The Last of the Plainsmen
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Zane Grey >> The Last of the Plainsmen
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"Say, for a thousand miles I've heard that word Naza!" returned
the hunter, with mingled curiosity and disgust. "At Edmonton
Indian runners started ahead of me, and every village I struck
the redskins would crowd round me and an old chief would harangue
at me, and motion me back, and point north with Naza! Naza! Naza!
What does it mean?"
"No white man knows; no Indian will tell," answered the
interpreter. "The traders think it means the Great Slave, the
North Star, the North Spirit, the North Wind, the North Lights
and the musk-ox god."
"Well, say to the chiefs to tell Ageter I have been four moons on
the way after some of his little Ageters, and I'm going to keep
on after them."
"Hunter, you are most unwise," broke in the commandant, in his
officious voice. "The Indians will never permit you to take a
musk-ox alive from the north. They worship him, pray to him. It
is a wonder you have not been stopped."
"Who'll stop me?"
"The Indians. They will kill you if you do not turn back."
"Faugh! to tell an American plainsman that!" The hunter paused a
steady moment, with his eyelids narrowing over slits of blue
fire. "There is no law to keep me out, nothing but Indian
superstition and Naza! And the greed of the Hudson's Bay people.
I am an old fox, not to be fooled by pretty baits. For years the
officers of this fur-trading company have tried to keep out
explorers. Even Sir John Franklin, an Englishman, could not buy
food of them. The policy of the company is to side with the
Indians, to keep out traders and trappers. Why? So they can keep
on cheating the poor savages out of clothing and food by trading
a few trinkets and blankets, a little tobacco and rum for
millions of dollars worth of furs. Have I failed to hire man
after man, Indian after Indian, not to know why I cannot get a
helper? Have I, a plainsman, come a thousand miles alone to be
scared by you, or a lot of craven Indians? Have I been dreaming
of musk-oxen for forty years, to slink south now, when I begin to
feel the north? Not I."
Deliberately every chief, with the sound of a hissing snake, spat
in the hunter's face. He stood immovable while they perpetrated
the outrage, then calmly wiped his cheeks, and in his strange,
cool voice, addressed the interpreter.
"Tell them thus they show their true qualities, to insult in
council. Tell them they are not chiefs, but dogs. Tell them they
are not even squaws, only poor, miserable starved dogs. Tell them
I turn my back on them. Tell them the paleface has fought real
chiefs, fierce, bold, like eagles, and he turns his back on dogs.
Tell them he is the one who could teach them to raise the
musk-oxen and the reindeer, and to keep out the cold and the
wolf. But they are blinded. Tell them the hunter goes north."
Through the council of chiefs ran a low mutter, as of gathering
thunder.
True to his word, the hunter turned his back on them. As he
brushed by, his eye caught a gaunt savage slipping from the boat.
At the hunter's stern call, the Indian leaped ashore, and started
to run. He had stolen a parcel, and would have succeeded in
eluding its owner but for an unforeseen obstacle, as striking as
it was unexpected.
A white man of colossal stature had stepped in the thief's
passage, and laid two great hands on him. Instantly the parcel
flew from the Indian, and he spun in the air to fall into the
river with a sounding splash. Yells signaled the surprise and
alarm caused by this unexpected incident. The Indian frantically
swam to the shore. Whereupon the champion of the stranger in a
strange land lifted a bag, which gave forth a musical clink of
steel, and throwing it with the camp articles on the grassy
bench, he extended a huge, friendly hand.
"My name is Rea," he said, in deep, cavernous tones.
"Mine is Jones," replied the hunter, and right quickly did he
grip the proffered hand. He saw in Rea a giant, of whom he was
but a stunted shadow. Six and one-half feet Rea stood, with
yard-wide shoulders, a hulk of bone and brawn. His ponderous,
shaggy head rested on a bull neck. His broad face, with its low
forehead, its close-shut mastiff under jaw, its big, opaque eyes,
pale and cruel as those of a jaguar, marked him a man of terrible
brute force.
"Free-trader!" called the commandant "Better think twice before
you join fortunes with the musk-ox hunter."
"To hell with you an' your rantin', dog-eared redskins!" cried
Rea. "I've run agin a man of my own kind, a man of my own
country, an' I'm goin' with him."
With this he thrust aside some encroaching, gaping Indians so
unconcernedly and ungently that they sprawled upon the grass.
Slowly the crowd mounted and once more lined the bank.
Jones realized that by some late-turning stroke of fortune, he
had fallen in with one of the few free-traders of the province.
