The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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class, and well used to all the work which comes on a trip in a wilderness country.
As they stood now a little apart, it might be seen that both of the guides were brown-skinned men, still browner by exposure to the weather. Each of them had had an Indian mother, and the father of each was a white man, the one a silent Scot, of the Hudson Bay fur trade, the other a lively Frenchman of the lower trails, used to horse, boat, and foot travel, and known far and wide in his own day as a good voyageur.
Indeed, two better men could not have been selected by Uncle Dick for the work now in hand. As they stood now in their shirt-sleeves, each wiping off his forehead with his red kerchief, they looked so strong and tall that the boys suddenly felt all uneasiness pass away from their minds. The twilight came on unnoticed, and in the light of the fire, freshly piled up with wood, the camp scene became bright and pleasant. It was impossible to feel any alarm when they were here under the protection of these two men, both of them warriors, who had seen encounters of armed men, not to mention hundreds of meetings with wild beasts.
“Well,” said Rob to Moise, “you must be tired with all that load.”
“Non! Non!” said Moise; “not tired. She’ll been leetle boat, not over hondred-feefty poun’. I’ll make supper now, me.”
“It was best to bring both the boats in to-night,” said Alex, quietly, “and easier to start from here than to push in to the lake. We load here in the morning, and I think there’ll be plain sailing from here. It’s just as well to make a stream carry us and our boats whenever we can. It’s only a little way to the lake.”
“I thought you were never coming, Alex,” said Jesse, frankly, looking up from where he sat on his blanket roll, his chin in his hands.
The tall half-breed answered by gently putting a hand on the boy’s head, and making a better seat for him closer to the fire. Here he was close enough to watch Moise, now busy about his pots and pans.
“Those mosquito he’ll bite you some?” laughed Moise, as he saw the boys still slapping at their hands. “Well, bimeby he’ll not bite so much. She’ll be col’ here un the montaigne, bimeby.”
“I’m lumpy all over with them,” said John.
“It’s lucky you come from a country where you’re more or less used to them,” said Alex. “I’ve seen men driven wild by mosquitoes. But going down the river we’ll camp on the beaches or bars, where the wind will strike us. In two or three weeks we’ll be far enough along toward fall, so that I don’t think the mosquitoes will trouble us too much. You see, it’s the first of August now.”
“We can fix our tent to keep them out,” said Rob, “and we have bars and gloves, of course. But we don’t want to be too much like tenderfeet.”
“That’s the idea,” said Alex quietly. “You’ll not be tenderfeet when you finish this trip.”
“Her Onkle Deek, she’ll tol’ me something about those boy,” said Moise, from the fireside. “She’ll say she’s good boy, all same like man.”
Jesse looked at Moise gravely, but did not smile at his queer way of speech, for by this time they had become better acquainted with both their guides.
“What I’ll tol’ you?” said Moise again a little later. “Here comes cool breeze from the hill. Now those mosquito he’ll hunt his home yas, heem! All right! We’ll eat supper ’fore long.”
Moise had put a pot of meat stew over the fire before he started back up the trail to bring in the canoe, when they first had come in with the packs. This he now finished cooking over the renewed fire, and by and by the odors arose so pleasantly that each boy sat waiting, his knife and fork on the tin plate in his lap. Alex, looking on, smiled quietly, but said nothing.
“Moise doesn’t build a fire just the way I’ve been taught,” said Rob, after a while.
“No,” added John. “I was thinking of that, too.”
“He’s Injun, same as me,” said Alex, smiling. “No white man can build a fire for an Injun. S’pose you ask me to put your hat on for you so you wouldn’t need to touch it. I couldn’t do that. You’d have to fix it a little yourself. Same way with Injun and his fire.”
“That’s funny,” said Rob. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” smiled Alex.
“He just throws the sticks together in a long heap and pushes the ends in when they burn through,” said Jesse. “He didn’t cut any wood at all.”
Moise grinned at this, but ventured no more reply.
“You see,” said Alex, “if you live all the time in the open you learn to do as little work as possible, because there is always so much to do that your life depends on that you don’t want to waste any strength.”
“It doesn’t take a white man long to get into that habit,” said Rob.
“Yes. Besides, there is another reason. An Injun has to make his living with his rifle. Chopping with an ax is a sound that frightens game more than any other. The bear and deer will just get up and leave when they hear you chopping. So when we come into camp we build our fire as small as possible, and without cutting any more wood than we are obliged to. You see, we’ll be gone the next morning, perhaps, so we slip through as light as possible. A white man leaves a trail like a wagon-road, but you’d hardly know an Injun had been there. You soon get the habit when you have to live that way.”
“Grub pile!” sang out Moise now, laughing as he moved the pans and the steaming tea-kettle by the side of the fire. And very soon the boys were falling to with good will in their first meal in camp.
“Moise, she’ll ben good cook — many tams mans’ll tol’ me that,” grinned Moise, pleasantly, drawing a little apart from the fire with his own tin pan on his knee.
“We’ll give you a recommendation,” said John. “This stew is fine. I was awfully hungry.”
It was not long after they had finished their supper before all began to feel sleepy, for they had walked or worked more or less ever since morning.
Alex arose and took from his belt the great Hudson Bay knife, or buffalo knife, which he wore at his back, thrust through his belt. With this he hacked off a few boughs from the nearest pine-tree and threw them down in the first sheltered spot. Over this he threw a narrow strip of much-worn bear hide and a single fold of heavy blanket, this being all the bed which he seemed to have.
“Is that all you ever had?” asked Rob. “I don’t think you’ll sleep well, Alex. Let me give you some of my bed.”
“Thank you, no,” said Alex, sitting down and lighting his pipe. “We make our beds small when we have to carry them in the woods. We sleep well. We get used to it, you see.”
“Injun man she’ll been like dog,” grinned Moise, throwing down his own single blanket under a tree. “A dog she’ll sleep plenty, all right, an’ she’ll got no bed at all, what?”
“But won’t you come under the edge of the tent?” asked Rob.
“No, you’re to have the tent,” said Alex. “I’m under orders from your Uncle, who employed me. But you’re to make your own beds, and take care of them in making and breaking camp. That’s understood.”
“I’ll do that for those boy,” offered Moise.
“No,” said Alex, quietly, “my orders are they’re to do that for themselves. That’s what their Uncle said. They must learn how to do all these things.”
“Maybe we know now, a little bit,” ventured John, smiling.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Alex. “But now, just from a look at your bed, you’ve taken a great deal of time making your camp to-night. You’ve got a good many boughs. They took noise and took time to gather. We’ll see