Читать книгу The Wild North Land - William Francis Sir Butler - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Buffalo Hunts.—A Picture once seen, long remembered.—L’Homme capable.—A wonderful Lake.—The lost Indian.—An Apparition.—We return home.

It was mid-November before we reached the buffalo; the snow had deepened, the cold had become intense, and our horses under the influence of travel, cold, and exposure, had become miserably thin. To hunt the herds on horseback would have been an impossibility; the new-fallen snow hid the murderous badger holes that covered the prairie surface, and to gallop weak horses over such ground must have been certain disaster.

Buffalo hunts on horseback or on foot have frequently been the theme of travellers’ story. Ruxton and Palliser, and Mayne Reid and Catlin, have filled many a page with glowing descriptions of charge and counter-charge, stalk and stampede. Washington Irving has lighted with his genius the dull records of western wanderings, and to sketch now the pursuit of that huge beast (so soon to be an extinct giant) would be to repeat a thrice-told tale.

Who has not seen in pencil sketch or pen story the image of the huge, shaggy beast careering madly before an eagle-feathered red man, whose horse decked like its rider with the feathered trophy, launches himself swiftly over the prairie? The full-drawn bow, the deadly arrow, the stricken animal, the wild confusion of the flying herd, the wounded giant turning to bay;—all these have been described a thousand times; so also has the stalk, the stealthy approach under the wolf-skin covering, the careful shot and the stupid stare of the startled animals as they pause a moment to gather consciousness that this thing which they deemed a wolf in the grass is in reality their most deadly enemy, man. All these have found record from pen and pencil; but I much doubt me if it be possible to place before a reader’s mental vision anything like a true picture of the sense of solitude, of endless space, of awful desolation which at times comes to the traveller’s mind as he looks over some vast prairie and beholds a lonely herd of bisons trailing slowly across that snow-wrapt, endless expanse, into the shadows of the coming night.

Such a sight I have beheld more than once, and its memory returns at times with the sigh of the south wind, or the waving of a pine branch. It is from moments such as these that the wanderer draws the recompence of his toil, and reaps in after-time the harvest of his hardship. No book has told the story, no picture has caught the colouring of sky and plain, no sound can echo back the music of that untainted breeze, sighing so mournfully through the yellow grass, but all the same the vision returns without one effort of remembrance: the vast plain snow-wrapt, the west ablaze with gold, and green, and saffron, and colours never classed or catalogued, while the horizon circle from north to east and south grows dim and indistinct, and, far off, the bison herd in long, scattered file trails slowly across the blue-white snow into the caverns of the sunset.

We carried with us a leather tent of eight skins, small of its kind, but capable of sheltering the five individuals comprising our party. This tent, pitched in some hollow at sunset, formed the sole speck of life amidst the vast solitude. Ten poles resting on the ground, and locked together at the top, supported the leather covering. An open space at the apex of the tent was supposed to allow the smoke to escape, but the smoke usually seemed to consider itself under no restraint whatever in the dim interior of our lodge, and seldom or never took advantage of the means of freedom so liberally provided for it. Our stock of fuel was very limited, and barely sufficed to boil a kettle and fry a dish of pemmican at the opening or close of each day. When the evening meal was finished, we sat awhile grouped around the small fire in the centre. “L’homme capable” ran round our line of traps, returning with a couple of kit foxes, the fattest of which he skinned and roasted for his supper. Then we gathered the blankets close together, and lying down slept until the dawn came struggling through the open roof, and cold and hungry we sat again around the little fire. Thus we journeyed on.

Scattered over the wide prairie which lies between the South Saskatchewan and the Eagle Hills roamed many herds of buffalo. But their numbers were very far short of those immense herds which, until a few years ago, were wont to cover the treeless regions of the west. Yet they were numerous enough to make the onlooker marvel how they still held their own against the ever-increasing odds arrayed against them.

