Pilgrims of the Wild. Grey Evil Owl
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and they would come to meet the canoe, answering the call with long high-pitched cries, and on close approach would reach up to us with outstretched hands in eager expectancy, grasping our fingers and looking up at us and making the most uncommon sounds. For we always made it a practice to bring along little bits of sweet things we made for them, and they would lie in the water eating them with loud enjoyment and a very audible smacking of lips. This usage gave us nearly as much pleasure as it gave to them, the more especially when we found that whether satisfied or not they did not leave us, but would try to get aboard the canoe, and on being lifted in, the tail providing a very convenient handle for the purpose, they would clamber over our persons with every sign of pleasure. And if the treats in any way improved the welcome we received, show me the very good friend whose heart is not the warmer towards you when you set him at your table!
Yet, on reflection, it struck me as passing strange that we, representatives of two tribes who, above all others, had each in their day made the war-trail a thing of horror (an art, by the way, in which the whole world is at present busy in perfecting itself), should be wearing ourselves to a frazzle over the likes and dislikes of two miserable little creatures that were not, according to civilized standards, worth the powder to blow them to hell.
Towards the middle of summer it became necessary to go out to the railroad to confer with others of my calling on the possibilities of the coming winter. On this journey, whilst in the canoe, we let the beaver run loose as they were not able to climb out of it. On the portages they were dumped into a grain bag and dangled from a thwart of the inverted canoe. One of these carries was two miles in length, and they cried the whole way while mosquitoes settled on the bag in swarms. Having no longer a box, at camping grounds we hung them up in the bag near a fire to keep the mosquitoes from them, so they were at times pretty well smoked. They slept nearly all the time and ate nothing, but arrived in fair shape except that they were a little groggy. An Indian who came to see them said they were dying, but an hour or two in the water restored them. It was now necessary to confine them both day and night, owing to the presence of a multitude of idle sleigh dogs that formed the larger part of the population of the village. They expressed their disapprobation of this treatment by promptly eating their way out of everything we tried to keep them in, so that they had me busy providing boxes which lasted, if they were good, one night.
Another trip had yet to be made to the trapping camp for some equipment that remained there, so we left the beaver in the care of a friend who locked them carefully into an outhouse built of logs. We returned a few days later with our load, and as soon as we disembarked Anahareo went to visit the beaver, whilst I crossed immediately over to the store to obtain a good strong box, as we expected to board a train that evening. I was met on my way back by a pale and distraught Anahareo…. The beaver were gone! They had eaten through the timbers at the thin place where two logs rested one on the other, and gone on a tour. Our friend was greatly disturbed at their loss, knowing how we prized them. He muzzled a beaver dog, an animal especially trained to hunt them, and set out to trail them down. I commenced to comb the surrounding woods, covering the ground in the direction of the lake which was some considerable distance away. The beaver had not been gone long, and could, under ordinary circumstances, have been easily recovered; the danger was grave only on account of the huskies of which there were dozens, and cheapskate hunters who would kill anything on sight.
We were not long away before one of the beaver, the female, showed up in the yard, and when seen was picking her way nonchalantly amongst several dogs, some of whom were commencing to circle warily behind her. With a shout and a wild leap Anahareo threw herself between them, and grabbing up the startled beaver ran for the nearest door, pursued by the enemy. This I learned on my return from an unsuccessful search. And when the hunting dog returned and was found to have also failed,* we, Anahareo and I, looked at one another silently and with one common thought — the little male whose curiosity and wandering habits had got him into hot water continually, had made just one trip too many. The big strong box looked pretty large and empty with one small lonely kitten beaver crouched unhappily in a corner of it. They had never been apart more than a few minutes all their short lives, and this one was wailing querulously in the way they had when lonesome, or in some trouble.
I hunted all evening without avail. The train we were to have taken passed on without us, and it would very soon be dark. The place was swarming with huskies, hunting dogs, and stray dogs, most of them half-starved, and the kitten would have made no more than a mouthful for any of them. The chances were poor. I had never realized until now how much the little fellows had gotten in under my skin. The lost waif was my own particular chum, and I was going to miss him. Yet I could not believe but what he had somehow made the grade and got to the lake, distant though it was. They had blundered complacently through a number of tough situations from the time of their birth on, and — there — sure enough, across a narrow bay I saw a dark brown object on the shoreline, dimly seen in the rapidly falling dusk — just in time! I gave several loud calls and instantly, not from the direction of this brown object at all, but from a spot not a stone’s throw ahead of me, came an answer, a most dolorous wailing. The willows were very thick and I could see nothing, but I advanced, calling every few steps and getting an answer each time, until with eyes bulging and hair erect, the wanderer burst through the leaves and threw himself at my feet. I picked up the little furry body and held him close to my shirt, while he uttered barely audible whimpering sounds and burrowed his nose into my neck. He was bone dry, so that although he must have been on the point of entering the water, he had allowed himself to be called away from it by the sound of a voice that he knew. Never before, and only once since, have I had the same feeling of relief at the recovery of anything lost.
Anahareo of course was overjoyed. And now the so-big box had its small quota of inhabitants, and from it there arose sounds of strife as the reunited couple quarrelled lustily over some sweet biscuits we had bought to celebrate the occasion. And as I watched them disporting themselves in happy unconsciousness of any danger past, present, or future, I found it strange and a little disquieting that these animals, that had seemed heretofore to have only one use, and that I had destroyed by hundreds, should turn out to be so likeable, should so arouse the protective instinct of a man who was their natural enemy.
From a purely economic viewpoint, I had long been opposed to the wholesale slaughter now going forward, which was indeed almost at an end for want of victims. But this was different. These beasts had feelings and could express them very well; they could talk, they had affection, they knew what it was to be happy, to be lonely — why, they were little people! And they must be all like that. All this tallied with the incredible stories I had heard in younger days, and perhaps accounted for the veneration that our people, when savage, had held them in, calling them “Beaver People,” “Little Indians,” and “Talking Mothers.” Indian mothers, bereaved of an infant, had suckled baby beavers at their breasts and thus gained some solace. I had seen them myself cared for tenderly by those whose hands they had fallen into. And I would have left them to die with never a thought, an intention that seemed now to have been something nearly barbarous. Well, we had to live, and anyway they were all right. To make sure I looked inside the box, and carefully securing the lid, went to bed.
That night they gnawed their way out of their new domicile and, weary with this, and that, and one thing and another, were found the next morning fast asleep along side of it.
Having again missed our train, with the freakish irresponsibility common to our kind when not seriously employed we decided to miss a few more and stay for the weekend. The news concerning our menagerie had spread, and we were approached by a fur dealer who wanted to see what we had. There was, he said, a pair of other young beaver that an Indian had turned in to a storekeeper in part payment of his debt, and he himself had intended to buy them. They were not, he said, in good shape and might die, and he would not touch them unless shipped to him at the present owner’s risk. He was much taken with ours, as they were in first class condition, and he made us a good offer. This of course we did not accept; although we were getting short of money we had no notion of parting with them.
But we did go to see the other kittens, first putting our own under a heavily weighted galvanized wash tub, and setting a guard over them with orders to show them to nobody. The place we were going to was a combined