Northern Trails Part 4

"Can we find um, little brother?"

"Oh, yes, we find um. Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now, after storm."

"But storm last all night, and it's soon dark. Can we rest and not freeze? Mooka tired and--and frightened, little brother."

"Sartin we rest; build um _commoosie_ and sleep jus' like bear in his den. Oh, yes, sartin we rest good," said Noel cheerfully.

"And the wolves, little brother?" whispered Mooka, looking back timidly into the wild waste out of which they had come.

"Never mind hwolves; nothing hunts in storm, little sister. Come on, we must find um woods now."

For one brief moment the little hunter stood with upturned face, while Mooka bowed her head silently, and the great storm rolled unheeded over them. Still holding his long bow he stretched both hands to the sky in the mute appeal that _Keesuolukh_, the Great Mystery whom we call G.o.d, would understand better than all words. Then turning their backs to the gale they drifted swiftly away before it, like two wind-blown leaves, running to keep from freezing, and holding each other's hands tight lest they separate and be lost by the way.

The second winter had come, sealing up the gloomy land till it rang like iron at the touch, then covering it deep with snow and polishing its mute white face with h.o.a.r-frost and hail driven onward by the fierce Arctic gales. An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves, the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless, hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead.

When the Moon of Famine came, the silence was rudely broken. Before daylight one morning, when the air was so tense and still that a whisper set it tinkling like silver bells, the rallying cry of the wolves rolled down from a mountain top; and the three cubs, that had waited long for the signal, left their separate trails far away and hurried to join the old leader.

When the sun rose that morning one who stood on the high ridge of the Top Gallants, far to the eastward of Harbor Weal, would have seen seven trails winding down among the rocks and thickets. It needed only a glance to show that the seven trails, each one as clear-cut and delicate as that of a prowling fox, were the records of wolves' cautious feet; and that they were no longer beating the thickets for grouse and rabbits, but moving swiftly all together for the edges of the vast barrens where the caribou herds were feeding. Another glance--but here we must have the cunning eyes of Old Tomah the hunter--would have told that two of the trails were those of enormous wolves which led the pack; two others were plainly cubs that had not yet lost the cub trick of frolicking in the soft snow; while three others were just wolves, big and powerful brutes that moved as if on steel springs, and that still held to the old pack because the time had not yet come for them to scatter finally to their separate ways and head new packs of their own in the great solitudes.

Out from the woods on the other side of the barren came two snow-shoe trails, which advanced with short steps and rested lightly on the snow, as if the makers of the trails were little people whose weight on the snow-shoes made hardly more impression than the broad pads of Moktaques the rabbit. They followed stealthily the winding records of a score of caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren, stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps, scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail, the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.

Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the snow and settle to rest again. But now, where the plain seemed most empty and lifeless, seven great white wolves crouched down in the snow in a little hollow, their paws extended, their hind legs bent like powerful springs beneath them, their heads raised cautiously so that only their ears and eyes showed above the rim of the little hollow where they hid. So they lay, tense, alert, ready, watching with eager, inquisitive eyes the two children drawing steadily nearer, the only sign of life in the whole wide, desolate landscape.

Follow the back trail of the snow-shoes now, while the wolves are waiting, and it leads you over the great barren into the gloomy spruce woods; beyond that it crosses two more barrens and stretches of intervening forest; then up a great hill and down into a valley, where the lodge lay hidden, buried deep under Newfoundland snows.

Here the fishermen lived, sleeping away the bitter winter. In the late autumn they had left the fishing village at Harbor Weal, driven out like the wild ducks by the fierce gales that raged over the whole coast. With their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and led into a great silent wood, sheltered on every side by the encircling hills.

Here the tilts were built with double walls, filled in between with leaves and moss, to help the little stoves that struggled bravely with the terrible cold; and the roofs were covered over with poles and bark, or with the brown sails that had once driven the fishing-boats out and in on the wings of the gale. The high mountains on the west stood between them and the icy winds that swept down over the sea from the Labrador and the Arctic wastes; wood in abundance was at their doors, and the trout-stream that sang all day long under its bridges of snow and ice was always ready to brim their kettles out of its abundance.

So the new life began pleasantly enough; but as the winter wore away and provisions grew scarce and game vanished from the coverts, they all felt the fearful pinch of famine. Every morning now a confused circle of tracks in the snow showed where the wild prowlers of the woods had come and sniffed at the very doors of the tilts in their ravening hunger.