These free-traders, from the very nature of their calling, which
was to defy the fur company, and to trap and trade on their own
account--were a hardy and intrepid class of men. Rea's worth to
Jones exceeded that of a dozen ordinary men. He knew the ways of
the north, the language of the tribes, the habits of animals, the
handling of dogs, the uses of food and fuel. Moreover, it soon
appeared that he was a carpenter and blacksmith.
"There's my kit," he said, dumping the contents of his bag. It
consisted of a bunch of steel traps, some tools, a broken ax, a
box of miscellaneous things such as trappers used, and a few
articles of flannel. "Thievin' redskins," he added, in
explanation of his poverty. "Not much of an outfit. But I'm the
man for you. Besides, I had a pal onct who knew you on the
plains, called you 'Buff' Jones. Old Jim Bent he was."
"I recollect Jim," said Jones. "He went down in Custer's last
charge. So you were Jim's pal. That'd be a recommendation if you
needed one. But the way you chucked the Indian overboard got me."
Rea soon manifested himself as a man of few words and much
action. With the planks Jones had on board he heightened the
stern and bow of the boat to keep out the beating waves in the
rapids; he fashioned a steering-gear and a less awkward set of
oars, and shifted the cargo so as to make more room in the craft.
"Buff, we're in for a storm. Set up a tarpaulin an' make a fire.
We'll pretend to camp to-night. These Indians won't dream we'd
try to run the river after dark, and we'll slip by under cover."
The sun glazed over; clouds moved up from the north; a cold wind
swept the tips of the spruces, and rain commenced to drive in
gusts. By the time it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They
were housed from the storm. Lights twinkled in the teepees and
the big log cabins of the trading company. Jones scouted round
till pitchy black night, when a freezing, pouring blast sent him
back to the protection of the tarpaulin. When he got there he
found that Rea had taken it down and awaited him. "Off!" said the
free-trader; and with no more noise than a drifting feather the
boat swung into the current and glided down till the twinkling
fires no longer accentuated the darkness.
By night the river, in common with all swift rivers, had a sullen
voice, and murmured its hurry, its restraint, its menace, its
meaning. The two boat-men, one at the steering gear, one at the
oars, faced the pelting rain and watched the dim, dark line of
trees. The craft slid noiselessly onward into the gloom.
And into Jones's ears, above the storm, poured another sound, a
steady, muffled rumble, like the roll of giant chariot wheels. It
had come to be a familiar roar to him, and the only thing which,
in his long life of hazard, had ever sent the cold, prickling,
tight shudder over his warm skin. Many times on the Athabasca
that rumble had presaged the dangerous and dreaded rapids.
"Hell Bend Rapids!" shouted Rea. "Bad water, but no rocks."
The rumble expanded to a roar, the roar to a boom that charged
the air with heaviness, with a dreamy burr. The whole indistinct
world appeared to be moving to the lash of wind, to the sound of
rain, to the roar of the river. The boat shot down and sailed
aloft, met shock on shock, breasted leaping dim white waves, and
in a hollow, unearthly blend of watery sounds, rode on and on,
buffeted, tossed, pitched into a black chaos that yet gleamed
with obscure shrouds of light. Then the convulsive stream
shrieked out a last defiance, changed its course abruptly to slow
down and drown the sound of rapids in muffling distance. Once
more the craft swept on smoothly, to the drive of the wind and
the rush of the rain.
By midnight the storm cleared. Murky cloud split to show shining,
blue-white stars and a fitful moon, that silvered the crests of
the spruces and sometimes hid like a gleaming, black-threaded
peak behind the dark branches.
Jones, a plainsman all his days, wonderingly watched the
moon-blanched water. He saw it shade and darken under shadowy
walls of granite, where it swelled with hollow song and gurgle.
He heard again the far-off rumble, faint on the night. High cliff
banks appeared, walled out the mellow, light, and the river
suddenly narrowed. Yawning holes, whirlpools of a second, opened
with a gurgling suck and raced with the boat.
On the craft flew. Far ahead, a long, declining plane of jumping
frosted waves played dark and white with the moonbeams. The Slave
plunged to his freedom, down his riven, stone-spiked bed, knowing
no patient eddy, and white-wreathed his dark shiny rocks in spume
and spray.
CHAPTER 9. THE LAND OF THE MUSK-OX
A far cry it was from bright June at Port Chippewayan to dim
October on Great Slave Lake.
Two long, laborious months Rea and Jones threaded the crooked
shores of the great inland sea, to halt at the extreme northern
end, where a plunging rivulet formed the source of a river. Here
they found a stone chimney and fireplace standing among the
darkened, decayed ruins of a cabin.
"We mustn't lose no time," said Rea. "I feel the winter in the
wind. An' see how dark the days are gettin' on us."
