little bill becomes a difficulty.
we must now pass over another winter, during which the red river settlers had to sustain life as they best might—acquiring, however, in doing so, an expertness in the use of gun and trap and fishing-line, and in all the arts of the savages, which enabled them to act with more independence, and to sustain themselves and their families in greater comfort than before.
spring, with all its brightness, warmth, and suggestiveness had returned to cheer the hearts of men; and, really, those who have never experienced the long six-or-eight-months’ winter of rupert’s land can form no conception of the feelings with which the body—to say nothing of the soul—opens up and expands itself, so to speak, in order to receive and fully appreciate the sweet influences of spring.
for one thing, seven or eight months of cold, biting, steely frost causes one almost to forget that there ever was such a thing as summer heat, summer scents, summer sounds, or summer skies. the first thaw is therefore like the glad, unexpected meeting of a dear old friend; and the trumpet voice of the first goose, the whirring wing of the first duck, and the whistle of the first plover, sounds like the music of the spheres to one’s long unaccustomed ears. then the trickle of water gives one something like a new sensation. it may be but a thread of liquid no thicker than a pipe-stem faintly heard by an attentive ear tinkling in the cold depths far under the ice or snow, but it is liquid, not solid, water. it is suggestive of motion. it had almost been forgotten as a sound of the long past which had forsaken the terrestrial ball for ever.
it does not take a powerful imagination to swell a tiny stream to a rivulet, a river, a lake, a mighty ocean. shut your eyes for a moment, and, in memory, the ice and snow vanish; the streams flow as in the days of old; flowers come again to gladden the eyes and—but why trouble you, good reader, with all this? we feel, sadly, that unless you have tasted the northern winter no description, however graphic, will enable you to drink in the spirit of the northern spring.
about this time okématan, the cree chief, took it into his head that he would go a-hunting.
this last word does not suggest to a dweller in the wilderness that crossing of ploughed lands on horseback, and leaping of hedges, etcetera, which it conveys to the mind of an englishman. the cree chief’s notion of spring-hunting was, getting into a birch-bark canoe, with or without a comrade, and going forth on the lakes and rivers of the wilderness with plenty of powder and shot, to visit the native home of the wild-goose, the wild-duck, the pelican, the plover, and the swan.
for such a trip not much is essential. besides the gun and ammunition referred to, okématan carried a blanket, a hatchet, several extra pairs of moccasins, a tin kettle in which to boil food, a fire-bag for steel, flint, and tinder, with a small supply of tobacco.
on hearing of his intention, dan davidson resolved to accompany him. dan had by that time associated so much with the chief that he had learned to speak his language with facility. indeed nearly all the settlers who had a turn for languages had by that time acquired a smattering more or less of indian and french.
“you see,” said dan to the chief, “there is not much doing on the farm just now, and i want to see a little of the country round about, so, if you don’t object to my company, i’d like to go.”
“the cree chief will be proud to have the company of the paleface chief,” replied the indian, with grave courtesy.
dan wanted to say “all right,” but was ignorant of the cree equivalent for that familiar phrase; he therefore substituted the more sober and correct, “it is well.”
“but,” said he, “you must not call me a paleface chief, for i am only an ordinary man in my own land—what you would call one of the braves.”
“okématan is thought to have a good judgment among his people,” returned the indian, “though he has not the snows of many winters on his head, and he thinks that if dan’el had stayed in the wigwams of his people beyond the great salt lake, he would have been a chief.”
“it may be so, okématan, though i doubt it,” replied dan, “but that is a point which cannot now be proved. meanwhile, my ambition at present is to become a great hunter, and i want you to teach me.”
the chief, who was gratified by the way in which this was put, gladly agreed to the proposal.
“there is another man who would like to go with us,” said davidson. “my friend, fergus mckay, is anxious, i know, to see more of the lands of the indian. you have no objection to his going, i suppose?—in another canoe of course, for three would be too many in your small canoe.”
okématan had no objection.
“three would not be too many in the canoe,” he said, “but two are better for hunting.”
