
rhythmically, and soundlessly over the surface of six feet of snow.  It
was as though the very elements themselves were in league against me,
and had conspired to our undoing.  The purging fires of adversity were
not to my liking, and I cursed with exceeding bitterness the country
that had brought me to such a pass.  Thus will man ever rail against
the rod that chastens him, though he may be driven thereby, and to his
own profit, from a life-long lethargy of self-satisfaction.  But it is
hard to submit, give up the ship, pull down your flag.  And that is
what I now would have to do; strike my colours.  I was thinking of my
beaver colony.

I knew beyond any hope of repeal that they must go.  I had made an
undertaking to kill no more beaver and owing to a set of conditions
arising directly from this vow, I must now break it.  They were the
only beaver left in the entire region; there were only four in the
house.  I would need them all.  The cards were stacked, and had been
from the outset.

Across the lake from the cabin stood the lodge that was to have been
the foundation of my colony,--the substantiation of a dream, the
fulfillment of a big idea.  With the two young ones we had and this
small family, I would have asked nothing more, and I well knew that
once I had killed them the whole structure of my cherished purpose
would topple down and never more be raised.

One evening I made my preparations.  It seemed like getting ready for
an execution.  I took over an ice chisel, some bait, and traps.  I made
four sets.  Every trap does not catch a beaver, but in two lifts I
would have them all.

Anahareo stood by; she helped me, handed me the bait, passed me the dry
sticks that were to guide the victims to the traps.  She was, I knew,
moved to the depths; but she said nothing, knowing from experience that
when my mind was made up on such matters that it was useless to plead.
Besides, it was not her way.

The sun was setting, and shone on the pitiful snow-covered home, the
sun that was Life, the sun that these creatures would not be there to
see when the spring came.

I dismissed these weak unmanly thoughts.  It was done.  In two days our
debt would be secure.  We turned to go.

Just then I heard a sound, a shrill treble voice; it issued from the
beaver house, the voice, almost, of a child.  Momentarily it startled
me.  Anahareo heard it too.

"Just like ours," she said.

"The very same."  I listened.  Another voice joined, raised in protest.
Well did we know the details of this small domestic scene.

"He's eating.  Some one is trying to steal his lunch."  This from
Anahareo.  Placating sounds, then bleats and murmurs of satisfaction,
the rattle of busy teeth.

"He's still got his stick."  She elaborated, reading the story out.
"He's eating it.  Gee!"  She laughed a little.  "Gee!  I'll bet you
he's glad now."

Well he wouldn't have to worry about his stick after to-night and no
amount of talk was going to change it--

"Pony!" I spoke harshly.  "What is the use of this!"

Came a hollow plunge, and the water heaved in one of the newly cut
holes: first out, that would be the old lady, the mother--I ran to the
set and throwing myself down peered in, the ice chisel poised.  With a
quick stab I thrust the chisel down into the waiting trap, felt the jar
as it snapped.  I passed swiftly to the other three, sprung them.

There were no words.  We avoided looking at one another.  We collected
our hardware and went home.  The sun was still shining on the beaver
house.

I had run my flag back up again.

When we entered the camp, the two rapscallions within stood a moment
eyeing us, and then surged across the floor to our feet.  Anahareo
gathered them up in her arms and held them close, and her eyes were
shiny.  She is not usually demonstrative, but she is a woman and
chicken-hearted; women are that way.

Perhaps too, she was thinking that across the way two other little
creatures, just like these, had also something to be happy about, did
they but know it.




7

HOW MCGINTY AND MCGINNIS OPENED A NEW DOOR

From then on I gave up travelling entirely.  Nothing is more monotonous
than time spent in objectless wanderings over a country you know to
have been thoroughly explored, exploited, cut, dried, and laid out with
scientific accuracy on a too correct map, especially if it be denuded
of most forms of life.  Any new features I might think I was
discovering would be past history to a dozen, perhaps a hundred other
men.  Moreover, there was never sufficient snow for good travelling.
Perhaps I am over particular, but I am something of an artist in my
line, and take pride in good work on a trail.

To beings of our kind, cessation of travelling, the denial of that
unappeasable urge to see what lays beyond the hills, meant stagnation,
almost a cessation of living, and worse, long hours of idleness with
their dark attendant introspection.

The beaver were our salvation.  By now they had grown considerably,
weighing in the neighbourhood of fifteen pounds apiece, and their fur
had come in full, rich, and lustrous.  Although they were growing up,
they were as much attached to us as ever, and still cuddled up to us in
bed.  Our hours did not always coincide with theirs and they were often
ready to rise before we were.  We would sometimes lay perfectly still
feigning sleep and hoping they would subside; but apparently they liked
to see everybody getting around mornings, and would pick at our
eyebrows and lips and otherwise aggravate us until, in self-defence, we
were obliged to get up.  We had to sleep on the floor on their account
as they clamoured unceasingly to get into the bunk, and made it
impossible for us to sleep there.  We could, of course, have put them
in their place as animals, but their perception of what went on around
them was so extraordinarily clear that we felt that we would not be
allowed to get away with it.  And moreover their manner of expressing
their desires was so explicit, and they were so sensitive to the least
rebuff, that it seemed hardly the thing to do.  That they were very
responsive to our moods and extremely sensitive could be plainly seen.
A bustle of preparation on our part induced them to like activity; as
for instance when we were making our bed on the floor, they would run
around us pulling at the blankets, and sometimes make off with the
pillows.  When we laughed a great deal, or held a more animated
conversation than usual, they also became very animated.  And I found a
little self-reproach, and learned to better guard my tongue and temper,
when I found that they kept out of sight, when I complained loudly and
not too well concerning some pet grievance I might entertain.

The stalemate which had fallen upon us would have been well-nigh
unbearable, with its prospect of a further three months of inactivity
until the March hunt should commence, had it not been for these
entertaining creatures, who kept us in a state of perpetual uncertainty
and had our minds well exercised conjecturing as to their next move.
They did the most unforeseen, un-heard of things and were at times
incorrigibly mischievous.  If variety is the spice of life, they
supplied by their diverse and sometimes rather violent activities a
condiment that certainly had a very enlivening effect on ours.  It
often took a good deal of forebearance to view with any approach to
appreciation, the results of what they seemed to consider a fair day's
work.  In their spare time they were always demanding something, or
moving some small object from place to place, or frolicking in amongst
our feet, and we were never really rid of them save while they slept,
and not always then.  But they seemed so happy with everything, and
their laughter-provoking antics so livened up the dull and dingy cabin,
that we forgave them much of the inconvenience they put us to.  Dave,
the old Algonquin Indian, who had kept beaver himself in his younger
days, had warned us of what we would be up against, and had told us
some incredible yarns which we had hardly believed at the time, but I
began to think that he had not told us the half of it.

And as these little elf-like creatures hopped and capered at their
work, and ran back and forth or staggered around erect appearing and
disappearing in the semi-darkness beneath the bunk, the table, or in
corners, there appeared to be not two, but a number of them, so that
the place had at last something the atmosphere of being inhabited by a
whole crowd of small busy sprites.  They were continually emitting
queer cries and signals to one another in their shrill adolescent
treble, and they made attempts to communicate with us in the same way,
and were often astonishingly intelligible.  Sometimes they squatted
upright on the floor and performed their periodical and very meticulous
toilet, or sat with their hands held tight to their breasts and their
tails before them, looking like nothing so much as small
mahogany-coloured idols.

There were moments in the midst of their most intense activity when
they would stop concertedly, and in attitudes of arrested motion regard
us with sudden, silent watchfulness; eyeing us searchingly,
steadfastly, and so very wisely, as though, realizing all at once that
we were not as themselves, they were trying to reach some decision
concerning us; or as if to say, "Yes, big fellows, we know, we are
small now, but just you wait awhile!"  And their looks on these
occasions seemed to be so full of meaning, as their actions were often
so much to the purpose, that as they stood regarding us so strangely,
they gave an eerie effect of being little dumb people with twilight
minds who would some day, astoundingly, speak to us.

But towards the close of their hours of wakefulness, there would come a
time when all this wisdom and alertness, all the skill and artful
planning, all the business and contriving would be discarded and
forgotten.  And the aura of semi-human super-instinct would quite
disappear and leave behind it nothing but two little animals who had
become suddenly very weary, and who plodded soberly over to each his
human friend to be lifted up, and then with long drawn sighs of vast
content fall fast asleep.

These versatile guests of ours accepted camp life as a matter of course
in spite of conditions that were so unnatural to their kind.  They had
no tank but lived precisely as any land animal would have done, getting
along quite contentedly with only a wash dish nailed to the floor for
drinking purposes.  They were quite well satisfied with this
arrangement, for though the door was open frequently during soft
weather, they made no attempt to go down to the lake.  Once we took
them to the water hole but they refused to enter or drink out of it,
but got off the ice as quickly as possible and scrambled up the snow
path back to camp.

Their efforts to carry out their numerous plans resulted in the
interior arrangements of the cabin being sometimes grotesque, and often
exceedingly messy.  The most notable of these was an attempt to build
themselves a house.  They had taken full possession of the space
beneath the bunk with a proprietary air that was very droll to see in
creatures so small.  This spot they undertook to turn into a kind of
private chamber, to which end they one night removed the entire
contents of the wood box, and constructed with it a barricade all down
the outside, between the bunk and the floor, leaving the end open as a
means of egress.  Inside the enclosure thus formed they next cut a hole
in the flooring, and dug out a tunnel under the rear wall, which, when
large enough served as a bed-room, though its present purpose was to
provide material for plastering the skeleton rampart already erected.

We were not aware of the addition of this mud mine to the domestic
arrangements, until one day we saw something coming up and over this
rampart, to fall with a heavy "plunk" on the floor--a lump of mud.  A
stone followed, of fair size; a little later more dobs of mud, large
dobs about the full of a quart measure apiece.  Inspection revealed the
tunnel, and also the fact that the inside of their partition was well
and smoothly plastered.  The odd consignments that had appeared on the
floor were merely a little excess material that had slopped over.  When
they came out later they collected this and tamped the outside with it.
They were really very economical.  Moreover they were well organized,
as the tunnel being as yet only big enough for one to pass at a time,
they sometimes worked in shifts.  When they both were on the job
together one brought out the material, and the other took it and did
the decorating.

All this explained the mysterious thumps and scrapings, and the sound
of grunts and loud breathing that had been heard for some nights past
issuing from under the bed.  This barricade was eventually plastered
completely, both inside and out, except at one end where a small
aperture was left open, apparently for observation purposes as the
window in the barrel had been.  When soft weather occurred, the burrow
being under the low side of the cabin, all the drippings poured off the
roof down onto it and soaked through, transforming the stiff mud into a
thin batter.  At such times they would come out in the cabin so
plastered with this gooey mess as to be almost unrecognizable, and
would disport themselves all over the floor, or try to clamber onto our
knees whilst in this condition.

We had read a book dealing with the building of the Union Pacific
railroad in early days, and this construction work of theirs, with its
wooden framework and earthen fill, reminded us a good deal of the
description given, and the resolution and industry of the Irish workers
engaged on it was well emulated by our own ambitious pioneers under the
bed.  So we now gave them Irish names, McGinnis and McGinty, to be as
near alike as possible.  These names suited them very well indeed, as
they were as energetic and at times as peppery as any two gentlemen
from Cork could well have been.  Ever since the barrel had been
discarded we had ceased to call them Immigrants but had named them
separately, for the time being, also from characters in books.  The
male (now McGinnis) had a little game he used to play.  Every day at
noon when he arose, he would lay watchfully hiding behind the corner of
his entrenchment until one of us passed, when he would charge violently
out and engage whoever it was in mock combat.  This tournament took
place each morning without fail, and was his one big moment of the day;
so we made it a point to be sure of passing the appointed spot when we
espied him.  Then, soon after the assault, which was always made in
silence and apparent deadly earnest, out would come McGinty to speak
her morning monologue, declaiming in a loud voice with many different
tones in it.  And sometimes the two of them would sit there in the
morning line-up as though for inspection and parade, and solemnly wag
their heads in the way they have, and make the strangest sounds.

And the warrior became known as Ivanhoe, while the other, on account of
her discoursing and long winded speeches, we had called Hawkeye, after
a character we had read about who was always moralizing and laying down
the law to those about him.  But we liked the new industrious-sounding
names the better, and they got to know them very well, but being so
much alike, as they themselves were, when one of them was called they
both would come.  And this was the very last of all their christenings.

After the morning exercises we fed them tidbits which they retired into
their house to eat, sitting as far apart as possible, and scolding
under their breath to ward off possible attempts at piracy.  The very
audible smacking of lips as they ate often made us wish they could be
induced to take some soup, to see just what effect would be produced.
They were very choosy too and had individual tastes, being satisfied
with no odds and ends or leavings, and if several pieces were offered
them from the same bannock, they spent some time in their selection,
like the hero in a novel who, in moments of stress, selects so
carefully one cigarette out of a dozen, all identical in appearance.
The lunch disposed of, they would emerge for the day's doings in great
fettle, coming on deck all cleared for action, forging around the camp
very alert and bustling in manner, as if to say "Well, here we are;
what to do?"  And almost always, it was not long before everyone was
doing, ourselves included.

The fidelity with which their voices and actions registered their
emotions was a constant source of interest to us, and they even seemed
gifted with some kind of a sense of humour.  I have seen one of them
torment the other until the victim emitted a squawk of complaint, and
then, having apparently accomplished his purpose, the aggressor would
shake his head back and forth and twist his body as though in
convulsions of mirth and then repeat the performance--so that an
onlooker once said that he fully expected to hear the creature laugh.

There is no doubt that they possessed, in common with all their kind,
capabilities not usually found in animals, though I much doubt that
these could be any further developed in so self-willed and independent
a nature; but, prepared as we constantly were for the unexpected, I
think neither of us will quite forget the first time we saw them
engaged in what is to a beaver, his national pastime.  I had seen dogs,
wolves, and foxes tussle and had watched most of the other beasts, from
cougars to squirrels, tumble around and paw at one another like the
animals they were.  But these, extraordinary creatures, not satisfied
with the amusements that other beasts were contented with, stood up on
their hind legs, put their short arms around each other as far as they
would reach, and wrestled like men!  Back and forth, round and
round,--but never sideways--forcing, shoving and stamping, grunting
with the efforts put forth, using all the footwork they knew how, they
would contest mightily for the supremacy.  When one was, perhaps after
some minutes, finally vanquished, with loud squeals, the bout was
immediately terminated and they would make a few hops and turn their
attention to their more sober occupations.

These strictly legal pursuits did not however supply the capricious and
enterprising McGinty with quite all the excitement she craved.  She
developed a mild criminality complex, one of those "kinks" we hear so
much about.  Although she had free access to the few potatoes we had
saved, and had helped herself to them at will quite openly, she
suddenly seemed to get the idea that stealing them would be more fun.
She took to going behind the bag and extracting them stealthily through
a hole, and could be seen creeping along close to the wall with her
booty, no doubt thoroughly enjoying the thrill.  We allowed her to do
this of course, and enjoyed watching her.  Now opposition is the breath
of life to a beaver; their whole life training is associated with the
overcoming of obstacles, and the great incentive not being forthcoming
in this instance, the pastime soon palled.

She next commenced purloining tobacco.  We were apprised of this during
the night by some very mournful wailing which we had come to recognize
as meaning real trouble, and we discovered the bold buccaneer laid out
in the middle of the floor not far from the stolen goods, which had
been partly consumed.  The poor little beast was evidently suffering
and tried to crawl over to us but was unable to get her hind legs under
her, as though paralysed.  We picked her up carefully and laid her on
the bunk.  She was Anahareo's pet and clung to her, clutching at her
clothes with paws, so like hands, that had lost their strength.  She
made no further utterance, but the look of dumb appeal, the weak
attempts to get as close as possible to this well loved haven of
refuge, spoke more eloquently than any sound she could have made.  A
beaver in serious trouble will sometimes grip you tightly, and look at
you and seem to beg.  I had not seen this before, and it moved me
profoundly to search some past experience for a cure.  I prepared an
emetic, but she would not, or could not swallow it.  She fell asleep or
into a coma and her heart action nearly ceased, and I suddenly
remembered a case of opium poisoning I had seen, or heard of, or read
about somewhere.  I told Anahareo to rub her, rub her hard over the
whole body, to massage the hands and feet, to keep her awake at all
costs.  It seemed cruel, but it was a case of kill or cure.  Meanwhile
under Anahareo's direction I prepared a hot mustard bath.  We put the
beaver in it and her head fell forward into the mixture: we held it up.
She was unconscious.  The liquor did not penetrate the fur right away,
but the feet and broad expanse of tail were exposed to it, and it had
an almost immediate, though slight, effect.  With her hand under the
breast Anahareo announced an increasing heart action.  The unconscious
animal became alive enough to moan and hold up her head, but drooped
again soon after being taken out, and soon the heart weakened so that
its beat was almost imperceptible.  Anahareo rubbed hard and
continuously, and kept her awake while I prepared another bath.  Placed
in it she came to her senses again.  We went at the thing
systematically, and the camp soon had the appearance of a hospital
ward, as we bathed the helpless little creature and tried to rub the
life into her with towels.  She was slipping away from under our hands,
eyes closed, motionless, sinking.  There seemed little hope.  We worked
over her for ten hours.  We kept her heart going, but during that time
she had three convulsions.  Yet she still lived, and the time of dawn,
so often fatal, was nearly past.  I had seen more than one life go out
on its grey receding tide.  At daylight she had seemed to pass the
crisis.  She began to show signs of returning vigour.  Her heart beat
strongly; she stood up on her four legs.  Then she took one last
convulsion and straightened out.  I dropped my towel; this must be the
end.

"Well, Pony," I commenced, and then turned to put wood in the stove,
and found other business in that direction.  I didn't want to see.
There would be a heart break in the death of this small dumb beast.
Then I heard a cry behind me, not a wailing, not a lamentation as I had
expected, but a declaiming, a discoursing with strange half-human
sounds in it, a long loud monologue as of one laying down the law.  And
then I turned to see McGinty sitting bolt upright and making some
attempt to comb her wet bedraggled coat.  Truly, at the eleventh hour.
And then I heard another sound from Anahareo.

It was the first time I had ever heard her cry.

Meanwhile McGinnis, either having become lonesome, or sensing in that
undefinable way peculiar to animals that something was wrong, had been
for some time trying to climb into the bunk, so we restored his partner
to him and gave him some attention.  For once he would have none of us,
but flew to McGinty and smelled her carefully as though to be sure of
her identity after so long an absence, and plucked at her and made
small sounds, short mumbling little whimpers that we had never heard
before, and ran beside her nose to nose, while she exclaimed in that
strident voice of her, as was her fashion.  And from under the bunk the
whimpering sounds continued for quite some time; and later when we
looked in to see if our patient was quite recovered, the two of them
lay with their hands firmly embedded in each other's fur, as they had
done so often when they were very, very small.

This dramatic episode put a period on McGinty's debut into the
underworld, and for some time after she was quite exemplary.  Any real
misfortune seemed to have quite a chastening effect on them, and
McGinnis, for his part, had been so good since his misadventure on the
ice that Anahareo was quite convinced that he could not be long for
this world.

They had contradictory, if not complex characters, with strongly marked
individual traits.  McGinnis, if reprimanded obeyed immediately and
busied himself elsewhere, only to return to the forbidden act at a
later date with an air of the most disarming innocence, to again retire
when requested.  McGinty had to be practically forced into compliance,
and would seize the first opportunity to continue whatever depredation
she had been engaged in.  As soon as she saw that she had again
attracted unwelcome attention, she would start to squeal in advance
protest against the inevitable interference, meanwhile addressing
herself to the matter in the most determined manner, sticking at it
until the last possible moment.  Yet it was all taken in good part and
there were never any hard feelings, and this wilfulness, with resultant
scoldings, in no way impaired their affection for us, and never was
allowed to interfere with that hour of quiet and peaceful intimacy,
which seemed to play such an important part in their daily lives, when
bygones were bygones and we were all such good friends together.  And
when perhaps they missed, in some dim wistful way, the mother-love that
was forever lost to them.

On one point however, they were strongly in accord, and that was in a
determination to find out, by hook or by crook, what lay concealed
beyond their reach up on the table.  This table and its inaccessible
contents had had an irresistible fascination for them from the time it
was first set up.  They seemed to think that they were missing
something here.  They were especially clamorous at meal times, and
although we often gave them all the food they could dispose of, it did
not assuage their burning desire to explore this piece of forbidden
territory.  They tried by every means possible to them to accomplish
this object, and they once succeeded in pulling down the oilcloth
cover.  The resulting crash of tin dishes must have been very edifying,
but this, apparently, was not enough.  I had an idea they would
eventually do something about it, but was not prepared for what
actually did happen.  We had never left them alone more than a few
hours at a time on account of the cold, but one day, it being quite
soft, we both took a trip to a lumber camp some miles away, and being
invited to stay the night felt safe to do so.  The cook, who had heard
about the beaver, was very interested and expressed a desire to see
them, so we suggested that he come over.  As we were leaving he gave us
a good sized parcel of treats for the beaver and said that he would be
along to see us that day.  As this was to be our first visitor here we
wanted to give him a welcome, and hurried home to prepare it.

We found the door hard to open.  That was because the blankets were
piled against it.  This however was the least of our troubles.  Beaver
can, under good direction, do a lot in a short space of time; in this
instance the supervision had been adequate and the results sweeping.

The place was a wreck.

The beaver had at last got the table where they wanted it, having
brought it down to their level by the simple expedient of cutting off
the legs.  We hadn't thought of that; there was always something you
didn't think of with these hooligans.  The long coveted contents of
this piece of furniture must have been disappointing, consisting mostly
of utensils, but these had been removed and most of them we found in
the den later; some of them were never recovered and probably had been
deposited in the far end of the tunnel.  Our other fixtures were lying
scattered over the floor in various stages of demolition.  The wash
stand also was down and the soap had disappeared.  A five gallon can
containing coal oil had fallen to the floor and had landed, luckily,
right side up.  The floor itself had escaped serious damage but was
covered with chips, and slivers, and the dismembered trunks of our
butchered belongings.  The scene must have been very animated whilst in
progress.

Since that time I have been subjected to similar and even more
devastating visitations, but as an introduction to what might lay in
store at a future date this was a little staggering, and certainly we
were in no shape to receive a guest.

Meanwhile these whimsical playmates of ours, interrupted in their
setting-up exercises by our arrival, were cautiously inspecting us
through the loophole in their fortification, and identifying us now
came out, two little capering gnomes that hopped over the piles of
dbris to welcome us home.

It was no use to punish them, as they would not have known what it was
all about, being no longer in the act.  We had thwarted their natural
instincts and must pay for it.

So we fed them the dainties that the cook had sent while they sat
amongst the wreckage and ate them--enjoying the finishing touch to what
probably had been the most perfect day of their lives.




8

HOW WE MADE CHRISTMAS

Apart from their purely physical activities, the mental and emotional
capabilities displayed by these creatures, not yet fully developed,
aroused in our minds a good deal of speculation as to where instinct
ceased and conscious mental effort began.

I once saw in a newspaper a photograph of a Japanese railroad depot
with the caption attached "Just like any other station!" as though the
editor had been rather surprised to find that it was not built of
bamboo and paper.  My reaction towards any unusual demonstration of
intelligence by an animal, had up till now been much the same.  But
since the coming of these small ambassadors from a hitherto unexplored
realm, the existence of which had so far been only grudgingly
acknowledged, this condescending point of view was no longer possible
to either of us, and delving yet further into this remarkable new world
offered fascinating possibilities.  Other animals too might have
qualities, which whilst not so spectacular perhaps, might be worth
investigating.

The opportunities were unusually good.  There was a good deal of soft
weather that Winter, and creatures of all kinds were very active, and
with the new angle on wild life which our experience with the beaver
had given us, we thought it might be interesting to cultivate these
others and see just how they responded.  Anahareo had made friends with
a muskrat that frequented the water hole and was something of a
nuisance there, keeping it filled with grass and empty clam shells.  He
was a fat, jolly-looking fellow whom we called Falstaff on account of
his paunchy look, and the fact that he was always eating when visible,
and he used to sit at the edge of the ice and demolish the morsels she
put down there for him.  He eventually got so tame that she could feed
him by hand, and I think he watched for her at last, as he would come
bobbing out soon after she started down to feed him.  He would trot a
few feet out on the ice as if to meet her, and losing confidence go
scurrying back through the hole, only to pop out again, and make
another sortie and retreat.  Day by day these runs got longer and
longer, and the retirements less precipitate as his assurance
increased, so that his education advanced by hops and runs if not by
leaps and bounds.  He had a small house of mud and weeds down at the
shore, and had companions in there, but they could never be induced to
put in an appearance.

We had besides, two squirrels who learned to come when called and jump
on us, and take bits of bannock from our fingers.  These two disagreed
violently whenever they met, but in their dealings with us they
displayed an ingratiating amiability that might or might not have been
counterfeit, and was no doubt inspired by the ever present hope of a
hand-out.

Whiskey jacks to the number of perhaps a dozen, attracted by this
distribution of free lunches, attached themselves to the place and were
always on deck, sitting around unobtrusively and motionless on
convenient limbs of trees, all fluffed up, and trying to look humble,
and dignified, and indifferent all at the same time, as though any such
vulgar thought as that of eating was furthest from their minds.  But
they had a weather eye on the door, and it had only to open when they
all assumed a very wideawake appearance, and some of them would start
to whistle a little song, hardly more than a whisper, which ceased
immediately the door was closed again.  There is, of course, no
friendship amongst the wild folk that will stand up in the presence of
food, it having on them something the effect that money has on not a
few humans, and if a quantity of scraps were thrown to them, each would
grab all he could and fly away with it.  They were not, however,
without some powers of discrimination as, if one happened to be alone
at the time, he would stroll around amongst the bits and pieces looking
for the biggest one.  They too become very intimate, and some members
of the flock would swoop down like attacking aeroplanes at any thing we
held out for them, and lift it as they passed.  Yet others would light
on extended fingers, and taking their portion, sit there for a few
moments apparently enjoying the novel sensations they experienced, or
perhaps warming their feet.