"I'm for hunting musk-oxen," replied Jones.
"Man, we're facin' the northern night; we're in the land of the
midnight sun. Soon we'll be shut in for seven months. A cabin we
want, an' wood, an' meat."
A forest of stunted spruce trees edged on the lake, and soon its
dreary solitudes rang to the strokes of axes. The trees were
small and uniform in size. Black stumps protruded, here and
there, from the ground, showing work of the steel in time gone
by. Jones observed that the living trees were no larger in
diameter than the stumps, and questioned Rea in regard to the
difference in age.
"Cut twenty-five, mebbe fifty years ago," said the trapper.
"But the living trees are no bigger."
"Trees an' things don't grow fast in the north land."
They erected a fifteen-foot cabin round the stone chimney, roofed
it with poles and branches of spruce and a layer of sand. In
digging near the fireplace Jones unearthed a rusty file and the
head of a whisky keg, upon which was a sunken word in
unintelligible letters.
"We've found the place," said Rea. "Frank built a cabin here in
1819. An' in 1833 Captain Back wintered here when he was in
search of Captain Ross of the vessel Fury. It was those explorin'
parties thet cut the trees. I seen Indian sign out there, made
last winter, I reckon; but Indians never cut down no trees."
The hunters completed the cabin, piled cords of firewood outside,
stowed away the kegs of dried fish and fruits, the sacks of
flour, boxes of crackers, canned meats and vegetables, sugar,
salt, coffee, tobacco--all of the cargo; then took the boat apart
and carried it up the bank, which labor took them less than a
week.
Jones found sleeping in the cabin, despite the fire,
uncomfortably cold, because of the wide chinks between the logs.
It was hardly better than sleeping under the swaying spruces.
When he essayed to stop up the crack, a task by no means easy,
considering the lack of material--Rea laughed his short "Ho! Ho!"
and stopped him with the word, "Wait." Every morning the green
ice extended farther out into the lake; the sun paled dim and
dimmer; the nights grew colder. On October 8th the thermometer
registered several degrees below zero; it fell a little more next
night and continued to fall.
"Ho! Ho!" cried Rea. "She's struck the toboggan, an' presently
she'll commence to slide. Come on, Buff, we've work to do."
He caught up a bucket, made for their hole in the ice, rebroke a
six-inch layer, the freeze of a few hours, and filling his
bucket, returned to the cabin. Jones had no inkling of the
trapper's intention, and wonderingly he soused his bucket full of
water and followed.
By the time he had reached the cabin, a matter of some thirty or
forty good paces, the water no longer splashed from his pail, for
a thin film of ice prevented. Rea stood fifteen feet from the
cabin, his back to the wind, and threw the water. Some of it
froze in the air, most of it froze on the logs. The simple plan
of the trapper to incase the cabin with ice was easily divined.
All day the men worked, easing only when the cabin resembled a
glistening mound. It had not a sharp corner nor a crevice. Inside
it was warm and snug, and as light as when the chinks were open.
A slight moderation of the weather brought the snow. Such snow! A
blinding white flutter of grey flakes, as large as feathers! All
day they rustle softly; all night they swirled, sweeping, seeping
brushing against the cabin. "Ho! Ho!" roared Rea. "'Tis good; let
her snow, an' the reindeer will migrate. We'll have fresh meat."
The sun shone again, but not brightly. A nipping wind came down
out of the frigid north and crusted the snows. The third night
following the storm, when the hunters lay snug under their
blankets, a commotion outside aroused them.
"Indians," said Rea, "come north for reindeer."
Half the night, shouting and yelling, barking dogs, hauling of
sleds and cracking of dried-skin tepees murdered sleep for those
in the cabin. In the morning the level plain and edge of the
forest held an Indian village. Caribou hides, strung on forked
poles, constituted tent-like habitations with no distinguishable
doors. Fires smoked in the holes in the snow. Not till late in
the day did any life manifest itself round the tepees, and then a
group of children, poorly clad in ragged pieces of blankets and
skins, gaped at Jones. He saw their pinched, brown faces,
staring, hungry eyes, naked legs and throats, and noted
particularly their dwarfish size. When he spoke they fled
precipitously a little way, then turned. He called again, and all
ran except one small lad. Jones went into the cabin and came out
with a handful of sugar in square lumps.
"Yellow Knife Indians," said Rea. "A starved tribe! We're in for
it."
Jones made motions to the lad, but he remained still, as if
transfixed, and his black eyes stared wonderingly.
"Molar nasu (white man good)," said Rea.
