Chapter XI The Hunters’ Camp
A burst of merry laughter made the two boys look round, half afraid that it might be at their own expense.
Wilfred felt a bit annoyed when he perceived a little party of horsemen spurring towards the fort. But Gaspé ran after them, waving his arms with a bonjour as he recognized his own Louison’s cousin, Batiste, among the foremost.
Dog training and dog driving are the never-failing topics of interest among the hunters and trappers. Batiste had reined in his horse to watch the ineffectual efforts of the boys to disentangle the two dogs, who were fighting and snarling with each other over the upturned sled.
Batiste and his comrades soon advanced from watching to helping. The sled was lifted up, the traces disentangled, and Wilfred and Gaspé were told and made to feel that they knew nothing at all about dog driving, and might find themselves in a heap all pell-mell at the bottom of the river bank some day if they set about it in such a reckless fashion. They were letting the dogs run just where they liked. Dogs wanted something to follow. Batiste jumped from his horse at last, quite unable to resist the pleasure of breaking in a young dog.
“It takes two to manage a dog team,” he asserted. “It wants a man in snow-shoes to walk on in front and mark a track, and another behind to keep them steady to their work.”
Dogs, horses, men, and boys all turned back together to discuss Yankee’s undeveloped powers. But no, Batiste himself could do nothing with him. Yankee refused to haul.
“I’ll make him,” said Batiste.
But Gaspé preferred to take his dog out of the traces rather than surrender him to the tender mercies of a hunter. “I know they are very cruel,” he whispered to Wilfred. So Yula was left to draw the empty sled back to the fort, and he did it in first-rate style.
“He is just cut out for hauling, as the hound is for hunting,” explained Batiste. “It is not any dog can do it.”
They entered the gate of the fort. The men stood patting and praising Yula, while Batiste exchanged greetings with his cousin.
Before he unlocked the door of his shop, Mr. De Brunier called Wilfred to him.
“Now is your chance, my boy,” he said kindly. “Batiste tells me he passed this Bowkett on his way to the camp, so you are sure to find him there. Shall I arrange with Batiste to take you with him?”
The opportunity had come so suddenly at last. If Wilfred had any misgiving, he did not show it.
“What do you think I had better do, sir?” he asked.
“There is so much good common sense in your own plan,” answered his friend, “I think you had better follow it. When we shut up, you cannot remain here; and unless we take you with us, this is the best thing to do.”
Wilfred put both his hands in Mr. De Brunier’s.
“I can’t thank you,” he said; “I can’t thank you half enough.”
“Never mind the thanks, my boy. Now I want you to promise me, when you get back to your home, you will make yourself missed, then you will soon find yourself wanted.” Mr. De Brunier turned the key in the lock as he spoke, and went in.
Wilfred crossed the court to Gaspé. He looked up brightly, exclaiming, “Kusky is the boy for you; they all say Kusky will draw.”
“I am going,” whispered Wilfred.
“Going! how and why?” echoed Gaspé in consternation.
“With these men,” answered Wilfred.
“Then I shall hate Batiste if he takes you from me!” exclaimed Gaspé impetuously.
They stepped back into the shed the puppies had occupied, behind some packing-cases, where nobody could see them, for the parting words.
“We shall never forget each other, never. Shall we ever meet again?” asked Wilfred despairingly. “We may when we are men.”
“We may before,” whispered Gaspé, trying to comfort him. “Grandfather’s time is up this Christmas. Then he will take his pension and retire. He talks of buying a farm. Why shouldn’t it be near your uncle’s?”
“Come, Gaspard, what are you about?” shouted Mr. De Brunier from the shop door. “Take Wilfred in, and see that he has a good dinner.”
Words failed over the knife and fork. Yula and Kusky had to be fed.
“Will the sled be of any use?” asked Gaspé.
Even Wilfred did not feel sure. They had fallen very low—had no heart for anything.
Louison was packing the sled—pemmican and tea for three days.
“Put plenty,” said Gaspé, as he ran out to see all was right.
Louison and Batiste were talking.