At first these birds were not distinguishable one from another, yet it
could soon be noticed that some of them had a kind of personality, an
individual manner or a look about them, that set them apart from their
fellows, so that they could be recognised quite readily.  They are a
light built bird with no great strength or speed of flight, but they
make up very adequately in address what they lack in force.  If
sufficiently hungry they could put on a most woebegone appearance
which, while perhaps not consciously assumed, had a highly desirable
effect on the observer, but which was exchanged for a very militant
alertness on the appearance of anything to eat.  One of them carried
this wheedling proclivity to the point that when there was any
altercation over some tidbit or other, he would grovel in the snow with
piteous cries, and exhibit all the symptoms of apoplexy.  This always
caused a commotion, and under cover of it he worked his way towards the
coveted morsel, and suddenly recovering his health would quickly seize
it and decamp.  Nearly all of what they took was stowed away in nooks
and crannies, from where it was most industriously retrieved and hidden
by the squirrels; but as these caches were in their turn consistently
robbed by the whiskey jacks, things were pretty well evened up, and
everybody eventually got enough.

Yet in spite of their shameless solicitation, these feathered yes-men
were engaging skalawags, and had they been human, they would have
belonged in the category of those delightful rascals who can touch you
for your last cigarette, and make you feel that they are doing you a
favour.

To have killed any or all of them would have been easy enough, but the
idea must have been repugnant to any thinking man.  Yet I had caught
them yearly by dozens in sets intended for larger and more predatory
game, where, caught by the legs, they had struggled their harmless
lives out in helpless agony.  And as these various creatures followed
me, and climbed my legs and bravely ran upon my hands and arms, to sit
there in all confidence, peering at me so bright-eyed and intelligent,
bodies vibrant with life and the joy of just being alive, the enormity
of this unthinking cruelty impressed itself upon me more and more.

Anahareo was very proud of having all these creatures around the house,
and they somehow gave the place a lively appearance, and made us feel
that we had been accepted as friends and fellow citizens by this
company of furred and feathered folk.  We attended to their wants quite
as though we had been their custodians, which in a way we were, and at
last our wild and ever-hungry family increased to the point that we
were obliged to have rules and hours for them, while the beaver
occupied the times between.


Yet in spite of all these distractions the days were often uneventful
and very long.  Fortunately, being both great readers, we had gone to
the labour of packing in a number of magazines.  They more than paid
for their transportation by the pastime we got out of them, as we read
and re-read them to ourselves and then aloud to each other.  Among
these was an English periodical which was evidently intended for
readers coming under the denomination of "landed gentry."  We were well
landed, if no gentry, and this particular publication became a
favourite with us, not only on account of the fine pictures it
contained, but probably also because the conditions set forth in it
were so utterly at variance with our own.  So we ambled around amidst
its precise and excellent pronouncements much in the manner of a man
who circulates among courtiers attired in his shirt sleeves.

Fits of loneliness for the great free country we had left assailed us
every so often, becoming at times almost intolerable, and while under
their influence we were hard put to find means to combat them.
Anahareo would take her snowshoes and wander in the woods or draw
cartoons of people we had known, at which she was an adept.  For my
part, I often scribbled in a writing pad and along the blank edges of
the magazine pages or on packing paper, running commentaries on the
discrepancies in some of the nature stories we had read, skeleton
descriptions of well-remembered scenes and short impressions of
outstanding happenings or personalities we had met up with.  By this
same vicarious means I lived over small portions of my former life and
got some solace from it.

Sometimes we extinguished the light, and opening the stove door wide,
we would sit upon the floor before the fire, and the glow of the
shifting embers threw red moving lances and shafts of crimson light out
into the shadowy darksome cabin, and made strange patterns on the
walls, and discovered in them secret new recesses that we had not known
were there.  And these beams came shining out on the tins and pots and
other homely ware, so that they gleamed like burnished copper in some
old baronial hall, and turned to rich rare tapestry the hanging blanket
at the door.  And behind the looming earthwork at our backs we could
hear the intermittent murmur of the beaver, like subdued and distant
voices from the past.  So that the place seemed full of mystery, and we
talked in whispers, and watched the embers glow and fade and break and
fall apart, in the red and fiery cavern beneath the burning coals.  And
here faces formed, and little images and imaginary objects took their
place and disappeared again as though upon a stage.  And the shapes of
some of them brought back to mind some half-forgotten story or an
incident, or thought, and by them there nearly always hung a tale.  And
presently, as we remembered we recounted them while we sat within the
small red circle of the fire-light.

Anahareo related, at these times, some of the innumerable exploits of
Ninne-bojo, the conjurer, who was sometimes evil, sometimes good, at
times a saint, more often a devil; a plausible rascal with a taste for
the occult and having conveniently flexible notions of honesty, and who
still survived in the folklore of the Iroquois, who are Anahareo's
people.

And in my turn I told my tales of high adventure, and hunger and
feasting in the great dim forests beyond the Height of Land, and
sometimes talked of war, and old Bisco days.  And in the cabin beside
that little stove was brought to light much that had long lain buried
in the past.  And so intent did we become in our recountings, and so
faithfully did we describe every act and every aspect of the actors in
them, that they almost seemed to live again in the fiery amphitheatre,
and I think they never slipped entirely back to where they came from,
but the glamour of the stories seemed to hang about the place, like
they had happened there.  And sometimes I wonder if the spirits of the
past that we conjured up, do not still gather in the old deserted cabin
and tell their tales and play their parts again, while the cold
moonbeams throw pale shafts of light through the crevices in the
unchinked walls, and filter down through the empty stove pipe hole and
make not a red circle but a white one, in which perhaps they sit before
a ghostly stove.

Some of these chronicles I wrote down, getting a vast satisfaction out
of the job, and I took at last to rolling these records up, and put
them carefully away.  Somehow they began to seem like old and honoured
traditions that would otherwise be lost.  Pretty soon there was quite a
stack of them.  I wrote little stories about our muskrats and squirrels
and birds, and would read them aloud to Anahareo.  She did not seem to
be as deeply impressed by them as I thought she should have been, but
we had a lot of fun out of it and she would tell them to the beavers
afterwards.  Of course they would listen awhile, and then shake their
heads and roll on their backs as they always did when we made a fuss of
them; and that was about all the appreciation I got.  But I kept at it.
I found that the English language did not have quite all the words I
needed, and I was not above manufacturing the odd one.  I stole freely
out of the magazines, having no idea of the enormity of my offence at
the time; but I was having a high old time, and was beginning to be, so
I was informed, something of a nuisance around the house.

It occurred to me, experimentally, and with no idea of seriously
accomplishing anything, to take the highlights of all these aimless
scribblings and try to weld them into something.  For I had noticed
that, apart from the literary skill and carefully selected wording
apparent in them, many of the narratives we read with such interest had
very little meat on the bone, so to speak, when they were dissected.  I
had plenty of material, so decided to write an article with lots of
meat on it.  So I commenced the welding process.  This took about a
week, and resulted in a production about six thousand words in length,
very meaty, and in which I covered the greater part of Northern Canada,
and touched with no light hand on nearly every incident and animal
common to that region.  The beaver were in it, and all our other
dependents that lived out in the yard and in the lake, so I felt I had
done my duty by all of them.

I read it through repeatedly, each time with a more pronounced feeling
of satisfaction, and made many alterations, and then rewrote it,
working feverishly on it far into the night.  I read it again, aloud
this time, to Anahareo and would have read it to the beaver if I had
thought they would have listened.  Anahareo listened dutifully and
patiently, and we discovered several points on which I had not made
myself quite clear.  I easily overcame these ambiguities by adding
lengthy and precise explanations.  Anahareo worked with me on these
troublesome parts and what one did not think of the other did, and the
two of us racked our brains by the hour thinking up any fine points we
might have missed.  This story was going to be true to life if it took
all Winter.  These additions and interpolations brought this creation
up into the neighbourhood of eight thousand words; no mean
accomplishment for a maiden effort.  Anahareo once suggested meekly
that it might be too long, but I rejected the idea with some acerbity;
I had read a similar article in which the author had only been able to
squeeze about fifteen hundred words out of his subject.  I intended to
fall into no such error.  Thoughts and ideas could come and go, to be
used or discarded at will, but the moment one was recorded it became an
acquisition.  A story, once it was on paper, became a palace of dreams
the structure of which was studded with rich gems, not one of which was
to be on any account removed.  Any suggestion that some of these be
extracted for the general good, aroused a state of mind bordering on
the mildly homicidal.  I copied the effusion all out laboriously (I am
not at all sure, at this distance, whether I used pen or pencil)
parcelled it up with about fifty photographs intended to be used as
illustrations, and made a special trip to town with it, a matter of
forty miles.  I was not particularly anxious to sell it, but wanted a
whole lot of people to read this stuff, and if they paid me, why so
much the better.

I mailed the parcel to a war-time address in England, which country, I
had always understood, was the market for such material, giving special
instructions to my agent that the serial, translation, moving picture,
and book rights were to be retained, in accordance with something I had
read on the subject.  And some demon of perversity caused me to specify
the very exclusive publication, already mentioned, which catered to the
aristocracy.

Such a thing as a rejection slip was quite beyond my knowledge, and
having estimated, by close figuring, that the cheque would not arrive
for at least a month I started home at once, taking a few things for
Christmas, which was close at hand.  And as I marched along the trail
in the driving snow storm, I pondered deeply on the days to come.

I had got some stuff off my chest where it had been fermenting for a
long time, and somehow the writing of that manuscript had partially
appeased the feeling of loneliness and home-sickness that had overcome
me whenever I saw, smelled or heard anything that brought quick
stabbing memories of the trails of yesterday.  For now the North was
not so far away.  It was in my hand, ready at my call to leap to action
in the jumble of words and disconnected phrases that flowed from my
pencil, as I lived over again the joys and the triumphs, the struggles
and the hardships that had made life so worth living, while my soul
slipped back to wander once more, at will, in a land of wild romantic
beauty and adventure that would soon, by all the signs, be gone beyond
recall.  Perhaps too, a man might live by writing about it; I had the
practical experience but could I use it in this way?

A feeling of kinship for all the wild that had been growing on me for
years, at this time seemed to have reached its culmination.  My late
experiences with the few creatures that were commencing to frequent the
cabin, had caused me to have quite a feeling of responsibility towards
them.  Though they had not a tithe of the appeal that a beaver
possessed, they were by no means the abysmal insensate creatures I had
been wont to consider them, and they gave a remarkable response in
return for a little kindness.  Lately there had been an addition to our
clientele.  There was a half-grown fawn that used to feed across the
lake from us.  He was always alone, and probably had lost his mother.
I had myself killed several does close in.  This little creature,
lacking perhaps an education on this account, had little fear of us and
would sometimes cross the lake, and coming up the water trail would
pass around the cabin on his way.  This was always at about the same
hour, every second day or so, and we took to standing outside and
waiting for him and he would pass most unconcernedly and sometimes
stopped and looked us over.  He soon became quite tame, and we could
move quite freely near him while he nibbled at the poplar tops that had
been collected for the beaver.  He was a mighty interesting thing to
have around, and his confidence, or his ignorance, or whatever it might
be, was the best guarantee of safety he could have.  After his arrival
on the scene, I used to go far back into the woods for our meat, so
that the sound of shooting and the sight and smell of slaughter would
not drive him away.  Yet a short year ago I would have killed him with
a club to save a bullet.  And now I no longer wished to kill.  I had
beaten and abused the North that now I found I loved, and could I but
live without this slaughter, this unnecessary brutalizing cruelty, I
would be forever glad.  A few clean kills for meat, that was the law of
the Wild, and permissible.  Perhaps this new idea, this writing would
provide, but I had no notion how much a man would have to put out of
this commodity.  The thought of the possible unsaleability of my
product never entered my head.  A man may do a lot of thinking in forty
miles, and the familiar setting of the whirling snow seemed somehow to
clarify my mind, and as I plodded onward my aims began to take on shape
and form.

My impulsive action in springing the beaver traps I had not regretted
in the light of sober reflection.  They were now safe.  This decision
was final and unchangeable.  That I could tame these animals I was
assured, nor was I wrong.  Those other little beasts, the squirrels,
the whiskey jacks, the muskrat, the little deer, they seemed to sense a
sanctuary and trusted us, and the daily development of their confidence
and the manifestations that accompanied it, were an absorbing study.
They were more fun alive than dead, and perhaps if I could write about
them they would provide many times over the value of their miserable
little hides, beaver included, and still be there as good friends as
ever.  A man didn't need much of a hunting ground that way.  I realized
that these radical departures from my life training would require
something more than the ordinary resourcefulness and physical courage
of the woods to bring to a successful conclusion; but I did not know,
at least so far as my new-born literary aspirations were concerned,
that I was gaily disporting myself where an angel would have worn a
life-buoy.

So I dreamed my dreams and builded my castles in Castile.

I had always felt that if a man believed himself capable of anything,
put into his project all the best there was in him, and carried on in
absolute sincerity of purpose, he could accomplish nearly any
reasonable aim.  I had seen it exemplified a hundred times.  Perhaps
the task I was setting myself was a little too much like trying to walk
on the water, but the blustering fury of the storm exhilarated me,
aroused in me a feeling that I marched in some wild parade or carnival
and had a part in all this savage revelry, so that I felt that there
was nothing that could not be overcome.  And as I bore against it, and
yet with all its howling frenzy it could not hold me back one step, I
cried aloud that I was the better for its coming, that my faithful
snowshoes could break a trail through any storm that was ever put
across in this one-horse lowland country.

Yet, did I but think of it, with all my shouting, all my boasted skill
and cunning, I could not turn back from falling one single snow-flake
of them all.

I arrived home in the thick of the blizzard and found the little cabin
mighty snug to come into out of the tempest.  Anahareo had busied
herself crocheting bright wool borders on white sugar bags, split open
and freshly laundered, and we now had these for window curtains, which
gave everything a real cosy, homey appearance.

The beaver, so Anahareo said, had missed me, McGinnis especially had
seemed to search for something, and had spent much time at the door,
looking up at it.  Neither of them was in evidence, but a nose was
visible at the peep-hole in the redoubt and being at length satisfied
as to my identity, they came bouncing out and capered around me in a
great access of spirits, McGinnis repeatedly throwing himself at my
feet until kneeling down, I offered them the sticks of candy I had for
them, and which they sat and ate with loud and most unmannerly sounds
of satisfaction.

I laid out my small purchases which the kindly storekeeper had
suggested that I make, saying as he did so, that it must be lonesome in
the woods and that he liked to feel that we had Christmas back there
too.  And being now in a country where Christmas was recognized as a
real festival, we decided that we ought to make all the good cheer we
could and so forget our troubles for a while.

Personally I had always been too busy hunting to celebrate that festive
Season, beyond submitting to a kind of hypocritical sentimentality that
prevented me from taking life on that day; but never being quite sure
which day it was, even this observance had fallen into disuse.  But I
was now a family man, and being, besides, sure of the date, we would
now keep it in style.

I whittled out some boards of dry cedar, painted them with Indian
designs and attached them to the sides and tops of the windows where
they looked, if not too closely inspected, like plaques of beadwork.
We painted hanging ornaments with tribal emblems and hung them in
places where the light fell on them.  We laid two rugs of deerskin;
these were immediately seized as play-toys by the two Macs, and had to
be nailed down, when the beaver compromised by pulling handfuls of hair
out of them; a pleasing pastime.  Having killed a large eagle in my
travels, I made a war-bonnet, a brave affair of paint and eagle
feathers and imitation beadwork, that sat on a wooden block carved in
the semblance of a warrior's face, and painted with the Friendship Sign
in case we had a guest.  It had quite an imposing effect as it stood on
the table, at one end.  We distributed coloured candles in prominent
places, and hung a Japanese lantern from the rafter.  Viewed from the
outside, through a window, the interior exhibited a very pleasing
appearance, though a little like the abode of some goblin whose tastes
were torn between the pious and the savage.

On Christmas Eve all was ready.  But there was one thing missing;
Anahareo decided that the beavers were to have a Christmas Tree.  So
while I lit the lantern and arranged the candles so their light fell on
the decorations to the best advantage, and put apples and oranges and
nuts in dishes on the table, and tended the saddle of deer meat that
sizzled alongside of the factory-made Christmas pudding that was
boiling on top of the little stove, Anahareo took axe and snowshoes and
went out into the starry Christmas night.

She was gone a little longer than I expected, and on looking out I saw
her standing in rapt attention, listening.  I asked her what she heard.

"Listen."  She spoke softly.  "Hear the Christmas Bells," and pointed
upwards.

I listened.  A light breeze had sprung up and was flowing, humming in
the pine tops far above; whispering at first then swelling louder in
low undulating waves of sound, and sinking to a murmur; ascending to a
deep strong wavering note, fading again to a whisper.  The Carrillons
of the Pine Trees; our Christmas Bells.

Anahareo had got a fine balsam fir, a very picture of a Christmas tree,
which she wedged upright in a crevice in the floor poles.  On top of it
she put a lighted candle, and on the limbs tied candies, and pieces of
apple and small delicacies from the table, so they hung there by
strings and could be reached.

The beaver viewed these preparations with no particular enthusiasm but
before long, attracted by the odour of the tree, they found the hanging
tidbits and sampled them, and soon were busy cutting the strings and
pulling them down and eating them with great gusto.  And we set our own
feast on the table, and as we ate we watched them.  They soon consumed
all there was on the tree, and as these were replaced the now
thoroughly aroused little creatures stood up on their hind legs and
grabbed and pulled at their presents, and stole choice morsels from one
another, pushing and shoving so that one would sometimes fall and
scramble to his feet again as hastily as possible, for fear everything
would be gone before he got up, while they screeched and chattered and
squealed in their excitement.  And we forgot our supper, and laughed
and called out at them, and they would run to us excitedly and back to
the tree with little squawks as if to say "Looky! what we found!"  And
when they could eat no more they commenced to carry away provision
against the morrow, sometimes between their teeth, on all fours, or
staggering along erect with some prized tidbit clutched tightly in
their arms, each apparently bent on getting all that could be got while
it lasted.  And when we thought they had enough and no longer made
replacements, McGinty, the wise and the thrifty, pulled down the tree
and started away with it, as though she figured on another crop
appearing later and had decided to corner the source of supply.

It was the best fun of the evening, and instead of us making a festival
for them, they made one for us, and provided us with a Christmas
entertainment such as had never before been seen in any other home, I'm
pretty sure.  And Anahareo was so happy to see her tree well
appreciated, and the beaver were so happy to patronize it, and
everybody seemed to be so thoroughly enjoying themselves, that I
perforce must be happy too just to see them so.

Stuffed to the ears, and having a goodly supply cached beyond the
barricade, the revellers, tired now, or perhaps overcome by a pleasant
fullness, soon went behind it too.  Heavy sighs and mumbles of
contentment came up from the hidden chamber beneath the bunk and soon,
surrounded by all the Christmas Cheer they had collected, they fell
asleep.

And after they were gone a silence fell upon us and all was quiet.  And
the stove began to be cold: and the place was suddenly so lonely, and
the painted brave looked out so soberly at us from under his feathered
bonnet, that I put on a rousing, crackling fire, and drew out from its
hiding place a bottle of very good red wine that was to have been kept
for New Year's.

And we drank a toast to the beaver in their silent house across the
lake, and to the friendly muskrats in their little mud hut and all our
birds and beasts, and to McGinnis and McGinty, who now lay snoring in
the midst of plenty; and another to the solemn wooden Indian, and yet
another to the good Frenchman who had supplied the wine.

And as we pledged each other with a last one, we declared that never
was there such a Christmas anywhere in all the Province of Quebec.  And
certainly there never had been on this lake before.




9

HOW WE CAME TO THE DEPTHS

In March there being, in that country, no longer any frost that could
penetrate the stout walls of our shack, we decided to go out and
collect our cheque.  And sure enough there was one, and for a good
substantial sum, from the British periodical I had selected as the
rather unlikely target for my first shot at the authoring business.
Under separate cover was a complimentary copy sent us, as was stated,
on account of the unusual circumstances.  In it was the article,
reduced to about a quarter of its original length and illustrated by
about five of my fifty photographs.  I remember being a little hurt
about this reduction at the time.  When we turned to the page indicated
and saw, in actual print in that royal-looking magazine, the words and
phrases that had been produced under such difficulties and in such
humble surroundings, and saw depicted there our cabin, the beaver dam,
and McGinnis and McGinty themselves, we were so astonished that we
could only grab the pages from one another and gaze unbelievingly at
them, and sometimes bumped our heads as we tried to look at them
together.  Eventually, with a modesty more becoming to a newly hatched
author, I allowed Anahareo to have it for herself, while I examined for
the twentieth time the bright-tinted and beautifully engraved cheque.
It certainly had a very comforting appearance and would take care of a
large part of our indebtedness.

As I considered this pink slip of paper I was conscious of an
indescribable feeling of freedom, of having stepped through some dark
and long closed door into a new, unmapped territory that lay waiting
with all its unknown and untried possibilities.

But there was more to it than that.  The editor had written me a kind
and personal letter, not at all in keeping with the austere
magnificence of his product, and in it he stated that he was prepared
to consider more work of this nature.  What I had hardly dared hope for
had actually come to pass, and with no fuss, no ceremony.  Rather like
stepping out in the dark, this first move, but it had been successful.
And so, on account of what had seemed to be a foolish, idle pastime
contrived in the heavy hours of despondency, the dawn had broken
suddenly, bewilderingly bright and clear before us.  And before I wrote
accepting this new commission, I went out from the small hotel and
bought me a fat yellow fountain pen, some ink and much paper, and a new
kodak for Anahareo.  And when he heard the news the generous store
keeper, whom now we almost looked on as a patron saint, slapped me on
the shoulder and gave his congratulations in the hearty fashion of a
Frenchman, and said that he had known all along that something
wonderful would come of it.  My own feelings were not a little mixed.
This correspondence was my first contact with a world that had been as
far removed from my grasp as was the throne of Egypt, and while I hid
my pride as best I could, and kept my light as dim as possible, you may
be sure I did not go around with a bushel basket over my head to hide
it.

On the forty mile journey home through the bright snow-bound forest, we
walked lightly, Anahareo and I, lifted out of our sombre silent habits
of the trail by the good fortune that had befallen us.  And we
travelled, not in single file as usually, but side by side as we talked
and planned for the future, and figured how we would soon begin to tame
whoever would remain at home of the beaver family that had been so
providentially saved.  We decided to build a kind of a beaver house on
the lake for our two Irishmen, to give them a start.  They, and the
neighbourly muskrats, and the squirrels and birds, and the little fawn
were to share in our new prosperity; and encouraged by our success with
these smaller creatures we said that we must now also find a moose.
And we would get together a few belongings, and improve the cabin, and
cultivate our horned and furred and feathered friends and I would write
about them, while Anahareo would supply the illustrations with her new
camera.  There were no trappers to encroach and destroy, and the
beavers would mingle together and increase and fill the pond and
spread, and populate the empty streams round about, and the house of
McGinnis, as the lumberjacks for miles around now called our camp,
would be the centre, and perhaps become a celebrated place.  And I
inwardly rejoiced that the bloodless happy hunting ground of my
imagination was now within the bounds of possibility.

We had been five nights away from home, but the frost had been light
and moreover we had protected the legs of the bunk, the washstand, and
the table (on one stout centre leg now, and therefore harder to cut
down, and also easier to repair) with spare stove piping, and had piled
everything on these armoured retreats and on the shelves, so we felt no
misgivings.

A few miles from camp we found strange snowshoe tracks turning in on
our trail.  It was black dark and we could not establish the identity
of the shoes, but the indentations, made some time during the heat of
these late March days and now frozen hard, could be easily detected
beneath the feet.  We had no idea who this might be, and always on the
watch, we now dropped all discussion and fell into the loping trot we
sometimes used.  We had had many visitors from surrounding lumber camps
on account of the beaver, but not from this particular direction, nor
out of the solid bush as in this case, for your lumberjack sticks
pretty closely to his roads.  This man, as could be ascertained, did
not straddle on his webs as does a white man but walked close-footed,
like an Indian.  This might prove interesting; we hurried.  There was a
light in the cabin, and not knowing who to expect we opened the door;
and there standing before us, with the broadest of smiles and an
outstretched hand was David White Stone, the old Algonquin.  He had
made the grade.

It was quite a reunion.  I don't know when we had been quite so glad to
see anyone.  He still had the famous gun that could so unerringly pick
one man out of a crowd, having been lucky enough to catch a short moose
hunt with some sportsmen.  He had been trapping all winter on the
borders of New Brunswick, thirty odd miles away, and having found a
pocket of beaver had done fairly well.

We had supper, and after everything had been talked over and
conversation had died down a little, we began to call McGinty and
McGinnis who had, for some reason, not showed up yet, although subdued
sounds could be heard from them.  Whereupon David looked at Anahareo
and winked slyly with both eyes like an owl.

"They got business in there I guess," he said with a knowing grin and
another double-barrelled wink.  "I've not been idle since I came;
here's a present for you."

And reaching behind the partition he pulled out one after the other two
full grown beaver, still wet and--dead.

Anahareo let slip the spoon she was wiping and it fell with a little
clatter on the floor.  I pulled out my pipe; the tiny crack of the
match was an explosion in the silence that suddenly had fallen on the
place.  Anahareo picked up her spoon and continued with the dishes.
After what seemed a long time I remembered that this man was our friend.

"Thanks, Dave," I said, my mouth suddenly dry, "where are the others?"

"There's traps down there yet," he replied.

I lit the lantern.

"Let's go look at them now," I said.

When we were outside, Dave, sensing a discordance somewhere asked,

"What's the matter, Archie?  Seems like I've done wrong or something."

He would never know from me.

"Why, no Dave," I answered, looking at him squarely, the lantern raised
to see his face the better, and at the same time hide my own.  "No,
nothing like that--we've been a little unlucky this Winter, that's all."

Across at the lodge we pulled up five traps.  David is an old
beaver-man, one of the best.  The two kittens were both caught.

"We got them all now," he offered uncertainly and added, "That's all
there are."  He gave me an oblique, keen glance.