“very good. but we will want a fourth to make two in each canoe. whom shall we invite?”
“okématan’s counsel is,” answered the chief, “to take a brave who is young and strong and active; whose eye is quick and his hand steady; whose heart never comes into his throat when danger faces him; whose face does not grow pale at the sight of approaching death; whose heart is as the heart of the grisly bear for courage, and yet tender as the heart of a paleface squaw; whose hand can accomplish whatever his head plans, and whose tongue is able to make a sick man smile.”
davidson smiled to himself at this description, which the chief uttered with the sententious gravity that would have characterised his speech and bearing in a council of war.
“a most notable comrade, good okématan; but where are we to find him, for i know nobody who comes near to that description.”
“he dwells in your own wigwam,” returned the chief.
“in prairie cottage?” exclaimed the other with a puzzled air. “you can’t mean my brother peter, surely, for he is about as grave as yourself.”
“okématan means the young brave who loves his little brother.”
“what! archie sinclair?” exclaimed dan, with a surprised look. “i had no idea you had so high an opinion of him.”
“okématan has seen much of arch-ee: has watched him. he sees that he thinks nothing of himself; that he thinks always for the sick brother, leetle beel, and that he will yet be a great chief among the palefaces.”
“well, now you come to mention it, there is something about archie that puts him high above other boys; and i suppose his unselfishness has much to do with it; but don’t you think he’s too young, and hardly strong enough?”
“he is not young. he is fifty years old in wisdom. he is very strong for his size, and he is willing, which makes his strength double.”
“but he will never consent to leave little bill,” said dan.
“okématan had fears of that,” returned the indian, with, for the first time, a look of perplexity on his face. “if arch-ee will not go without leetle beel, leetle beel must go too.”
it was found, on inquiry, that they were right in their surmise. when the proposal was made to archie that afternoon by dan, the boy’s eyes seemed to light up and dance in his head at the prospect. then the light suddenly went out, and the dancing ceased.
“why, what’s the matter, archie?” asked his friend.
“can’t go. impossible!” said archie.
“why not?”
“who’s to look after little bill, i should like to know, if i leave him?”
“elspie, of course,” said dan, “and elise, to say nothing of jessie, mother, and brother peter.”
archie shook his head.
“no,” he said, “no! i can’t go. elspie is all very well in her way, and so is elise, but they can’t carry little bill about the fields and through the bush on their backs; and peter wouldn’t; he’s too busy about the farm. no—ever since mother died, i’ve stuck to little bill through thick and thin. so i won’t go.”
it was so evident that archie sinclair’s mind was made up and fixed, and also so obvious that a delicate little boy would be a great encumbrance on a hunting expedition that dan thought of attempting the expedient of winning little bill himself over to his side. he had no difficulty in doing that, for billie was to the full as amiable and unselfish as his brother. after a short conversation, he made billie promise to do his very best to induce archie to go with the hunters and leave him behind.
“for you know, little bill,” said dan in conclusion, and by way of consoling him, “although nobody could take such good care of you as archie, or make up to you for him, elspie would take his place very well for a time—.”
“o yes, i know that well enough,” said the poor boy with some enthusiasm; “elspie is always very good to me. you’ve no notion how nice she is, dan.”
“hm! well, i have got a sort of a half notion, maybe,” returned dan with a peculiar look. “but that’s all right, then. you’ll do what you can to persuade archie, and—there he is, evidently coming to see you, so i’ll go and leave you to talk it over with him.”
billie did not give his brother time to begin, but accosted him on his entrance with—“i’m so glad, archie, that you’ve been asked to go on this hunting expe—”
“o! you’ve heard of it, then?”
“yes, and i want you to go, very very much, because—because—”
“don’t trouble yourself with becauses, little bill, for i won’t go. so there’s an end of it—unless,” he added, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, “unless they agree to take you with them. they might do worse. i’ll see about that.”
so saying, archie turned about, left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and sought out okématan. he found that chief sitting in la certe’s wigwam, involved in the mists of meditation and tobacco-smoke, gazing at slowfoot.
that worthy woman—who, with her lord and little child, was wont to forsake her hut in spring, and go into the summer-quarters of a wigwam—was seated on the opposite side of a small fire, enduring okématan’s meditative gaze, either unconsciously or with supreme indifference.
