Читать книгу The Best Ballantyne Westerns - R. M. Ballantyne - Страница 29

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Good news and romantic scenery—Bear-hunting and its results.

Jacques failed in his attempt to break off his engagement with the fur-traders. The gentleman in charge of Norway House, albeit a good-natured, estimable man, was one who could not easily brook disappointment, especially in matters that involved the interests of the Hudson’s Bay Company; so Jacques was obliged to hold to his compact, and the pastor had to search for another guide.

Spring came, and with it the awakening (if we may use the expression) of the country from the long, lethargic sleep of winter. The sun burst forth with irresistible power, and melted all before it. Ice and snow quickly dissolved, and set free the waters of swamp and river, lake and sea, to leap and sparkle in their new-found liberty. Birds renewed their visits to the regions of the north; frogs, at last unfrozen, opened their leathern jaws to croak and whistle in the marshes, and men began their preparations for a summer campaign.

At the commencement of the season an express arrived with letters from headquarters, which, among other matters of importance, directed that Messrs Somerville and Hamilton should be dispatched forthwith to the Saskatchewan district, where, on reaching Fort Pitt, they were to place themselves at the disposal of the gentleman in charge of the district. It need scarcely be added that the young men were overjoyed on receiving this almost unhoped-for intelligence, and that Harry expressed his satisfaction in his usual hilarious manner, asserting somewhat profanely, in the excess of his glee, that the governor-in-chief of Rupert’s Land was a “regular brick.” Hamilton agreed to all his friend’s remarks with a quiet smile, accompanied by a slight chuckle, and a somewhat desperate attempt at a caper, which attempt, bordering as it did on a region of buffoonery into which our quiet and gentlemanly friend had never dared hitherto to venture, proved an awkward and utter failure. He felt this, and blushed deeply.

It was further arranged and agreed upon that the young men should accompany Jacques Caradoc in his canoe. Having become sufficiently expert canoemen to handle their paddles well, they scouted the idea of taking men with them, and resolved to launch boldly forth at once as bona-fide voyageurs. To this arrangement Jacques, after one or two trials to test their skill, agreed; and very shortly after the arrival of the express, the trio set out on their voyage, amid the cheers and adieus of the entire population of Norway House, who were assembled on the end of the wooden wharf to witness their departure, and with whom they had managed, during their short residence at that place, to become special favourites. A month later, the pastor of the Indian village, having procured a trusty guide, embarked in his tin canoe with a crew of six men, and followed in their track.

In process of time spring merged into summer—a season chiefly characterised in those climes by intense heat and innumerable clouds of mosquitoes, whose vicious and incessant attacks render life, for the time being, a burden. Our three voyageurs, meanwhile, ascended the Saskatchewan, penetrating deeper each day into the heart of the North American continent. On arriving at Fort Pitt, they were graciously permitted to rest for three days, after which they were forwarded to another district, where fresh efforts were being made to extend the fur-trade into lands hitherto almost unvisited. This continuation of their travels was quite suited to the tastes and inclinations of Harry and Hamilton, and was hailed by them as an additional reason for self-gratulation. As for Jacques, he cared little to what part of the world he chanced to be sent. To hunt, to toil in rain and in sunshine, in heat and in cold, at the paddle or on the snow-shoe, was his vocation, and it mattered little to the bold hunter whether he plied it upon the plains of the Saskatchewan or among the woods of Athabasca. Besides, the companions of his travels were young, active, bold, adventurous, and therefore quite suited to his taste. Redfeather, too, his best and dearest friend, had been induced to return to his tribe for the purpose of mediating between some of the turbulent members of it and the white men who had gone to settle among them, so that the prospect of again associating with his red friend was an additional element in his satisfaction. As Charley Kennedy was also in this district, the hope of seeing him once more was a subject of such unbounded delight to Harry Somerville, and so, sympathetically, to young Hamilton, that it was with difficulty they could realise the full amount of their good fortune, or give adequate expression to their feelings. It is, therefore, probable that there never were three happier travellers than Jacques, Harry, and Hamilton, as they shouldered their guns and paddles, shook hands with the inmates of Fort Pitt, and with light steps and lighter hearts launched their canoe, turned their bronzed faces once more to the summer sun, and dipped their paddles again in the rippling waters of the Saskatchewan River.