"Yes," I agreed.  "That's all there are," and looked down at the two
half grown kittens that lay lifeless on the ice before their home that
so lately had been filled with intelligent, pulsing life, and now was
cold and empty in the starlight.  There was nothing to be done.  The
ancient law of claw and fang had after all prevailed.

My palace of dreams had fallen and become a heap of ashes.

Sorrowfully I skinned the beaver next day, giving the hides to Dave.
What was left I took back across the lake where they belonged.  And as
I placed the four poor naked bodies side by side beneath the ice before
their door, I breathed a pagan prayer that the Spirit of the
Wilderness, whose children they were, might see, and seeing understand.

The thaw commenced, and when Dave suggested that we all go out together
and camp on the Touladi Lakes, we agreed.  There was nothing to stay
here for now save our few pets, who could live without us as they had
done before we ever came.  So the old man made a sleigh and a toboggan,
and when they were finished, one morning at the crack of dawn we loaded
up our equipment, with the beaver in the barrel, and the stove as well,
and were ready to go.

And Anahareo went down to the small mud hut at the landing to feed our
friendly muskrat for the last time, while the whisky jacks and
squirrels perched and ran upon my hands and arms and took my final
offerings; and what was left I scattered on the snow.  The little deer
we did not see again.

We left the warrior with his bonnet, standing stern and proudly at his
post, the Sign of Welcome still upon his face; and left the paint work,
and the emblems, and the gaily-bordered curtains in their places on the
windows and the walls.

And we bid farewell to the House of McGinnis with its stories and its
laughter, its hopes and its ambitions, its beasts and birds and
spirits, left it standing there deserted in its grove of brooding pine
trees, gazing out with its windows and its widely open door, at the
empty lodge across the lonely silent lake.

And Dave saw that we were sad, and as he walked he shook his head and
said he knew there was something wrong, but never asked.  At the outlet
he blazed a cedar tree and made on it the sign of the Duck, his patron
bird, and in a notch below he wedged a piece of plug tobacco and said
some words we did not understand.

Meanwhile, we looked in on the beaver, and McGinnis took this
opportunity to make a flying leap out of the window of his coach and
fell into the creek which was open.  In the ensuing search and recovery
the mists of sadness lifted for a while.  With White Stone in the lead
as chief, our little band plodded and wound its laborious way four days
across the hills into the blue distance, on to Touladi.

We were overloaded and the going was bad, so that we travelled mostly
at night while the frost was in the crust.  Several times the toboggan,
top-heavy with the barrel, upset, spilling its passengers out into the
snow, which not liking very well they hastened back in again before the
conveyance was righted, generally after a lively altercation as to who
should get in first, or else climbed on the body of the load emitting
querulous plaints of discomfort.  They preferred to be in motion, and
when the cavalcade was halted for any reason it was not long before the
covering was pulled off the window of the caboose, and two brown heads
with tiny black eyes would peer out in a most accusing silence.  If a
start was not soon made they became fractious, not ceasing their
complaints until we got going again.  I have exactly that feeling
myself on a train ride so was able to sympathise with them, but Dave's
point of view was that they were getting the ride for nothing with free
meals thrown in, and that they should be more patient with us.  Once
the road was reached we had no further trouble, as Company teams soon
picked us up, for in that country few vehicles will pass a wayfarer on
foot without the offer of a lift.  An official of the Company, not
willing to see us camping out in tents, allotted to our use a small
snug cabin on the shores of Lake Touladi.  This camp, known as the
"Half-way," became our home until we should choose to move.

Here we turned the beaver loose, and they spent their nights exploring
the new waters, sleeping in the camp by day.  We had many visitors,
being now only five miles from Cabano, and were very contented, save
for the cloud that hung heavy over the hearts of two of us.  But this
setback had somehow made me more determined than ever to carry on.  The
sacrifice at Birch Lake was not to be in vain, and never again would I
desert my post and let those dependent on me foot the bill.  That it
should happen again was unthinkable.  With set purpose and design I
commenced again to write, and got away another article, though I
doubted its acceptance for my new pen seemed somehow filled with a
melancholy that flowed out of it into nearly every line.

Meanwhile we kept close watch on the beaver, as the region was full of
travellers, river drivers and habitants.  They were good company on
their frequent visits and seemed very friendly towards us, but Dave,
who spoke French fluently, overheard more than one scrap of
conversation concerning the beaver that put us doubly on our guard.
And the three of us took turns to patrol the neighbourhood, so that
they were never beyond earshot at any hour.  Our charges were not hard
to keep track of, as they were always creating a commotion at some
point or another.  They built themselves a funny little beaver house a
short distance away where the water was open and the soil clear of
snow.  They cut and slashed small poplars and willows in all
directions, and their cries and slashings and other uproar could be
heard at almost any time.  Just about daybreak they would scratch and
call out at the door, and being let in would come into our beds and go
to sleep.  They awoke about noon, and, without waiting to eat,
scampered off to the big doings outside.  They had made another
partition for themselves of firewood, but they did not go behind it
much, preferring our beds to rest in, and as beaver live twenty or
thirty years it looked as though we would have to spend the rest of our
lives sleeping on the floor.

At this time there came to live with us an old man who had for many
years trapped muskrats on these lakes.  This hunt was his by right and
he depended on it.  On account of the danger to the beaver his coming
meant only one thing--we must move.  So David went out to Cabano
intending, with his knowledge of French, to seek a job, while Anahareo
and I collected the beaver, loaded them into the barrel, and catching a
passing team moved everything to a little lake that lay beside the
road, still nearer to the town.  Here, under some big elms, we made
camp, while McGinnis and McGinty disported themselves around an old
beaver house and dam that stood at the foot of the little pond.  There
was plenty of feed and water and these old works besides, and they
would be well fixed here until I could locate another colony in which
to introduce them.  When our work was finished, we went down to the
lake and called them.  They came racing over and tumbled their black
dumpy bodies all about our feet, labouring under some great excitement,
doubtless on account of the old beaver works.  They calmed down a
little to eat some sticks of candy, still jabbering away in concert,
telling us, no doubt, about their discoveries, and the new estate that
had fallen to them with all its ready-made castle and appurtenances.
They were hardly able to contain themselves, and after a few moments of
gambolling with us, during which they pulled strongly at our legs and
charged back and forth as if to have us join in the fun, they hurried
off to their small properties like a pair of kids to a circus, two
absurd but happy little creatures enjoying their new freedom to the
utmost, and who from now on would live as they were intended to.

It was almost a year since we had found them, two tiny helpless orphans
at the point of death, and this celebration seemed a fitting
anniversary.  And my heart warmed the more towards them as I reflected
that in their new-found self-sufficiency and independence, they still
retained that child-like attachment to ourselves that we had feared to
lose.

Once during the evening they came bustling up to camp, and coming
inside combed themselves and talked loudly and long, and roamed around
the tent as of yore, evidently recognising it, which was not remarkable
as it had been their only home for half their lives.  They smelled at
the stove in which they had so many adventures, and McGinnis burnt his
nose on it, while McGinty upset the grub-box, disclosing the bannock of
which they ate a goodly portion and altogether seemed very much at home
in these familiar surroundings.  They had their usual petting party and
even slept a while, and it was all so like those eventful days on the
Birch Lake trail that seemed now so far away, that we were glad to be
back in the old tent again with the little stove going and our two
small friends beside us in its glow.  Soon they headed for their lake,
two gnome-like capering little figures that alternately bounced and
waddled side by side down the water trail, and we followed them to the
landing as we always did, and somehow wished that they were small again.

We watched the two V's forging ahead towards the ancient beaver lodge
until they disappeared into the dusk.  And in the star-light, the wake
of their passing made pale rippling bands of silver that spread wide
behind them, and touched the shore at last, and so were lost.  Once, in
answer to a call, a long clear note came back to us, followed by
another in a different key.  And the two voices blended and
intermingled like a part-song in the stillness of the little lonesome
pond, and echoed back and forth in the surrounding hills and faded to a
whisper, and died.

And that long wailing cry from out the darkness was the last sound we
ever heard them make.

We never saw them any more.

      *      *      *      *      *

This knowledge did not come to us at once, but was slowly borne upon us
with the slow immutable passage of the days.  One evening passed with
no ripple to break the glassy surface of the water, no eager response
in answer to our calling.  A second night passed, a third and yet a
fourth, and there came no racket on the water, no cheerful chattering,
no familiar small brown bodies trotted up the water trail on happy
visits.  The rain washed away their tracks; their sticks of candy
wasted quite away.  At the Half-way their small works had been removed,
and the unfinished lodge had been submerged and soon was swept away.
There was nothing left of them, nothing at all.  It was as if they had
never been.

That they should follow the Spring flood to the mouth of any stream was
inevitable; but their return, in a country of this nature, was just as
sure.

We followed the stream up to its source and down to the mouth, caving
in through snow banks under mined by its flood, wallowing in slush on
broken snowshoes, calling, calling----  We scoured the whole
neighbouring district.  We covered the shores of Touladi foot by foot,
and followed every creek.  We did this until the possibilities were
exhausted, while all around us shots resounded and tracks of men
criss-crossed in all directions.  Anything could have happened; once we
found a deer half skinned, the hunters disturbed by our coming; here
and there traps were laying set, regardless of season.  I doubt if they
ever reached the mouth.  Tame as they were they would be easy victims,
and one man with a club could have killed them anywhere, they who so
much craved affection and needed so little to be happy.  And we could
only hope that they had passed together to the Great Beyond, side by
side as they had lived, and that in their last moments they had known
it was not we who took their lives away.

A good-natured and deeply religious people these, nonetheless more than
one of them had intimated that little would be added to us in the
hereafter for our consideration to creatures having neither speech nor
a soul.  Their principles would include no mercy to an animal.  Some
were sure the beaver had been killed, others were as certain they had
not.  We could not know and we carried on our ceaseless, hopeless quest.

The canoe was forty miles away and we needed to prosecute our search.
We walked in and paddled back eighty miles in three days.  On the river
bank stood the tent poles of our camps.  At one we saw a little pen of
sticks, made before the days of the famous coach; a happy camp it had
been.  We passed the spot where they had so nearly drowned and had been
saved, passed it swiftly, never speaking.  That night we slept out on
the beach of Temiscouata, too tired to walk the five miles to our camp.
The next day we resumed our search.  For many more days we ranged the
countryside.  We scarcely ate; our sleep was troubled and our waking
hours full of sorrow.  Often we made long trips to inspect some hide we
heard of; McGinnis had a burnt nose and some grey hairs, McGinty was
jet black.  We found, mercifully, no such skins.  We questioned
travellers, followed some, one or two we searched.  We went armed; we
made enemies.  A grim and silent search it had become.  Constantly we
got false leads, and momentarily buoyed up, followed them to inevitable
disappointment.  Sometimes, towards the last, we acted on the impulse
of some foolish dream, a vision conjured up by fatigue and hunger and
restless haunted slumber.  There was little that escaped us, and we
found beaver that no one knew even existed.

And all the time we travelled we kept some dainties in the tent and on
the landing; but no one ever ate them, ever came for them.

And Anahareo grew gaunt and pale and hollow cheeked; her eyes began to
have a strained and hungry look.  Once she said, "I wonder what we have
done.  Anything else in all the world could have happened to
us--anything but this."  And again "We thought we would always have
them" and in her sleep she said, "They loved us."

And we hoped on long after we knew that there was nothing left to hope
for.  We sat at nights in the darkness by our unhappy camp beneath the
elm trees, waiting, watching, listening for a well remembered cry of
greeting, or the thump of clumsy plodding feet that never came, never
would come.  And we saw nothing save the still lake and the silent ring
of trees, heard nothing but the tiny murmur of the brook.  The leaves
came, and grass grew undisturbed on the ancient beaver house; the pond
dried to a marsh and only the stream remained, running slowly through
it.

And at last we knew that they were gone forever, into the darkness from
whence they came, two random spirits from the Land of Shadows that had
wandered in and stayed a little time, and wandered back again, that had
passed like the forgotten winds of yesterday, and vanished like the
figment of a dream.

And they left behind them no sign, no trace, save an empty barrel with
a hole in it that sat beside the lake, and dried and warped and fell
apart, and became a heap of staves and rusty hoops.

[Illustration: "... side by side, down the water trail, and vanished
... we never saw them any more." _Courtesy Eugene Pelletier._]

And the aged trees whose great drooping crowns loomed high above our
heads, standing omniscient in the wisdom of the ages, seemed to brood
and to whisper, and look down upon our useless vigil, in a mighty and
compassionate comprehension.  And they stood about us in a serried dark
array, as though to shield us and this spot from further spoliation by
the civilization that could be at once so benignant and so ruthless.
For they were of the Wild as we were, the Wild to which in our
desolation we turned for a solace and a refuge, that ageless Wilderness
that had ever been and would, somewhere, always be, long after we had
followed our little lost companions and were gone.

And in the grove of stately elms the little tin stove was placed high
in a hidden spot with its door open, faced towards the lake.  So that
the small wandering spirits that might sometimes be lonely would see,
and remember, and sometimes enter in, as they had done in life when
they were small.  And so the stove that knew so many tales might learn
another and a last one, a tale of which the end is lost forever, a
story we could never, never know.

For we are Indian, and have perhaps some queer ideas; yet who among you
having a faith of any kind, will deny us our own strange fancies and
tell us we are wrong, or say us no.

The camp beneath the elms is far away.  Yet memories linger on, and
that last long haunting cry rings often in our ears.

We sometimes hear it in the storm, and in the still of evening; at dawn
in the song of the birds, and in the melancholy calling of a loon,
half-heard and distant in the night.  It wails in the minor cadences of
an Indian chant, and swells in the deep notes of an organ played softly
by a master hand; it mutters in the sound of sleepy streams, and
murmurs in the rumour of the river, in the endless tolling of the waves
upon a lake-shore--each and everyone a note from the composite of
Nature's harmony, chords struck at random from the mighty Symphony of
the Infinite that echoes forever on, down the resounding halls of Time.




BOOK TWO


QUEEN OF THE BEAVER PEOPLE


  I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid
      and self-contained.
  I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.
  They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
  They do not lay awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
  They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.
  No one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
      owning things,
  Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands
      of years ago,
  Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
  So they show their relations to me, and I accept them,
  They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in
      their possession.

            WALT WHITMAN.




1

HOW ANAHAREO LEFT TOULADI

Haunted by the memory of our little buddies that were lost and gone, I
felt that the task of reclamation of the species to which I had set
myself had become something in the nature of a duty.  They had left
behind them two souls that were the better for their coming, and had
provided an inspiration and an impetus that, as though it were a mantle
they had put upon us, had influenced the order of our lives.  Without
them it is certain I never would have put a pen to paper, and though my
ability is, and always must be, very limited, the records I made of
their short lives and the attitude towards Wild Life that they
inspired, were instrumental in paving the way to the recognition which,
unsought and unexpected, was to follow.  I determined that they should
live again, by hundreds, in their successors.

Dave, with his knowledge of French, had got himself a job, but often
visited us.

"I'm sure now they are killed," he stated.  "We can't get along without
beaver now; we must get some more.  I'll help you."

"What about your job?" asked Anahareo, with some concern.  He had
already lost ten days of his time searching for the lost ones, which
fact he had not, until now, seen fit to let us know.

"To hell with the job," said Dave.  "A man can always get a job.  But
them little fellas--they never meant to go away--we can't forget them
like that."  His eye took in the remains of the barrel.  "Their old
caboose," he said.  He shook his head, and looking at Anahareo with one
of his rare smiles, added, "You know, I kinda like to see beaver around
here myself, some way."

An old shrapnel wound, rebelling against the rough treatment of the
past month, came to life and put me temporarily out of commission.  So
Anahareo and Dave walked twenty-five miles through the bush into the
Sugar Loaf Hills and took two more kittens.  There were four young ones
in the house, but the old man would take only one pair.  He said that
if he had to take them all that he would kill the mother and be done
with it.  She would, in his opinion, be better dead.

Anahareo carried them on her back, in a bag, the whole way and they
arrived half starved and noisy, two bits of creatures that would have
disappeared from sight in a pint measure, and that weighed perhaps
three ounces apiece.  They were very delicate and had but a tenuous
hold on their tiny lives.  By rights they were too young to have been
taken.

Dave stayed on, giving us two weeks more of his time, to help us raise
them but one, the little male that Anahareo called Sugar Loaf, after
his home mountains, woke up one evening with all the power gone from
his legs, and gasped out his puny life before the dawn.  The other took
sick, refusing to eat the decoction of canned milk and bread that had
been their diet, and lay with her head in a corner of her box, a small
huddle of misery and pain.

To the population, our attitude towards Nature was incomprehensible,
savouring to them strongly of heathenism, which perhaps it was; but the
townspeople were not long in finding out about this new development,
and aroused by our now well broadcasted history some of them tried to
help us.  We received much advice, and had the sick beaver been a human
being it could not have had much more attention.  A woman offered to
supply us with cow's milk, and two doctors, all there were in the town,
came to our assistance.  On their advice we accepted the milk, and
thinning it down very weak under the direction of a motherly and very
efficient old Irish lady, fed it to the invalid.  A man and his wife
who had decided to see this thing through between them, administered
the doses, every two hours, with a glass syringe, one holding the
beaver and the other pumping.  The effect, after the third or fourth
application, was magical.  In two days the kitten was as well as ever,
and soon began to evince that assurance and independence of disposition
that has since helped to make her one of the best known wild animals in
North America.  For this inauspicious beginning was the first entry
into public life of the now famous Jelly Roll, screen star, public pet
Number One, proprietor of Beaver Lodge, and a personage, moreover, with
something to say at the seat of Government in Ottawa.

We moved our camp to Big Temiscouata, and erected it at the mouth of
the creek on which McGinnis and McGinty had had their last adventure,
in case they should ever return.  And in the slack water at the foot of
it Jelly Roll disported herself, made tiny bank dens and queer
erections of sticks, what time she was not engaged in galloping up and
down the path to the tents.  She grew apace, and as soon as she was big
enough she commenced removing magazines, vegetables, wood or anything
that took her fancy, and acted generally in a manner which plainly
indicated a personality that was well prepared to cope with whatever
vicissitudes life might hold in store.  She refused to live in the
tent, preferring domiciles of her own manufacture, of which she had
four or five scattered around in the pool below.

Aside from fits of affection which attacked her in spontaneous and
rather overwhelming outbursts, she was totally different in character
to her predecessors.  She had little of their clinging dependence, and
having lost her small companion whilst yet too young to realize it, she
came speedily to look on us and our belongings as a natural part of her
environment.

Our devotion to our animal friends seemed to have impressed the
townspeople much in our favour, and despite differences in creed,
colour, and language, we were accorded a friendly recognition as
citizens of the town.  On holidays picnic parties were made up, and
landing at our beach spent hours enjoying themselves in the shade of
our birchen grove.  Jelly always inspected each member of these
gatherings, a habit she has retained to this day, and never registering
any great approval of any of them, would amble towards one of her
numerous domiciles with such a look of disdain about her rear exposure
that her departure was always a source of great merriment, and perhaps
some little relief.  The priest, a learned gentleman, proficient in
languages and a keen student of human nature, took a scholarly and
benevolent interest in us and our manner of living, and visited us on
more than one occasion.

We ourselves were at first a little awkward with our guests, but their
tactful and considerate behaviour soon aroused in us a desire to look
and act our best before them, so that we went to some pains to bestir
ourselves and meet them on the common ground of good fellowship.

It was no doubt this innate courtesy and instinctive regard for the
feelings of others that enabled the French settlers of an earlier date
to get along with the Indians, so that they were often spared whilst
people of other nationalities were massacred without mercy all around
them.  It was this same spirit that, on our infrequent visits to town,
was to be seen even in small boys, who politely raised their caps to a
buckskin clad _sauvage_, and in little girls that shyly bowed and
blushed on meeting a woman of a conquered race.  On our progress
through the streets, women smiled and bade the time of day, while men
stopped and chatted; should we be loaded, as was often the case, people
stepped off the sidewalk to give us place.  This community spirit
permeated the lives of these people, and was no insincere pretension or
false veneer assumed for purposes of expediency, and was observable
especially in times of stress.  When a fire took place everyone who was
able to be present helped subdue the flames, and the family, if
rendered homeless, found shelter in any one of a dozen neighbours'
homes.  When a death occurred the bereavement was everyone's, and it
was a matter of civic pride that as the funeral cortge passed through
the streets the small traffic was held up, pedestrians halted, and
storekeepers came out of their establishments, while all stood
bareheaded in attitudes of respect until the solemn procession had gone
by; and no matter what may have been the record of the deceased while
living, now that he was passing from among them, it was remembered only
that he had been a brother citizen.

In such a place, any bleakness or angularity of character a person
might possess could not but become mellowed and suppressed.

Dave had lost his job owing to his frequent and lengthy absences on our
account, and being unable to get another, we were glad to have him with
us again, share and share alike in the Indian way.

The proceeds of my second article had arrived and with all bills paid
and a well-filled cache beside the tent, we had no immediate worries.
We pooled our resources, and while I supplied the groceries David
procured the meat and fish of which there were plenty in the adjoining
woods and lakes.  As an interdependent and self-sustaining community we
could have existed here indefinitely, but I think we all began to pine
for our North country, and most of our conversations drifted around to
reminiscences of it and the making of plans to get back there.  I could
see no possibility of undertaking my own project in this region, and
Dave began to be restless, and was getting anxious about his gold mine.
This mine was apparently the only hope there was for any of us to carry
out our ambitions--Dave's to retire, Anahareo's to prospect, and mine
to create a beaver sanctuary.  But there were no resources available
that would finance such a trip as Dave contemplated.  It was now July,
and Winter supplies and all expenses for three had to be taken care of
before Fall, with time allowed to make a heavily loaded trip, with many
portages, over a distance of more than two hundred miles.  We were all
to be partners, and as the mine was Dave's and I had nothing to offer,
it seemed to me to be up to Jelly and I to supply the sinews of war.
So I watched closely her activities and wrote stories about her, and
penned long articles on Wild Life from the new angle of my changed
attitude towards it.

I read these to a couple of English speaking acquaintances, who were
much amused by them, so they said, and one of them who had been
something of a public speaker, persuaded me that they were good
lecturing material.  But I could not yet speak French sufficiently well
to use them in that way.  The only place of any account where English
was universally spoken, was a resort on the south shore of the St.
Lawrence, known as Metis Beach, and it was far away.  But I resolved to
try my luck, and we wanted badly for other people to know how we felt
about things in general, so Anahareo being willing to take a chance
with me, we turned over everything to Dave, packed up Jelly Roll, some
provisions and a camping outfit, and took the train for Metis.

We arrived there with the usual dollar sixty-nine in pocket, and soon
found that a lecturing tour that was lacking in a few accessories such
as advertising expenses, a manager and so forth, and for which the only
stock in trade was a writing pad full of notes, was not likely to be a
paying proposition.

In the first place we had difficulty in getting permission to camp, as
people of our kind were apparently not common here.  A Frenchman
allowed us to make camp on his property, and I then made a personal
canvass of the possibilities, at great injury to my pride, and was told
that we would have to publicize ourselves.  At this we shrunk up like
two worms that had fallen into a dish of salt.  To give a lecture was
one thing: to vulgarly advertise was another.  Meanwhile we were
getting nowhere.  Jelly, always used to plenty of water, was frantic in
her box and cried continuously.

Two weeks passed, and so sensitive had we become at the bare thought of
the whole idea, that we cringed in our tent alongside the unfriendly
Atlantic Ocean, while Jelly clamoured and grew thin for this salt water
that we dare not let her into.  We had a letter from Dave in which he
hoped we were getting along well.  And so we were, getting along well
towards the end of our provisions.  I considered wiring our
storekeeper, for tickets back to Cabano, which he had guaranteed in
case of failure.  But this seemed like rank cowardice, and besides, too
much was at stake.  I decided at last to make a move of some kind, so
retired into a remnant of bushland and wrote out a lecture of about
five thousand words.

Meanwhile word had gone around the resort concerning our aims, and a
member of the family who originally settled there, and who owned most
of the place, appointed us a camping ground on their property, where
there was a small pond.  Here Jelly Roll was in clover again.  One of
the leaders of the summer colony became interested in our project, read
the lecture, and approved the sentiments expressed in it.  She gave the
idea the stamp of her approval, and graciously constituting herself
secretary, advertising manager, and treasurer, went to work to launch
the enterprise.  Her young sons and their friends sold tickets, while
she herself, an artist of no small ability, made and issued a number of
beautifully illustrated placards.  She informed me of the date and
place of the lecture, which was to be in a ballroom, and gave me some
sound advice on elocution.

I touched up my material, and on the evening set for the encounter, we
slipped unobtrusively into the building by a rear entrance.  In a back
room we sat awaiting our call, paralysed with fright and wondering if
Jelly had upset the milk back at camp, or had got run over by one of
the numerous automobiles that infested the country.  In either event I
would, at this moment, have cheerfully traded places with her.  We
received our summons, and the march to the chamber of execution was one
of the bravest acts of my life.  Anahareo trailed along with me as
moral support, but it was a case of the blind leading the blind, and
when I faced all those people, hundreds of them, gathered in a compact
mass in the auditorium, I felt a good deal like a snake that has
swallowed an icicle, chilled from one end to the other.

But rescue was at hand.  The lady who sponsored us now came forward and
spoke a few well chosen words of introduction.  The audience applauded
her.  Silence fell.  Zero hour had arrived.  I fixed my eyes on a kind
looking face in the front row, and suddenly found myself speaking.  I
heard murmurs; people looked at one another and nodded, seemed
interested; gaining confidence I warmed to my subject, and pursued my
theme to the end.  A moment of pause and then came applause loud,
steady, long.  My head swam momentarily; all this noise--and for us!  A
British army colonel arose and spoke words of appreciation he--I could
hardly believe my ears--said that it was not a lecture, but a poem;
more applause.  Then these people crowded around us, shook our hands,
congratulated us.