Noel's father and Old Tomah were far away, trapping, in the interior; and to Noel with his snares and his bow and arrows fell the pleasant task of supplying the family's need when the stock of dried fish melted away. On this March morning he had started with Mooka at daylight to cross the mountains to some great barrens where he had found tracks and knew that a few herds of caribou were still feeding. The sun was dimmed as it rose, and the sun-dogs gave mute warning of the coming storm; but the cupboard was empty at home, and even a little hunter thinks first of the game he is following and lets the storm take care of itself. So they hurried on unheeding,--Noel with his bow and arrows, Mooka with a little bag containing a loaf and a few dried caplin,--peering under every brush pile for the shining eyes of a rabbit, and picking up one big grouse and a few ptarmigan among the bowlders of a great bare hillside. On the edges of the great barren under the Top Gallants they found the fresh tracks of feeding caribou, and were following eagerly when they ran plump into the wolf trail.

Now by every law of the chase the game belonged to these earlier hunters; and by every power in their gaunt, famished bodies the wolves meant to have it. So said the trail. Every stealthy advance in single file across, the open, every swift rush over the hollows that might hide them from eyes watching back from the distant woods, showed the wolves'

purpose clear as daylight; and had Noel been wiser he would have read a warning from the snow and turned aside. But he only drew his longest, keenest arrow and pressed on more eagerly than before.

The two trails had crossed each other at last. Beginning near together, one on the mountains, the other by the sea, they had followed their separate devious ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly, inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild rangers of the plains, and that still leads a wolf to follow and watch the doings of men with intense curiosity. Now the trails had met fairly in the snow, and a few steps more would bring the boy and the wolf face to face.

Noel was stealing along warily, his arrow ready on the string. Mooka beside him was watching a faint cloud of mist, the breath of caribou, that blurred at times the dark tree-line in the distance, when one of those mysterious warnings that befall the hunter in the far North rested upon them suddenly like a heavy hand.

I know not what it is,--what lesser pressure of air, to which we respond like a barometer; or what unknown chords there are within us that sleep for years in the midst of society and that waken and answer, like an animal's, to the subtle influence of nature,--but one can never be watched by an unseen wild animal without feeling it vaguely; and one can never be so keen on the trail that the storm, before it breaks, will not whisper a warning to turn back to shelter before it is too late. To Noel and Mooka, alone on the barrens, the sun was no dimmer than before; the heavy gray bank of clouds still held sullenly to its place on the horizon; and no eyes, however keen, would have noticed the tiny dark spots that centered and glowed upon them over the rim of the little hollow where the wolves were watching. Nevertheless, a sudden chill fell upon them both. They stopped abruptly, shivering a bit, drawing closer together and scanning the waste keenly to know what it all meant.

"_Mitcheegeesookh_, the storm!" said Noel sharply; and without another word they turned and hurried back on their own trail. In a short half hour the world would be swallowed up in chaos. To be caught out on the barrens meant to be lost; and to be lost here without fire and shelter meant death, swift and sure. So they ran on, hoping to strike the woods before the blizzard burst upon them.

They were scarcely half-way to shelter when the white flakes began to whirl around them. With startling, terrible swiftness the familiar world vanished; the guiding trail was blotted out, and nothing but a wolf's instinct could have held a straight course in the blinding fury of the storm. Still they held on bravely, trying in vain to keep their direction by the eddying winds, till Mooka stumbled twice at the same hollow over a hidden brook, and they knew they were running blindly in a circle of death. Frightened at the discovery they turned, as the caribou do, keeping their backs steadily to the winds, and drifted slowly away down the long barren.

Hour after hour they struggled on, hand in hand, without a thought of where they were going. Twice Mooka fell and lay still, but was dragged to her feet and hurried onward again. The little hunter's own strength was almost gone, when a low moan rose steadily above the howl and hiss of the gale. It was the spruce woods, bending their tops to the blast and groaning at the strain. With a wild whoop Noel plunged forward, and the next instant they were safe within the woods. All around them the flakes sifted steadily, silently down into the thick covert, while the storm pa.s.sed with a great roar over their heads.

In the lee of a low-branched spruce they stopped again, as though by a common impulse, while Noel lifted his hands. "Thanks, thanks, _Keesuolukh_; we can take care of ourselves now," the brave little heart was singing under the upstretched arms. Then they tumbled into the snow and lay for a moment utterly relaxed, like two tired animals, in that brief, delicious rest which follows a terrible struggle with the storm and cold.