The lad came out of his trance and looked back at his companions,
who edged nearer. Jones ate a lump of sugar, then handed one to
the little Indian. He took it gingerly, put it into his mouth and
immediately jumped up and down.
"Hoppiesharnpoolie! Hoppiesharnpoolie!" he shouted to his
brothers and sisters. They came on the run.
"Think he means sweet salt," interpreted Rea. "Of course these
beggars never tasted sugar."
The band of youngsters trooped round Jones, and after tasting the
white lumps, shrieked in such delight that the braves and squaws
shuffled out of the tepees.
In all his days Jones had never seen such miserable Indians.
Dirty blankets hid all their person, except straggling black
hair, hungry, wolfish eyes and moccasined feet. They crowded into
the path before the cabin door and mumbled and stared and waited.
No dignity, no brightness, no suggestion of friendliness marked
this peculiar attitude.
"Starved!" exclaimed Rea. "They've come to the lake to invoke the
Great Spirit to send the reindeer. Buff, whatever you do, don't
feed them. If you do, we'll have them on our hands all winter.
It's cruel, but, man, we're in the north!"
Notwithstanding the practical trapper's admonition Jones could
not resist the pleading of the children. He could not stand by
and see them starve. After ascertaining there was absolutely
nothing to eat in the tepees, he invited the little ones into the
cabin, and made a great pot of soup, into which he dropped
compressed biscuits. The savage children were like wildcats.
Jones had to call in Rea to assist him in keeping the famished
little aborigines from tearing each other to pieces. When finally
they were all fed, they had to be driven out of the cabin.
"That's new to me," said Jones. "Poor little beggars!"
Rea doubtfully shook his shaggy head.
Next day Jones traded with the Yellow Knives. He had a goodly
supply of baubles, besides blankets, gloves and boxes of canned
goods, which he had brought for such trading. He secured a dozen
of the large-boned, white and black Indian dogs, huskies, Rea
called them--two long sleds with harness and several pairs of
snowshoes. This trade made Jones rub his hands in satisfaction,
for during all the long journey north he had failed to barter for
such cardinal necessities to the success of his venture.
"Better have doled out the grub to them in rations," grumbled
Rea.
Twenty-four hours sufficed to show Jones the wisdom of the
trapper's words, for in just that time the crazed, ignorant
savages had glutted the generous store of food, which should have
lasted them for weeks. The next day they were begging at the
cabin door. Rea cursed and threatened them with his fists, but
they returned again and again.
Days passed. All the time, in light and dark, the Indians filled
the air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great
Spirit, and the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific
feature of their wild prayer for food.
But the white monotony of the rolling land and level lake
remained unbroken. The reindeer did not come. The days became
shorter, dimmer, darker. The mercury kept on the slide.
Forty degrees below zero did not trouble the Indians. They
stamped till they dropped, and sang till their voices vanished,
and beat the tomtoms everlastingly. Jones fed the children once
each day, against the trapper's advice.
One day, while Rea was absent, a dozen braves succeeded in
forcing an entrance, and clamored so fiercely, and threatened so
desperately, that Jones was on the point of giving them food when
the door opened to admit Rea.
With a glance he saw the situation. He dropped the bucket he
carried, threw the door wide open and commenced action. Because
of his great bulk he seemed slow, but every blow of his
sledge-hammer fist knocked a brave against the wall, or through
the door into the snow. When he could reach two savages at once,
by way of diversion, he swung their heads together with a crack.
They dropped like dead things. Then he handled them as if they
were sacks of corn, pitching them out into the snow. In two
minutes the cabin was clear. He banged the door and slipped the
bar in place.
"Buff, I'm goin' to get mad at these thievin' red, skins some
day," he said gruffly. The expanse of his chest heaved slightly,
like the slow swell of a calm ocean, but there was no other
indication of unusual exertion.
Jones laughed, and again gave thanks for the comradeship of this
strange man.
Shortly afterward, he went out for wood, and as usual scanned the
expanse of the lake. The sun shone mistier and warmer, and frost
feathers floated in the air. Sky and sun and plain and lake--all
were gray. Jones fancied he saw a distant moving mass of darker
shade than the gray background. He called the trapper.
"Caribou," said Rea instantly. "The vanguard of the migration.
Hear the Indians! Hear their cry: "Aton! Aton! they mean
reindeer. The idiots have scared the herd with their infernal
racket, an' no meat will they get. The caribou will keep to the
ice, an' man or Indian can't stalk them there."
