On the shores of a great lake were clustered the buildings of the old Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, where the People of the Interior came every spring with their cargoes of pelts to trade for the articles which the white man made for them. Through the long, cold winters, the factor and his crew passed the time as comfortably as they could, with little to break the monotony of the days, while powerful blasts of cold, often bringing several feet of drifted snow in their wake, beat upon the buildings. In the summer, however, the time went quickly. From the vast, forested hills northward came the returning bands of trappers, bringing the results of their winter’s hunt. From the regions nearer, the People of the Lake, by shorter stages, came in, too, with their peltry. So, with the two bands of nomads camped along the beach and on the grassy terrace between the lake and the forest of the upland, the scene was enlivened each spring by the presence of several hundred hunters, with their families, gaudily dressed and garrulous. By day, in the heat of the sun, which makes these northern places blossom in acres of green and showy flowers, the newcomers wandered from tent to tent, exchanging gossip, talking, singing, gaming and planning for the coming of winter; and all the time gradually enlarging the store of their annual necessities by an irregular trade with the factor behind his long counter in the Post shop. By night among the tents, grouped in twos and threes, the twinkling lights illuminated scenes of quiet domestic life, where some were asleep on piles of tent litter and furs, while others were engaged in plying the busy needle or in the low conversation which made the early evenings such pleasant times for visiting between those who had not seen each other for many months.
The People of the Interior always came to the Post two or three weeks later than those whose hunting grounds were around the lake. Some of the families from the interior came six hundred miles, driving dogs which dragged their laden sleds, the canoes forming part of the loads, until, coming south to where the snow was giving 88 way to the advance of the spring, they left the sleds and loaded the canoes, finishing their journey by drifting in them with the swollen current down to the great lake. The trading completed, the People of the Interior returned as they had come, by canoe and sled, leaving the Post two or three weeks sooner than the People of the Lake. This had been the procedure for innumerable generations.
The People of the Lake never envied their friends from the interior. Their nearness to the Post they considered a great advantage. They could even make a short journey to the Post in midwinter to enjoy the festivities of Christmas with the factor and his employees, while their friends in the interior were perhaps freezing or starving if the game had failed them.
The People of the Lake had begun to feel themselves wiser and more important than their simple forest neighbors. Often one of them would come back from the metropolis with new and smart-cut clothes, plenty of gin, and some household finery with which to decorate the shelves and tables of the board houses which they had erected on the lake shore, but above all, with glowing accounts of the great and busy city where everything could be had that a Montagnais might covet in his most prodigal dreams. To the People of the Interior, these tales sounded marvelous, yet, much as they loved to hear them told, there was a lingering suspicion in their minds that all was not as fine and grand as it was painted, judging by the strong breath, the fagged condition and the depleted pocket-books of those who had experienced these transitory contacts with the outside world.
A product of the conditions which made the People of the Lake so satisfied with themselves was young Antoine, a stalwart youth, whose knowledge of French and the astute principles of business in general, made him invaluable to the independent fur traders who regularly came to the lake to drive bargains with the returning hunters. Antoine’s clothes showed his advance in the social scale. Peg-top trousers, narrow-waisted jacket, suède-topped, patent leather shoes, blue celluloid collar, ready-made cravat, and a green woolen golf cap marked him at once as a denizen of the back streets of Montreal as much as his brown skin, oblique eyes, and sleek hair proclaimed his origin from the People of the North. In broken French, even in broken English, Antoine could swear in competition89 with the French-Canadian employees of the honorable Hudson’s Bay Company’s Post, and those of Revillon Brothers of Montreal who sought to compete with the great company. Antoine had actually cultivated an urbane swagger, he consumed innumerable packages of paper cigarettes and perfumed his system attentively with draughts of gin and brandy. At times, even, Antoine forgot that he was a Montagnais. It was only when reminded by his own people that it was unbecoming for him to prey upon them to the advantage of the traders, that his vanity was lowered to a point which made him agreeable to the other young men. To the girls he was more attractive, and among the People of the Lake there were few girls he had not sampled. At times his vain heart yearned to extend his conquests to the simple maids who came patiently with their parents on the toilsome journey from the hills and forests of the north.