As their bark was exceedingly small, and burdened with but little lading, they resolved to abandon the usual route, and penetrate the wilderness through a maize of lakes and small rivers well known to their guide. By this arrangement they hoped to travel more speedily, and avoid navigating a long sweep of the river by making a number of portages; while, at the same time, the changeful nature of the route was likely to render it more interesting. From the fact of its being seldom traversed, it was also more likely that they should find a supply of game for the journey.

Towards sunset, one fine day, about two weeks after their departure from Fort Pitt, our voyageurs paddled their canoe round a wooded point of land that jutted out from, and partially concealed, the mouth of a large river, down whose stream they had dropped leisurely during the last three days, and swept out upon the bosom of a large lake. This was one of those sheets of water which glitter in hundreds on the green bosom of America’s forests, and are so numerous and comparatively insignificant as to be scarce distinguished by a name, unless when they lie directly in the accustomed route of the fur-traders. But although, in comparison with the fresh-water oceans of the Far West, this lake was unnoticed and almost unknown, it would by no means have been regarded in such a light had it been transported to the plains of England. In regard to picturesque beauty it was perhaps unsurpassed. It might be about six miles wide, and so long that the land at the farther end of it was faintly discernible on the horizon. Wooded hills, sloping gently down to the water’s edge; jutting promontories, some rocky and barren, others more or less covered with trees; deep bays, retreating in some places into the dark recesses of a savage-looking gorge, in others into a distant meadow-like plain, bordered with a stripe of yellow sand; beautiful islands of various sizes, scattered along the shores as if nestling there for security, or standing barren and solitary in the centre of the lake, like bulwarks of the wilderness, some covered with luxuriant vegetation, others bald and grotesque in outline, and covered with gulls and other waterfowl,—this was the scene that broke upon the view of the travellers as they rounded the point, and, ceasing to paddle, gazed upon it long and in deep silence, their hands raised to shade their eyes from the sun’s rays, which sparkled in the water, and fell, here in bright spots and broken patches, and there in yellow floods, upon the rocks, the trees, the forest glades and plains around them.

“What a glorious scene!” murmured Hamilton, almost unconsciously.

“A perfect paradise!” said Harry, with a long-drawn sigh of satisfaction.—“Why, Jacques, my friend, it’s a matter of wonder to me that you, a free man, without relations or friends to curb you, or attract you to other parts of the world, should go boating and canoeing all over the country at the beck of the fur-traders, when you might come and pitch your tent here for ever!”

“For ever!” echoed Jacques.

“Well, I mean as long as you live in this world.”

“Ah, master,” rejoined the guide, in a sad tone of voice, “it’s just because I have neither kith nor kin nor friends to draw me to any partic’lar spot on arth, that I don’t care to settle down in this one, beautiful though it be.”

“True, true,” muttered Harry; “man’s a gregarious animal, there’s no doubt of that.”

“Anon?” exclaimed Jacques.

“I meant to say that man naturally loves company,” replied Harry, smiling.

“An’ yit I’ve seen some as didn’t, master; though, to be sure, that was onnat’ral, and there’s not many o’ them, by good luck. Yes, man’s fond o’ seein’ the face o’ man.”

“And woman too,” interrupted Harry.—“Eh, Hamilton, what say you?

“‘O woman, in our hours of ease

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou.’

“Alas, Hammy! pain and anguish and everything else may wring our unfortunate brows here long enough before woman, ‘lovely woman,’ will come to our aid. What a rare sight it would be, now, to see even an ordinary housemaid or cook out here! It would be good for sore eyes. It seems to me a sort of horrible untruth to say that I’ve not seen a woman since I left Red River; and yet it’s a frightful fact, for I don’t count the copper-coloured nondescripts one meets with hereabouts to be women at all. I suppose they are, but they don’t look like it.”

“Don’t be a goose, Harry,” said Hamilton.

