The Long Labrador Trail Part 7

"The river!" he paused between mouthfuls to exclaim, "that's the only thing within twenty miles that I didn't see. I've been looking for it for four hours, but it kept changing its location and I never found it till I struck camp just now."

"Now, boys," said I, when all the pipes were going, "I've something to say to you. Up to this time we've had no real hardships to meet. We've had hard work, and it's been most trying at times, but there's been no hardship to endure that might not be met with upon any journey in the bush. If we go on we _shall_ have hardships, and perhaps, some pretty severe ones. There'll soon be sleet and snow in the air, and cold days and shivery nights, and the portages will be long and hard. On the whole, there's been plenty to eat--not what we would have had at home, perhaps, but good, wholesome grub--and we're all in better condition and stronger than when we started, but flour and pork are getting low, lentils and corn meal are nearly gone, and short rations, with hungry days, are soon to come if we don't strike game, and you know how uncertain that is. I cannot say what is before us, and I'm not going to drag you fellows into trouble. I'm going to ask for one volunteer to go on with me to Ungava with the small canoe, and let the rest return from here with the other canoe and what grub they need to take them out. Who wants to go home?"

It came to them like a shock. Outside, the wind howled through the trees and dashed the rain spitefully against the tent. The water dripped through on us, and the candle flickered and sputtered and almost went out. In the weird light I could see the faces of the men work with emotion. For a moment no one spoke. Finally Richards, in a tone of reproach that made me feel sorry for the very suggestion, asked: "Do you think there's a quitter here?"

The loyalty and grit of the men touched my heart. Not one of them would think of leaving me. Nothing but a positive order would have turned them back, and I decided to postpone our parting until we reached Michikaumau at least, if it could be postponed so long consistently with safety.

The next day was Sunday, and it was spent in rest and in preparation for our advance up the trail. The weather was damp and cheerless, with rain falling intermittently throughout the day.

To cover a possible retreat a cache was made near our camp of thirty pounds of pemmican in tin cans and forty-five pounds of flour and some tea in a waterproof bag. A hole was dug in the ground and the provisions were deposited in it, then covered with stones as a pro-tection from animals.

By Monday morning the storm had gained new strength, and steadily and pitilessly the rain fell, accompanied by a cold, northwest wind.

What narrowly escaped being a serious accident occurred when we halted that day for dinner. Easton was cutting firewood, when suddenly he dropped the ax he was using with the exclamation "That fixes me!" He had given himself what looked at first like an ugly cut near the shin bone. Fortunately, however, upon examination, it proved to be only a flesh wound and not sufficiently severe to interfere with his traveling. Stanton dressed the cut. Our adhesive plaster we found had become useless by exposure and electrician's tape was subst.i.tuted for it to draw the flesh together.

On the evening of the second day after leaving the Nascaupee, our tent was pitched upon the site of an extensive but ancient Indian camp beside a mile-long lake, four hundred and fifty feet above the river.

Five ponds had been pa.s.sed _en route_, but all of them so small it was scarcely worth while floating the canoe in any of them.

In these two days we had covered but eleven miles, but during the whole time the wind had driven the rain in sweeping gusts into our faces and made it impossible for a man, single-handed, to portage a canoe. Thus, with two men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking, and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs. The weather conditions had made the work more than hard--it was heartrending--as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and moraines, or through dripping brush and timber land.

A beautiful afternoon, two days later, found us paddling down the first lake worthy of mention since leaving the Nascaupee River. The azure sky overhead shaded to a pearly blue at the horizon, with a fleecy cloud or two floating lazily across its face. The atmosphere was perfect in its purity, and only the sound of screeching gulls and the dip of our paddles disturbed the quiet of the wilderness. Lake Bibiquasin, as we shall call it, was five miles in length and nestled between ridges of low, moss-covered hills. It lay in a southeasterly and northwesterly direction, and rested upon the summit of a subsidiary divide that we had been gradually ascending. A creek ran out of its northwesterly end, flowing in that direction.

Until now we had found the trail with little difficulty, but here we were baffled. A search in the afternoon failed to uncover it, and we were forced to halt, perplexed again as to our course. Camp was pitched in a grove of spruces at the lower end of the lake. Not far from us was an old hunting camp which Pete said was "most hundred years old," and he was not far wrong in his estimate, for the frames upon which the Indians had stretched skins and the tepee poles crumbled to pieces when we touched them.