“hallo! oké,”—thus irreverently did archie address the chief—had any one else ventured to do so, he might possibly have been scalped—“hallo! oké, i’ve been huntin’ for you all round. you’re worse to find than an arrow in the grass.”
it may be said, here, that archie had learned, like some of the other settlers, a smattering of the cree language. how he expressed the above we know not. we can only give the sense as he would probably have given it in his own tongue.
“okématan’s friends can always find him,” answered the indian with a grave but pleased look.
“so it seems. but i say, oké, i want to ask a favour of you. dan davidson tells me you want me to go a-hunting with you. well, i’m your man if you’ll let me take little bill with me. will you?”
“leetle beel is not strong,” objected the indian.
“true, but a trip o’ this sort will make him strong perhaps. anyhow, it will make him stronger.”
“but for a sick boy there is danger,” said the chief. “if arch-ee upsets his canoe in a rapid, arch-ee swims on shore, but leetle beel goes to the bottom.”
“not as long as arch-ee is there to hold him up,” returned the boy.
“waugh!” exclaimed the indian.
“humph!” remarked the boy. “what d’ye mean by ‘waugh,’ oké?”
“okématan means much that it is not in the power of the tongue to tell,” replied the indian with increasing gravity; and as the gravity increased the cloudlets from his lips became more voluminous.
“arch-ee hopes, nevertheless, that the tongue of oké may find power to tell him a little of what he thinks.”
this being in some degree indefinite, the chief smoked in silence for a minute or two, and gazed at slowfoot with that dreamy air which one assumes when gazing into the depths of a suggestive fire. apparently inspiration came at last—whether from slowfoot or not we cannot tell—for he turned solemnly to the boy.
“rain comes,” he said, “and when sick men get wet they grow sicker. carrying-places come, and when sick men come to them they stagger and fall. frost often comes in spring, and when sick men get cold they die. waugh!”
“humph!” repeated the boy again, with a solemnity quite equal to that of the red-man.
“when rain comes i can put up an umbrella—an umbrella. d’you know what that is?”
the indian shook his head.
“well it’s a—a thing—a sort of little tent—a wigwam, you know, with a stick in the middle to hold on to and put it up. d’you understand?”
an expression of blank bewilderment, so to speak, settled on the chief’s visage, and the lights of intelligence went out one by one until he presented an appearance which all but put the boy’s gravity to flight.
“well, well, it’s of no use my tryin’ to explain it,” he continued. “i’ll show it to you soon, and then you’ll understand.”
intelligence began to return, and the chief looked gratified.
“what you call it?” he asked—for he was of an inquiring disposition— “a bum-rella?”
“no, no,” replied the other, seriously, “an umbrella. it’s a clever contrivance, as you shall see. so, you see, i can keep the rain off little bill when he’s in the canoe, and on shore there are the trees, and the canoe itself turned bottom up. then, at carryin’ places, i can carry little bill as well as other things. he’s not heavy and doesn’t struggle, so we won’t leave him to stagger and fall. as to frost—have we not hatchets, and are there not dead trees in the forest? frost and fire never walk in company, so that little bill won’t get cold and die, for we’ll keep him warm—waugh!”
when human beings are fond of each other disagreement seldom lasts long. okématan had taken so strong a fancy to archie that he felt it impossible to hold out; therefore, being a man of strong common sense, he did not attempt the impossible.
thus it came to pass that, two days later, a couple of birch-bark canoes were launched on the waters of red river, with dan davidson in the stern of one and fergus mckay acting as his bowman. okématan took the stern of the other, while archie sinclair wielded the bow-paddle, and little bill was placed in the middle on a comfortable green blanket with the celebrated “bum-rella” erected over him to keep off, not the rain, but, the too glorious sunshine.