Other lectures followed.  I was called on to speak at parties, in other
halls, in the hotels.  Always Anahareo stood by.  I often think she had
the hardest part, to sit there, in an agony of shyness, trying to look
composed and at ease, and valiantly succeeding.  Some parents brought
their children to us, commissioning us to instruct them in a few of the
simpler devices used by the Indians in the woods.  Some of the small
grains of knowledge that we dispensed no doubt found lodgment in
enquiring young minds, but much of it, I fear, fell on stony soil.
Anahareo, with her shrewder woman's instinct, told them tales of the
likable but somewhat villainous Ninne-bojo, as well as other folk-yarns
of her people, the Iroquois.  But for my part I forgot that children of
a certain age are sometimes inclined to be a little blood-thirsty in
their choice of stories, and harped perhaps a little too insistently on
kindness to the weaker brethren of the forest.  That some of these
lectures were not producing quite the desired effect on all present, I
was very well aware, but I was a little startled when, in answer to my
request for questions, a sturdy young fellow of about thirteen summers
rose in his place and demanded:

"Did you ever kill anybody?"

"No," I confessed to the omission a trifle guiltily.

"Didn't you ever scalp anyone?" continued this embryo prosecuting
attorney.  I admitted that I had not, hoping at the same time that my
forbearance would gain his juvenile respect.  He gave me a long, level
look.

"Well, I think you're a dumb guy," said he, and sat down with an air of
great decision.

Jelly, at one of these talks, provided the illustrations, and her
lively expressions of disapproval of the lecturing business,
contributed as much to the interest of this particular audience as
anything that I had to say.

We opened a bank account.  Our camp ground was crowded with children,
and Jelly became the most popular person at Metis Beach, and was badly
spoiled.  I have good reason to believe that she never rightly got over
it.  On our last night, a missionary of the Canadian Bible Society, an
old acquaintance whom I had not known was present, rose at the close of
my farewell speech, and told how he had known us in the far North, and
established without doubt our identity.

To these people, each and every one of them, who so accepted us without
endorsement of any kind, mountebanks as we must at first have seemed to
them, I owe a debt of gratitude that no words written or spoken, could
convey.  I had not known that people could be so kind.  And when one
courtly, gracious lady, high in the society of a large city, said to us
in parting that we had taught the people something, I remembered the
words of an Eastern prophet of whom I once had read and replied,
tritely perhaps, but none the less sincerely, "Have I taught?--then
have I also learned."

And there was more meaning in my answer than perhaps she ever guessed.

And to our patron, to whom we owed it all, we gave a name; we called
her Sha-san-oquet which means Opens-the-Clouds.  For that is what she
did for us.

Dave met us with open arms on our return, and would hardly credit our
story.  But he had to credit the bank roll and the two tickets to
Abitibi provided us by our good friend the English colonel.  And we
could scarcely realise that now we were free, free to fulfil our chosen
plans, free to return to our harsh, untamed, beloved North with its
romance, its wild freedom and its gold; free at last to leave this sad
disfigured country with its tortured ravaged forests and its memories
and grief and tribulation.

Time was getting short and there was far to go, so the next day we
broke camp and crossed over to the station.  We loaded the canoe and
all our dunnage on the baggage car, and put Jelly on the day coach in a
well-made ventilated box.

As we sat on the waiting train I looked across Temiscouata, looked at
the dark Elephant Mountain that stood so still, so silently on guard at
the portals of Touladi.  Anahareo was looking there too.  Each knew
what the other was thinking--back of that towering pine-crowned granite
cliff, somewhere, living or dead, were the two little creatures that
had loved us; and we were abandoning them--for a gold mine.  Quitters!

Anahareo choked back a sob.  Rising she took her bundles from the rack.
"I'm getting off," she said in a husky voice.  "They might come back
and us not there----"

My thoughts to the letter.  I knew she meant it.  There was not time to
discuss the matter anyway--just the break that was needed; now somebody
would have to stay.  I picked up my guns, carefully wrapped for the
trip.

"You're right," I concurred, "we can't quit like this.  But one is all
that is needed here.  I am staying."  This was no self-sacrifice; now
that the words were said I was conscious of a feeling of relief, as
though some crime, in which we were to be unwilling accomplices, need
not now be committed.  Anahareo couldn't see it that way but there
wasn't much time and my facts were unassailable; I didn't care for
prospecting, I had my writing to do; the fate of McGinnis and McGinty
was as yet undecided, and Jelly didn't like train rides and might even
die on the trip; all of which was true and therefore unanswerable.  So
we got off the train, Jelly and me, after saying our farewells, and I
got out from amongst the baggage one tent, some cookery, and my
dunnage, and I said goodbye to my old canoe and whispered to it to
carry my people staunchly.

I knew how much they wanted to go.

Dave disembarked, his face set very stern and hard, his eyes troubled,
for Indian people do not take partings casually.

"Take care of her, old-timer," I said, and looked him squarely in the
face.  Sixty seven years on the trail--I knew she was in good hands,
perhaps better than my own.

"Yes, I will," he said simply, and stood silently holding my hand for
the few moments before the warning cry of "All Aboard," and with a last
strong clasp he winked prodigiously with both eyes together, and cried
out as he ran for the now rapidly moving step, "We'll come back with a
bag of gold and paint this old town red!" and gave his old time Indian
yell, "Hey--ey--ey----Yah!"

And that was the last I ever saw of Dave.

The train was gathering speed, and I watched with stinging eyes two
brown faces with black hair streaming in the wind of their going, and
two arms that waved and waved, and grew smaller and smaller as they
receded into the distance, until the train rounded a curve and they
were no longer to be seen.

I loaded my belongings on a wagon, and hugging Jelly tightly under one
arm I went back through the blurred and empty streets to the ferry,
back to Touladi.




2

HOW THE QUEEN AND I SPENT THE WINTER

I found it hard to adjust myself.  At one blow I was bereft of all my
little community.  Anahareo, my brave and faithful Anahareo, who had
been through so much with me; Dave, with his troubled eyes at parting,
his impenetrable self-possession quite gone; my canoe--I felt stripped,
empty, kind of weary, famished and lost, with a fierce gnawing at my
heart that would not be allayed.

I was now, my period of war service excepted, without a canoe for the
first time in twenty-five years, and felt as must a rider who finds
himself suddenly afoot in a desert; and the circumstance affected my
morale nearly as much.  This one, in particular, had been a tried and
true companion of many toilsome journeys, and I missed it as though it
had been a living thing.  And while it was a gift to Dave, one that I
had been proud to make and he to receive, when I touched for the last
time the worn spot on the gunnell where the paddle had worked so long,
I experienced some of the sensations of a sea-captain who sees a
well-beloved vessel sink beneath the waves.  But I consoled myself with
the thought that it was gone to some good purpose, and was in the hands
of a man who was, if anything, more meticulous in the care of equipment
than I was myself, and whose skill would never bring discredit to a
good canoe.  And in the same good hands was the welfare of Anahareo,
who, full of ambition and hopes for the future, was faring forth to do
her share in the seeking of our fortune, neither knowing nor caring
what she might be called upon to face--going far into a country that
lay no great distance from Labrador and having, as I had good reason to
remember, a similar climate.  But cold weather and storms mean but
little to our kind of people, and she came of a nation that had made a
considerable mark in history, so I had no real fear as to the outcome.

But I was lonesome for the first time in my life.  Yet I had, for a
solace, a very cheerful and entertaining companion, the little beaver
who, if she was ever lonely, never showed it.  No longer a kitten, she
had developed into a beautiful specimen of her kind, was always bright
and very much alive, and had a rich, full-furred coat, dark and
glistening, which it had been Anahareo's pride to carefully groom each
day.

It became necessary to get ready for the Winter, and I, on advice,
located a small camp, well built and in good shape, situated on the
shores of a little lake that lay about five miles back of the Elephant
mountain.  A bush road led to it, mostly swamp, and hiring a team to
bring in our supplies we, Jelly 'n' me, moved to it for a permanent
abode, she being carried in a packsack with her head and arms free,
viewing the scenery round about on the way in.

What had passed now seemed to be an epoch, a line of demarcation in our
lives, dividing the new from the old.  And symbolical of the new was
this tiny squalling brat upon my back.  Little did I think as she sat
in the packsack and chittered and mumbled and upbraided and pulled my
hair, that she was to become a very noted lady, and was to make a name
for both herself and me.  Her whole short life of five months had been
turned topsy-turvy, inside out, hell, west and sideways.  She had been
transported hither and thither on trains and wagons, carried long
distances in a variety of boxes, had been Exhibit "A" on a lecture
tour, and had finally spent two entire days in a stable.  In the latter
place, for a swimming pool she had a dish pan, and instead of poplar
had been fed pancakes.

And now came the end of this last short, but very eventful journey, to
where all was peace and quietness and contentment, to this little lake
set high in the mountains where there was plenty of deep water for
birling like a spinning log and diving to her heart's content.  Here
was any amount of mud in which to play and build any number of little
imitation beaver houses on the shore, and there was even a long burrow
with a roomy sleeping apartment at the end of it, left by some long
departed family of her kind.  All this spelled a happiness she had
never before known, and she had a delirious time for the first few
days.  She slept in the burrow, which was up the creek about half a
mile from the cabin, but every evening about sunset she was at the
cabin door, scratching to be let in.  She came in several times a night
and spent an hour with me, and took a great interest in my doings.  She
was particularly attracted by the bunk, recognizing perhaps the scent
of the blankets on which she had been in the habit of drying herself
off.  I made a kind of chute for her, and she would climb into the bed
by means of this, getting out by the very simple process of falling
over the side, and as I left the door ajar on her account, I often
awoke in the morning to find her fast asleep beside me.

Meanwhile I found plenty of outlet for my desire to write.  During a
visit to town I picked up a sporting magazine and I was strongly
attracted by the conservation ideas expressed all through it, and read
in it an article by a man I had known well in Ontario.  He was pretty
much of a theorist who wrote greatly from second hand experience, and
while part of his information was correct, a good deal of it was
misleading.  Sitting down in the house of a friend I wrote an article
on the subject, taking those of his statements which in my opinion were
incorrect as a theme, and discussing them from a point of view of
personal observation.  It was called "The Vanishing Life of the Wild,"
and the periodical was Canadian Forest and Outdoors, the official organ
of the Canadian Forestry Association of which I was later to become a
life member.  This was my first appearance in print in this country.
They asked me for more, and I wrote intermittently for them for three
years.

Country Life, in England, who had had two articles from me and a series
of long rambling personal letters written to the editor during fits of
loneliness, now sent me a request to write a book.  Nothing loath I
accepted, at the time not having the remotest idea of how I was going
to set about it.  On giving the matter thought, one difficulty appeared
to be insurmountable, and that was how, with my entire lack of
technical knowledge, to give an account of happenings in which I acted
in the role not only of an observer but of an active participant, and
yet to avoid an offensive use of the first personal pronoun.  I knew of
two devices; the employment of coldly formal references to the writer
himself in the third person, and the substitution of the foremost
numeral, "one," for the foremost pronoun.  This looked to me like
merely juggling with words.  The undue use of these pretexts seemed
only to impart to the narrative an air of portentious hypocrisy that
was unworthy of so simple and noble a theme as my beloved wilderness;
and I have since discovered that these sometimes convenient forms can
be little more than subterfuges, under cover of which your true egoist
often does his stuff.  So I decided to write, not a personal biography,
as requested, but a series of essays on the North itself.  In this
present work, however, it seemed that a few good healthy unequivocating
"I's" standing up honestly on their own hind legs, would do no harm
whatever.  It feels a lot better, this time, to be more of a humanist.

Every once in so often, attempts were made to buy Jelly Roll, who had
become to me more than just a pet and was not to be purchased at any
price.  One of these offers came from a man living in the near-by
village of Notre Dame-du-lac.  On his invitation, though with no idea
of selling the beaver, I paid him a visit.  He was a hunchback, and had
a kind of a little exhibition by means of which he lived, consisting of
different kinds of dogs, some of which danced, and one could walk a
tight wire.  He had a good sized bear that turned the handle of a
hurdy-gurdy and rode a three wheeled bicycle, and it was strange to see
the means this beast had evolved to perform his act with as little
labour as possible.  He (the bear) also had learned to carry a gun on
his shoulder, fall supposedly dead at the report of a cap pistol, and
rise at a word.  Bear and dogs, as a finale, danced to the tune of a
gramophone, all in an erect position.  To keep control the hunchback
joined the slowly revolving circle, likewise moving his feet in time to
the music, quite oblivious of the appearance he gave of dancing with
his animals.  He was not quite as tall as the bear who on that account
appeared to lead this weird dance, and in the shadowy, ill lighted
gallery the whole effect was a little eerie.  He was popularly and
aptly known as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and was, to some, a rather
sinister figure, but on closer acquaintance he revealed a character of
great benevolence and gentleness, and I could well believe his
statement that he obtained his results with animals by kindness and
patience.  The most remarkable feature of his performance was the
casual, almost inaudible voice in which he issued his suggestions--they
could hardly be called commands--and the implicit obedience, amounting
almost to co-operation that he was given.  This man died later, and his
one fear expressed before his passing was verified; the show was
disbanded and these animals were dispersed, and the bear, turned loose
and refusing to stay in the bush, haunted the scene of his old home and
was shot to death by timorous villagers.

At this time a letter arrived from Anahareo reporting progress.  All
had gone well, save that they were lonesome, seemingly a chronic
condition with all of us, and they had been, at the time of writing,
ready to leave with a canoe load of supplies for Chibougamou Lake, two
hundred odd miles North from the steel.

There had, she related, been adventures in Quebec City.  David,
bewildered by the number of taverns that were to be found everywhere,
had gotten lost.  Anahareo, after two days of waiting started to trail
him down, inquiring at all beer parlours.  Yes, he was well known at
several taverns, and had been feeling, oh, just so-so, when last seen.
His ecclesiastical leanings when in this condition prompted her to
consider searching all the churches, beginning with the largest and
working down.  She compromised by making the rounds of the police
stations, but none of them had any record of him.  She found him in the
railroad depot, tired and very hungry.  I have it on the word of
witnesses that they almost embraced.  Dave, it appeared, having lost
all track of time, and supposing he had missed his train and that
Anahareo had gone on without him, had boarded the first one he saw, and
without ticket, money, equipment or anything else except the clothes he
stood up in, and a headache, had proceeded sixty miles or so in the
wrong direction.  Apprised of this fact by the conductor he got off and
had walked back.  I kind of sweated as I read all this, but by now they
were safely away on the lakes.  They wanted for nothing, and I knew
that once in the bush few men were David's peer.

Meanwhile I myself was busy.  Hunting season was open and hunters
swarmed in the woods.  This made it necessary for me to patrol the
scene of Jelly's activities all night, and I slept beside her burrow in
the day time.  I much doubted if there were many of the Cabano men who
would have deliberately killed her, but as with McGinnis and McGinty,
it would only take one man to turn the trick and I was resolved to take
no chances.

I was greatly assisted in this by the trapper who claimed the hunting
ground I was occupying.  Instead of trying to oust me from his
holdings, on finding that I was without a canoe he lent me one, and
drew me a map of the district so I could patrol the more effectively.

Hunting season passed and the woods became again deserted and we, this
beaver and I, carried on our preparations for the Winter each at his
own end of the lake.  The outlet, near which my cabin was situated,
passed through a muskeg, and the immediate neighbourhood was covered
with spindling birch which I was rapidly using up for wood.  Jelly had
by far the best part of it so far as scenery was concerned, being
picturesquely established at the mouth of a small stream that wandered
down from the uplands through a well timbered gully.  Here she lived in
state.  She fortified her burrow on the top with mud, sticks and moss,
and inside it had a fine clean bed of shavings (taken from stolen
boards), and had a little feed raft she had collected with highly
unskilled labour, and that had a very amateurish look about it.  But
she was socially inclined, and often came down and spent long hours in
the camp.  When it snowed she failed to show up and I would visit her,
and hearing my approach while still at some distance, she would come
running to meet me with squeals and wiggles of welcome.  We had great
company together visiting back and forth this way, and I often sat and
smoked and watched her working, and helped in any difficulties that
arose.  After the ice took her visits ceased altogether, and becoming
lonesome for her I sometimes carried her to the cabin on my back in a
box.  She did not seem to mind these trips, and carried on a
conversation with me and made long speeches on the way; I used to tell
her she was talking behind my back.  She made her own way home under
the ice in some mysterious manner and always arrived safely, though I
made a practice of following her progress along the shore with a
flashlight, to make sure she did.  This distance was over half a mile
and I much admired the skill with which she negotiated it, though she
cheated a little and ran her nose into muskrat burrows here and there
to replenish her air supply.  One night, however, after going home, she
returned again unknown to me, and in the morning I found the door wide
open and her lying fast asleep across the pillow.  Nor did she ever go
outside again, evidently having decided to spend the Winter with me;
which she did.  So I bought a small galvanised tank for her and sunk it
in the floor, and dug out under one of the walls what I considered to
be a pretty good imitation of a beaver house interior.

Almost immediately on her entry, a certain independence of spirit began
to manifest itself.  The tank, after a lengthy inspection was accepted
by her as being all right, what there was of it; but the alleged beaver
house, on being weighed in the balance was found to be wanting, and was
resolutely and efficiently blocked up with some bagging and an old deer
skin.  She then dug out at great labour, a long tunnel under one corner
of the shack, bringing up the dirt in heaps which she pushed ahead of
her and painstakingly spread over the floor.  This I removed, upon
which it was promptly renewed.  On my further attempt to clean up, she
worked feverishly until a section of the floor within a radius of about
six feet was again covered.  I removed this several different times
with the same results, and at last was obliged to desist for fear that
in her continued excavations she would undermine the camp.  Eventually
she constructed a smooth solid side walk of pounded earth clear from
her tunnel to the water supply, and she had a well beaten play ground
tramped down all around her door.  Having thus gained her point, and
having established the fact that I was not going to have everything my
own way, she let the matter drop, and we were apparently all set for
the Winter.  But these proceedings were merely preliminaries.  She now
embarked on a campaign of constructive activities that made necessary
the alteration of almost the entire interior arrangements of the camp.
Nights of earnest endeavours to empty the woodbox, (to supply materials
for scaffolds which would afford ready access to the table or windows),
alternated with orgies of destruction, during which anything not made
of steel or iron was subjected to a trial by ordeal out of which it
always came off second best.  The bottom of the door which, owing to
the slight draught entering there, was a point that attracted much
attention, was always kept well banked up with any materials that could
be collected, and in more than one instance the blankets were taken
from the bunk and utilised for this purpose.  Reprimands induced only a
temporary cessation of these depredations, and slaps and switchings
produced little squeals accompanied by the violent twisting and shaking
of the head, and other curious contortions by which these animals
evince the spirit of fun by which they seem to be consumed during the
first year of their life.  On the few occasions I found it necessary to
punish her, she would stand up on her hind feet, look me square in the
face, and argue the point with me in her querulous treble of annoyance
and outrage, slapping back at me right manfully on more than one
occasion; yet she never on any account attempted to make use of her
terrible teeth.  Being in disgrace, she would climb on her box
alongside me at the table, and rest her head on my knee, eyeing me and
talking meanwhile in her uncanny language, as though to say, "What are
a few table legs and axe handles between men?"  And she always got
forgiven; for after all she was a High Beaver, Highest of All The
Beavers, and could get away with things no common beaver could, things
that no common beaver would ever even think of.

When I sat on the deer skin rug before the stove, which was often, this
chummy creature would come and lie with her head in my lap, and looking
up at me, make a series of prolonged wavering sounds in different keys,
that could have been construed as some bizarre attempt at singing.  She
would keep her eyes fixed steadily on my face all during this
performance, so that I felt obliged to listen to her with the utmost
gravity.  This pastime soon became a regular feature of her day, and
the not unmelodious notes she emitted on these occasions were among the
strangest sounds I have ever heard an animal make.

In spite of our difference in point of view on some subjects, we, this
beast with the ways of a man and the voice of a child, and I, grew very
close during that Winter for we were both, of our kind, alone.  More
and more as time went on she timed her movements, such as rising and
retiring and her mealtimes, by mine.  The camp, the fixtures, the bed,
the tank, her little den and myself, these were her whole world.  She
took me as much for granted as if I had also been a beaver, and it is
possible that she thought that I belonged to her, with the rest of the
stuff, or figured that she would grow up to be like me and perhaps eat
at the table when she got big, or else that I would later have a tail
and become like her.

Did I leave the camp on a two day trip for supplies, my entry was the
signal for a swift exit from her chamber, and a violent assault on my
legs, calculated to upset me.  And on my squatting down to ask her how
the thing had been going in my absence, she would sit up and wag her
head slowly back and forth and roll on her back and gambol clumsily
around me.  As soon as I unlashed the toboggan, every article and
package was minutely examined until the one containing the
never-failing apples was discovered.  This was immediately torn open,
and gathering all the apples she could in her teeth and arms, she would
stagger away erect to the edge of her tank, where she would eat one and
put the rest in the water.  She entered the water but rarely, and after
emerging from a bath she had one certain spot where she sat and
squeezed all the moisture out of her fur with her forepaws, very hands
in function.  She did not like to sit in the pool which collected under
her at such times, so she took possession of a large square of birch
bark for a bath-mat, intended to shed the water, which it sometimes
did.  It was not long before she discovered that the bed was a very
good place for these exercises, as the blankets soaked up the moisture.
After considerable inducement, and not without some heartburnings, she
later compromised by shredding up the birch bark and spreading on it a
layer of moss taken from the chinking in the walls.  Her bed, which
consisted of long, very fine shavings cut from the flooring and
portions of bagging which she unravelled, was pushed out at intervals
and spread on the floor to air, being later returned to the sleeping
quarters.  Both these procedures, induced by the requirements of an
unnatural environment, were remarkable examples of adaptibility on the
part of an animal, especially the latter, as in the natural state the
bedding is taken out and discarded entirely, fresh material being
sought.  The dish out of which she ate, on being emptied she would
shove into a corner, and was not satisfied until it was standing up
against the wall.  This trick seems to be instinctive with all beaver,
and can be attributed to their desire to preserve the interior of their
habitation clear of any form of dbris in the shape of peeled sticks,
which are likewise set aside in the angle of the wall until the owner
is ready to remove them.

Any branches brought in for feed, if thrown down in an unaccustomed
place, were drawn over and neatly piled near the water supply, nor
would she suffer any sticks or loose materials to be scattered on the
floor; these she always removed and relegated to a junk pile she kept
under one of the windows.  This I found applied to socks, moccasins;
the wash board and the broom, etc., as well as to sticks.  This broom
was to her a kind of staff of office which she, as self-appointed
janitor, was forever carrying around with her on her tours of
inspection, and it also served, when turned end for end, as a quick, if
rather dry lunch, or something in the nature of a breakfast food.  She
would delicately snip the straws off it, one at a time, and holding
them with one end in her mouth would push them slowly in, while the
teeth, working at great speed, chopped it into tiny portions.  This
operation resembled the performance of a sword swallower as much as it
did anything else, and the sound produced was similar to that of a
sewing machine running a little out of control.  A considerable dispute
raged over this broom, but in the end I found it easier to buy new
brooms and keep my mouth shut.

Occasionally she would be indisposed to come out of her apartment, and
would hold long-winded conversations with me through the aperture in a
sleepy voice, and this with rising and falling inflections, and a
rhythm, that made it seem as though she was actually saying something,
which perhaps she was.  In fact her conversational proclivities were
one of the highlights of this association, and her efforts to
communicate with me in this manner were most expressive, and any remark
addressed to my furry companion seldom failed to elicit a reply of some
kind, when she was awake, and sometimes when she was asleep.

To fill her tank required daily five trips of water, and she got to
know by the rattle of the pails when her water was to be changed.  She
would emerge from her seclusion and try to take an active part in the
work, getting pretty generally in the way, and she insisted on pushing
the door to between my trips, with a view to excluding the much dreaded
current of cold air.  This was highly inconvenient at times, but she
seemed so mightily pleased with her attempts at co-operation that I
made no attempt to interfere.  Certain things she knew to be forbidden
she took a delight in doing, and on my approach her eyes would seem to
kindle with a spark of unholy glee and she would scamper off squealing
with trepidation, and no doubt well pleased at having put something
over on me.  Her self-assertive tendencies now began to be very
noticeable.  She commenced to take charge of the camp.  She, so to
speak, held the floor, also anything above it that was within her
reach, by now a matter of perhaps two feet and more.  This, as can be
readily seen, included most of the ordinary fixtures.  Fortunately, at
this late season she had ceased her cutting operations, and was
contented with pulling down anything she could lay her hands on, or
climb up and get, upon which the article in question was subjected to a
critical inspection as to its possibilities for inclusion into the
rampart of heterogeneous objects that had been erected across her end
of the camp, and behind which she passed from the entrance of her
dwelling to the bathing pool.  Certain objects such as the poker, a tin
can, and a trap she disposed in special places, and if they were moved
she would set them back in the positions she originally had for them,
and would do this as often as they were removed.  When working on some
project she laboured with an almost fanatical zeal to the exclusion of
all else, laying off at intervals to eat and comb her coat with the
flexible double claw provided for that purpose.

She had the mischievous proclivities of a monkey combined with much of
the artless whimsicality of a child, and she brightened many a dreary
homecoming with her clumsy and frolicsome attempts at welcome.
Headstrong past all belief, she had also the proprietary instinct
natural to an animal, or a man, that builds houses and surrounds
himself with works produced by his own labour.  Considering the camp no
doubt as her own personal property, she examined closely all visitors
that entered it, some of whom on her account had journeyed from afar.
Some passed muster, after being looked over in the most arrogant
fashion, and were not molested; if not approved of, she would rear up
against the legs of others, and try to push them over.  This
performance sometimes created a mild sensation, and gained for her the
title of The Boss.  Some ladies thought she should be called The Lady
of the Lake, others The Queen.  Jelly the Tub I called her, but the
royal title stuck and a Queen she was, and ruled her little kingdom
with no gentle hand.