Strange to say, not a fish of any description had been seen for several days and not one could be induced to rise to fly or bait, and our net was always empty now. Game, too, was scarce. There were no fresh caribou tracks this side of the Nascaupee River, and but one duck and one spruce partridge had been killed. The last bit of our venison was eaten the day before. It was pretty badly spoiled and turning a little green in color, but Pete washed it well several times and we all avoided the lee side of the kettle while it was cooking. It was p.r.o.nounced "not so bad."

Another day was lost on Lake Bibiquasin in an ineffectual hunt for the trail. I scouted alone all day and in my wanderings came upon the first ptarmigans of the trip and shot one of them with my rifle. The others flew away. They wore their mottled summer coat, as it was still too early for them to don their pure white dress of winter.

During my scouting trip I also discovered the first ripe bake-apple berries we had seen. This is a salmon-colored berry resembling in size and shape the raspberry, and grows on a low plant like the strawberry.

On Sat.u.r.day morning, August nineteenth, the temperature was four degrees below the freezing point, and the ground was stiff with frost.

In a further search on the north side of the lake opposite our camp we found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and through marshes to a small lake. This was the only trail that we could find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing--it was decidedly more ancient. We started our work with a will. It was a hard portage and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired frequently, but finally reached the lake.

Indian signs now completely disappeared. Down the lake, where a creek flowed out, was a bare hill, and Pete and I climbed it. From its summit we could easily locate the creek taking a turn to the north and then to the northeast and, finally, flowing into one of a series of lakes extending in an easterly and westerly direction. The land was comparatively flat to the eastward and the lakes no doubt fed a river flowing out of that end, probably one of those that we had noted as joining the Nascaupee on its north side. To the north of these lakes were high, rugged ridges. It was possible there was an opening in the hills to the westward, where they seemed lower; we could not tell from where we were, but we determined to portage along the creek into the lakes with that hope.

Again the smoke of a forest fire hung in the valleys and over the hills, and the air was heavy with the smell of it, which revived the former uneasiness, but by the next day every trace of it had disappeared.

Another day found us afloat upon the first of the lakes. Several short carries across necks of land took us from this lake into the one which Pete and I had seen extending back to the ridges to the westward, and which we shall call Lake Desolation.

On the northern sh.o.r.e of Lake Desolation we stopped to climb a mountain. A decided change in the features of the country had taken place since leaving Lake Bibiquasin, and the low moss-covered hills had given place to rough mountains of bare rock. To the northward from where we stood nothing but higher mountains of similar formation met our view--a great, rolling vista of bare, desolate rocks. To the westward the country was not, perhaps, so rough, though there, too, in the far distance could be discerned the tops of rugged hills breaking the line of the horizon. Through a valley in that direction was distinguishable, with a considerable interval between them, a string of small lakes or ponds. This valley led up from the western end of Lake Desolation, and there was no other possible place for the trail to leave the lake. The valley was the only opening.

Our mountain climbing had consumed a good part of an afternoon, and it was evening when finally we reached the western end of the lake and pitched our camp near a creek flowing in. As we paddled we tried our trolls, but were not rewarded with a single strike. When camp was made the net was stretched across the creek's mouth and we tried our rods in the stream for trout, but our efforts were useless. No fish were caught.

The prospect for game had not improved, in fact was growing steadily worse. We were now in a country that had been desolated by a forest fire within four or five years. The moss under foot had not renewed itself and where any of it remained at all, it was charred and black.

The trees were dead and the land harbored almost no life. It seemed to me that even the fish had been scalded out of the water and the streams had never restocked themselves.

A thorough search was made for Indian signs, but there were absolutely none. There was nothing to show that any human being had ever been here before us. Back on Lake Bibiquasin we had lost the trail and now on Lake Desolation we were far and hopelessly astray, with only the compa.s.s to guide us.

After supper the men sat around the camp fire, smoking and talking of their friends at home, while I walked alone by the lake sh.o.r.e. It was a wild scene that lay before me--the aurora, with its waves of changing color flashing weirdly as they swept and lighted the sky, the dead trees everywhere like skeletons gray and gaunt, the blazing camp fire in the foreground, with the figures lying about it and the little white tent in the background. Somewhere hidden in the depths of that vast and silent wilderness to the westward lay Michikamau.