“Certainly not, my friend. If I were under the disagreeable necessity of being anything but what I am, I should rather be something that is not in the habit of being shot,” replied the other, paddling with renewed vigour in order to get rid of some of the superabundant spirits that the beautiful scene and brilliant weather, acting on a young and ardent nature, had called forth.

“Some of these same redskins,” remarked the guide, “are not such bad sort o’ women, for all their ill looks. I’ve know’d more than one that was a first-rate wife an’ a good mother, though it’s true they had little edication beyond that o’ the woods.”

“No doubt of it,” replied Harry, laughing gaily. “How shall I keep the canoe’s head, Jacques?”

“Right away for the p’int that lies jist between you an’ the sun.”

“Yes; I give them all credit for being excellent wives and mothers, after a fashion,” resumed Harry. “I’ve no wish to asperse the character of the poor Indians; but you must know, Jacques, that they’re very different from the women that I allude to and of whom Scott sung. His heroines were of a very different stamp and colour!”

“Did he sing of niggers?” inquired Jacques simply.

“Of niggers!” shouted Harry, looking over his shoulder at Hamilton, with a broad grin; “no, Jacques, not exactly of niggers—”

“Hist!” exclaimed the guide, with that peculiar, subdued energy that at once indicates an unexpected discovery, and enjoins caution, while at the same moment, by a deep, powerful back-stroke of his paddle, he suddenly checked the rapid motion of the canoe.

Harry and his friend glanced quickly over their shoulders with a look of surprise.

“What’s in the wind now?” whispered the former.

“Stop paddling, masters, and look ahead at the rock yonder, jist under the tall cliff. There’s a bear a-sittin’ there, an’ if we can only get to shore afore he sees us, we’re sartin sure of him.”

As the guide spoke he slowly edged the canoe towards the shore, while the young men gazed with eager looks in the direction indicated, where they beheld what appeared to be the decayed stump of an old tree or a mass of brown rock. While they strained their eyes to see it more clearly, the object altered its form and position.

“So it is,” they exclaimed simultaneously, in a tone that was equivalent to the remark, “Now we believe, because we see it.”

In a few seconds the bow of the canoe touched the land, so lightly as to be quite inaudible, and Harry, stepping gently over the side, drew it forward a couple of feet, while his companions disembarked.

“Now, Mister Harry,” said the guide, as he slung a powder-horn and shot-belt over his shoulder, “we’ve no need to circumvent the beast, for he’s circumvented hisself.”

“How so?” inquired the other, drawing the shot from his fowling-piece, and substituting in its place a leaden bullet.

Jacques led the way through the somewhat thinly scattered underwood as he replied, “You see, Mister Harry, the place where he’s gone to sun hisself is jist at the foot o’ a sheer precipice, which runs round ahead of him and juts out into the water, so that he’s got three ways to choose between. He must clamber up the precipice, which will take him some time, I guess, if he can do it at all; or he must take to the water, which he don’t like, and won’t do if he can help it; or he must run out the way he went in, but as we shall go to meet him by the same road, he’ll have to break our ranks before he gains the woods, an’ that’ll be no easy job.”

The party soon reached the narrow pass between the lake and the near end of the cliff, where they advanced with greater caution, and peeping over the low bushes, beheld Bruin, a large brown fellow, sitting on his haunches, and rocking himself slowly to and fro, as he gazed abstractedly at the water. He was scarcely within good shot, but the cover was sufficiently thick to admit of a nearer approach.

“Now, Hamilton,” said Harry, in a low whisper, “take the first shot. I killed the last one, so it’s your turn this time.”

Hamilton hesitated, but could make no reasonable objection to this, although his unselfish nature prompted him to let his friend have the first chance. However, Jacques decided the matter by saying, in a tone that savoured strongly of command, although it was accompanied with a good-humoured smile—

“Go for’ard, young man; but you may as well put in the primin’ first.”

Poor Hamilton hastily rectified this oversight with a deep blush, at the same time muttering that he never would make a hunter; and then advanced cautiously through the bushes, slowly followed at a short distance by his companions.

