Читать книгу Settlement - Ann Birch - Страница 9

TWO

Sam and Jacob Snake portaged past the Narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching, where the Indians had driven stakes into the water to trap fish. Carrying the eighty-pound canoe and their gear, they walked along the bank for a half a mile.

At a turn in the well-worn path, they came upon Sir Francis Bond Head and his official entourage. They were making an inspection of the huge Indian encampment which the previous governor had established. The new man was small in stature with a large head of pretty grey curls. Sam had met him twice before at official functions in Toronto.

“Surprised to see you in such a godforsaken spot, Jarvis,” he said. “Colborne left me with a mess here which I’ll have to sort out. Too many savages in one place. Bound to be trouble.”

“May I present my friend and guide, Jacob Snake?”

No response from Sir Francis. He looked down, seemingly more interested in counting the coloured studs on his frilly shirt than in acknowledging the introduction.

After a pause, Sam said, “Please excuse us, sir. You have much on your mind, and Jacob and I have a trek to accomplish before we make camp. Tomorrow we go moose hunting.”

They tipped the canoe over their heads again and trudged onwards until they were able to put their craft into Lake Couchiching, north of the Narrows. They reached their campsite just after sunset.

“Sorry about the Governor,” Sam said, as they pulled the canoe up on shore. Actually, he was more embarrassed and angry than sorry. “Savages” indeed. The nerve of the man. Why did these British upstarts have such a sense of superiority?

Jacob laughed. “Perhaps he is afraid of losing his buttons.”

“Probably wanted to show us he can count to ten.”

They lugged their gear to an open spot in the bush and threw down the fish they had caught en route.

“I start the fire, Nehkik. You gut the fish. We have a good supper.” Jacob took out his tinder-box and with one deft swipe of the metal pieces, he got a spark going to light the tiny shreds of paper in the bottom of the box. Then he dipped a spill into the burning bits and transferred the flame to the dried moss heaped on the logs he’d already prepared. Sam had watched this procedure many times in his fishing and hunting expeditions with Jacob and was always amazed at the Indian’s dexterity. He had tried to use the tinder-box himself but never achieved anything beyond scraped knuckles.

Sam turned to his own task and soon had several bass ready for the pan. Jacob made strong tea and bannock, and they settled down with tin plates and bone cutlery to an excellent meal.

“You know, Jacob, sometimes when I’m at the Governor’s banquets in Toronto, sawing my way through a tough steak and talking to a corseted matron, I yearn for a meal of fish with you, taken in the peace of a fall evening like this one.” He gestured at the harvest moon rising behind his friend.

“Pardon me, Nehkik, what is this ‘corseted matron’ you speak of?”

“A fat white woman who pulls in her waist with...” Sam found himself unable to describe the heavy material stiffened with whalebones and tied together with laces. “Imagine a wide band of deerskin so tight around your middle that you cannot breathe. Then you will understand ‘corset’.”

“So because the lady cannot breathe, you must do all the talking.”

“That’s about it, Jacob, though I never before realized this was why white women have no conversation.”

After rinsing their plates in the lake water, they sat in silence, smoking their pipes. They were both tired. It had been a long day, so instead of making a couch from balsam tips, they simply rolled up in the comfortable stink of their bearskins and fell into a sound sleep.

About four o’clock, Sam jolted awake. Loud snuffles and grunts came from the bushes beside his bed. Jacob wakened too. He seized a tin plate and beat a tattoo on it with a fork, shouting something in his own language. The marauder—perhaps a bear enticed by the scent of their sleep-covers—lumbered off into the darkness, and just as quickly, Jacob lay back again and fell asleep.

But Sam stayed awake, staring up at the full moon. Gradually the darkness faded, and Jacob still snored softly. Finally, Sam tapped him on the shoulder. “Shall we call now?”

“Maybe,” Jacob said, then added, “or maybe wait.”

“Damn it, Jacob, why can’t you answer a simple question outright? It’s going to be a perfect dawn. Why don’t we use it?”

There was no answer, only the sound of his companion’s deep breathing.

It was utterly still, the sort of day that Jacob had once told him was necessary for moose calling. Of all the deer family, Jacob said, the bull moose had the keenest sense of smell. When he heard a call, he would circle downwind to get a scent of the animal beckoning him. If there was even a breath of wind, he would know that the caller was not the one he wanted as a mate.

Rifle in hand, Sam climbed a tall pine tree nearby. Two-thirds of the way up, he found a thick branch that provided a comfortable perch. There he waited. Sunrise came gradually. The stars and moon faded, and the pale light deepened into the pink and red that herald the warmth of the sun. The light glanced off his rifle, illuminating the silver inlays on the walnut stock and the barrel with its engraving of the serpent in the apple tree. It had belonged to his grandfather.

Suddenly the peace was shattered by wild, diabolical cries. Shocked out of his reverie, Sam clutched the branch of the pine tree to stop himself from pitching to the ground. He turned and saw Jacob grinning at him from a perch in an adjacent pine tree. “Nehkik, I call the moose now,” he said.

He put to his mouth a cone-shaped horn of birchbark, about a foot and a half in length, and fashioned like a speaking trumpet. The sound coming from this instrument was the primal call of the moose to her mate.

They waited in silence for upwards of fifteen minutes. Then Jacob tried again. Then another fifteen-minute silence. And so it went, for more than an hour, while the branch on which Sam stood pressed into his moccasined feet and the cold crept through his buckskin jacket and took possession of his body.

A movement in the next pine tree caught his attention. Jacob lowered the horn and held his forefinger to his mouth, signalling quiet. Then he pointed in the direction of the marsh. They inched their way down the tree, careful to be perfectly silent, both aware that a bull moose had uncannily acute hearing. On that clear, still morning, the slightest sound would announce their presence.