There was one change that this lowly animal wrought in my habit of mind
that was notable.  Human companionship, in spite of, or perhaps on
account of my solitary habits, had always meant a lot to me.  But
before the coming of Anahareo I had enjoyed it only intermittently.
Its place had been taken by those familiar objects with which I
surrounded myself, which were a part of my life,--a canoe that had been
well-tried in calm and storm and had carried me faithfully in good
water and bad, a pair of snowshoes that handled especially well, a
thin-bladed, well-tempered hunting axe, an extra serviceable tump-line,
my guns, a shrewdly balanced throwing knife.  All these belongings had
seemed like living things, almost, that could be depended on and that I
carefully tended, that kept me company and that I was not above
addressing on occasion.  Now there was this supposedly dumb beast who
had, if not entirely supplanted them, at least had relegated them to
their normal sphere as useful pieces of equipment only.  In this
creature there was life and understanding; she moved and talked and did
things, and gave me a response of which I had not thought an animal
capable.  She seemed to supply some need in my life of which I had been
only dimly conscious heretofore, which had been growing with the years,
and which marriage had for a time provided.  And now that I was alone
again it had returned, redoubled in intensity, and this sociable and
home-loving beast, playful, industrious and articulate, fulfilled my
yearning for companionship as no other creature save man, of my own
kind especially, could ever have done.  A dog, for all his affection
and fidelity, had little power of self-expression, and his activities
differed greatly from those of a human being; a dog was sometimes too
utterly submissive.  This creature comported itself as a person, of a
kind, and she busied herself at tasks that I could, without loss of
dignity, have occupied myself at; she made camp, procured and carried
in supplies, could lay plans and carry them out and stood robustly and
resolutely on her own hind legs, metaphorically and actually, and had
an independence of spirit that measured up well with my own, seeming to
look on me as a contemporary, accepting me as an equal and no more.  I
could in no way see where I was the loser from this association, and
would not, if I could, have asserted my superiority, save as was
sometimes necessary to avert wilful destruction.

[Illustration: Jelly Roll asleep on Grey Owl's knee.  "She would rest
her head on my knee ... talking meanwhile in her uncanny language."
_Courtesy National Parks of Canada._]

Her attempts at communication with me, sometimes ludicrous, often
pitiful, and frequently quite understandable, as I got to know them,
placed her, to my mind, high above the plane of ordinary beasts.  This,
and the community of interest we had of keeping things in shape, of
keeping up the home so to speak, strengthened indissolubly the bond
between the two of us, both creatures that were never meant to live
alone.

[Illustration: "Soon the snow was deep enough for good snowshoeing."
_Photo by Grey Owl._]

Soon the snow was deep enough for good snowshoeing, setting me free to
cover the country easily and systematically, in an effort to establish
definitely whether McGinnis and McGinty lived or not.  All beaver found
(to a hunter, even in the dead of Winter, with three feet of snow on
the ground, this is not so difficult as it would seem) could be easily
re-located in the Summer without waste of time, and their identity then
ascertained.  I found three more families, one of them within a few
miles of the cabin and on the same waters.  This latter discovery gave
me no particular joy, as I had given up all idea of attempting any
conservation project in a region where the inhabitants, on whose good
will the safety of my proteges would depend, held animal life so
cheaply.  Anyone of the several colonies could have been the retreat of
the lost yearlings, but nothing could be determined about them till
late Summer, a beaver's habits being what they are.

I commenced to plan my book, but somehow was not able to get started.
I had no idea how to put a book together.  I bethought me of the
"Writing System" that Anahareo had brought away from her home thinking
they were cookery books.  I dug them out of the oblivion in which they
had so long lain forgotten and soon became deeply absorbed in matters
of "Setting," "Dialogue," "Point of View," "Unity of Impression," and
"Style."  And while I could not put any of these instructions to their
fullest use, having no very clear notion of what form, if any, my
narrative would take, this "Unity of Impression" that was so urgently
recommended seemed to be of the first importance, and is the one point
that since has kept my pen, a little inclined to wander into irrelevant
by-paths of reminiscence, more or less within the limits of my subject.
My stories seemed to have the peculiar faculty of writing themselves,
quite against any previous plans I made for them, and they generally
ended up in an entirely different direction from what they started in,
so that the forepart had to be completely re-arranged to satisfy this
exacting and at times exceedingly troublesome rule.

Meantime, I could not but worry about Anahareo, although she was well
equipped and under the care of a man whose equal as a woodsman was
seldom to be met, for I knew the country they had gone into, a region
of very large lakes and severe storms, and having a climate that made
Winter in Temiscouata seem like late Fall weather by comparison.

With these thoughts on my mind I found it impossible to concentrate.
Thinking that a visit to the scene of our earlier struggles, and that
the atmosphere of the place where my first literary aspirations had
been born, might be something in the nature of an inspiration, I gave
my camp into the care of a friend, and loading my toboggan with a light
outfit made the long pilgrimage to Birch Lake.

On arrival I made camp at the same old tenting ground, using even the
same poles, that had been so carefully laid by for future use.

The place was sadly changed.  Though the roofing was torn and the
chinking had mostly fallen out, the camp was otherwise much as we had
left it.  But the beaver dam had gone out of repair and the lake, once
the snow was off it, would be little better than a rock-studded swamp.
The beaver house, untenanted, stood high above the empty basin, the
entrance plainly visible.  Even the muskrats must have left there long
ago.  The birds were all gone and a stranger squirrel scurried away at
my approach.  But the great pines still stood towering, mighty in their
silence; and standing there immovable in their impenetrable reticence,
they seemed to meditate, and brood upon the past.

My feelings as I entered the cabin were those of one who visits a
shrine.  The relics were all there, though the now leaky roof had
afforded small protection to them.  The famous war-bonnet hung limp and
lifeless, its gay feathers bedraggled, and the warrior, the Sign of
Welcome gone from off his face, was but a wooden block.  The homely
paintings, that had looked so like beadwork if you stood away from them
a little were marred and disfigured, and partly washed away.  The
Christmas tree leaned dry and withered where we had left it, in its
corner.  The cut table-legs, the chewed deerskins, and drinking dish
upon the floor, the very tooth marks--Anahareo's curtains on the
windows, all were there.  The redoubt built with such pathetic industry
remained intact, but no small black eyes peered wisely through the
peep-hole in the end of it, no gambolling elfin figures raced from
behind it in mock battle, no small wailing voices declaimed aloud--no
Ivanhoe, no Hawkeye.

And I took my old place sadly on the bench and wished I had not come.
And as I sat in reverie it fell to dusk.  But outside the sky was still
crimson from the sunset, and the glow from it shone redly through the
gaping crevices and was reflected down the vacant stove pipe hole, so
that the floor and walls were coloured with it.  And the dingy, empty
cabin was transformed, and took on again something of the glamour of
its former days, and seemed once more an enchanted hall of dreams.  So
that it was no more an abandoned heap of logs and relics, but was once
again the House of McGinnis in all its former glory.

And quite suddenly the place that had seemed to be so lonely and
deserted was now no longer empty, but all at once was filled with
living memories and ghosts from out the past.  And then I made a light,
and here amongst the wraiths began to write.

In two nights, two chapters of "The Vanishing Frontier" were finished,
"The Tale of the Beaver People," and "The House of McGinnis."  I made
out in my writing that our lost friends still were living, and hoped my
readers would forgive me the deception, if it was one, which neither
they nor I will ever know.

And they lived again in those few pages if no where else.

For a week I wrote furiously, while ever in my ears was the soft
laughter of a woman, and the sound of small voices that were so much
like the voices of little children.  And the phantoms sat with me and
moved and played, and the characters in my stories lived again.  And
they were not sad, these wraithes of yesterday, but happy ones, and
walked in gladness before me as I wrote.  And I found myself able, at
last, to capture thoughts that had hitherto been beyond expression.
And here it was borne upon me why they had so much impressed themselves
upon us, these little beasts.  They had been like little Indians in
their ways, and had seemed emblematic of the race, a living link with
our environment, a living breathing manifestation of that elusive
Something, that Spirit of the Waste Lands that so permeated our own
lives, that had existed always just beyond our reach, and could never
before be grasped in its entirety.  In some tangible way they and their
kind typified the principle that is inherent in all Nature.  The animal
supreme of all the forest, they were the Wilderness personified, the
Wild articulate, the Wild that was our home, and still lived embodied
in the warp and woof of it.  Through them I had a new conception of
Nature.  Although I had not hitherto given the matter much
consideration, it was not inconceivable that every other creature, and
perhaps every other thing was, according to its place and use, as well
provided to fulfil its special purpose as were they, though not perhaps
so obviously.  I had lived with Nature all my life, yet had never felt
so close to it before, as I better understood the Spirit that had
fashioned it--nor yet so far apart from it, in the sudden knowledge of
my own unfitness to interpret or describe it.  As well now attempt a
history of the Creation.

So I kept my theme well within the limits of personal observation and
experience, and left interpretation to those of greater skill in
writing.

The swing of an Indian on snowshoes, the rolling, easy gait of a bear,
the lightly undulating progress of a swift canoe, the black sweeping
rush of water at the head of a falls, the slow swaying of the
tree-tops, were all words from the same script, strokes from the same
brush, each a resonance from the changeless rhythm that rocks the
Universe.  We were more kin to those creatures than we had known.  Not
the exaggerated veneration of a pagan mythology this, nor any doctrine
of animal or Nature worship, but the same realization of the great
Original Plan that caused a Christian minister to say, as he stood rapt
in the contemplation of a mountain lake,

"An Indian, an animal, and a _mountain_ move as to some rhythm of
music.  All the works of the Creator are cast from the one mould, but
on some the imprint of His finger is more manifest."

My writing even had sprung from these things, they ran all through it.
And I sorrowed no more.  The tree falls and nourishes another.  From
death springs life; it is the Law.  And these writings that were no
longer mine, but which I now saw only as recorded echoes and not
creations of my own, had captured, in their poor way, the essentials of
what had eluded me so long.

And I felt at last that I had been made to understand.  And the house
of McGinnis, as I left it in the starlight, seemed no longer a
headstone at the grave of lost hopes, was no more an end, but a
beginning.  And before leaving I took one or two peeled sticks and some
chips, a few brown hairs, and a dried sprig from off the Christmas
tree, and rolled them tightly in a piece of buckskin, to be my
medicine, my luck, and for a token.

And I bid the cheerful ghosts farewell and left them there behind me;
yet as I journeyed onward down the well-remembered trail, whereon no
tracks showed in the starlight save my own, I felt that in the darkness
there behind me was a woman, and with her two little beavers in a stove.




3

THE COMING OF RAWHIDE

On arriving home I was presented by my friend with another letter from
Anahareo.  The possibility of hearing from her by air mail never had
occurred to me.  They were safe and well, but Dave's claim had been
staked just twenty-eight days before their arrival, and was rated the
richest property in the whole area.  They had both had to go work for
wages on what was to have been their gold mine.  Dave's last Eldorado
was gone; and he was old.  Broken and embittered, he had gone out, back
to his own land to lay his bones with those of his fathers, beneath the
singing pine trees on the Ottawa.  Anahareo was waiting for the
break-up in order to return.  This would not be till early June.  So
now the book was no longer a pastime but a serious undertaking; on the
proceeds of this venture we must depend to make a move, and we got
right busy, Jelly and me.  From then on I worked unremittingly on my
script, writing at night and going out only to replenish the wood
supply.  I did not, and do not, aim at literary excellence, it being
beyond me, sacrificing what might be correct usage to paint a picture
in words.  I felt, and still feel that if I had, in my little
knowledge, to pay too much attention to technical niceties, my thoughts
might be dressed in a coat of mail, rather than in the softer
habiliments with which Nature clothes even her grimmest realities.  If
I considered that by putting a word in front that should be behind, and
vice versa, I could better express some thought, I would do so, on the
same principle whereby a snowshoe is often handier to dig snow with
than a shovel, and the handle of an axe is sometimes better suited to
breaking a way through snow encumbered undergrowth than is the blade.
My factory-made English on which I had looked with something
approaching contempt, could now be put to some use.  It was brought out
of cold storage where it had languished for the better part of three
decades, and on inspection, in the light of modern requirements, was
found to be woefully short on words.  This had to be mended, and I
wrestled for hours with books of reference on the English language.
From a book of English poems, Longfellow's Hiawatha, and Service's
Songs of a Sourdough I unearthed verses suggestive of the chapters they
introduced, a fashion long out of date, it was said, but it appealed to
me and I was not interested in fashions; I was getting something off my
chest.

The pile of MS. increased to imposing and rather alarming proportions.
I often awoke from sleep to make alterations, made constant notes, and
to get the proper effect of difficult passages, I read them aloud to
Jelly, who, pleased with the attention and the sound of rattling
papers, would twist and turn in queer contortions of delight.  I
erected a table alongside the bunk, so that I could sit there and reach
out at any moment and jot down any notions that came along.

[Illustration: "The pageant of the High North ... marching as in an
avenue of ghosts."  _Sketch by Grey Owl_.]

And while I wrote Jelly pursued her own studies, and carried on with
her highly important jobs such as moving and placing objects, and took
care of little household chores such as banking up the bottom of the
door, or the re-arrangement of the wood pile.  Often she would sit bolt
upright beside me on the bed, looking up in a most intent manner at my
face, as though trying to fathom what my purpose could be with that
queer scratching noise.  She was a paper addict and was much attracted
by the rustle of the stationery, and constantly stole wrapping paper
and magazines and books, taking them home with her, and when she was on
the bunk with me she would reach out very often at my note book and
other papers, and we sometimes had lively discussions on this matter in
which I was not always the winner.  One day however she succeeded,
quite, I think, beyond her expectations or mine.  Forgetting to erect
the barrier between the bunk and the table, I returned from cutting
wood one day to find everything pushed off it, including a camera, a
lamp, and a row of books; and she had registered her entire approval of
my literary efforts by removing the MS. bodily.  A few sheets of my
work were scattered on the floor, but the rest were not to be seen.  A
visit of investigation to the abode of the culprit was received with
squeals of mingled trepidation and protest, but I routed her out and
raked up the manuscript with the blackened wooden poker and a piece of
wire, the paper fiend meanwhile trying desperately to maintain her
rights of ownership.  Luckily all of it but one page was recovered, and
as she had no doubt scooped up the entire pile with that steam shovel
of a bottom jaw of hers, it was little damaged.  But the resulting
mix-up was very little short of cataclysmic.  Imagine about four
hundred loose sheets closely written on both sides, in pencil, with
interpolations, alterations, and notes wedged in here and there, with
lines and arrows and other cabalistic indications of what went where,
and unnumbered, and you may get the idea.  It took me the best part of
three days to reassemble, and in some instances, re-write the script.
This time I painstakingly numbered the pages.

[Illustration: "Man, whose coming and going, whose very existence, was
of such small significance..." _Courtesy Canadian Forestry
Association._]

So we kept on with our book, Jelly and I, and it began to draw to a
close.  And ever there passed before me as I wrote, the pageant of the
far-off Height of Land--the trooping forest swaying, swinging ever to
the Northward, rows of shrouded trees, like spectres standing on
parade, that loomed beside the trail in the light of the Aurora, where
caravans of snowshoemen marched as in an avenue of ghosts, their
toboggans singing shrilly on the frozen trail behind them; or where
single silent hunters stalked grimly on, alone.  And I wrote not so
much of men, whose comings and goings, whose very existence, was of
such small significance in the vastness of The Great White Silence, but
of the Frontier in all its aspects and its phases, the Frontier that
even now was vanishing, seemed indeed to be already gone; for the ruins
amongst which I now was living showed only too plainly what its fate
was soon to be.  And so I called my book "The Vanishing Frontier."[1]

And ever my mind turned back to Mississauga, roaring between its
looming maple-crested mountains--the wild Forty Mile rapids, the swift
rush of the Three Mile, the flashing mane of the White Horse, the
Cheneaux with its toll of human lives, the heavy thunderous roar of
Aubrey Falls over its redstone cliffs, the Gros Cap with its sheer
towering walls of granite and gnarled distorted jack-pines jutting out
from precarious ledges, the dark, cavernous pine forests, the smell of
drying leaves of birch and ash and poplar, the rhythmic, muffled thud
of paddles on hardwood gunnells, blue smoke trailing up from the embers
of slow fires, quiet, observant Indians camped beneath the red pines,
beside its racing flood----

And ever in my heart there was an acheing loneliness for the simple
kindly people, companions and mentors of my younger days, whose ways
had become my ways, and their gods my gods; a people now starving
patiently, quietly and hopelessly in their smoky lodges on the
wind-swept, ravished barrens that Progress had decreed that they should
dwell in.  I thought of the young children who died so pitifully, while
the parents with stony faces kept vigil turn about to keep the flies
away, till, like little beavers, they slipped silently and stoically
away on the grey wings of dawn that carries so many souls into the
Great Unknown.  And I remembered that with all my repining their case
was infinitely worse than my own, and felt somehow that my place was
with them, to suffer as they were suffering, that I should share their
misery as I had shared their happier times.

Came Christmas, which we two spent together.  I think Jelly enjoyed it,
as she ate so much that she was in visible discomfort all the next day,
but my own lone festivities were rather futile and a little unhappy.
However, I hung up a paper lantern from a rafter and after the candle
in it was lighted Jelly did happen to look up at it a couple of times,
so I didn't feel so flat and ridiculous about it after all.  I had
several invitations for New Year's, and leaving Jelly well fixed for
water and feed, and the camp well warmed, I spent that afternoon and
night in Cabano.

On this holiday the French Canadian throws himself into the spirit of
joyous conviviality of the Season with a carefree abandon that throws
wide all doors, opens all hearts, and puts a period to all feuds; and
he allows, on this Day of all the year, this Jour De L'An, his robust
love of merriment to have full sway.

In town everything had a festive air that could not but have its effect
on the dourest onlooker.  The streets were full of people dressed in
all their best.  Church bells were ringing, men arrived hourly from the
woods in strings, singing as they passed along the streets, and the
whole village had such an atmosphere of good will and bonhomie bubbling
up from it, that no weather however stormy or evil could possibly have
penetrated or subdued it, if indeed it would ever have been noticed.
Music could be heard resounding in every direction, from the organised
revelry of the radio, to the blare of a gramophone, and there issued
out upon the frosty air the skirl of fiddles, playing the wild rhythms
of the jigs and reels and the clever and intricate step dances in which
these people find a self-expression and an outlet for their feelings
which is peculiarly their own.

There seemed something so very reminiscent of the intimate community
spirit of an Indian village in all of it, that a wave of homesickness
swept over me as I passed down the narrow tree lined streets.  But this
was soon driven entirely from my mind as I was saluted on all sides,
shaken by the hand, and called into houses that I had never before
entered, and made to partake of whatever cheer they were all enjoying.
And it was all done in such an unpretentious, genuine, and simple way
that I clean forgot that I was a gloomy half-breed, and gave my best in
entertainment in return.

Every house was full of music and play and laughter.  Here were no
funereal, stupifying "rhythms" or erotic, maudlin inanities, but gay
quadrilles, fine old waltzes, snappy fox-trots, and whatever the
circumstances of the host, whether he laid a ceremonious feast, or
could afford no more than fried pork or venison or good French bread,
the parting guest was sped with a full belly and good wishes, and
perhaps a few glasses of red wine to fortify him against his journey
home.  Here the sophisticates, had there been any, would have had no
need to pose or attitudinize, for no eye would have rested long upon
them in all this healthy, hearty fun, and many a solid citizen lost his
dignity that night and got it back just as good as ever in the morning.

At one of these entertainments was an old gentleman of some account in
the place, who had on this occasion at least, so far forgotten his age
as to proclaim for all to hear, that he was positive he could leap over
a house--not too big a one of course--and told me of his prowess in his
younger days.  He related how, when once waylaid by a crowd of
hoodlums, he had torn up a whole picket fence and advanced to the
attack behind its cover, and had swung it right and left with such
vigour and address (during this part of the recital it was necessary to
duck quickly once or twice), that he had driven the enemy away in
terror and confusion, leaving their fallen behind them.  And so
elevated did he become as he re-enacted the glories of those palmy
days, that when he left the house he took the wrong overcoat, and being
a small man, walked gravely down the street enveloped in a garment
several sizes too large for him, with sleeves reaching nearly to his
knees and skirts that trailed upon the snow behind him.

[Illustration: "At New Year's ... the skirl of fiddles ... and the
clever and intricate step dances of the French Canadians." _Sketch by
Grey Owl._]

At another house was a guest who was a stranger, like myself.  He had a
little Ford truck and travelled from place to place without any settled
abode, and passed amongst the villages selling sewing machines, or
cigars, or cook-books, or even a good recipe for moonshine.  He had a
scarred face and was near-sighted, and wore thick enormous spectacles
and a cowboy hat, and had only one finger remaining on his right hand.
But he made no effort to disguise these infirmities, or belittle them,
as most of us would have done, but paraded them, just now, as fortunate
endowments of Fate that enabled him to contribute to the pleasure of
others not so gifted, and made impersonations by means of them and sang
comic songs, and played the piano with his six fingers in imitation of
a great musician, and danced with nimble feet.  So that the ladies were
glad to plant a New Year's kiss on the poor distorted face, and men
took the crippled hand of this noble, gallant clown and were sorry to
see him go, and wished him Godspeed on his wanderings.

And at midnight a fusillade of shots was fired from every kind of
firearm, and timed by every kind of clock, so that volleys were being
fired from time to time for several minutes, according to whether
clocks were fast or slow.  And as long as the bullets were sent up and
out in the general direction of the lake no one cared a great deal
where they fell, as no good citizen had any business to be outside the
town on such a night.

And in the midst of all the celebration and the merriment I thought
suddenly of my little brown buddy, waiting up there alone in the dark
and empty cabin in the hills.  So I slipped away on my snowshoes
through the midnight forest to my home behind the Mountain of the
Elephant; and with a parcel of peanuts and apples and candies, Jelly
had her New Year's too, and enjoyed it every bit as much as I had
done--better perhaps, because she had no memories behind her.  For no
matter where, or under what happy circumstances I ever found myself, I
never once forgot my mission, and, should I be successful, its probable
results.  I never ceased to listen quietly, studying the language,
asking guarded questions; ever on the watch.  For my search was not
only for living beaver, or for perhaps some hides or even bones, but
might even yet be for a man.  And sometimes I walked in hate amongst
these people who would be my friends.

Late in February I sent the completed MS. away, and being now free I
commenced the study of words, with the assistance of my book of
synonyms and a dictionary.  I found words elusive and hard to trap.
But each one as it was cornered up in a book or magazine was caught,
and went down into a note book and was brought home and given a
thorough and exhaustive going over.  Often it would have little to
recommend it save that I liked the sound of it.  I sought words that
suggested in their pronunciation the idea I would try to express by
means of them.  I was much preoccupied with this note book and the
still-hunts in the trackless jungles of the book of synonyms, and at
times forgot to eat.  I became vocabulary-conscious, began to use four
and five dollar words, and often my conversation was unintelligible
even to my English-speaking friends.  I had attacks of absent
mindedness, and eventually got to the stage where I once reached for
the ink bottle to fill my pipe, and another time caught myself on the
point of attempting to fill my pen out of the tobacco can.  Progress by
any other name could have been no worse.

There was a lawyer who often visited me, always bringing cheer with
him, and sometimes a merry crowd of friends.  He seldom came without
some gift for me and once showed up in the middle of the night, having
lost his way, and announced that he had left a radio down the trail a
piece.  It was a portable model, and the next day we packed it in, with
its appurtenances.  This machine was a complete mystery to me, but he
installed it and rigged the aerial, and that night the camp, usually so
quiet, was filled with music.

I overcame my aversion to any form of machinery from ploughs to
railroads, sufficiently well to listen in on this set.  Here, I soon
discovered, was a word-mine all by itself.  From then on radio
announcers, authors, book reviewers, news reporters, politicians, and
others whose trade is words, became my nightly company.  These people
and the works of Emerson and Shakespeare, and the Bible, each made
their unwitting contribution to my omnivorous appetite for the means
wherewith to express myself.

Always, night travelling had had an irresistible fascination for me, to
which predilection I owed my name.  This familiarity with darkness and
the development of certain faculties that went with it, stood me in
good stead in my work of patrolling and in locating Jelly at any and
all hours; and between tours on the rounds of my self imposed duties,
and at intervals between sleeps, I studied the English language from
dark to sunrise.  My coal oil bill went up, and the books I bought cut
deeply into my eating money; but there were lots of deer and for
clothes I wore buckskin, taking time out to tan the hides.  This latter
practice attracted the attention of the local game warden, who came in
armed with written orders to impose a fine on me.  I had to talk pretty
fast to him to get him to see things my way, and saying that he felt
there had been a mistake he advised me to write to Quebec City.  This I
did, and later received from the head Warden of the district, a letter
expressing regret for the trouble I had been put to, and a hunting and
trapping licence was awarded me free of charge.  Again the noblesse of
Old Quebec.

During the New Year's festivities I had become acquainted with an Irish
family who all but adopted me, using me as though I had been son and
brother, giving me the freedom of their home, and who entered into all
my joys and woes, laughed when I laughed, and danced and sang for me
when I was low in spirits.  A carefree happy-go-lucky group of people
they were, who cared little whether I wore my hat backwards, sideways,
or at all, and who made my coming the signal for a gay party of music
and singing.  And with them I formed a friendship that exists today,
and at this distance, as strong as ever it was then.  It was after one
of these visits that I returned on a day late in March, to find the
camp door open and my little companion of a lonely Winter gone.

I stared stupidly at the open door: my head swam for a moment with the
sudden, devastating feeling of bereavement, and I remember that I
shouted once aloud, made some meaningless sounds.  Then I got busy.  At
first I thought she had been taken, but evidently she had at last
solved the problem of opening the door from the inside, having long
learned the trick of shutting it.  The warm sun of an early Spring
afternoon had lured her out to a not improbable death by freezing, as
there was as yet no open water and there was easily four feet of snow
in the bush.  Her tracks revealed that she had been gone a full day,
and her trail led up the lake to her playhouse of the Fall before.