Around the wide circle of this prairie ocean lay scattered not less than 15,000 wild people, all preying with wasteful vigour upon these scattered herds; but the numbers killed for the consumption of these Indian or half-Indian men formed but a small item in the lists of slaughter. To the north and east the denizens of the remote parts of the great regions locked in savage distance, the land of fur, the land which stretches to the wintry shores of the Bay of Hudson, and the storm-swept capes of the Arctic Ocean, looked for their means of summer transport to these wandering herds in the, to them, far distant Saskatchewan. What food was it that the tired voyageur munched so stolidly at nightfall by the camp fire on some long portage of the Winnipeg, the Nelson, or the Beaver Rivers, or ate with so much relish ere the morning sun was glinting along the waves of far Lake Athabasca; and his boat, rich laden with precious fur, rocked on the secluded shore of some nameless bay? It was buffalo pemmican from the Saskatchewan. And what food was it that these dozen hungry dogs devoured with such haste by that lonely camp fire in the dark pine forest, when all nature lay in its mid-winter torpor frozen to the soul; when the pine-log flared upon some snow-sheeted lake, or ice-bound river in the great wilderness of the north? It was the same hard mixture of fat and dried buffalo-meat pounded down into a solid mass which the Indians called “pemmican.” Small wonder then that the great herds had dwindled down to their present numbers, and that now the once wide domain of the buffalo had shrunken into the limits of the great prairie.

Yet, even still, the numbers annually killed seem quite incredible; 12,000 are said to fall to the Blackfeet tribes alone; in a single hunt the French half-breeds, whose winter camp we had lately visited, had killed 600 cows. The forts of the Hudson’s Bay Company were filled with many thousand bags of pemmican, and to each bag two animals may be counted; while not less than 30,000 robes had already found their way to the Red River, and fully as many more in skins of parchment or in leather had been traded or consumed in the thousand wants of savage life; and all are ruthlessly killed—young and old, calves and cows, it matters little; the Indian and the half-breed know no such quality as forethought. Nor, looking at this annual havoc, and seeing still in spite of all the dusky herds yet roaming over the treeless waste, can we marvel that the Red man should ascribe to agencies other than mortal the seemingly endless numbers of his favourite animal?

South-west from the Eagle Hills, far out in the prairie, there lies a lake whose waters never rest; day and night a ceaseless murmur breaks the silence of the spot.

“See,” says the red man, “it is from under that lake that our buffalo comes. You say they are all gone; but look, they come again and again to us. We cannot kill them all—they are there under that lake. Do you hear the noise which never ceases? It is the buffalo fighting with each other far down under the ground, and striving to get out upon the prairie—where else can they come from?”

We may well ask the question where can they come from? for in truth the vast expanse of the great prairie seems too small to save them from their relentless foes.

The creek of the Eagle Hills winds through the prairie in long, lazy bends. The beaver has made his home under its banks; and in some of the serpentine bends the bastard maple lifts its gnarled trunk, and the willow copses grow thickly. It is a favourite ground for the hunter in summer; but now, in mid-November, no sign of man was visible, and we had the little thicket oasis all to ourselves.

It was in this spot, some two years ago, that the following event occurred. In a band of Crees travelling over the plains there happened to be a blind Indian. Following the band one day he lagged behind, and the party dipping over a ridge on the prairie became lost to sound. Becoming suddenly alarmed at having thus lost his friends, he began to run swiftly in hope of overtaking them; but now his judgment was at fault, and the direction of his run was the wrong one—he found himself alone on the immense plains. Tired at last by the speed to which feverish anxiety had urged him, he sat down to think over his chances. It was hopeless to attempt to regain his party; he was far out in the grassy ocean, and south, west, and east, lay hundreds of miles of undulating plain; to the north many days’ journey, but still near, in relative distance, lay the forts of the white man, and the trail which led from one to the other. He would steer for the north, and would endeavour to reach one of these forts. It was midsummer; he had no food, but the carcases of lately-killed buffalo were, he knew, numerous in that part of the prairie, and lakes or ponds were to be found at intervals.

He set out, and for three days he journeyed north. “How did he steer?” the reader will ask; “for have you not told us the man was blind?” Nevertheless, he steered with accuracy towards the north. From sunrise he kept the warm glow on his naked right shoulder; six hours later the heat fell full upon his back; towards evening the rays were on his left side; and when the sun had gone, and the damp dew began to fall, he lay down for the night: thus he held a tolerably correct course. At times the soft mud of a lake shore cloyed his feet; but that promised water, and after a drink he resumed his way; the lakelet was rounded and the course pursued. There was no food; for two days he travelled on patiently, until at last he stumbled over the bones of a buffalo. He felt around; it had been killed some time, and the wolves had left scant pickings on ribs or legs, but on the massive head the skin was yet untouched, and his knife enabled him to satisfy his hunger, and to carry away a few scraps of skin and flesh.

