Chapter XVIII: Mirage of the Prairie

Early in the New Year, Louis, Neil and Walter set out for the Pembina Mountains or the Hare Hills, as that ridge of rough land was sometimes called. New Year’s day, ushered in with the firing of muskets, was another occasion for merrymaking and hilarity in the settlement. Indeed the feasting, dancing, and gaiety had scarcely ceased day or night since Christmas. Many a _bois brulé_ family had shared their winter supplies so generously with their guests that they had almost nothing left and would have to resort to hunting and fishing through the ice. Though they might starve before spring, the light-hearted, improvident half-breeds did not grudge what had been consumed in the festivities. They would do the same thing over again at the first opportunity.

The rapid decrease of supplies in the village gave Louis and Neil excuse for a hunting trip, and Walter was ready and eager to go along. At the Pembina Mountains they would be sure to find both game and fur animals, Louis asserted. He had been there the winter before and had found good hunting. On that trip he and his companion had come across an old and empty but snug log cabin that had been built by some hunting or trading party. He proposed to return to the old camp and stay several weeks.

Walter was the more ready to go because, on the last day of the old year, he had received word from the Periers that they were getting along all right. The letter, from Elise, was brought by a half-breed who had come from St. Boniface to be married on New Year’s day to a Pembina girl. Her father’s cough was much better, Elise wrote. He was working at the buffalo wool factory with Matthieu. Max had been disappointed to find that Mr. West’s school was a good two miles from Sergeant Kolbach’s home, too far for the little fellow to go and come in cold weather. “But we are both of us learning some English without going to school,” Elise added.

The cabin was warm, and they had enough to eat, principally pemmican, and fish caught in nets set under the ice in the rivers. “You know I did not like pemmican,” wrote Elise, “but now I am used to it. For Christmas we had a feast, a piece of fresh venison, and a pudding made with some wheat flour M. Kolbach had saved and with a sauce of melted sugar, the sugar the Indians make from the sap of the maple tree. Have you eaten any of that sugar, Walter? It is the best thing I have tasted since we came to this new land. You wrote to me that I must tell you if everything here did not go well. Of course it is not like home in Switzerland. We are not as comfortable or as happy as we were there, and sometimes Max and I are very lonely and homesick. Father does not complain of the hardships and is always planning what we are going to do when spring comes. We keep warm, we are well, and we have enough to eat, though we long for bread with butter, and milk, and cheese. I get the meals and wash and mend our clothes and keep the house clean. M. Kolbach says it is more comfortable than before we came. I can’t really like M. Kolbach, though I know I ought to, it is so good of him to have us here. He is rather harsh to Max sometimes, but not to me, and yet I feel a little afraid of him. Isn’t it strange that we can’t like people by just trying to, no matter how hard we try? But I am very grateful to M. Kolbach for taking care of us.”

This part of the letter troubled Walter a little, but, reading it over a second time, he concluded that Elise was merely homesick. Kolbach was very likely a rough sort of man, but he must have a kind heart or he would not do so much for strangers. There was no mention of the younger brother. Probably Elise knew nothing of him. Father Dumoulin thought Fritz Kolbach might not be on very good terms with the Sergeant. Perhaps after the robbery of the Indian, Fritz had not returned to St. Boniface. Undoubtedly the trader at Pembina had sent an account of that affair to Fort Douglas. Kolbach and Murray might not dare to show their faces there.

The day of their start for the Pembina Mountains, Louis and Walter were up before dawn. The morning was still and very cold. After packing their few supplies and belongings on the toboggan, the boys passed a long rawhide rope, or _shaganappy_, back and forth over the load and through the loops of the leather lashing that ran along the edges of the sled. Before the work was done their fingers were aching. They were glad to go back into the cabin for a breakfast of hot pemmican and tea.