Unable to find an opening in the ice she had followed the course of the
creek up stream, and at no place did it offer a chance of entry.  The
stream eventually petered out in a maze of alders and cedar swamp in
which she had wandered in all directions.  She penetrated this swamp
for a distance of about a mile and then became lost entirely, digging
deeply into the snow in spots, in a futile endeavour to find water.
Her steps were becoming short, and in many places she had lain down for
long periods thawing out a bed for herself.  It was easy to see where
night had caught her, as a crust had then commenced to form, on which
she left less and less impression as it hardened; and the poor ugly
in-toed tracks became indistinct and finally disappeared
altogether--and still headed away from home and safety.  The
temperature had abruptly dropped and a beaver's feet and tail freeze
easily, completely disabling him.

I did not return to camp that night but hunted the swamp till daylight,
calling every few minutes.  I searched it and the surrounding gullies
and ravines in all directions, that day and many succeeding days, and
there being a moon, for as many nights as it lasted.  Came a spell of
almost zero weather, not infrequent during early Spring.  I then knew
that if my little chum had by any series of accidents escaped the foxes
and was still without sufficient water, she would be by now almost
certainly frozen to death; and in support of this theory I one day
found a porcupine in that condition.  The weather later became soft and
I travelled day after day combing the country for signs of the
wanderer, even visiting lakes to which she probably could never have
got.  At the end of twenty days I sat dispirited and well nigh worn out
from dragging heavy snowshoes over wet snow at a time of year when bush
travelling is considered virtually impossible.  My injured foot had
given out and my snow shoes were so worn as to be almost useless, but
as there had been a couple of days of heavy rain followed by a sharp
frost, I decided to take advantage of the crust that formed and make
one more attempt.  I repaired my snowshoes as best I could and was
starting out, when I saw a black object working its way along the shore
line, about fifty yards away and headed for the cabin.  For a moment I
watched it, and then, the certainty entering my mind that my search was
ended I went forward and met it and there, plodding slowly but
persistently ahead, poor as a rake and otherwise the worse for wear,
came my long lost friend the Boss.

It was a great reunion.  For her part, she took up camp life about
where she had laid it down, had a good feed, slept for twenty-four
hours, and said no more about it.  I later found where her unerring
instinct had located water in the nearly dry bed of the stream, and she
had holed up there for nearly three weeks, under the snow, until the
rain had created a freshet on which she had descended to the lake, and
there being by then a strip of open water she had been released.

Come open water she left the camp, and I much feared that she would
leave on some rambling excursion to look for a partner, and finding
one, not return.  But she waived her privilege and proceeded up the
lake, where she formally took up her abode in her burrow, visiting me
regularly several times a night.  She followed the canoe around the
lake and surprised me one day by scrambling over the side and flopping
into it.  This seemed at the time a little extraordinary, and
especially remarkable was her manner of doing this, as she had a nice
sense of equilibrium, canting the canoe only a few inches.  She
continued this practice, and varied the performance by climbing onto
the stern seat and taking a high dive into the lake, slipping smoothly
into the water as though oiled.  On what I took to be special occasions
she played a kind of a game with me, giving me a false lead as to her
intended direction, and then diving.  I would attempt to follow her,
and she would suddenly appear in a totally unexpected spot some
distance away, and on my approach she would birl around and around like
a log, or spin in an erect position, partly out of the water, and throw
herself backwards with a mighty splash in very evident pleasure,
perhaps at having fooled me.  This she would do for perhaps half an
hour at a time.  She would sometimes dive alongside the canoe, and I
could see her straining every muscle to gain on me whilst supposedly
out of sight, and on coming to the surface ahead of the canoe, which of
course I always made sure to allow for, she would wait for me to catch
up and then repeat.  She often signalled me by calling, giving a clear
penetrating note capable of being heard for half a mile, and should I
call her with a similar sound she seldom failed to answer me, if within
earshot.  Her favourite amusement was to place her two front legs
around my wrist, gripping hard, and standing erect with my hand
pressing against her breast, she would push and strain in a sustained
effort to upset me.  Sometimes in the course of this pastime she would
back up, trying to drag me forward until I was off balance and then
attempt to rush me off my feet.  She now weighed all of twenty pounds
and was solid bone and muscle, and was surprisingly strong.  I have
since found that there was nothing very out of the ordinary in these
activities as they are all customary amusements of any beaver; the
remarkable part is, that she should elect to remain with me and so
employ herself, instead of seeking her own kind of which there was a
colony less than three miles away, and easily accessible to her.

Just before the leaves came I set a trap for a marauding otter, on a
stream some distance away, as I had found beaver hair in his droppings;
Jelly, on account of her optimistic outlook on life, would fall an easy
victim.  One morning on visiting the trap I found it gone, and
projecting from under a submerged log saw the tail of a beaver.  On
pulling the chain I found resistance, and hauled out a living beaver,
an adult.  He had a piece of his scalp hanging loose, and half-drowned
and scared almost to death, he made little attempt to defend himself.
I removed the trap and took him home with me, tied up in a gunny sack.
His foot was badly injured, and being one of the all-important hind, or
swimming feet, I decided to try and repair the damage before I
liberated him.  For the first twenty-four hours he hid himself in the
Boss's late apartment, emerging only to drink, and he ate not at all.
At the end of that time he came out into the centre of the camp with
every appearance of fear, but I was able to pick him up and speaking
kindly to him, offered him an apple which he took.  I worked on him all
night doing my best to inspire confidence, and succeeded to the extent
that, crippled as he was, he commenced a tour of the camp, examining
everything including the door, which he made no attempt to bite
through.  In the course of his explorations he discovered the bunk,
climbed into it up Jelly's chute, found it to his liking, and from then
on ate and slept there, occasionally leaving it for purposes of his
own, such as to dispose of his peeled sticks or to take a bath.  He
slept between my pillow and the wall, and nearly every night he became
lonesome and came around to sleep in the crook of my arm till daylight,
when he went back behind the pillow.  I might add here that I was under
no hardship, as a beaver is perhaps one of the cleanest animals in
existence.  After all I was responsible for his condition, and any
small sacrifices that I had to make were cheerfully submitted to.

Although the weather was still cold I dared light no fire in the camp,
as the noise of the stove drove him frantic; tobacco smoke caused him
to hide away for hours.  The operation of dressing his foot single
handed was an undertaking of no mean proportions.  It was swollen to an
immense size, and two of the metatarsal bones projected through the
skin.  His teeth were badly shattered from his attempts to break the
trap, and it would be weeks before they were again serviceable.  The
loose portion of his scalp had dried, and hung from his head like a
piece of wrinkled hide, so I severed it and named him after it, calling
him Rawhide, a name he still retains and knows.

For two weeks I worked hard to save the injured foot, and to a certain
extent succeeded, although I believe the antiseptic effect of the
leeches which clustered in the wound on his subsequent return to
natural conditions, completed a task that taxed my ingenuity to the
utmost.  Whether on account of the attention he received, or because
labouring under the impression that I had saved his life, or from very
lonesomeness, I cannot say, but the poor creature took a liking to me,
hobbling around the camp at my heels, and crying out loudly in the most
mournful fashion when I went out.  These sounds on one occasion
attracted the attention of the Boss who forthwith raced up into the
camp to ascertain the cause.  On seeing a strange beaver she nearly
broke her neck trying to get out of the camp, running in her haste full
tilt into the door, which I had closed.  She then reconsidered the
matter, and returned to give the newcomer the once over.  She at once
decided that here was somebody who, being disabled, would be perfectly
easy to beat up, which kind and chivalrous thought she immediately
proceeded to put into execution.  After a considerable scramble which
ended in my having to carry the would-be warrior bodily down to the
lake, objecting loudly, quiet was restored.  She apparently resented
the presence of a stranger in the home, no matter whose home; she ruled
here as queen and had no intention of sharing her throne with anybody,
it seemed, and I had to fasten the door from then on to keep her out.

On my patient becoming convalescent I bid him good luck and turned him
loose, not without some feelings of regret, as he had become very
likeable and affectionate.  The next day, on visiting the domicile of
the so-militant Queen, I saw a beaver and called it over.  The animal
answered and swam towards me, and my surprise can be well imagined,
when I recognised the now well known voice and lines of the cripple.
He came to the canoe with every sign of recognition, followed me down
the full length of the lake, and crept behind me into the camp.  While
there he lay for a time on a deerskin rug, and whimpered a little and
nibbled gently at my hands, and presently slipped away to the lake
again.  And this practice he continued, sometimes climbing, with
assistance, onto my knees and there conducting an assiduous and very
damp toilet.  He had nothing to gain by these manoeuvres, and could
have left at any time for parts unknown, had he been so minded.  While
I can not go so far as to say that he was grateful, there is little
doubt but that the treatment he had received while sick and confined to
the cabin had had its effect on him, for he haunted me and the camp
environs, unless driven away by the Boss, whose treatment of him was
little short of brutal.  She was insanely jealous and drove him away
from the camp repeatedly, and would not allow him to approach me if she
were present.  On more than one occasion she chased him far down the
stream below the outlet, where I could hear him crying out; but he
always stuck to his guns and came back.  In spite of her hostility he
followed her around and did every thing she did, hobbling on his
injured foot emitting plaintive little sounds, and seeming almost
pitifully anxious to fit into the picture and be one of the boys.  He
even succeeded, after several failures, in climbing into the canoe,
only to be thrown out by the Boss, on which I interfered.  He somehow
gave the impression that he was starving for companionship, and Jelly
refusing his advances he turned to me.  He did all these unaccustomed
things in such a dumb and humble way, yet with such an air of quiet
resolution about him, that I always took his part against the more
flamboyant and self-sufficient Jelly Roll.  And by this very quiet
insistence, this inflexible yet calm determination, this exercise of
some unexpected latent power within him, he overcame one by one the
obstacles imposed on him by his new environment and found his place at
last, and eventually took control and became no more a suppliant but a
leader.

The Boss had for me the friendship that exists between equals; we were
rough and tumble playfellows, old-timers together who could take
liberties with one another and get away with it.  But the stranger, for
all his harsh sounding and rather unsuitable name of Rawhide, seemed to
want only a little kindness to make him happy, and was as gentle as the
touch of the night wind on the leaves; yet I once saw him, driven to
passion by too much persecution, shake the Boss like she had been a
paper bag.

And I think she owes it to him that she lives today.

A rogue beaver, old and watchful and wise, his colony no doubt
destroyed by hunters, now gone bad and ranging far and wide, descended
on these two while I was away and tried to take possession.  On my
return I found Jelly laid out on the landing before the camp.  A thin
trail of blood led to the door but she must have been too weak to
enter, and had dragged herself back to the water's edge to wait.  Her
throat was torn open, some of the parts protruding; her bottom lip was
nearly severed, both arms were punctured and swollen and nearly
useless, and her tail had been cut completely through at the root for
over an inch of its width and there were besides a number of ugly
gashes on the head and body.  There was nothing I could do save to
disinfect the wounds.  Meanwhile she lay inert, her eyes closed,
moaning faintly, while her blood oozed away into the mud of the landing
she had so stoutly maintained as her own; and in her extremity she had
come to me, her friend, who could only sit helplessly by, resolving to
let her quietly die beside her pond, where she had once been a small
lonesome waif, before she was a queen.

[Illustration: "Straight up the side of the house Rawhide marches."
_Sketch by Grey Owl._]

I sat beside her all night, and at intervals fed her milk with the old
glass syringe that once before had brought her back from the edge of
the Valley of Shadows.  Towards morning she seemed to draw on some
hidden resources of vitality and bestirred herself, and slowly,
painfully, crawled up into the cabin; for I did not dare to pick her up
for fear of opening up her now clotted wounds afresh.  She stayed with
me all that day, leaving again at night, in bad shape but with the best
part of two cans of milk inside her, and apparently on the mend.  Only
the marvellous recuperative powers possessed by wild animals and man in
a state of nature, brought her around.  I did not see her again for a
week, but often passed the time of day with her through the walls of
her abode, and heard her answer me.  By the signs I discovered around
the lake and from what I saw of him another time, the visitor must have
been of enormous size, and there is no doubt that had she been alone
she would have been killed.  Rawhide also bore marks of the encounter
but to a less degree, and I am sure by what I have since seen of his
other abilities, that his assistance must have turned the tide of
battle.

[Illustration: "They proved up on their possession ... by building
themselves a house."  (The picture shows a mother beaver at work on a
house.)  _Courtesy National Parks of Canada._]

From then on the two of them lived in perfect harmony, and have done
ever since.  But with the knowledge that the presence of an intruder
may result in pain and suffering, to her all strangers, human or
animal, from then on were anathema.  Guests who wished to view the
beavers might no longer stand on the recognised landing places or
trails and admire the beauty of the fur, the intelligence of the eye,
the noble lines of the head, and so forth.  They, the guests, were
firmly and none too politely pushed off the said trail or landing.
They were very definitely put in their places, and resistance stirred
up trouble.  The shore, the lake itself, the canoe, she claimed them
all.  Even the camp, it appeared, was hers, as she chased people out of
it and ran them up the road, and it was highly probable that she even
thought she built it.

They both acted much as if they owned the pond and environs, and
certainly without them it would have been just a shallow, lifeless,
muddy sheet of water.  Their presence there gave life to it, and
imparted to the valley an indefinable air of being occupied that no
other creature save man could give to it.  Many came to this hitherto
deserted spot because of them, and it became something of a metropolis,
in a mild way of speaking.  And some of those who came, with the poetic
instinct of the Frenchman, thought it should be named for them, and so
the hills that trooped down from the crest of high Elephant Mountain
and stood gathered around the lake, became the Jelly Roll Hills and the
pond was Rawhide Lake; and knowing well the history of the camp they
named it Beaver's Home.

So we were all officially designated on the local records, and all
three of us proved up on our possession by improving the estate.  The
beavers cleaned out runways and landings in convenient places, and
built a lodge and kept the dam ship-shape and up to date, while I
banked my own cabin and re-chinked it, and brightened up the interior a
little and raked the yard.

Near their house the beavers cleared themselves a playground, on which
no human being but myself might set a foot, and Jelly once chased a
party of three people off this place, two of whom retired to high
ground and another climbed a tree.

And the Queen deliberately stood up in the centre of her plaza, and
shook and twisted her head and body in the irresistibly mirth provoking
contortions with which a beaver shows his appreciation of what he
considers to be a very good joke.

A beaver's memory is long, and I think she has never quite forgotten
that adventure that so nearly cost her life, and even to-day, if I be
absent, the Queen will tolerate no stranger on the place.



[1] This title was changed by the publishers to _Men of the Last
Frontier_, the only alteration of any account in it.




4

THE DARK HOUR AND THE DAWN

In early August, at which time beaver are localized in their permanent
works, I took up again my quest, the only thing that was keeping me in
this cut and tortured remnant of a wilderness with its ever present
menace to the lives of my two dependents.  There was little food for
them on the shores of the pond and once it was exhausted they might
leave me; one more year in this locality would make a move imperative,
though I was well aware that no matter where I went every man's hand
would be against them, and that I might some day be forced into serious
trouble on their account.  Every time I received a cheque for an
article I was sorely tempted to abandon my hopeless search, leave
someone in charge of the beaver, and make a journey back to Ontario and
find some point where we would all have a safer and more congenial
environment.  But I quenched these disloyal thoughts and thought only
of the lost ones, feeling as a man who plots against absent friends.  I
quit writing entirely having run out of material and unable, between
trips, to apply the concentration necessary to the elaboration of new
themes.  So I gave up all thoughts of literary work in the prosecution
of my hunt.  A month's travel proved beyond any doubt, that none of the
few scattered lodges and bank dens previously located were occupied by
McGinnis and McGinty.  Some of the townspeople took a lively interest
in the affair, and I received much well-meant information.  But it
takes a hunter to read the signs with any accuracy, and these clues
rarely amounted to anything.  But I followed them every one to the end,
travelling through swamps and slash, sleeping out in any weather only
to find, after days of wandering, an old lodge that had been deserted
for years, or more frequently the cuttings of a porcupine instead of
those of beaver.

This search had lost its reality to me, and had become an uncompleted
mission which must be adhered to from a sense of duty, until every
chance had been eliminated, in the possibility, but no longer the
expectation, of its fulfillment.  Often it seemed little but a useless
struggle against the unalterable laws of fate, that I sought to change
from their invincible decrees by the very doggedness and persistence of
my efforts.  And when with an empty belly, sometimes in the darkness,
often in the rain, perhaps after dragging for miles through tangled,
mosquito-infested cedar swamps in which it was at times necessary to
crawl, I pursued some phantom clue to its inevitable failure, it
assumed the proportions of a nightmare in which one struggles
hopelessly to gain some vital but unattainable goal.  Yet in the bush
nothing can be taken for granted, and I intended to stick until the
last dog was hung.  The all-too-evident hopelessness of my object, now
no longer to be disguised, together with a number of other things,
weighed heavily on my mind.  It was long since I had heard from
Anahareo; not only was she far removed from any means of communication,
but she herself would not return for months.  The mine on which we had
so depended had failed us, and unable to get out of the country she
might become destitute among strangers.  Our sole income was my small
pension; there was no work to be had here, and if there had been I
could not have taken it without leaving the beaver unprotected.  I was
alone in what amounted to a foreign land, and there was moreover the
depressing influence, exceedingly potent, of the country itself, this
terrible graveyard of a blasted ruined forest, slashed, racked and
slaughtered, a wilderness with the soul torn out of it.  These factors
and the ever present danger to the beaver, liable to be consummated at
any moment were ever before me.  There seemed to be no way out, and I
knew not what the end might be, save that in the event of the beaver
being butchered, I would exact retribution that, in its results, would
drive me forever from the haunts of man.  I felt as one caught in the
slow drag of some dark sinister stream that was drawing me in its
flood, irresistibly down to some vortex of destruction and despair.

Added to this, Mons. Duchene, my lawyer friend, had died, leaving
behind him a sense of deprivation and a real regret.  Even the beaver
had taken to him.  During the summer when both beaver were frequenting
the camp, he had stayed several nights.  He slept in the bunk alone
while I lay on the floor, as I frequently did.  The first morning, on
waking, I asked him how he had slept and he said not too well.  On
being asked the reason, he said that he had no room in the bed.
"Look," he told me; and there in the bunk with him, stretched out on
their backs and occupying most of the bed, lay the two beaver fast
asleep!

Had these animals, to whom strangers were always an object of
indifference, if not actual suspicion, been able to so decipher the
generous character of this man?  I wondered.  He never knew just what
his gift had meant to me, and for a long time I left it silent on its
box.

On the shores of one pond on which lived two beavers whose identity I
had not yet established, I once found a bed of brush; beside it were
some empty rifle shells, and carefully wrapped up and concealed, a
powerful jack-light.  The hunters would evidently return.  Taking a
position directly across the narrow sheet of water, just behind the low
ridge that bordered it, I lay in waiting four days and five nights,
living on snared rabbits broiled before the embers of careful smokeless
fires.  On the fifth afternoon the hunters came.  I appeared suddenly
and without sound behind them, armed.  The moral effect was quite good.
However, it transpired that I knew these men and believed they were
what they claimed themselves to be--poor devils out of a job, trying to
get some meat for their families.  Pot-hunters, if you will, but who
had a better right than they?  They were even unaware of the presence
here of beaver.  But I requested them to move, making no mention of the
illegal jack-light which was none of my business, unless they had been
obstinate.  I took them to a good deer-lick; perhaps they had some luck
there.  But things were not always so smooth.  Nevertheless I had my
way, always, as fortune had it, by fair means; in emergency I would
have not been particular as to the means.  I could understand better
the old-time Indian's point of view, the atrocities they committed in
defence of their families and homes, or to safeguard a piece of
territory, an individual tree, a shrine, or a rock.  Some hostility was
aroused.  It was said by some that I did not, according to law, possess
any beaver, that they belonged to the province; to them it was a
question of ownership, chattels, law.  We own no lives but our own and
I sought only to save, if possible, two that I valued.

That I should make enemies was inevitable, and incidents occurred that
are best not recorded.  And many miles from home, sometimes with camp
made or even waking from sleep, I would suddenly become obsessed by the
thought that the volunteer assistant who took charge of my little
community in my absence had become tired of his thankless task, and had
left Jelly and Rawhide open to attack from some ill-wisher; and I would
hurry homeward day and night through the tangled slash.  But my
faithful friend was always at his post, nor did he ever give any sign
of impatience, although the pickings were often pretty thin at Rawhide
Lake, as I was now living on my infinitesimal army pension.  Eggs,
caviare and champagne entered the cabin only by way of the loud
speaker, and the beaver too went pretty short on treats.  They always
begged for them, and when after buying only absolute necessaries for
myself there remained a few dimes and nickels, these were always
invested in a parcel of apples.  And the little beasts were so
overjoyed to have them, and it was so much pleasure to witness their
enjoyment, that I found it no hardship to stint myself the least bit in
tobacco and some other things that were not real necessities, so as not
to disappoint them too often.[1]

I received another letter from Anahareo.  With the wages she had earned
driving a dog team all the previous Winter for a company, she had
bought herself a grubstake, and was on the trail of another fortune.
This was probably for the best, as although her presence here on patrol
in my stead would have set me free to go to work, if any such was to be
had here, yet the deadly monotony of the place would in time have been
very depressing, and perhaps have driven her away again.  If only I
could present her with McGinnis and McGinty on her return, the loss of
the gold mine would be of small account!

Meanwhile, with the intensive observations I took, and experiments I
conducted to ascertain the movements and identity of any beaver that
came within the wide orbit of my reconnoitring, I was accumulating more
and more data concerning these animals than I had, in my supposedly
complete education in them, considered possible; and my previous
knowledge, hitherto confined to the requirements of the hunt, was as
nothing compared with what I now commenced to learn.  I found that by
the exercise of a little patience and judgment I could, in course of
time, get to see different members of a family within a measurable
distance, provided they were house beaver and not individuals living in
a bank.  After my familiarity with my own animals, it seemed to be
somehow only natural that I should be able to confidently approach any
and all of them, even if wild, and it is probable that three years of
living on the closest terms with these creatures must have had its
unconscious influence on my conduct and manner of approach.  Even my
very attitude of mind may have communicated itself to them, as animals
seem gifted that way.  I found that, after some days of quiet
watchfulness, I could inspire these elusive creatures with some measure
of confidence, and that at the sound of my voice, not in imitation of
their own calls but in tones of a certain pitch, they would sometimes
leave their house and swim back and forth or lay quietly on the water,
observing me, at a distance of a few yards.  One, a young fellow,
actually came ashore and peeled a stick, disregarding me utterly, and
could have been no more than six feet away.  There was nothing
supernatural in all this, and I think that any other person who had had
the same acquaintance with them, and who felt about them as I did,
could have had the same experience, and I have since discovered that
these results were greatly attributable to the disposition of the
animals themselves.  I believe today that animals having a high
mentality, and that have not yet suffered at the hands of man will, if
given an opportunity, come to a conclusion regarding his intention
towards them and act accordingly.  Interesting as these experiments
were, I eventually desisted from them, as the beaver would fall a prey
to the hunters soon enough, without my dulling their instincts of
self-protection for my own gratification.

The two that were now my sole company were, in the fearless intimacy of
their relations with me, adding to my store of information daily.  I
saw them continuously, and within touching distance, occupied in all
the arts of their profession, adding their quota of interest to what
was to be the most eventful Summer of my career.  These two were
completing a house and dam.  And never before having had the same
opportunity of seeing these erections in process of actual construction
to such advantage, I spent hours watching them.  My advent was always a
signal to knock off work for the purpose of playing a wet, splashy kind
of game, and this occurred at intervals all night; but the greater part
of the time was spent in labour that was never abandoned till after
daylight.

[Illustration: "Shook and twisted her body in queer contortions of
delight."  _Photo by Grey Owl._]

The interest inspired by their activities would alone have caused me to
spend the night watches in this manner, but this was also made
advisable by the presence of the numbers of poachers and would-be
hunters that ranged the woods, and these would be a menace from now
until the beaver were safely ensconced in the camp.  For I did not
intend them to pass the Winter in their new house half a mile away,
owing to the danger of their being trapped some day while I slept.  But
they had made elaborate preparations and were every day adding to them,
and in their search for material they stole every movable article they
could find and utilized it in some manner or another.  One night the
paddles were removed from the canoe, to be found later firmly enmeshed
in the structure of the house.  This edifice, besides the usual
material of sticks and mud, had sometimes a weird assortment of
household articles embedded in its surface like raisins in a pudding,
all of which had to be surreptitiously extracted.  Bones, bottles,
firewood and old bags were taken and utilized in the building of the
dam, and I returned once from town to be greeted at the landing by a
pile of objects of a very varied description, including a shovel, a bag
containing potatoes, a box of foolscap, a pair of pants and an Eaton's
catalogue, and interspersed through this collection were numerous
blocks of stove wood.  Other materials lay scattered along the trail in
various stages of transportation, all destined for the lodge and dam.
I had left the camp door secured against them, but these ambulating
saw-mills had easily gained entrance by simply carving away a portion
of the door.  The good work was still going on when I arrived, and I
was met with great acclaim and much excited rolling and falling on
backs, and they seemed mightily pleased with themselves.  On yet
another occasion I entered the cabin to find Jelly on the bunk busily
engaged in ripping up and pushing overboard my carefully laid bed of
balsam brush, while below her on the floor stood Rawhide, who received
it and stowed it away under the bed, for what purpose was not apparent.
Most of the damage being now done, I sat down and watched the
exhibition with some interest until, it suddenly occurring to me that
the blankets were missing I interfered, and found them tangled up with
the brush in under the bunk, and liberally salted with needles off the
boughs.

At the height of the poaching season I received some information that
caused me to pick up the beavers and keep them in the safety of the
cabin for the matter of a week.  They were now three parts grown and
powerful for their size.  The first night in camp they cut down a
table, tore up part of the floor, upset a pail of water and broke a
window.  Their manner of accomplishing this last feat is worth
recording.  On the floor beside one wall was an eight foot canoe-pole
with an iron socket on one end of it.  I had noticed that they were
fooling with this and had thought little of it, until they suddenly
rushed the pole, heavy end foremost, across the floor together.  When
near the opposite wall Jelly Roll, who was ahead, reared up and held
the end above her head with both hands, while Rawhide, at the other
end, kept going and drove the iron socket crashing through the window.
It is not to be supposed that they had any intention of deliberately
breaking the glass, having no knowledge of its nature, their purpose
being no doubt to commence the erection of a scaffold on which they
could climb to close the aperture they thought existed there.  But this
notable instance is the only example that I have so far been a witness
to, of actual team work on the part of beaver, in the carrying out of a
plan of action conceived on the spur of the moment.