Thus recruited he pressed on. It was drawing towards evening on the fifth day of his weary journey when he found himself reduced to starvation, weak from protracted hunger and faint from thirst; the day had been a warm one, and no friendly lake had given him drink. His scanty food had been long exhausted, and there seemed but little hope that he could live to feel the warm sun again. Its rays were growing faint upon his left shoulder, when his feet suddenly sank into soft mud, and the reeds and flags of a swamp brushed against his legs: here was water, he lay down and drank a long, long draught. Then he bethought him, Was it not better to stay here while life lasted? here he had at least water, and of all the pangs that can afflict the lost wanderer that of thirst is the hardest to bear. He lay down midst the reeds, determined to wait for death.

Some few miles distant to the north-east lay the creek of the Eagle Hills. That evening a party of hunters from the distant fort of À la Corne, had appeared on the wide prairies which surrounded this creek; they were in search of buffalo, it wanted an hour of sunset. The man in charge looked at the sinking sun, and he bethought him of a camping-place. “Go to such and such a bend of the creek,” he said to his hunters, “unyoke the horses and make the camp. I will ride to yonder hill and take a look over the plains for buffalo; I will rejoin you at the camp.”

The party separated, and their leader pushed on to the hill-top for a better survey of the plains. When he reached the summit of the ridge he cast a look on every side; no buffalo were to be seen, but to his surprise, his men, instead of obeying his orders as to the route, appeared to be steering in a different direction from the one he had indicated, and were already far away to the south. When he again overtook them they were in the act of camping on the borders of a swampy lake, a long way from the place he had intended; they had mistaken the track, they said, and seeing water here had camped at sunset.

It was not a good place, and the officer felt annoyed at their stupidity. While they spoke together thus, a figure suddenly rose from the reeds at the further side of the lake, and called loudly for assistance. For a moment the hunters were amazed at this sudden apparition; they were somewhat startled too, for the Blackfeet bands were said to be on the war-trail. But presently they saw that there was only a solitary stranger, and that he was blind and helpless: it was the lost Cree. He had long before heard the hunters’ approach, but not less deadly was the fear of Blackfeet than the dread of death by starvation. Both meant death; but one meant scalping, therefore dishonour in addition. It was only when the welcome sounds of the Cree language fell on his ear that he could reveal his presence in the reed-fringed lake.

I have told this story at length just as I heard it from the man who had been in charge of the party of hunters, because it brings home to the mind of the outsider, not only the power of endurance which the Indian displays in the face of physical difficulties, but also the state of society produced by the never-ending wars among the Indian tribes. Of the mistake which caused the hunters to alter their course and pitch their camp in another direction than that intended by their leader I have nothing to say; chance is a strange leader people say. Tables are said to be turned by unseen powers seemingly like the stars in the song, “because they’ve nothing else to do;” but for my part I had rather believe that men’s footsteps are turned south instead of west under other Guidance than that of chance, when that change of direction, heedless though it be, saves some lost wanderer who has lain down to die.

It was the 3rd of December, when with thin and tired horses, we returned to the Forks of the Saskatchewan. We found our house wholly completed; on the stage in front safe from dogs and wolves the produce of the hunt was piled, the weary horses were turned loose on the ridge above, and with a few books on a shelf over a rude but comfortable bed, I prepared to pass the next two months of winter.

It was full time to reach home; the snow lay deep upon the ground; the cold, which had set in unusually early, had even in mid-November fallen to thirty degrees below zero, and some of our last buffalo stalks had been made under a temperature in which frozen fingers usually followed the handling, with unmittened hands, of rifle stock or gun trigger.

Those who in summer or autumn visit the great prairie of the Saskatchewan can form but a faint idea of its winter fierceness and utter desolation. They are prone to paint the scene as wanting only the settler’s hut, the yoke of oxen, the waggon, to become at once the paradise of the husbandman. They little know of what they speak. Should they really wish to form a true conception of life in these solitudes, let them go out towards the close of November into the treeless waste; then, midst fierce storm and biting cold, and snow-drift so dense that earth and heaven seem wrapped together in indistinguishable chaos, they will witness a sight as different from their summer ideal as a mid-Atlantic mid-winter storm varies from a tranquil moonlight on the Ægean Sea.

TENT IN THE GREAT PRAIRIE.

During the sixteen days in which we traversed the prairie on our return journey, we had not seen one soul, one human being moving over it; the picture of its desolation was complete.