First they ate a little of their bread and fish to keep up their spirits; then--for the storm that was upon them might last for days--they set about preparing a shelter. With a little search, whooping to each other lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that some gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a deep hole there, with the snow banked up around it to the height of his head. Next with his knife he cut a lot of light poles and scrub spruces and, sticking the b.u.t.ts in his s...o...b..nk, laid the tops, like the sticks of a wigwam, firmly against the big stub. A few armfuls of spruce boughs shingled over this roof, and a few minutes' work shoveling snow thickly upon them to hold them in place and to make a warm covering; then a doorway, or rather a narrow tunnel, just beyond the stub on the straight side of the semicircle, and their _commoosie_ was all ready. Let the storm roar and the snow sift down! The thicker it fell the warmer would be their shelter. They laughed and shouted now as they scurried out and in, bringing boughs for a bed and the fire-wood which Mooka had gathered.

Against the base of the dry stub they built their fire,--a wee, sociable little fire such as an Indian always builds, which is far better than a big one, for it draws you near and welcomes you cheerily, instead of driving you away by its smoke and great heat. Soon the big stub itself began to burn, glowing steadily with a heat that filled the snug little _commoosie_, while the smoke found its way out of the hole in the roof which Noel had left for that purpose. Later the stub burned through to its hollow center, and then they had a famous chimney, which soon grew hot and glowing inside, and added its mite to the children's comfort.

Noel and Mooka were drowsy now; but before the long night closed in upon them they had gathered more wood, and laid aside some wisps of birch bark to use when they should wake, cold and shivering, and find their little fire gone out and the big stub losing its cheery glow. Then they lay down to rest, and the night and the storm rolled on unheeded.

Towards morning they fell into a heavy sleep; for the big stub began to burn more freely as the wind changed, and they need not stir every half hour to feed their little fire and keep from freezing. It was broad daylight, the storm had ceased, and a woodp.e.c.k.e.r was hammering loudly on a hollow sh.e.l.l over their heads when they started up, wondering vaguely where they were. Then while Noel broke out of the _commoosie_, which was fairly buried under the snow, to find out where he was, Mooka rebuilt the fire and plucked a ptarmigan and set it to toasting with the last of their bread over the coals.

Noel came back soon with a cheery whoop to tell the little cook that they had drifted before the storm down the whole length of the great barren, and were camped now on the opposite side, just under the highest ridge of the Top Gallants. There was not a track on the barrens, he said; not a sign of wolf or caribou, which had probably wandered deeper into the woods for shelter. So they ate their bread to the last crumb and their bird to the last bone, and, giving up all thought of hunting, started up the big barren, heading for the distant Lodge, where they had long since been given up for lost.

They had crossed the barren and a mile of thick woods beyond when they ran into the fresh trail of a dozen caribou. Following it swiftly they came to the edge of a much smaller barren that they had crossed yesterday, and saw at a glance that the trail stretched straight across it. Not a caribou was in sight; but they might nevertheless be feeding, or resting in the woods just beyond; and for the little hunters to show themselves now in the open would mean that they would become instantly the target for every keen eye that was watching the back trail. So they started warily to circle the barren, keeping just within the fringe of woods out of sight.

They had gone scarcely a hundred steps when Noel whipped out a long arrow and pointed silently across the open. From the woods on the other side the caribou had broken out of a dozen tunnels under the spruces, and came trotting back in their old trails, straight downwind to where the little hunters were hiding.

The deer were acting queerly,--now plunging away with the high, awkward jumps that caribou use when startled; now swinging off on their swift, tireless rack, and before they had settled to their stride halting suddenly to look back and wag their ears at the trail. For Megaleep is full of curiosity as a wild turkey, and always stops to get a little entertainment out of every new thing that does not threaten him with instant death. Then out of the woods behind them trotted five white wolves,--not hunting, certainly! for whenever the caribou stopped to look the wolves sat down on their tails and yawned. One lay down and rolled over and over in the soft snow; another chased and capered after his own brush, whirling round and round like a little whirlwind, and the shrill _ki-yi_ of a cub wolf playing came faintly across the barren.

It was a strange scene, yet one often witnessed on the lonely plains of the far North: the caribou halting, running away, and halting again to look back and watch the queer antics of their big enemies, which seemed now so playful and harmless; the cunning wolves playing on the game's curiosity at every turn, knowing well that if once frightened the deer would break away at a pace which would make pursuit hopeless. So they followed rather than drove the foolish deer across the barren, holding them with monkey tricks and kitten's capers, and restraining with an iron grip their own fearful hunger and the blind impulse to rush in headlong and have it all quickly over.

