Part 12 (1/2)

Bezkya says they are good to eat in this stage; but we had about 700 pounds of good meat so did not try. The velvet on the horns is marked by a series of concentric curved lines of white hair, across the lines of growth; these, I take it, correspond with times of check by chill or hards.h.i.+p.

We loaded our canoe with meat and pushed on toward the Buffalo country for two miles more up the river. Navigation now became very difficult on account of alders in the stream. Bezkya says that only a few hundred yards farther and the river comes from underground.

This did not prove quite correct, for I went half a mile farther by land and found no change.

Here, however, we did find some Buffalo tracks; one went through our camp, and farther on were many, but all dated from the spring and were evidently six weeks old.

There were no recent tracks, which was discouraging, and the air of gloom over our camp grew heavier. The weather had been bad ever since we left Fort Smith, cloudy or showery. This morning for the first time the day dawned with a clear sky, but by noon it was cloudy and soon again raining. Our diet consisted of nothing but Moose meat and tea; we had neither sugar nor salt, and the craving for farinaceous food was strong and growing. We were what the.

natives call ”flour hungry”; our three-times-a-day prospect of Moose, Moose, Moose was becoming loathsome. Bezkya was openly rebellious once more, and even my two trusties were very, very glum. Still, the thought of giving up was horrible, so I made a proposition: ”Bezkya, you go out scouting on, foot and see if you can locate a band. I'll give you five dollars extra if you show me one Buffalo.”

At length he agreed to go provided I would set out for Fort Resolution at once unless he found Buffalo near. This was leaving it all in his hands. While I was considering, Preble said: ”I tell you this delay is playing the mischief with our Barren-Ground trip; we should have started for the north ten days ago,” which was in truth enough to settle the matter.

I knew perfectly well beforehand what Bezkya's report would be.

At 6.30 he returned to say he found nothing but old tracks. There were no Buffalo nearer than two days' travel on foot, and he should like to return at once to Fort Resolution.

There was no further ground for debate; every one and everything now was against me. Again I had to swallow the nauseating draught of defeat and retreat.

”We start northward first thing in the morning,” I said briefly, and our third Buffalo hunt was over.

These, then, were the results so far as Buffalo were concerned: Old tracks as far down as last camp, plenty of old tracks here and westward, but the Buffalo, as before on so many occasions, were two days' travel to the westward.

During all this time I had lost no good opportunity of impressing on the men the sinfulness of leaving a camp-fire burning and of taking life unnecessarily; and now, I learned of fruit from this seeding. That night Bezkya was in a better humour, for obvious reasons; he talked freely and told me how that day he came on a large Blackbear which at once took to a tree. The Indian had his rifle, but thought, ”I can kill him, yet I can't stop to skin him or use his meat,” so left him in peace.

This is really a remarkable incident, almost unique. I am glad to believe that I had something to do with causing such unusual forbearance.

CHAPTER XX

ON THE NYARLING

All night it rained; in the morning it was dull, foggy, and showery.

Everything was very depressing, especially in view of this second defeat. The steady diet of Moose and tea was debilitating; my legs trembled under me. I fear I should be a poor one to stand starvation, if so slight a brunt should play such havoc with my strength.

We set out early to retrace the course of the Nyarling, which in spite of a.s.sociated annoyances and disappointments will ever s.h.i.+ne forth in my memory as the ”Beautiful River.”

It is hard, indeed, for words to do it justice. The charm of a stream is always within three feet of the surface and ten feet of the bank. The broad Slave, then, by its size wins in majesty but must lose most all its charm; the Buffalo, being fifty feet wide, has some waste water; but the Nyarling, half the size, has its birthright compounded and intensified in manifold degree. The water is clear, two or three feet deep at the edge of the gra.s.sy banks, seven to ten feet in mid-channel, without bars or obstructions except the two log-jambs noted, and these might easily be removed.

The current is about one mile and a half an hour, so that canoes can readily pa.s.s up or down; the scenery varies continually and is always beautiful. Everything that I have said of the Little Buffalo applies to the Nyarling with fourfold force, because of its more varied scenery and greater range of bird and other life. Sometimes, like the larger stream, it presents a long, straight vista of a quarter-mile through a solemn aisle in the forest of mighty spruce trees that tower a hundred feet in height, all black with gloom, green with health, and gray with moss.

Sometimes its channel winds in and out of open gra.s.sy meadows that are dotted with clumps of rounded trees, as in an English park.

Now it narrows to a deep and sinuous bed, through alders so rank and reaching that they meet overhead and form a shade of golden green; and again it widens out into reedy lakes, the summer home of countless Ducks, Geese, Tattlers Terns, Peetweets, Gulls, Rails, Blackbirds, and half a hundred of the lesser tribes. Sometimes the foreground is rounded ma.s.ses of kinnikinnik in snowy flower, or again a far-strung growth of the needle bloom, richest and reddest of its tribe--the Athabaska rose. At times it is skirted by tall poplar woods where the claw-marks on the trunks are witness of the many Blackbears, or some tamarack swamp showing signs and proofs that hereabouts a family of Moose had fed to-day, or by a broad and broken trail that told of a Buffalo band pa.s.sing weeks ago.

And while we gazed at scribbled records, blots, and marks, the loud ”slap plong” of a Beaver showed from time to time that the thrifty ones had dived at our approach.

On the way up Jarvis had gone first in the small canoe; he saw 2 Bears, 3 Beaver, and 1 Lynx; I saw nothing but birds. On the way down, being alone, the luck came my way.

At the first camp, after he left, we heard a loud ”plong” in the water near the boat. Bezkya glided to the spot; I followed--here was a large Beaver swimming. The Indian fired, the Beaver plunged, and we saw nothing more of it. He told Billy, who told me, that it was dead, because it did not slap with its tail as it went down.