They started for the open space the Chippewas called Lake of Spirits. It had once probably been a lake of some three miles in breadth, but now it was a marshland filled with rushes on which the moose liked to feed. At intervals across its width, there were high, dry patches of treed land that were once islands. They waded through the marsh, making their way to one of these islands, where they lay down on pine needles and waited. The sun was higher in the sky now, and Sam welcomed its warmth on his wet legs. He dozed.

Snuffling noises like the breathing of a large animal brought him to his senses. Jacob had the large end of the birchbark horn in the water, and he was blowing through the small end to make bubbling sounds like an animal drinking. Then, smiling at Sam, he put his fingers over the small end, filled the horn with water, and held it aloft. In a moment or two, he removed his fingers, and a stream of water coursed back into the swamp.

It was an old trick. “Sounds like a cow moose pissing,” Jacob had once told him.

Scrambling back up onto the grass, Jacob waited with Sam, who watched the horizon with his telescope. It was only a moment or two before Jacob whispered, “Moose comes over the barren,” his word for the marshy land they had waded through. Sam threw down his scope and picked up his rifle.

And suddenly there it was, at least ten feet tall, and against the sun, its black bulk and huge antlers made it seem like a monster from some ancient folktale. It evidently sensed danger, for the bristles stood high on its shoulders.

Sam readied his rifle for a shot. He had the animal in his sights. Then, into his head flashed an image of Ridout, arm raised.

“Fire!” yelled Jacob.

The animal lunged towards him, eyes rolling and mouth drooling, hooves stirring ripples in the water, its bulk blocking out the sun. It would crush him. Sam dropped his rifle, covered his head with his arms, stopped breathing.

But in that hopeless instant, Jacob discharged his rifle. The animal staggered and crashed to the ground, four feet from Sam.

Cradling his firearm, Jacob crept towards the beast. A shudder rippled through its hide, and it was still.

“Aim for the head,” Jacob said. “When the brain dies, spirit leaves.”

“You saved my life,” Sam said. He took deep breaths, afraid that if he said more, he’d make an ass of himself. Cry like a baby.

In its last charge, the moose had propelled itself upwards from the marsh onto the dry oasis, so they did not have to lever the body to a place where they could work easily on its carcass. With the knives that Jacob produced from a deerskin pouch, they were able to get right down to the task of skinning and gutting.

Sam paused to sharpen his knife on a whetstone. “I promised my small son a fine set of antlers for the nursery.”

“Then I sever the antlers,” Jacob said, “so they do not break.”

The sun was hot as they worked, and Sam’s hands grew tired from hacking at the flesh. “Don’t think I can stand this much longer, Jacob.”

“Think, my friend. You work hard now, and I give you a reward: one grilled kidney when we carve him up.” He smiled and shook a bloody finger at Sam. “No work, no reward, white man.”

Sam laughed, forgetting his fatigue for a minute. “Now I understand why my fine white friends call you folk savages.”

They resumed their work, stopping only when they heard the sound of splashing. Looking up, they saw five Indian men crossing the marsh towards them.

“We hear rifle shots,” they said. “We come to help.”

“Just in time,” Jacob said. “Poor old white friend here is worn out. Let us go back to the camp and eat first. Then we leave him to smoke pipe while red men do the work.”

So they took some pieces of meat from the carcass and slopped back through the marsh to the place where he and Jacob had slept the night before. Jacob got a good fire going, and they impaled the moose meat on sharpened sticks and set it to roast.

“For you, my friend,” Jacob said, handing him a choice piece of the kidneys.

“Ah, so I get my reward after all. Thank you. Roasted moose kidneys with salt, a cup of strong tea and sugar, a hard biscuit: it’s a feast for King William himself.” They munched in silence.

Jacob looked at the sun. “Time to get to work.”

“Poor old white friend will help you,” Sam said. “I’ll take my pipe and smoke while we work.” He turned to the other Indians. “Let us work well together, and at the end of the day, we shall divide the moose among us.”

The sun was low in the sky when they finished carving up the carcass and smoking some of the pieces. There were several hundred pounds of meat. Sam saved a portion for his family, and the other men took their fair share and departed, single file, down the narrow bush trail.

“A good day, Nehkik,” said Jacob that evening as they sat at the campfire. Jacob had grilled two moose steaks in the coals and filled their tin cups with scalding tea.

“A good day, Jacob.” Sam set down his tin plate and sighed. “Tomorrow, alas, we must start our voyage south.” Back to paper-shuffling. Back to his debts, to the insatiable demands of his large family. Back to Mary, who no longer wanted him in her bed. And goodbye to promotion now that the new Gov had seen him consorting with a “savage”.

They made themselves comfortable beds of dried bracken and tender balsam tips and lay down for a sound sleep. They rose at dawn and loaded their canoe in preparation for the trip.

“I’m going for a swim,” Sam said. “Just a few minutes’ more respite before we launch the canoe.”

Taking off his clothes, he swam out into the cool lake waters, his destination a small island a few hundred yards off shore. “You swim like an otter,” Jacob had told him once long ago. “So I call you ‘Nehkik’.” It was one of the few compliments he had ever received from his Indian friend, though they had known each other from childhood, when his parents had struck a friendship with Jacob’s Chippewa grandparents.

He climbed up on the rocks of the little island and looked back at Jacob, who waved to him from the shore, then disappeared into the bush.

His fingers cupped around his mouth, Sam called out, “WOOOOO!” And again, “WOOOO!”

A few minutes elapsed. He called again, “WOOOO!”

Then Jacob reappeared on the shore. He’d strapped the moose antlers to his head somehow, perhaps with the beaded sash he wore on his buckskin jacket. “WOOOO!” he called back.

Laughing, Sam dived from a rock back into the chill waters and headed for shore.