I wrote casual articles on all these doings, and the editor who was
taking my work, wrote me to the effect that the interest aroused by
these descriptions had prompted him to notify the National Parks
Service of the Department of the Interior at Ottawa concerning them,
with a view to the possibility of having the beavers' activities placed
on record in the form of moving pictures.  Almost immediately I
received a visit from an official of the National Parks Service, a
gentleman with a wealth of iron grey hair, a shrewd but kindly face,
and a pair of penetrating blue eyes that looked out at one, rather
disconcertingly at times, from under his shaggy Scotch eyebrows.  At
the railroad station he informed me that although he himself was
convinced that my tale bore the stamp of authenticity, before any
expensive operations could be undertaken, the lay-out would have to be
looked over.  He expressed himself as being prepared to see something a
little unusual, but I will never quite forget the look on his face
when, on arriving at the lake I called the beaver out, and swimming
beneath the surface and unobserved by him, they suddenly popped out of
the water beside him, climbed into the canoe, and gave him a very
thorough examination.  They mussed up his clothes but he cared little.
The beaver were as represented, and that was that.

He stayed two days, and during that time the beaver were constantly in
and out of the cabin.  The beavers' actions had seemed very matter of
fact to me having, during nearly three years, gotten over the novelty
of the situation, but this official told me frankly that there was
nothing to parallel it anywhere, and that something must be done about
it immediately before anything happened to the beaver.  I told him the
story of McGinnis and McGinty and how they had been the moving spirit
behind this endeavour.  He was quite moved by the recital and said that
such a thing must not be allowed to happen again.  However nothing was
decided, save that when he left, he told me to expect a moving picture
outfit to arrive within a few days.

In less than a week the cameras were grinding away while Jelly and
Rawhide swam, dived, walked, ran, hauled sticks around, climbed in and
out of a canoe, and did besides a hundred and one other things that no
one had ever seen a beaver do before, and which formed the subject of
the first beaver film of any account ever taken, "The Beaver People."

The difficulties connected with the filming of this first beaver
picture were numerous.  The operator who, in his enthusiasm, spent much
of his time standing ankle deep in mud and water, and once slid waist
deep into the creek, had little knowledge of beaver, and I had
considerably less of picture taking, still or otherwise.  The beaver
were, however, very helpful, staying on deck all afternoon and acting
very polite and interested, the main difficulty being to keep them far
enough away from the cameras.

The picture was released and later in the year the official who had
first approached me paid us another visit, and stated that he was now
in a position to offer me the protection I so much desired for the
beaver.  The picture, he said, had been received with acclamation all
over the Dominion, and was to be shown in all civilized countries.  And
you can bet us beaver people were a proud bunch.

The history of this endeavour, apart from the results achieved, had
been considered to be deserving of recognition, and it had been
arranged, pursued my visitor, that I might continue with the work I was
now engaged in, under the auspices of the Dominion Government, and at a
regular salary.  The safety of the beaver would be guaranteed as long
as they should live, and they would never be taken from me; they would
never be made the object of political issues or of any form of
experimentation, and the administration and their increase, if any,
would be left entirely in my hands.  Further, I would be given every
opportunity to carry out my conservation ideas in a dignified and
constructive manner, without the necessity for anxiety as to the means.
A house would be built for Anahareo, to be designed according to our
own plans.  The beaver would be supplied with all the apples they could
eat, and in return certain duties would be expected of them.  They were
to afford opportunities for research to students of wild life and
natural history, and for scientific observation, and it was considered
that the contribution they would make to a more general public
knowledge of our national animal, would constitute them a valuable
educational exhibit of national importance and would provide a living
argument for conservation.  I myself would become a servant of the
Government of Canada.

He skilfully drew me out, this earnest grey haired gentleman, and
influenced by his utter friendliness and his attitude towards Indians,
animals and all of nature, I told him of my ideas and aims, and of the
bitter struggle it had been to keep on with them after such devastating
failures.  He listened in grave silence and when I had finished said,
"You're the man we want."  And from his further conversation I gathered
that my activities had been under observation for some time past.  And
with his infinite tact and consideration he somehow made it appear that
the gain would be his, that he was the petitioner, when my anxiety on
behalf of my dependents must have been so very plain to see.  But he
did not hurry me, and went away leaving it in my hands to decide.  And
after I saw him off at the station, I went back behind the Elephant
Mountain and thought it over.

It was the chance of a lifetime; yet the decision was a momentous one
to make, and I gave the matter long and deep consideration.

Outside of forest ranging and guiding I had never had a job of any
kind.  If I embraced this opportunity, with all its multitudinous
advantages, it would seem to mean the absolute surrendering of my
freedom, might put an end to all my wanderings in the wilderness.  It
all seemed very final and a little frightening and unexpected.  Yet did
I remain true to what I deemed to be my obligations, all thought of
liberty must be given up.  And two things stood out compellingly and
clear as light; my object, which had seemed at last so unattainable,
was now within my grasp, and my two small friends would be forever
beyond the power of any one to harm, free for all time from the
haunting fear of death, that is the inescapable heritage of the beaver
folk.  These were the main issues; all others dwarfed beside them.

And so I chose aright for once, and today am freer than perhaps I ever
was before, and have a little kingdom all my own, so far as any one is
here to tell me different.

And when I penned my letter of acceptance, turning over the beaver and
myself to National Parks of Canada to do with as they would, I asked
that we, the beaver and I, should never be parted, and that if I should
ever find McGinnis and McGinty that I would be allowed to take them
too; for here was one door that I could never bring myself to close.

Both these requests were granted.

And thus I attained the consummation of my long thwarted desires and in
a way I never dreamed of; not owing to any act of mine, not through any
startling demonstration of ability on my part, not altogether on
account of anything I said or wrote, save as might have sprung from the
natural and orderly process of forces that are always greater than we,
or than anything of our devising, but by reason of the vision and
foresight of others.

Long months, years of privation in pursuance of a principle, of futile
tilting at lifeless and unimpressionable windmills, were bearing rather
unexpected fruit.  The tide of my affairs, that had ebbed so steadily,
had turned to some effect; for there were other matters, of which
later.  I had read that the law of averages was invincible.  I could
now believe it.  Emerson wrote that the effect blooms in the cause,
that no sustained effort, good or bad, but had its inevitable
complement of reward or punishment--an interesting but debatable theory
that had no place in real life, apparently, and was only to be accepted
by anyone in a philosophical frame of mind.  But it had worked out, in
this instance, and at a time when I had been ready to brand it, in my
own mind, as a lie.  The dark cloud that lurked behind every silver
lining, I could always detect with great precision.  Today, Emerson's
"Compensation" is one of my favourite and most consoling pieces of
literature in times of stress, and although much of it is yet beyond my
comprehension, I read it with increased profit at every sitting.

      *      *      *      *      *

And none of it could have been made possible without the whole-hearted
and vigorous, if unwitting co-operation of two homely, clumsy looking,
wilful and mischievous, yet lovable beasts.

Less than a week after the arrangements were concluded and I was to
prepare myself to move, these contrary creatures suddenly absented
themselves from me and all my works, and were, with no warning at all,
frozen into their lodge for the Winter.

They were now as far out of my reach as if they had been in China.



[1] During this period the writer was in actual want, though frequent
and highly attractive offers were made to buy this pair of Beaver.  To
illustrate the feeling inspired by the disposition of these animals an
extract is appended from an unpublished article, written by the Author
as a kind of soliloquy, during an especially trying time.

"... But be times ever so hard, let the pot be empty and the belt
somewhat tightened on occasion, they will never die to provide the
wherewithal for me.  A thousand times the value of their coats so
proudly scrubbed and combed would not pay for the loss of my ever-happy
playfellows; for they trust and seem to love me.  And did I so betray
them or sell them into bondage, methinks there are nights when I would
awake and listen in the darkness to the fancied sound of childlike
voices, the pleading voices of my Little Brethren, and see looking
reproachfully at me the wise, sad eyes of my Beaver People."




5

HOW WE LEFT RAWHIDE LAKE

It was a dreary Winter.  After the Beaver People had paid me their last
visit and danced for the last time their bizarre Pleasure Dance upon
the landing, and had retired to their skillfully constructed hut at the
head of lake, I found it none too easy to adjust myself.  The
companionship of these fun-loving, bustling little workers had become
more or less indispensable to me in and around the lonely camp at the
outlet, and the knowledge that they would spend the Winter in comfort
and security on the fruits of a Summer of intense industry, did little
to lift the pall of solitude that immediately fell upon the landscape.
The den that I had so carefully improved and lined with marsh hay
remained untenanted, and the big new tank, especially made for them,
sat in gloomy and resounding emptiness in a corner.  The constantly
recurring thought that my two retainers, now full grown and entirely
beyond my influence, would revert to the wild state, and that answering
neither call nor entreaty would go sailing by on the Spring flood to
the same fate that had befallen the other small adventurers, cast a
gloom over the sunshiny days of early Winter.

Many were the pilgrimages made to the tall snow-shrouded house at the
far end of the lake, and often I carefully opened up the white coverlet
and spoke through the hollow air-space beneath it, the well-known words
and phrases that so far had never failed to provoke weird contortions
and sounds of joy.  But now no sound rewarded me save the echo of my
own voice across the empty solitude.  Yet beneath that conical white
mound that stood high above the level of the wind-swept muskeg was
life, and two plump furry bodies lay sleeping soundly and pitifully in
fancied security, little knowing that the very defences on which they
so depended, served but to advertise their presence to every passing
vandal.  Well I knew that did I betray my trust and neglect to guard
these living creatures committed to my charge, they would never see the
Spring.  And I swore that if any power on earth could save them I would
invoke it, if I mortgaged my entire future to do so.

And then one never-to-be-forgotten day I found a hole, cut with an axe,
in the thin ice beside the beaver house.  A heavy storm was on,
effectively obliterating all tracks in the open muskeg.  Scraping away
the accumulated snow from around the opening, I found a crimson
stain--blood!

In five swift seconds I reverted to the savagery of forgotten ancestors
and turned my faculties loose on that hunt supreme, the man-hunt.  Out
in the open the tempest baffled me, but in the shelter of the timber I
found the indications I was looking for, undoubtedly left in such a
manner as to be confusing to one who followed.  This man knew his
business well, but not quite well enough.  A fugitive who once sets his
snowshoe, or his foot, into the high and narrow coping of piled up snow
that covers a fallen tree at any elevation, has made an impression, a
slot that no snowstorm, or any number of snowstorms, can ever quite
fill in.  And even if he undertake to do this himself, he can by no
means reproduce the strata of the successive storms that made it.

Fortunately for all concerned he had at least two hours the start of me
and was now at home, safe for the moment.  I spun a web of evidence
from odd tracks, and later by careful questioning in the village,
spotted out my man.  As to my intentions, had I finally proven the case
to my own satisfaction, the less said the better.  Suffice it that a
timely thaw revealed, at some distance from the lodge, the mangled body
of a muskrat, evidently killed by an owl, as the head was missing and
the body roughly skinned.  Hearing of this the suspected hunter sought
me out and told me how he had cut open a rat hole near the beaver house
to get a drink, and had then noticed the nearby bloodstain.  Realizing
the construction that might be placed on this, he had feared to carry
out his intention of paying me a visit, and depending on the storm, had
tried to mask his trail.

But for two weeks I had suffered the mental tortures of the damned,
while I laid plans, carefully and cold-bloodedly conceived, that could
have ruined three lives, if no worse, and have sealed the beavers' fate
in reality.  And my dreams have often since been troubled with the
picture of it.

And so ended the Mystery of the Murdered Muskrat, in which, for once, I
rather out-sherlocked myself.

From then on I worked systematically; and around the little valley I
drew a circle on my snowshoes, with the lake for its hub, which none
could cross without discovery and within it kept a hard packed trail
between the cabin and the lodge, on which a flying trip could be
quickly made; the trail of the Beaver Patrol.

The small receiving set had now become an important factor in my life,
for here was an inexhaustible supply of company and music on tap, and I
went to much trouble to keep the batteries replenished, drawing them in
and out on the sleigh at frequent intervals.

When Christmas came I went out, but my heart was not in the festivities
of the generous family that had me for a guest, so I spent New Year's
at the cabin, listening to the celebrations on the radio.  I had by now
got into the way of keeping these festivals in some kind of a way, and
at midnight, aroused by the announcements that came to me from out this
blind man's theatre, and stirred by the knowledge that the whole world
was enjoying itself, I did not see why Rawhide Lake should be left out
of it.  So I turned on the electric torch and let it stream through the
window, down on to the frozen lake, and in the spotlight of its beam I
stood at the water hole and fired a few shots in the air, and yelled a
little.  And I fired one shot straight and true to the Eastward,
towards the far off House of McGinnis and its helpful happy ghosts, and
another over the beaver house, and yet another into the North, towards
Chibougamou, where my prospector was.  And on each bullet I breathed a
message, and sent it out into the vast emptiness of the New Year's
night.

Meanwhile, between patrols, I wandered through the uplands and followed
the old disused lumber roads to see what lay at the end of them; but it
was like wandering through an empty haunted house.  There was never
anything but an old deserted camp surrounded by stumps and stark dead
trees, ghosts of a forest that was gone.  There were small blocks of
timber, and here and there a lone pine tree, diseased perhaps and
spared on that account.  I always made my dinner fire near one of these
and tried to feel at home.  But it was beyond my imagination; they were
destined for the axe in any case and I could only pity them.  And on
leaving I would look back a dozen times at the moving smoke of my lunch
fire, as though it were something there that was alive and kept the old
tree company when I was gone.  All Northern people loved the pine
trees, perhaps because those of us of any age at all, had lived the
forepart of our lives amongst them.  Now, as we followed the receding
waves of this vanishing frontier further and further North to where
pine no longer grew, we found them to be rare, and missed them.  Even
David, with his stern repressions, allowed this feeling to escape him
once.  We had come across a giant pine, four feet across the stump
maybe, towering in dignified aloofness high above the trashy second
growth of popple and willow by which it was surrounded, standing there
mighty in its loneliness, like to some ancient warrior who has awakened
from centuries of sleep, to find his comrades gone and his course beset
by an innumerable horde of weaklings.  And Dave took his light axe from
his belt and cut away from the roots of the great conifer, and for a
space all around the foot of it, the parasitic growth of rubbish that
had accumulated there.

"Dam' things," he mumbled, half ashamed.  "They'll kill 'um; only
decent tree in the country."

There were not even any wolves here, and a country without them seemed
lacking in some strong ingredient.  I missed their wild cantatas, and
the lazy inbred deer, lacking any incentive to move around and improve
themselves, died like rabbits all through the woods.

In town I met one Indian.  Civilization had surely gotten in its work
on him.  He had a broad Cockney accent, and a large repertoire of
shanty songs which he rendered most entertainingly.  He was more or
less of a hobo and was well versed in his art.  He could size up a
store full of people and pick his prospect unerringly, extracting from
him a nickel, a dime, or a quarter, or whatever he appeared to be good
for, before the astonished victim quite realized what it was all about.
He was a great thief, so he told me with some pride, but as he was on
his uppers and his company might be entertaining, I had him stay with
me a while.  He practised none of his accomplishments on me, and was a
good worker around the place, and weaved some very fine baskets from
strips he skilfully pounded out of ash timber, and dyed.  But he was
afflicted with what he termed "itchy feet," a malady which could only
be alleviated by the soothing contact of long stretches of railroad
ties, applied at regular intervals.  So one morning, with one of his
small baskets filled with supplies he set out, bound for no particular
place, singing happily as he went, a piece of drift flung from the
spinning flywheel of Modernity, a shred of waste material spewed from
the bowels of the Machine that would some day engulf us all.  And as he
disappeared, this cheerful vagabond, amongst the trees along the
out-bound trail, his song echoing back behind him, I remembered that he
belonged to the oldest civilized of all the tribes.  The wild freedom
of his ancestors that had made them something noble, perverted, was
come to this.

No son should ever be mine to rear to such a heritage.

And then one day I returned from patrol to find sitting in the cabin
waiting for me, Anahareo!  She had come out to civilization by plane.
We had much to talk about, and we talked about it,--plenty.  Although
she was prepared, by my few letters, to hear that my attempts to
recover McGinnis and McGinty had been unsuccessful, when I told her
that there had been no trace of them, no sign, nothing--and when, to
prove to her how thorough had been the search, I described the history
of the past year and a half, and told her straight that there could be
no longer any hope,--she did not trust herself to speak, just held the
relics in her hand and looked at them.  And she stayed so for a long
time, turning the dry, dead keepsakes over and over on their buckskin
wrapper, and at last said softly:

"Don't let's ever forget, will we, eh?  Never?"

Her greatest wish could now never be accomplished, and save at
Christmas, in commemoration of that one unforgettable Christmas Eve on
faraway Birch Lake, she never mentions our little old companions that
are gone.  Nor do I ever trespass on this silent remembrance which is
hers.

As to her own affairs, her tale was quickly told.  The Depression, so
soon to make itself felt the world over, was already on its way.  The
mining business had not been what it was cracked up to be; her claims,
any claims in fact, were unsaleable, and had become something in the
nature of a whole herd of white elephants.  They were eating up money
faster than she could earn it, so she had relinquished them, and had
got out of the country while she still had the price to do so.  But her
joy at all the good news I had for her made these matters of small
moment, in her estimation.  She had had what she called her "fling" and
was satisfied.  But there was a note of sadness in her triumph when she
spoke of Dave.  Some busy-body, full of ideas of uplift and education
of the savage mind, had painstakingly explained to him that his long
cherished belief that somewhere beyond the Northern horizon there
existed a vast unexplored hunting ground, was a delusion; that the
white people had penetrated to the furthermost recesses of the
wilderness, and that the end had been reached, that there were no more
beaver, no more pine trees; it was all a myth.  No one cares to break
the faith of a simple man, but this reformer had gone to some trouble
to convince his victim, and had succeeded only too well in
administering, over a course of months, doses of poison from the tree
of knowledge.  Although there existed, and still exists, some
foundation for his ideas, Dave had only half believed in those things;
but this stark and utter disillusionment, together with the loss of his
fortune so nearly won, had ruthlessly tumbled his house of cards about
his ears.  His dream shattered, his last hope gone, he had brooded and
fallen into a melancholy from which he could not be aroused.  The
spring of his vitality had dried within him and he had seemed to wilt
and wither; his age had come upon him all at once, and left him a
weary, unhappy old man.

And one night, not long before the falling of the leaves, he had come
to bid Anahareo good-bye.  He was going home.  And with his canoe--my
last gift to him, a tiny outfit, his beloved gun, and his
recollections, he had paddled away into the calm moonlight night, on
his way back to the scenes of his childhood, broken, hopeless, and
alone.

The Winter was not without event.  The book was accepted, and it had
been published practically verbatim, except the title, which had been
altered.  The results were numerous and interesting.  Small amounts
began to percolate into the bank.  The workings of a bank account were,
and are yet, a puzzle to me, and although these amounts were quite
small and continue to remain so, I found writing cheques on the
brilliantly printed slips provided, an exciting and adventurous
pastime.  We both got a great kick out of having the people at the
other end accept them.  Moreover there was the delightfully informal
correspondence entered into on occasions when the sums indicated on
these gay coloured tokens were in excess of the funds.  I have since,
however, succeeded in working out a system whereby I can forecast this
contingency quite accurately.  My writings began to appear in different
publications.  Some editors, and kindly, wished to make changes in my
work, substituting for my faulty phrasing, constructions more in
accordance with correct usage.  But these alterations seemed somehow to
destroy the effect I attempted to produce, and unable to adjust myself
to the higher standards so set up, I objected strenuously.  After some
lively discussions back and forth, by mail (exhilarating and quite
safe) my requests were acceded to, probably more to put an end to the
correspondence than anything else.  I imagine that some of my letters
on the subject must have been carried out of the office by means of a
pair of tongs and dropped, with some relief, into the incinerator.  My
obvious amateur standing no doubt protected me, and editors, it seems,
can be not such bad fellows after all.

I received numbers of press notices.  Most reviewers, realising perhaps
my lack of technical knowledge, were kind and let me down easy, even
praised me.  Some of them, perhaps to see how far I would go,
encouraged me to try again, and in some American and English newspapers
my work was given several columns of favourable comment.  Letters came
from Germany, Australia, London and New York; a Canadian college in
Ontario--my home Province--gave it recognition.  I felt elated, yet
somehow apprehensive--I had started something; I had fired an arrow,
wildly, in the air and it had come home to roost, and in great feather.
One or two critics, (or perhaps I should be more precise and say, one
critic), mildly scandalized apparently, that an uncultured bushwhacker
of acknowledged native blood should so step out of character and become
articulate, were more severe.  They seemed to take it as a personal
affront that there were in existence beings who, without benefit of
education, had common knowledge of many things not taught in halls of
learning, casting, by implication, some doubt on my knowledge of a
subject with which they themselves could have had but little
acquaintance; quite as though they were, by some divine right,
omniscient.  They probably did not realize that the rather
standardizing influence of an intensive education militates somewhat
against the development of an ability to grasp the more subtle and
elusive nuances of a culture peculiar to the Wilderness.

And then, unkindest cut of all, came an accusation that most of the
text had been the work of a ghost writer.  On discovering the meaning
of this, and not having the poise of those who affect to be "rather
amused" when unjustly censured, I had a few strait moments with myself;
so it was not I that wrote the book, but two other fellows from Utica
N.Y., or perhaps a man from Aberdeen--after all my sweating, conniving,
contriving, and conspirating with that dictionary, the synonyms and the
"System"!  I love the simpler things of life; homely useless dogs,
cheap cigars, clothes and music that are a little out of date, and men
that sometimes forget to remember that they are God's greatest feat of
creation.  A menu written in a foreign language adds nothing to the
elegance or flavour of a repast, to me, nor does the shape of the
dishes or the colour of the food.  Therefore it can be easily seen that
this broadside, delivered by such a connoisseur, struck well below the
waterline.  However, Shakespeare had, it appeared, something the same
trouble with a man of the name of Bacon, yet he had done quite well at
the writing business.  And as to the imputation, made a trifle
scornfully, that I must be possessed of some high form of erudition to
have accomplished anything, that I somehow must be cheating, that I
was, in fact, stepping rather out of my class as one of the
unchosen,--Emerson was again good enough to come to my rescue with a
passage, taken from his "Self-Reliance":

"They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see--how you can
see.  'It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.'  They do
not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into
any cabin, even into theirs."

Moreover, I was much comforted by the reflection that there is always
the odd one who would not have us see the light save through his own
particular knot hole, and who would undertake to categorize us all, and
put us in our little box and lock us in there.

In other words, I was having the time of my life.

There were other developments; my mail increased to alarming
proportions.  The world, I found, had a number of very wonderful people
in it, and some of these letters made me feel that I was at last
emerging from the role of despoiler and had joined, even if in a very
minor capacity, the ranks of the producers.  These acknowledgments of
appreciation made us both very happy.  It was not now so much like
shouting blindly out into the darkness.  Our aims were actually
considered sane and reasonable.  Some of this correspondence was a
little unmanageable; a lady from Chicago whose husband was in gaol,
suggested that we spend less of our energies on animals, and offered as
an alternative that we shelter her until her erring spouse should be
released; this would, in her opinion, constitute a worthy effort on
behalf of suffering humanity.

Representatives of various sects addressed to me a voluminous
correspondence, each suggesting that I adopt his particular faith.
These communications left me in something of a quandary, as the only
way in which I could have accommodated them all was to have divided
myself up amongst them; and as each was so sure he was the only one
that was on the right trail, it was all a little bewildering.  It
perhaps did not occur to these good people that I might have a creed of
my own that made for honesty of purpose, reverence, and the love of my
fellow man, as much as any one of theirs did.  Some of these condemned
me for my love for animals, telling me to look to my own soul.  I do
not venture to drive a bargain with God, and feel that if I do the
right thing by my fellows, human and animal, my soul will be adequately
cared for.  I think that God must sometimes feel sorrowful and perhaps
a little hurt to find himself so misunderstood that countless numbers
of good people, whilst scrambling fervidly to provide themselves with
safe conduct to the hereafter, look with a kind of self-complacent
disdain on the rest of His works that they, not God, have pronounced to
be soulless, and even look with distaste, if not with actual hostility,
on any form of worship which differs from their own which they, not
God, have devised.  These people could not divine that this devotion
sprang from a reverence for all the works of Him whom they themselves
worshipped, though perhaps in a little different way--He, who to us was
not the awful unapproachable Presence of more than one of their
theologies, but was the Unseen Musician whose melodies whispered in the
singing of the pine trees, or resounded in the mighty symphony of the
tempest; Whose purpose was made manifest in the falling of the leaves
and in their budding, and in the ceaseless running of the waters, and
in the rising and the setting of the sun--Who could point a lesson in
the actions of a lowly animal.  Religion has always seemed to me to be
simple and spontaneous, and any involved or mechanical, stereotyped
creed a travesty of truth; while, to some, prayer can become little
more than servile solicitation.

Interviewers appeared who put us gently through our paces.  We were
invited to a convention in Montreal; I was supposed to speak.  Having,
with great difficulty, though with no great certainty, persuaded
Anahareo that she would not be called on, I finally persuaded her to
accept her end of the invitation, and come along to supply the well
known moral support.  We arranged for a couple of friends to undertake
the beaver patrol and went down together.  The train drew into the city
by some back entrance or other, and the portentious and over-powering
gloom of huge industrial buildings just about had me buffaloed, as I
realized that this appalling pile of stone and iron was the city that I
was to electrify with my remarks.  However, as with a war-bonnet, the
front view of it was better than the back, and Mr. Dallyn, the editor
who had done so much for us and who was now our host, was seated in the
audience with Anahareo, and as he had suggested, I addressed my speech
to them, the rest listening in at their own risk.  Here we saw the
beaver picture for the first time.