For a few moments his companion surveyed the lake and shore with
a plainsman's eye, then dashed within, to reappear with a
Winchester in each hand. Through the crowd of bewailing,
bemoaning Indians; he sped, to the low, dying bank. The hard
crust of snow upheld him. The gray cloud was a thousand yards out
upon the lake and moving southeast. If the caribou did not swerve
from this course they would pass close to a projecting point of
land, a half-mile up the lake. So, keeping a wary eye upon them,
the hunter ran swiftly. He had not hunted antelope and buffalo on
the plains all his life without learning how to approach moving
game. As long as the caribou were in action, they could not tell
whether he moved or was motionless. In order to tell if an object
was inanimate or not, they must stop to see, of which fact the
keen hunter took advantage. Suddenly he saw the gray mass slow
down and bunch up. He stopped running, to stand like a stump.
When the reindeer moved again, he moved, and when they slackened
again, he stopped and became motionless. As they kept to their
course, he worked gradually closer and closer. Soon he
distinguished gray, bobbing heads. When the leader showed signs
of halting in his slow trot the hunter again became a statue. He
saw they were easy to deceive; and, daringly confident of
success, he encroached on the ice and closed up the gap till not
more than two hundred yards separated him from the gray, bobbing,
antlered mass.
Jones dropped on one knee. A moment only his eyes lingered
admiringly on the wild and beautiful spectacle; then he swept one
of the rifles to a level. Old habit made the little beaded sight
cover first the stately leader. Bang! The gray monarch leaped
straight forward, forehoofs up, antlered head back, to fall dead
with a crash. Then for a few moments the Winchester spat a deadly
stream of fire, and when emptied was thrown down for the other
gun, which in the steady, sure hands of the hunter belched death
to the caribou.
The herd rushed on, leaving the white surface of the lake gray
with a struggling, kicking, bellowing heap. When Jones reached
the caribou he saw several trying to rise on crippled legs. With
his knife he killed these, not without some hazard to himself.
Most of the fallen ones were already dead, and the others soon
lay still. Beautiful gray creatures they were, almost white, with
wide-reaching, symmetrical horns.
A medley of yells arose from the shore, and Rea appeared running
with two sleds, with the whole tribe of Yellow Knives pouring out
of the forest behind him.
"Buff, you're jest what old Jim said you was," thundered Rea, as
he surveyed the gray pile. "Here's winter meat, an' I'd not have
given a biscuit for all the meat I thought you'd get."
"Thirty shots in less than thirty seconds," said Jones, "An' I'll
bet every ball I sent touched hair. How many reindeer?"
"Twenty! twenty! Buff, or I've forgot how to count. I guess mebbe
you can't handle them shootin' arms. Ho! here comes the howlin'
redskins."
Rea whipped out a bowie knife and began disemboweling the
reindeer. He had not proceeded far in his task when the crazed
savages were around him. Every one carried a basket or
receptacle, which he swung aloft, and they sang, prayed, rejoiced
on their knees. Jones turned away from the sickening scenes that
convinced him these savages were little better than cannibals.
Rea cursed them, and tumbled them over, and threatened them with
the big bowie. An altercation ensued, heated on his side,
frenzied on theirs. Thinking some treachery might befall his
comrade, Jones ran into the thick of the group.
"Share with them, Rea, share with them."
Whereupon the giant hauled out ten smoking carcasses. Bursting
into a babel of savage glee and tumbling over one another, the
Indians pulled the caribou to the shore.
"Thievin' fools." growled Rea, wiping the sweat from his brow.
"Said they'd prevailed on the Great Spirit to send the reindeer.
Why, they'd never smelled warm meat but for you. Now, Buff,
they'll gorge every hair, hide an' hoof of their share in less
than a week. Thet's the last we do for the damned cannibals.
Didn't you see them eatin' of the raw innards?--faugh! I'm
calculatin' we'll see no more reindeer. It's late for the
migration. The big herd has driven southward. But we're lucky,
thanks to your prairie trainin'. Come on now with the sleds, or
we'll have a pack of wolves to fight."
By loading three reindeer on each sled, the hunters were not long
in transporting them to the cabin. "Buff, there ain't much doubt
about them keepin' nice and cool," said Rea. "They'll freeze, an'
we can skin them when we want."
That night the starved wolf dogs gorged themselves till they
could not rise from the snow. Likewise the Yellow Knives feasted.
How long the ten reindeer might have served the wasteful tribe,
Rea and Jones never found out. The next day two Indians arrived
with dog-trains, and their advent was hailed with another feast,
and a pow-wow that lasted into the night.
"Guess we're goin' to get rid of our blasted hungry neighbors,"
said Rea, coming in next morning with the water pail, "An' I'll
be durned, Buff, if I don't believe them crazy heathen have been
told about you. Them Indians was messengers. Grab your gun, an'
let's walk over and see."
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