Chapter VI: The Trapping Partner

“Th’ wind’s freshenin’, and she feels like snow. I’m expectin’ a white camp tonight,” observed Indian Jake when they had passed out of The Jug and out of the view of the cabin.

“She does feel like snow,” said David, “but it’s a good wind for us, and if she holds where she is we’ll make a fine run up Grand Lake.”

“Yes,” agreed Indian Jake, blowing a mouthful of smoke from his pipe and watching its direction. “She’s east nor’east now, and fine. We’d better not lose any time stopping at the post.”

“No,” said David, “not with a fine breeze like this. Pop was four days gettin’ up th’ Lake last year, with contrary winds.”

It was a somber morning. Gray clouds hung low and the wind was damp and cold, but it was a fair wind, and before nine o’clock they came abreast the post. Zeke Hodge saw them and hailed and they answered his hail, but passed on into the river without stopping, at which Zeke marveled, for he had never before known a boat to pass the post without pausing at least for a brief call.

The tide was nearing flood, and this was vastly to their advantage in counteracting the river current, and the five miles to Grand Lake was accomplished in an hour.

“Oh, ’tis grand!” exclaimed Andy when the long vista of lake appeared before them.

“Aye,” said David, “’tis that, and that’s why she’s called Grand Lake, I’m thinkin’.”

At the eastern end of the lake, where they entered it, both the northern and southern shores were lined with low hills wooded to their summits with spruce, white birch, balsam fir, and tamarack, the foliage of the latter making golden splotches in the green. Some few miles up the lake the wooded hills on its southern shore gave place to naked mountains, with perpendicular cliffs rising sheer from the water’s edge for several hundred feet, grim and austere, but at the same time giving to the landscape a touch of grandeur and majestic beauty. In the far distance to the westward high peaks in an opalescent haze lifted their summits against the sky.

The vast and boundless wilderness inhabited by no human being other than a few wandering Indians, lay in somber and impressive silence, just as God had fashioned it untold ages before, untouched and unmarred by the hand of man. There were no smoking chimneys, no ugly brick walls, no shrieking locomotives; no sound to break the silence save the cry of startled gulls, soaring overhead, the honk of a flock of wild geese in southern flight, and the waves lapping upon the rocky shore. The air was fresh and spicy with the odor of balsam and other forest perfumes. It was a wilderness redolent with suggestions of mysteries hidden in the bosom of its unconquered and unmeasured solitudes and waiting for discovery.

“It makes me feel wonderful strange--t’ think I’m goin’ in there,” remarked Andy presently, gazing away over the dark forest which receded to the northward over rolling hills, “and t’ think we’re t’ be gone till th’ break-up next spring, an’ won’t see Pop or Margaret or Doctor Joe for so long.”

“Not gettin’ sorry you’re goin’, now, be you?” grinned Indian Jake.

“No, I’m not gettin’ sorry. Not me! I’m wonderful glad t’ be goin’,” Andy asserted stoutly.

“Better not think about the folks and home too much, or you’ll be gettin’ homesick,” counseled Indian Jake.

“I’m not like t’ get homesick!” and Andy’s voice suggested that nothing in the world was less likely to happen.

“Ah, but you’ll have a sore trial, lads,” said Indian Jake. “Wait till we’re deep in th’ trails, and winter settles, and th’ wind cuts t’ th’ bone, and th’ shiftin’ snow blinds you, and th’ cold’s like t’ freeze your blood, and t’ have t’ fight it for your very life. _Then’s_ th’ time that you’ll be tried out for th’ stuff that’s in you--both of you. And you can’t rest then, for there’s fur t’ be got out of th’ traps, and there’s no one t’ get it but you, and you _got_ t’ get it. Then, lads, you’ll be thinkin’ of your warm snug home at The Jug, with its big stove, and your cozy nest of a bed. There’s no rest for the trapper that makes a good hunt, lads. ’Tis the man that rests when th’ storms blow wild and the cold settles bitter and fierce, that makes th’ poor hunt. ’Tis always so with work.”

“We’ll stick to un, and make th’ good hunt,” David declared stoutly.

“Aye, we’ll stick to un, and not be gettin’ homesick, either. We’ll have plenty o’ grit,” said Andy.

“That’s the way to talk, lads!” said Indian Jake heartily. “Stick to it, lads, and have grit a plenty, and you’ll make a good hunt.”

“But I was thinkin’ o’ what a wonderful big place ’tis in there,” and Andy was again gazing at the forest-clad hills.

“’Tis a _big_ place,” said Indian Jake.

“Pop says,” continued Andy, “that ’tis so big they’s no end to un.”

“Aye,” agreed Indian Jake, “no end to un.”

“And there’ll be nobody but just us in there,” and there was awe in Andy’s voice.

“Just us,” said Indian Jake.

Snow was falling when they made camp that evening in the shelter of the forest on the lake shore, and cozy and snug the tent was with a roaring fire in the stove, and the wind swirling the snow outside, and moaning through the tree tops. Indian Jake had said little during the afternoon, but now as he fried a pan of pork by the light of a sputtering candle, while David and Andy laid the bed of fragrant spruce boughs, he volunteered the information that they would be in the Nascaupee River early in the morning.

“That’s fine,” said David. “We made a wonderful day’s travel, now, didn’t we?”

Indian Jake did not reply, and the boys, too, fell into silence, until supper was eaten and Indian Jake had lighted his pipe. Then David asked:

“Where were you livin’ before you came to th’ Bay, Jake?”

“South,” grunted Indian Jake.

“Did your folks live there?” asked Andy.

“Yes,” answered Indian Jake.

“Why don’t yo bring un t’ th’ Bay t’ live, now you’re here?” asked Andy. “’Twould be fine t’ have your folks t’ live with you.”

“Because I can’t,” replied Indian Jake, in a tone that implied he was through talking.

“I’m wonderful sorry,” sympathized Andy.

“It’s too bad, now,” said David.

Indian Jake grunted again, but whether it was a grunt of appreciation or of resentment that they should have asked the questions, they could not tell, and quietly they spread their sleeping bags and slipped into them. They were to learn as the weeks passed that Indian Jake had a double personality--that he was both an Indian and a white man--and that he possessed traits of character peculiar to both.

It was Andy’s first night in camp, and for a time he lay awake wondering if Jamie and his father and Margaret were very lonely without him and David. And then he fell to listening to the wind and the crackling fire in the stove, and to watching in the dim light of the candle the dark outline of Indian Jake’s figure crouched before the stove and silently smoking. The half-breed’s face with its beaked nose was never a pleasant thing to see, and now it looked unusually sinister and forbidding to Andy. Presently it began to fade, and a great black wolf took its place, and Andy dreamed that the wolf was crouching over him and David, ready to devour them.

He awoke with a start. The candle light was out and all was darkness and strangely silent, with no sound save David’s deep breathing and the moan of wind through the trees. It was weird and lonely there in the darkness, and when Andy thought of how long it would be before he and David returned to The Jug again, it seemed still lonelier.

“I must have plenty o’ grit, and keep a stout heart, the way Jamie is doing,” he thought, and it gave him courage, and he slept again.