On reaching a bush within seventy yards of the bear, Hamilton pushed the twigs aside with the muzzle of his gun; his eye flashed and his courage mounted as he gazed at the truly formidable animal before him, and he felt more of the hunter’s spirit within him at that moment than he would have believed possible a few minutes before. Unfortunately, a hunter’s spirit does not necessarily imply a hunter’s eye or hand. Having, with much care and long time, brought his piece to bear exactly where he supposed the brute’s heart should be, he observed that the gun was on half-cock, by nearly breaking the trigger in his convulsive efforts to fire. By the time that this error was rectified, Bruin, who seemed to feel intuitively that some imminent danger threatened him, rose, and began to move about uneasily, which so alarmed the young hunter lest he should lose his shot that he took a hasty aim, fired, and missed. Harry asserted afterwards that he even missed the cliff! On hearing the loud report, which rolled in echoes along the precipice, Bruin started, and looking round with an undecided air, saw Harry step quietly from the bushes, and fire, sending a ball into his flank. This decided him. With a fierce growl of pain, he scampered towards the water; then changing his mind, he wheeled round, and dashed at the cliff, up which he scrambled with wonderful speed.

“Come, Mister Hamilton, load again; quick. I’ll have to do the job myself, I fear,” said Jacques, as he leaned quietly on his long gun, and with a half-pitying smile watched the young man, who madly essayed to recharge his piece more rapidly than it was possible for mortal man to do. Meanwhile, Harry had reloaded and fired again; but owing to the perturbation of his young spirits, and the frantic efforts of the bear to escape, he missed. Another moment, and the animal would actually have reached the top, when Jacques hastily fired, and brought it tumbling down the precipice. Owing to the position of the animal at the time he fired, the wound was not mortal; and foreseeing that Bruin would now become the aggressor, the hunter began rapidly to reload, at the same time retreating with his companions, who in their excitement had forgotten to recharge their pieces. On reaching level ground, Bruin rose, shook himself, gave a yell of anger on beholding his enemies, and rushed at them.

It was a fine sight to behold the bearing of Jacques at this critical juncture. Accustomed to bear-hunting from his youth, and utterly indifferent to consequences when danger became imminent, he saw at a glance the probabilities of the case. He knew exactly how long it would take him to load his gun, and regulated his pace so as not to interfere with that operation. His features wore their usual calm expression. Every motion of his hands was quick and sudden, yet not hurried, but performed in a way that led the beholder irresistibly to imagine that he could have done it even more rapidly if necessary. On reaching a ledge of rock that overhung the lake a few feet, he paused and wheeled about; click went the doghead, just as the bear rose to grapple with him; another moment, and a bullet passed through the brute’s heart, while the bold hunter sprang lightly on one side, to avoid the dash of the falling animal. As he did so, young Hamilton, who had stood a little behind him with an uplifted axe, ready to finish the work should Jacques’s fire prove ineffective, received Bruin in his arms, and tumbled along with him over the rock headlong into the water, from which, however, he speedily arose unhurt, sputtering and coughing, and dragging the dead bear to the shore.

“Well done, Hammy,” shouted Harry, indulging in a prolonged peal of laughter when he ascertained that his friend’s adventure had cost him nothing more than a ducking; “that was the most amicable, loving plunge I ever saw.”

“Better a cold bath in the arms of a dead bear than an embrace on dry land with a live one,” retorted Hamilton, as he wrung the water out of his dripping garments.

“Most true, O sagacious diver! But the sooner we get a fire made the better; so come along.”

While the two friends hastened up to the woods to kindle a fire, Jacques drew his hunting-knife, and, with doffed coat and upturned sleeves, was soon busily employed in divesting the bear of his natural garment. The carcass, being valueless in a country where game of a more palatable kind was plentiful, they left behind as a feast to the wolves. After this was accomplished and the clothes dried, they re-embarked, and resumed their journey, plying the paddles energetically in silence, as their adventure had occasioned a considerable loss of time.

It was late, and the stars had looked down for a full hour into the profound depths of the now dark lake ere the party reached the ground at the other side of the point, on which Jacques had resolved to encamp. Being somewhat wearied, they spent but little time in discussing supper, and partook of that meal with a degree of energy that implied a sense of duty as well as of pleasure. Shortly after, they were buried in repose, under the scanty shelter of their canoe.