From now on I met and conferred with many conservationists, professed
and real.  The genuine conservationist was unmistakeable, and I made a
number of worth while and highly instructive contacts, not a few of
which still continue.  But some of these gentlemen, while enthusiastic,
were faintly ridiculous in their insistence on getting full credit for
every word said or written by them for their cause, while we could not
see that it mattered a great deal who said or wrote what, so long as we
got results.  On the whole, the attitude of these individuals was
rather suggestive of the peculiar egoism of some actors that we hear
about, who stoop to petty subterfuges to draw attention to themselves,
losing sight of the production as a whole.  It seemed to be a custom,
none-the-less, to introduce a speech, and sometimes an article, with a
few disclaimers of a self-deprecatory nature with the obvious intention
of enlisting the sympathy of an audience or a reader; a kind of crafty
modesty which detracted greatly from the force and dignity of an
otherwise well-turned argument.

There was a rather depressing suspicion that others were interested in
no measures in which the subdued rustle of currency was not somewhere
audible; and there is a melancholy fear that the left hands of a good
many of these gentlemen were well advised of what their right hand was
about to do, a couple of good jumps in advance.  Listening to their
conversation I began to see the difference between a line of credit and
a credit line, and came to realize that, in the words of a famous
comedian, the dollar will never go so low as the means some people will
adopt to get it.

But by far the greatest part of my contacts were with sincere and
earnest men who had the situation with regard to wild life very much to
heart, and I formed many associations that were an inspiration and that
formed the basis of more than one friendship.  I was approached by
groups who, honest enough in their intentions, wanted to get in on this
venture, supposing me to be a prosperous fur farmer, and they smiled
knowingly when I said that I did not intend to use commercially
whatever knowledge I might in time accumulate.

With regard to an issue so new and having as yet no definite policy,
arguments were inevitable.  Some thought that all remaining timber
should be turned over to commercial interest, the practice of
reforestation being their platform.  I gave as my views that
reforestation, whilst it should be carried on intensively was not
preservation but substitution, and that in face of the fact that it
took a hundred years to grow a respectable tree, its undue propagation
as a sole means of restitution, amounted to an attempt to run a bill
with the nation which would not be payable for a century or so, by
which time, it seemed to me, the debtors would be safely out of it, and
would care little who was to foot the bill.  These kitchen garden
forests, I urged, whilst as necessary to the development of the country
as were fields of grain, could never replace the magnificent forests of
great trees that they supplanted, citing, in support of my contention,
the notorious example of Green Timbers on the Pacific Highway.  Others
thought that fur farming solved the wild life problem, which I was
persuaded it never could do, save commercially, and added a statement I
had heard on the radio, to the effect that the value of wild life as a
tourist attraction in the United States, was worth some hundreds of
millions of dollars yearly, asking my opponents what they thought of
that for a commercial enterprise.  It was all a matter of opinion and
these discussions were very stimulating, and while my opponents could
not always agree with my rather radical views, they broadened my
perspective considerably, and enabled me to grasp other points of view
besides my own.

I had offers, highly remunerative some of them, but none that could
afford the beaver the same protection that National Parks had
guaranteed.  Other lectures were awaiting my acceptance but I dared not
leave my wards too long in the care of a substitute, and was obliged to
refuse them all.

Meanwhile, in advices received from Ottawa, we learned that Jelly and
her leading man had attracted wide attention, not only at home, but
overseas and across the border, of which they were supremely
unconscious as they lay snoring together in their castle of frozen mud.

In March we commenced our campaign for their recovery, for we had no
idea what would be their attitude towards us after five months spent in
seclusion and entirely beyond our influence.  We commenced by cutting a
hole in the ice near the feed raft, and found it to have been nearly
consumed, and this we replaced at intervals with fresh birch, poplar,
and willow, which was always taken away piecemeal, though we never saw
a beaver.

April came and with it warm days, melting snows and shaky ice.  It now
became necessary to, if possible, re-establish communication with our
long absent friends.  Being now two years old, and having been
completely out of contact with human beings for five and a half months,
and at a phase in their lives during which they usually desert their
own home and parents and branch out to establish for themselves, I
doubted much but that their spirit of independence might be stronger
than memory or affection.  My experience with beaver, although wide and
life-long, had not hitherto included any such situation as now
presented itself.  None-the-less I designed and filled in the
specifications for transportation tanks and boxes, and carried on my
preparations for the removal with all confidence.  I have found that a
vacillating and uncertain attitude of mind in dealing with animals
appears to communicate itself to them, especially the highly perceptive
wild creatures who seem to possess a sixth sense, of which I had
already had sufficient demonstration to cause me to take it into some
account.

We transported our entire equipment, save a few necessaries, to the
railroad ready for shipment, and gave away all but a little of our
remaining provisions.  Having now burnt our bridges behind us, we went
to work.  We cut two holes in the ice opposite the lodge and placed in
them a choice assortment of poplar and willow, already budding and
succulent with sap commencing to rise in the warmth of the early Spring
sun.  This provision was persistently destroyed by the constant
nibbling of the hungry muskrats, whom we frequently saw, and we as
regularly replaced it.

At these holes we watched, turn about, from sunset till daylight, and
one evening after about a week of this, during my turn of duty at this
listening post, I saw the swirl and larger bubbles of the passage there
of a beaver, and noted that although he eventually took away a stick,
he passed around the hole several times, far enough back to be out of
sight, apparently searching systematically for one that might protrude
beyond the open water, in under the ice.  I set the next bait further
into the centre of the hole so as to be in plain view, but nothing was
then taken till after dark.  The reason for these manoeuvres was, I
believe, greatly owing to the extreme sensitiveness of the eyes to
light after a long period spent in darkness and much sleeping.

The weather turned soft and the ice began to give out along the shore
line, and we took turns or sat hours together motionless, a little
distance from the holes, calling softly with the inflections that had
in the past always elicited a response, until on the third evening,
after a preliminary and very lengthy inspection from under a hollow
shelf of ice, a beaver broke water, emitted a long low call and
disappeared with a mighty splurge.  After perhaps a half an hour,
during which we sat tensely waiting, calling at intervals, the beaver
reappeared, swam uncertainly around for a few minutes, and being at
last satisfied with our appearance, climbed out on the ice beside us
and commenced the well-known and oft-repeated toilet--Jelly Roll, the
Boss, in person; the same voice, the same clumsy waddle, and the same
air of arrogant self-sufficiency as she took an apple, and shaking it
back and forth with little squeals, ate it with evident enjoyment
within reach of our hand.

Triumph! after nearly six months in the wild state she had returned to
us, faithful as the seasons themselves.  But I was dubious about my
little wild fellow, who had stayed with me unasked and of his own
accord, and whose gentle trusting ways had made his short stay with me
so pleasant.  However we continued calling over two more nights, and
once by the light of the young moon saw a dark object laying motionless
on the water in the most distant of the holes.  Jelly was beside us,
fussing around our feet, and the shape of the floating object was
unmistakably that of another beaver.  That he was very much alive was
evidenced by his abrupt disappearance at some movement.  The next night
he took an apple with every sign of confidence, and the following
evening spent a considerable time out on the ice in company with the
Boss and ourselves.

Again triumph; a wild beaver tamed by hand but never captive, he had
come back to us from his natural state after nearly half a year of
absence.  Almost unbelievable it seemed, but there he was and not to be
denied.  The atmosphere brightened considerably after this, and I had
no further doubt as to the outcome.  I went out to town and wired the
National Parks Service that the beaver had surrendered themselves.  Now
to capture them, remove them from a home to which they must have become
attached, and to inflict on them the terrifying alarms and hardships of
a journey of a thousand miles or more, without impairing this wonderful
confidence and fidelity in the simple mind of a wild animal.  You have
but to fool them once or twice and the work of years becomes null and
void; and only by the most delicate tact and diplomacy can the lost
ground be recovered, if at all, especially with the more intelligent
species.

I attempted to secure Jelly Roll the following evening, but she had so
increased in size and strength that I found it impossible to lift her
from the ground without a struggle, the very thing I wished to avoid.
We both tried it without success; we could pull her ears, open her
mouth, yank her tail and roll her on her back, do anything in fact that
we pleased, but this lifting business was now strictly against the
rules.  So a wooden box was constructed and laid on its back, with the
lid lying flat and facing the water, and into this, all unsuspicious,
walked the Boss.  With the guilty feelings of those who betray a
friend, even if only for his own good, we promptly stood up the box and
clapped down the lid.  Swiftly adjusting the tump line we were quickly
away with our load.  Voiceless, motionless, the Boss stood the gaff
until liberated in the camp, when the first dumb bewilderment gave way
to wild clutchings and wailings as she seized hold of parts of my
apparel.  Her fright was quite pathetic, and she had to be pacified and
reassured almost as much as a child would have been, and nothing would
now do her but that I should pick her up like the big tub she was,
while she buried her head in my clothing.  Gradually she commenced to
look around, and finding herself in familiar surroundings eventually
recovered her composure.

Rawhide was a good deal harder to capture as he would not enter the
box, and on this particular night had decided not to leave the water.
But I eventually got my hands on him and he submitted quite docilely to
being carried away, and was a good deal easier to handle than Jelly had
been.  The beaver made no attempt to escape during the night and slept
soundly with us in the blankets, and the next morning they submitted
quietly to being placed in a ventilated tin box provided for the
purpose, and all hands hit the trail for town.

We said good-bye to the empty cabin and the now deserted lake that had
been our home for almost two years, and we were not a little lonesome
as we trudged over the snowshoe trail drawing our living freight behind
us, leaving behind us forever, somewhere, those that I had stayed here
so long to seek.  My search, carried on hopelessly for two years, was
over; and yet the thought persisted that they were not dead, that we
were deserting them, leaving our task undone.  So it was in silence and
with dragging feet, that we followed the trail that we had come to know
so well, and even the stern mountains seemed to look down on us in
sorrowful reproach at our desertion.

The Quebec Government had waived all rights in any of our pets, and the
permit, as promised, called for four beavers.  But in the big tank so
carefully designed, there were two extra places that were empty.

A deputation of citizens came to see us off and we left real friends
behind us in that town.  And as the train pulled out at last, we stood
hand in hand on the step of the hindmost car, never moving, never
speaking, watching Temiscouata and its mountains slowly fade from view.

      *      *      *      *      *

_Au revoir nos amis_, gay, hospitable, ever happy, singing
French-Canadians....  _Bon voyage_.

Good-bye Elephant Mountain, farewell House of McGinnis; sleep on little
friends, Nitche-keewense,--Little Brothers, sleep on----




6

HOW THE PILGRIMAGE WAS ENDED

It is now Fall, the time of Harvest, and the Queen and her little band
are busy gathering in supplies against the long Winter, as are the more
responsible and useful members of society everywhere.

Landings have been reopened and runways cleaned out, and into them with
uncanny accuracy trees fall crashing at almost any hour from four in
the afternoon till daylight.  The feed raft that floats before the
cabin[1] is getting daily heavier, wider, and more solid.  Heavy logs
are piled on it to sink it deeper, whilst on the under side the limbs
and branches of the fallen trees and all the choicest portions, many of
them with a short projection used as a retaining hook, are secured
below the reach of ice.

Heavily laden beaver swim slowly by separately, in groups, or all in
line as on parade, their loads gaily caparisoned with sprays of
coloured leaves like trappings--the Pageant of the Workers of the Wild.
Sometimes I tune in on some symphonic orchestra, and they go sailing by
in their steady slow procession to the martial strains of Zampa or the
Polonaise, or slip silently along the shadowy surface of the water
while the Moonlight Sonata weaves a spell about them--pictures in sound
I wish that half the world were here to see.

At this season young beaver commence to perform some useful work, but
up to this time few of the rules which govern adult beaver behaviour
seem to apply to the kittens.  They lead a happy carefree existence of
playing, wrestling, and exploring.  They roam the waters of the
home-pond in pairs or groups, forming attachments amongst themselves,
signalling with shrill cries when separated.  They pester the older
beaver at their work, and although this must be very exasperating, the
adults show no sign of irritation, and will go to a great deal of
trouble to avoid injuring them accidently.  This is difficult as the
little fellows seem to be always in the way of a heavy log or under a
pile of limbs, or crowded together at the foot of a runway.  They seem
to be protected by the good luck that favours irresponsibles, and come
out of every jam unhurt and looking for more excitement.

The passage near any group of them of a large beaver with a tow, is a
heaven sent opportunity for excitement.  With a concerted rush they
attack the convoy, attaching themselves to the load, pulling at it,
cutting pieces off it, climbing on the laden animal's back, or vainly
trying to engage him in a wrestling match or some other aquatic sport.
Such diversions serve to break the monotony of life on a small pond,
but are a serious matter for the harassed object of this persecution,
who takes it all in good part.  The adults are not above resorting to
such subterfuges as waiting motionless until the band of marauders
disperses, or diving suddenly with the tow and swimming beneath the
surface to dislodge them from it; but these stratagems seldom succeed,
as at the first movement, or in the latter case on their reappearance
from the depths, the parasitic little demons descend upon them, and
pursue them until they have disposed of their load.  A procession of
this description, with its varied and tumultuous movement and attendant
uproar, adds a gay and carnival-like air to the otherwise somewhat
sober proceedings, but must take a considerable toll in energy and
patience.  However, as the season advances these corsairs cease their
piratical activities, and direct their abounding energies into more
productive channels, and can be seen hauling in their own small loads
regularly and with great diligence.

The lively scuffling and tussling in which the kittens engage amongst
themselves is often quite rough, though harmless.  There is always one
of their number who considers himself a match for two or three others,
and some day he inevitably gets himself set upon by the entire crowd of
youngsters.  If this occurs on land where escape is difficult, he is
quickly disillusioned of his vaunted prowess.  Unable to stand the
pressure, he will eventually make a dash for the water, throw himself
in on head, back, side or whichever part arrives first, and sink like a
stone out of sight.  The incident seems to be soon forgotten, as these
little animals take nothing very seriously and the deposed champion, on
his return, is not further molested.

Most all day a complete and utter silence reigns upon the pond.  But
about an hour before sundown, first one then another black head breaks
water, loud cries and signals echo back and forth, and soon the
hitherto calm water and the deserted lake shore near the cabin becomes
a scene of activity reminiscent of that to be seen around the old red
school house at four o'clock.

It would seem that the task of identifying each and every beaver, all
so similar in appearance, were well nigh impossible.  It can, however,
be done.  Before two months of age they stick pretty closely to the
house, during which period I put in my more intensive taming
operations; after that time they develop individual characteristics of
voice and action, or slight variations in shape which, if studied
closely, make them recognizable.  They seem to run in types, each brood
exhibiting distinct personalities similar to those of the last one; so
that there is always the Loud Talker, the Independent, the Mad Hatter,
the Busy Appearing One, or the Lazy Bones, or the One That Stays Out
Late.  Before I got on to this I used to count as high as twenty
beaver, as alike as peas or houseflies, when there were only four or
six.  Fortunately, although they are constantly on the move, they go in
groups of two or three together, and there being only a limited number
of them, I do not have to be in more than two or three widely separated
places at the one time, in order to count heads before they switch
places and intermingle.

[Illustration: "So if one was called they all came, a very convenient
arrangement."  _Courtesy Canadian Forestry Association._]

We used to name all the new arrivals as soon as they began to be
distinguishable, so we had Happy and Hooligan, Wakinee and Wakinoo,
Silver Heels and Buckshot, Sugar Loaf and Jelly Roll Number Two, and a
host of others, but eventually we ran out of names.  They never
answered to them anyway, but would always come to one particular call,
a plaintive wailing note pitched in a close resemblance to a common
signal of their own, though different enough for them to recognize its
origin.  This cry was a prolonged, "Mah----W--e--e--e--e--e," given
with a wavering inflexion, and its sound, repeated a few times, rarely
failed to attract one or other of them, or at least elicit an answering
hail.  It became at last, by long usage, a kind of community name for
them, and we came to call them, each and every one Mah-Wee; so if one
was called they all came, a very convenient arrangement.  This name was
very suitable in more ways than one, as it is similar in sound to the
Ojibway word signifying "to cry," a vocal expedient they made use of on
the slightest pretext.  Such, however, is their independence of
character that once having put in an appearance, or given some more or
less heedful answer to the summons, it would be some hours before they
would again respond to it.  They could, however, be depended on to
appear at least three times a night and also for the usual morning
check up when they returned to retire for the day.

[Illustration: "My quarters have been invaded." _Sketch by Grey Owl._]

The depredations continue as of yore.  Often I enter the cabin after
some lengthy absence on patrol to find my quarters have been invaded,
and almost invariably some burglary has been committed.  Perhaps a pot
of potatoes has had the lid picked neatly off and every last potato
taken out of it.  Once these potatoes were in a stew and had had to be
fished for.  A beaver's hands are not made for fishing, but this
difficulty was easily overcome by upsetting the stew-pot, with more or
less gratifying results.  Sometimes the woodbox has been emptied, a box
of apples opened, or a chair hauled down into the lake, and being
useless for any purpose, abandoned there.  Dishes, apparently, are
trophies of high value; unless fastened down, their rice dish is
removed as soon as it is empty and is never seen again.  Several have
been lost that way, though one of them was, after three months, very
politely returned one evening and was found, high and dry and very
clean, up on the bank beside the house.

I returned from a perhaps too lengthy visit to a neighbouring Ranger's
camp, and on going behind the cabin to collect some wood I had split
for the night, found it to be all gone; also, some green poles
collected for fuel were not to be seen.  The interest aroused by these
features prevented me from noting further and far more interesting
developments till, finding the place kind of bare, I suddenly missed
the store tent.  Investigation revealed that it was down, and that most
of the poles that had held it up had disappeared.  Fortunately it had
been empty.  The stationary saw-horse, being made of green poplar, had
been cut off close to the ground and spirited away bodily and never was
seen again.  This, of course, was the work of the Queen, levying taxes
on the estate.  There was nothing so unusual about this, except that it
had been the only time that I had ever permitted myself to overstay.

I receive numbers of communications in regard to conservation and
kindred subjects, and I have several bags filled with them, sorted into
lots.  Wishing once to look through one of these bags, I brought it
into the camp and thoughtlessly left it standing in a corner.  Being
busy outside, I paid it no further attention for the time being until,
looking for the letters, I found them gone, bag and all.  A disturbance
in the beaver house, which I had been wondering about in a detached
sort of way, indicated that the booty had been brought in and was being
forcibly divided.  Screams and squeals of outrage in a well known voice
apprised me of the identity of the thief, as Jelly struggled against
hopeless odds to maintain her rights.  The resultant uproar was little
short of appalling, and the scene must have been ludicrous in the
extreme as she tussled valiantly and vainly for the possession of her
prize which, consisting of some hundreds of letters, was entirely
beyond her control.

Perhaps she thought that having been for a long time now a Star of no
mean magnitude, it was about time she had some fan mail of her own.
Anyway that mail remains unanswered to this day but, as it was all used
for bedding for the entire beaver family, it was utilized in a way that
the writers never imagined in their wildest dreams.  So these epistles
are serving the purpose of Conservation after all, which is what they
were originally intended to do in any case.

While the ice is making, the beaver succeed in keeping open a channel
to their accessible cuttings, in which they tow supplies up to the last
minute.  The whole family breaks ice for several hours each day to
accomplish this, succeeding in keeping it open for perhaps a week, but
this watery highway eventually freezes over.  Jelly then takes to
frequenting the water hole, after one has been opened for our own
purposes, and through it I give her quantities of apples, sometimes
till nearly Christmas.  She takes them all away, by relays, and on her
return home the sounds of strife, followed by a steady and contented
munching mingled with grunts of satisfaction in different keys, give
evidence of her generosity to those who make up in appetite what they
lack in enterprise.  I surmise that air that is very frosty must cause
discomfort to lungs acclimatized to soft weather and the humid
atmosphere of a beaver house.  I was led to believe this by the fact
that in cold weather she never emitted any of her usual sounds of
greeting when her head appeared, and closer inspection showed that on
cold nights she never drew breath while in the open, which accounted
for her hurried withdrawals.  I now allow a scum of ice to form, and
shove the apples under it.  So I do not see her, but the apples
disappear with monotonous regularity, until the arrival of more severe
weather makes this practice inadvisable.

About a year and a half ago another subject was added to Jelly's fast
spreading kingdom.  A little daughter came to us.  She and the Queen
get along well together, but we do not leave her in accessible places,
as Jelly's habit of appropriating articles which she takes a fancy to,
might result in us having to open the beaver house and rescue a very
wet and outraged young woman from the ministrations of her triumphant
abductor.

Although Jelly is by about ten pounds the heavier, they are much of a
size, and stand boldly up to one another and sometimes talk together.
And as neither one of them can, as yet, speak any English, a
conversation is held the like of which has not, I think, been ever
heard before.  The little girl is delighted when this big, dark furry
toy, this good natured teddy-bear with the so pretty coloured teeth[2]
takes an apple from her hand.  Gently the beaver takes the offering,
with none of the tom-boy gambols she indulges in with us, and yet never
so gently as Rawhide, humble, tireless, patient Rawhide, changeless and
unchangeable as the courses of the Wilderness whose son he is, faithful
as the rising and the setting of the sun.  He never seems to mind his
crippled foot that looks so odd beside the good one, and has perhaps
forgotten how I nearly took his life.  These matters are of small
moment to him now; he has his work, his babies that he loves so
unselfishly and, in his simple, wistful way he is happy.  Sometimes, as
he sits regarding me so quietly, so attentively and so inscrutably, I
would give much to know what deliberations are going on behind that
impassive mask, back of those grave, observing eyes.

For he is the silent power behind the Throne at Beaver Lodge, and
should he some day decide to move his people away from here, no power
on earth short of confinement or death could ever stop him.  So it
behoves me well that I should not offend.

He and Jelly are known, in some small way, in many countries, but they
sleep on in unconscious innocence of their celebrity.  And as they lie
there snoring in contentment, I wonder if the Queen remembers the dingy
camp in far off Temiscouata, the bed, the table, the deerskin rugs on
which she used to sleep before the stove, the welcomes home she used to
have for me.  Or if she has ever a passing thought for the long lonely
days before the coming of Rawhide, when we were such good company and
often slept together, and how she used to "help" me get water, and
would shut the door in my face; and how we wrote our book, and how she
got lost and must have nearly died--and how Anahareo came back to us
again.

Perhaps these matters are only a dim recollection now, and meanwhile
she lords it over Rawhide and Anahareo and little Dawn and all the rest
of us, and is content.



[1] These beaver are so attached to their human associates that they
have taken advantage of a tunnel that was bored for their convenience
when the cabin was built, and have constructed over the mouth of it,
inside the residence, a large beaver house which occupies nearly one
third of the floor space, is about twelve feet across, and would weigh
not less than a ton.  The beaver bring the building materials in
through the door, which they are able to open from either side, and the
entire family uses this erection as a permanent abode, summer and
winter.  From it they have egress into deep water through the tunnel,
and they attach their feed raft to the front of the cabin, which abuts
onto the lake.  Having successfully adjusted their arrangements to suit
these unusual conditions, they live and carry on their normal
activities precisely as do their wild brethren.  The adults have never
been known to leave the body of water on which they are domiciled,
though no restraint has ever been placed on their movements.  The
young, on attaining maturity, follow their natural course and spread
out through the surrounding lakes and streams to mingle with the native
beaver, and are frequently seen.

[2] The incisor teeth of a mature beaver are a dark orange in colour.




The rock-bound Mississauga roars on between its palisades of pine
trees.  The Elephant Mountain still stands at the portals of Touladi.
Somewhere in the wild Laurentian uplands are little mountain lakes on
whose shores the ashes of my camp-fires still remain.

Some day I hope to see them all again.

And there are those with whom I must smell smoke once more and talk and
reminisce of days gone by, of old landmarks and long-remembered trails.
I must speak again the language of the Ojibways, my adopted people,
lest it be thought that I have forgotten.  Once again I must hear the
Mississauga Dance and tread a measure to the drum of Mato-gense, called
Little Child, the Conjuror.  For the call of the River comes often upon
me, in the evenings, at dawn and when I am alone.

Some time, when the leaves are turning and the moose maples are flaring
redly on the granite hills, I want to enter Bisco as I left it, in the
night-time by canoe, and give the loud long whoop of the Laughing Owls,
and hear it answered from the dwellings of a dozen Bisco men.

All these things will I do in the fullness of time, but it cannot be
for very long.

My duty lies beneath these Western skies.

On all sides from the cabin where I write extends an uninterrupted
wilderness, flowing onward in a dark billowing flood Northward to the
Arctic Sea.  No railroad passes through it to burn and destroy, no
settler lays waste with fire and axe.  Here from any eminence a man may
gaze on unnumbered leagues of forest that will never feed the hungry
maw of commerce.

[Illustration: "When the last buffalo stood before the guns of the
hide-hunters."  _Courtesy National Parks of Canada._]

This is a different place, a different day.

Nowhere does the sight of stumps and slashed tops of noble trees offend
the eye or depress the soul, and the strange, wild, unimaginable beauty
of these Northern sunsets is not defaced by jagged rows of stark and
ghastly rampikes.

The camp is known as Beaver Lodge; yet to us it will always be a
replica of that House, the Empty Cabin, that is so far away--a little
richer perhaps, a little better built, but the spirit is the same.
Save for the radio, the kitchen range, the shape of the roof, it is as
near to it as maybe.  It is built of logs; the windows face out on the
groves of trees.  A painted warrior stands post in his appointed place,
his eagle bonnet spread in brave array; the paint work, the emblems,
they have all been reproduced.  The tokens are all here.

Atavistic?  Perhaps it is; but good has come of it.

Every wish has been fulfilled, and more.  Gone is the haunting fear of
a vandal hand.  Wild life in all its rich variety, creatures deemed
furtive and elusive, now pass almost within our reach, and sometimes
stand beside the camp and watch.  And birds, and little beasts and big
ones, and things both great and small have gathered round the place,
and frequent it, and come and go their courses as they will, and fly or
swim or walk or run according to their kind.




[End of _Pilgrims of the Wild_ by Grey Owl]