“We’ll teach that young dog to haul,” Batiste was saying; “and if the boy gets tired of them, we’ll take them off his hands altogether.”
“With pleasure,” added Louison, and they both laughed.
The last moment had come.
“Good-bye, good-bye!” said Wilfred, determined not to break down before the men, who were already mounting their horses.
“God bless you!” murmured Gaspé.
Batiste put Wilfred on his horse, and undertook the management of the sled. The unexpected pleasure of a ride helped to soften the pain of parting.
“I ought to be thankful,” thought Wilfred—“I ought to rejoice that the chance I have longed for has come. I ought to be grateful that I have a home, and such a good home.” But it was all too new. No one had learned to love him there. Whose hand would clasp his when he reached Acland’s Hut as Gaspé had done?
On, on, over the wide, wild waste of sparkling snow, with his jovial companions laughing and talking around him. It was so similar to his ride with Bowkett and Diomé, save for the increase in the cold. He did not mind that.
But there was one thing Wilfred did mind, and that was the hard blows Batiste was raining down on Kusky and Yula. He sprang down to remonstrate. He wanted to drive them himself. He was laughed at for a self-conceited jackass, and pushed aside.
Dog driving was the hunter’s hobby. The whole party were engrossed in watching Yula’s progress, and quiet, affectionate little Kusky’s infantine endeavours to keep up with him.
Batiste regarded himself as a crack trainer, and when poor Kusky brought the whole cavalcade to a standstill by sitting down in the midst of his traces, he announced his intention of curing him of such a trick with his first taste.
“Send him to Rome,” shouted one of the foremost of the hunters. “He’ll not forget that in a hurry.”
“He is worth training well,” observed another. “See what a chest he has. He will make as good a hauler as the old one by-and-by. Pay him well first start.”
What “sending to Rome” might mean Wilfred did not stay to see. Enough to know it was the uttermost depth of dog disgrace. He saw Batiste double up his fist and raise his arm. The sprain in his ankle was forgotten. He flew to the ground, and dashed between Batiste and his dogs, exclaiming, “They are mine, my own, and they shan’t be hurt by anybody!”
He caught the first blow, that was all. He staggered backwards on the slippery ground.
Another of the hunters had alighted. He caught Wilfred by the arm, and pulled him up, observing dryly, “Well done, young ’un. Got a settler unawares. That just comes of interfering.—Here, Mathurin, take him up behind ye.”
The hunter appealed to wheeled round with a good-natured laugh.
But Wilfred could not stand; the horses, dogs, and snow seemed dancing round him.
“Yula! Kusky!” he called, like one speaking in a dream.
But Yula, dragging the sled behind him, and rolling Kusky over and over in the tangling harness, had sprung at Batiste’s arm; but he was too hampered to seize him. Wilfred was only aware of a confused mêlée as he was hoisted into Mathurin’s strong arms and trotted away from the scene of action.
“Come, you are the sauciest young dog of the three,” said Mathurin rather admiringly. “There, lay your head on me. You’ll have to sleep this off a bit,” he continued, gently walking his horse, and gradually dropping behind the rest of the party.
Poor Wilfred roused up every now and then with a rather wild and incoherent inquiry for his dogs, to which Mathurin replied with a drawling, sleepy-sounding “All right.”
Wilfred’s eyes were so swollen over that he hardly knew it was starshine when Mathurin laid him down by a new-lit camping-fire.
“There,” said the hunter, in the self-congratulatory tone of a man who knows he has got over an awkward piece of business; “let him have his dogs, and give him a cup of tea, and he’ll be himself again by the morning.”
“Ready for the same game?” asked Batiste, who was presiding over the tea-kettle.
The cup which Mathurin recommended was poured out; the sugar was not spared. Wilfred drank it gladly without speaking. When words were useless silence seemed golden. Yula was on guard beside him, and poor little Kusky, cowed and cringing, was shivering at his feet. They covered him up, and all he had seen and heard seemed as unreal as his dreams.