There was no mark on the face of the earth to direct us on our road. We must blaze a new trail up that valley and over those ridges that looked so dark and forbidding in the uncertain light of the aurora. We must find Michikamau.

CHAPTER X

"WE SEE MICHIKAMAU"

"It's no use, Pete. You may as well go back to your blankets."

It was the morning of the second day after reaching the lake which we named Desolation. We had portaged through a valley and over a low ridge to the sh.o.r.es of a pond, out of which a small stream ran to the southeast. The country was devastated by fire and to the last degree inhospitable. Not a green shrub over two feet in height was to be seen, the trees were dead and blackened; not even the customary moss covered the naked earth, and loose bowlders were scattered everywhere about.

There was no fixed trail now to look for or to guide us, but by keeping a general westerly course, we knew that we must, sooner or later, reach Michikamau. Rough, irregular ridges blocked our path and it was necessary to look ahead that we might not become tangled up amongst them. One hill, higher than the others, a solitary bailiff that guarded the wilderness beyond, was to have been climbed this morning, but when Pete and I at daybreak came out of the tent we were met by driving rain and dashes of sleet that cut our faces, and a mist hung over the earth so thick we could not even see across the tiny lake at our feet. I looked longingly into the storm and mist in the direction in which I knew the big hill lay, and realized the hopelessness and foolhardiness of attempting to reach it.

"It's no use, Pete," I continued, "to try to scout in this storm. You could see nothing from the hill if you reached it, and the chances are, with every landmark hidden, you couldn't find the tent again. I don't want to lose you yet. Go back and sleep."

Later in the morning to my great relief the weather cleared, and Richards and Pete were at once dispatched to scout. We who remained "at home," as we called our camp, found plenty of work to keep us occupied. The bushes had ravaged our clothing to such an extent that some of us were pretty ragged, and every halt was taken advantage of to make much needed repairs.

It was nearly dark when Richards and Pete came back. They had reached the high hill and from its summit saw, some distance to the westward, long stretches of water reaching far away to the hills in that direction. A portage of several miles in which some small lakes occurred would take us, they said, into a large lake. Beyond this they could not see.

Pete brought back with him a hatful of ripe currants which he stewed and which proved a very welcome addition to our supper of corn-meal mush.

The report of water ahead made us happy. It was now August twenty-third. If we could reach Michikamau by September first that should give me ample time, I believed, to reach the George River before the caribou migration would take place.

The following morning we started forward with a will, and with many little lakes to cross and short portages between them, we made fairly good progress, and each lake took us one step higher on the plateau.

The character of the country was changing, too. The naked land and rocks and dead trees gave way to a forest of green spruce, and the ground was again covered with a thick carpet of white caribou moss.

We were catching no fish, however, although our efforts to lure them to the hook or entangle them in the net were never relinquished. Pork was a luxury, and no baker ever produced anything half so dainty and delicious as our squaw bread. A strict distribution of rations was maintained, and when the pork was fried, Pete, with a spoon, dished out the grease into the five plates in equal shares. Into this the quarter loaf ration of bread was broken and the mixture eaten to the last morsel. Sometimes the men drank the warm pork grease clear. Finally it became so precious that they licked their plates after sc.r.a.ping them with their spoons, and the longing eyes that were cast at the frying pan made me fear that some time a raid would be made on that.

One day, an owl was shot and went into the pot to keep company with a couple of partridges. Pete demurred. "Owl eat mice," said he. "Not good man eat him.

"You can count me out on owl, too," Richards volunteered.

"Oh! they're all right," I a.s.sured them. "The Labrador people always eat them and you'll find them very nice."

"Not me. Owl eat mice," Pete insisted.

"Well," I suggested, "possibly we'll be eating mice, too, before we get home, and it's a good way to begin by eating owl--for then the mice won't seem so bad when we have to eat them."

Stanton took charge of the kettle and dished out the rations that night.

"Partridge is good enough for me," said Richards, fearing that Stanton might forget his prejudice against owl.

"Me, too," echoed Pete.

"I'll take owl," said I.

Easton said nothing.