As he went out again, Walter paused on the threshold to stare in amazement. The sun was not yet above the horizon, but the whole world had changed. He seemed to be standing in the center of a vast bowl. On every hand the country appeared to curve upward. And the distance was no longer distant! Groves of bare branched trees, streams, heights of land that he knew to be miles away had moved in around the settlement until they seemed only a few rods distant. To the west the line of hills,—Pembina Mountains,—that he had never glimpsed, even on the clearest day, as more than a faint blue line on the horizon, loomed up a mighty, flat-topped ridge. Once before, in December, Walter had seen the landscape transformed, but it was nothing to compare with this. Louis, familiar from childhood with the mirage of the prairie, declared he had never known such an extraordinary one.

Awed and wondering, the two lads stood gazing about them. Turning to the east, they watched a spreading ray of crimson light mount the sky from the soft, low lying, rose and gold bordered clouds at the horizon. The sun was coming up. As the horizon clouds reddened and the rim of the glowing disk appeared, an exclamation from his companion caused Walter to wheel about.

Louis was pointing at two men and a dog team gliding through the air,—upside down! Every detail was startlingly clear, capotes with hoods pulled up, sashes, buckskin leggings, snowshoes. The driver with the long whip looked very tall. He belabored his dogs cruelly. It seemed to Walter that he ought to hear the man’s shouts and curses, the howls and whines of the abused beasts. He could see their tracks in the snow, and a fringe of trees beyond them,—everything inverted as if he himself were standing on his head to watch men and dogs moving across the prairie. As he watched, the figures grew to gigantic stature, the outlines became indistinct. They vanished altogether. The sun was above the clouds now. The distance grew hazy. Only part of the chain of hills was visible. Louis turned to Walter, excitement in his voice.

“I think those men go to the mountain too,” he said. “Do you know how far away they are?”

Walter shook his head. He felt quite incapable of estimating distance in this fantastic world, where things he knew to be miles away were almost hitting him in the face.

“At least fifteen miles,” declared Louis impressively.

“Impossible. We couldn’t see them so plainly.”

“And yet we have seen them. The mirage is always unbelievable.”

“What is it anyway, Louis? What causes it?”

The Canadian lad shrugged his shoulders. “The Indians say the spirits of the air play tricks to bewilder men and make them wander off the trail to seek things that are not there. Once I asked Father Dumoulin and he said the spirits had nothing to do with it. He called it a false effect of light, but that does not explain it, do you think?”

Again Walter shook his head.

“This I have noticed,” Louis went on. “I have never seen the mirage in winter except at dawn or sunset. In summer I have seen it in the middle of the day when it was very hot and still. But why it comes, winter or summer, I do not know.”

Neil’s arrival stirred the others to action. The dogs were harnessed and good-byes said to Louis’ mother and sisters and rather sulky younger brother. Raoul wanted to go too, but one of the boys was needed at home.

Fresh and full of spirits, the dogs set off at such a pace that the boys had all they could do to keep up. When they left the trail and took to the untracked snow, speed slackened considerably. Louis now went ahead of the team, though track breaking was hardly necessary. Underneath an inch or more of dry, loose stuff, almost like sand, the snow was well packed and held up the dogs and sled. The line of hills had vanished, but the mirage did not entirely disappear and the landscape resume its natural appearance until the sun had been up nearly two hours.

The day was cold, much colder than the lads realized at first, for, when the start was made and for some time thereafter, there was not a breath of wind. All three wore fur caps and mittens, woolen capotes, and thick knit stockings under their moccasins. Walter had possessed none of these things when he came to Pembina, but Mrs. Brabant had made him a capote from a Hudson Bay blanket and a cap and mittens from a rather well worn bearskin. She had knit warm, new stockings for both boys from yarn bought at the trading post. A prickling feeling in his nose was Walter’s first warning that his flesh was freezing. Stooping for a handful of snow, he rubbed the prickly spot to restore circulation, and pulled the hood of his capote farther around his face.

Their course at first lay to the north of the Pembina River, over flat prairie without an elevation high enough to be called a hill. On that January morning, the whole plain was a stretch of dazzling white. In the distance it appeared level, but it was actually made up of rolling snow waves. It was, Walter thought, like a great lake or sea, the waves of which had suddenly frozen while in motion and turned to snow instead of ice.