Kneeling behind a big spruce, Noel was trying nervously the spring and temper of his long bow, divided in desire between the caribou, which they needed sadly at home, and one of the great wolves whose death would give him a place among the mighty hunters, when Mooka clutched his arm, her eyes snapping with excitement, her finger pointing silently back on their own trail. A vague shadow glided swiftly among the trees. An enormous white wolf appeared, vanished, came near them again, and crouched down under a low spruce branch waiting.

Again the two trails had crossed in the snow. The big wolf as he appeared had thrust his nose into the snow-shoe tracks, and a sniff or two told him everything,--who had pa.s.sed, and how long ago, and what they were doing, and how far ahead they were now waiting. But the caribou were coming, coaxed along marvelously by the cubs and the old mother; and the great silent wolf, that had left the pack playing with the game while he circled the barren at top speed, now turned to the business in hand with no thought nor fear of harm from the two children whom he had watched but yesterday.

Not so Noel. The fire blazed out in his eyes; the long bow swung to the wolf, bending like a steel spring, and the feathered shaft of an arrow lay close against the boy's cheek. But Mooka caught his arm--

"Look, Noel, his ear! _Malsunsis_, my little wolf cub," she breathed excitedly. And Noel, with a great wonder in his eyes, slacked his bow, while his thoughts jumped far away to the den on the mountains where the trail began, and to three little cubs playing like kittens with the gra.s.shoppers and the cloud shadows; for the great wolf that lay so still near them, his eyes fixed in a steady glow upon the coming caribou, had one ear bent sharply forward, like a leaf that has been creased between the fingers.

Again Mooka broke the tense silence in a low whisper. "How many wolf trails you see yesterday, little brother?"

"Seven," said Noel, whose eyes already had the cunning of Old Tomah's to understand everything.

"Then where tother wolf? Only six here," breathed Mooka, looking timidly all around, fearing to find the steady glare of green eyes fixed upon them from the shadow of every thicket.

Noel stirred uneasily. Somewhere close at hand another huge wolf was waiting; and a wholesome fear fell upon him, with a shiver at the thought of how near he had come in his excitement to bringing the whole savage pack snarling about his ears.

A snort of alarm cut short his thinking. There at the edge of the wood, not twenty feet away, stood a caribou, pointing his ears at the children whom he had almost stumbled over as he ran, thinking only of the wolves behind. The long bow sprang back of itself; an arrow buzzed like a wasp and buried itself deep in the white chest. Like a flash a second arrow followed as the stag turned away, and with a jump or two he sank to his knees, as if to rest awhile in the snow.

But Mooka scarcely saw these things. Her eyes were fastened on the great white wolf which she had claimed for her own when he was a toddling cub.

He lay still as a stone under the tip of a bending spruce branch, his eyes following every motion of a young bull caribou which three of the wolves had singled out of the herd and were now guiding surely straight to his hiding-place.

The snort and plunge of the smitten animal startled this young stag and he turned aside from his course. Like a shadow the big wolf that Mooka was watching changed his place so as to head the game, while two of the pack on the open barrens slipped around the caribou and turned him back again to the woods. At the edge of the cover the stag stopped for a last look, pointing his ears first at Noel's caribou, which now lay very still in the snow, then at the wolves, which with quick instinct had singled him out of the herd, knowing in some subtle way he was watched from beyond, and which gathered about him in a circle, sitting on their tails and yawning. Slowly, silently Mooka's wolf crept forward, pushing his great body through the snow. A terrific rush, a quick snap under the stag's chest just behind the fore legs, where the heart lay; then the big wolf leaped aside and sat down quietly again to watch.

It was soon finished. The stag plunged away, settled into his long rack, slowed down to a swaying, weakening trot. After him at a distance glided the big wolf, lapping eagerly at the crimson trail, but holding himself with tremendous will power from rushing in headlong and driving the game, which might run for miles if too hard pressed. The stag sank to his knees; a sharp yelp rang like a pistol-shot through the still woods; then the pack rolled in like a whirlwind, and it was all over.

Creeping near on the trail the little hunters crouched under a low spruce, watching as if fascinated the wild feast of the wolves. Noel's bow was ready in his hand; but luckily the sight of these huge, powerful brutes overwhelmed him and drove all thoughts of killing out of his head. Mooka plucked him by the sleeve at last, and pointed silently homewards. It was surely time to go, for the biggest wolf had already stretched himself and was licking his paws, while the two cubs with full stomachs were rolling over and over and biting each other playfully in the snow. Silently they stole away, stopping only to tie a rag to a pointed stick, which they thrust between their own caribou's ribs to make the wolves suspicious and keep them from tearing the game and eating the tidbits while the little hunters hurried away to bring the men with their guns and dog sledges.