The now familiar cry of “Lève! lève!” made Yula sit upright. The hunters were astir before the dawn, but Wilfred was left undisturbed for another hour at least, until the rubeiboo was ready—that is, pemmican boiled in water until it makes a sort of soup. Pemmican, as Mr. De Brunier had said, was the hunters’ favourite food.
“Now for the best of the breakfast for the lame and tame,” laughed Batiste, pulling up Wilfred, and looking at his disfiguring bruises with a whistle.
Wilfred shrank from the prospect before him. Another day of bitter biting cold, and merciless cruelty to his poor dogs. “Oh, if Gaspé knew!—if Kusky could but have run back home!”
Wilfred could not eat much. He gave his breakfast to his dogs, and fondled them in silence. It was enough to make a fellow’s blood boil to be called Mathurin’s babby, l’enfant endormi (sleepy child), and Pierre the pretty face.
“Can we be such stoics, Yula,” he whispered, “as to stand all this another twenty-four hours, and see our poor little Kusky beaten right and left? Can we bear it till to-morrow morning?”
Yula washed the nervous fingers stroking his hair out of his eyes, and looked the picture of patient endurance. There was no escape, but it could not last long. Wilfred set his teeth, and asserted no one but himself should put the harness on his dogs.
“Gently, my little turkey-cock,” put in Mathurin. “The puppy may be your own, but the stray belongs to a friend of mine, who will be glad enough to see him back again.”
Wilfred was fairly frightened now. “Oh, if he had to give his Yula chummie back to some horrid stranger!” He thought it would be the last straw which brings the breakdown to boy as well as camel. But he consoled himself at their journey’s end. Bowkett would interfere on his behalf. Mathurin’s assertion was not true, by the twinkle in his eye and the laugh to his companions. Louison must have told his cousin that Yula was a stray, or they would never have guessed it. True or false, the danger of losing his dog was a real one. They meant to take it from him. One thing Wilfred had the sense to see, getting in a passion was of no good anyway. “Frederick the Great lost his battle when he lost his temper,” he thought. “Keep mine for Yula’s sake I will.”
But the work was harder than he expected, although the time was shorter. The hardy broncos of the hunters were as untiring as their masters. Ten, twenty, thirty miles were got over without a sign of weariness from any one but Wilfred and Kusky. If they were dead beat, what did it matter? The dog was lashed along, and Wilfred was teased, to keep him from falling asleep.
“One more push,” said the hunters, “and instead of sleeping with our feet to a camp-fire, and our beards freezing to the blankets, we shall be footing it to Bowkett’s fiddle.”
The moon had risen clear and bright above the sleeping clouds still darkening the horizon. A silent planet burned lamp-like in the western sky. Forest and prairie, ridges and lowland, were sparkling in the sheen of the moonlight and the snow.
Wilfred roused himself. The tinkle of the dog-bells was growing fainter and fainter, as Mathurin galloped into the midst of a score or so of huts promiscuously crowded together, while many a high-piled meat-stage gave promise of a winter’s plenty. Huge bones and horns, the remnants of yesterday’s feast, were everywhere strewing the ground, and changing its snowy carpet to a dingy drab. There were wolf-skins spread over framework. There were buffalo-skins to be smoked, and buffalo-robes—as they are called when the hair is left on—stretched out to dry. Men and horses, dogs and boys, women drawing water or carrying wood, jostled each other. There was a glow of firelight from many a parchment window, and here and there the sound of a fiddle, scraped by some rough hunter’s hand, and the quick thud of the jovial hunter’s heel upon the earthen floor.
It resembled nothing in the old world so much as an Irish fair, with its shouts of laughter and snatches of song, and that sense of inextricable confusion, heightened by the all too frequent fight in a most inconvenient corner. The rule of contrary found a notable example in the name bestowed upon this charming locality. A French missionary had once resided on the spot, so it was still called La Mission.
Mathurin drew up before one of the biggest of the huts, where the sounds of mirth were loudest, and the light streamed brightest on the bank of snow beside the door.
“Here we are!” he exclaimed, swinging Wilfred from the saddle to the threshold.