The head man of the People of the Interior, old Shekapeo, whose name meant “Going Backwards,” was a stern and practical hunter whose annual catch could generally be depended upon to contain the finest and rarest furs. While he was alive to the defects of character which made Antoine in figure and reputation so conspicuous about the Post, he often wondered if a matrimonial attachment between Antoine and his daughter would not be of considerable advantage. With his own opportunities of production and Antoine’s far-reaching business experience and associations, he had more than once pictured the advantage, while puffing his pipe before the fire. And yet he could not make up his mind to discourage the growing intimacy between his daughter and a young man of his own band, whom he had always admired for his quiet energy and productive trapping. The girl herself, if left to her own judgment, would have had little to say. Born by the side of a remote lake on a beautiful still morning, when the heat of noontime was lifting a mirage to the north across the glassy waters, her mother had called her Ilitwashteu, Mirage, from the first phenomenon seen after the birth of her child. Mirage, like her father, felt the contrast between Good-ground and Antoine. But the mystery of Antoine was making him an object of growing interest in her mind. She had dared to raise her eyes from her moccasins and look directly at him once, when he had come to the tent to talk with her father on business. 90 Then, when her father’s back was turned, Antoine spoke to her, but she did not go so far as to answer him.
It was winter. Shekapeo had returned to his hunting grounds in the region of the Lake of Steep Shores. Near him, this year, was camped the family of young Good-ground who was at this season trapping in that section of his hereditary hunting grounds for marten. The territories of the two families adjoined each other, though for several years each had been operating on the more distant tracts, with the idea of allowing the intervening zone to become replenished with the fur-bearing animals. Old Shekapeo and young Good-ground knew perfectly well where their respective bounds lay. During the winter they occasionally visited one another and sometimes planned to exchange privileges in each other’s grounds. When, for instance, one year bear had been abundant in Shekapeo’s district, owing to a forest fire in the month of flowers which had left in its wake an exceptional abundance of berries, the same winter on young Good-ground’s territory, caribou had wandered in unusual numbers. Then they had allowed each other to cross the landmarks. Good-ground took toll on many of Shekapeo’s bears, and Shekapeo took what he needed of Good-ground’s caribou.
It happened late in the winter in the month of great cold that several members of Good-ground’s family were taken sick with coughs and aching limbs. Sickness added to Good-ground’s duties, and often he was prevented from following his line of traps properly, by the necessity of remaining at camp himself. One trip when he started to visit his ten traps, which were strung at a distance of about two miles apart along the banks of the River of Poplars, he found himself at the ninth trap by the end of the second day. So bad had been the conditions of travel, and his own feelings so oppressed, that, late this afternoon, he made himself a little fire where he had scraped away the snow with one of his snowshoes, and boiled himself a pot of tea. Near the fire lay his good dogs Ntohum and Kawabshet, “My Hunter” and “Whitey,” names descended through many generations of canines. They were worn out and tired, from pulling the toboggan through the soft, deep snowdrifts. The nine traps had yielded a few furs, yet most of them were empty. The promise of bad weather added to the trouble. To the northeast a heavy bank of lead-colored sky appeared above the pointed tops of the vast spruce forest. Fitful91 blasts of wind came occasionally from the same quarter, growing more frequent during the afternoon and causing Good-ground many times to turn his head about and look behind, then urge the dogs with a few sharp words to greater exertions.
Now, smoking his pipe of stone, which several times he refilled with dry tobacco obtained from the Post so far away, his eyes rested first upon his fagged dogs, then upon the slowly spreading pall of gray, northward above the hills. The question of the tenth trap was resting heavily upon Good-ground’s mind. Might there be anything held fast in its iron jaws, or would the machine be empty before his disheartened gaze, should he gather his forces together and press on against the rising wind for another three hours? The price to pay in risk to himself and his animals for whatever might be caught there, would be, indeed, the highest. With depleted provisions through another afternoon of struggle against the blizzard which was surely coming, a question arose in his experienced mind as to the actual possibility of its accomplishment. Should he turn about now and go down with the wind to the little shelter camp where he could spend the night, back on Round Lake, he would then be within a short day’s voyage of his home camp. There his sick family, brothers, sisters and mother, were comfortably and snugly housed in their warm tent, roofed tightly with birch-bark and lined with caribou skins, making it warm as the inside of his fur-lined mitten. But what if trap number ten should contain an animal, perhaps a sable or even a black fox, whose pelt would bring the profit he so badly needed?
Having filled his pipe several times, and cleaned it with the blade of bone which he carried tied to his tobacco bag, it seemed as if Good-ground could not decide. Finally, with a motion of determination, he plunged his hand into the bag, which contained the carcass of a hare reserved for his supper. With a few cuts of his knife he got out the shoulder blade of the animal, and he removed the clinging flesh by tearing it off with his teeth till the bone was clean and brown; then upon the end of a split stick he held the hare’s shoulder bone before the heat of his fire, and raised his voice in a low melody which came from between slightly opened lips. “Ka na ka na aa ka na he.” While he sang, the bone, affected by the heat, grew black toward the center; finally a segment with a little crack split from the center and ran toward the edge, breaking through the bone and causing it to 92 burn away on one of its outer sides. The divination was complete. The spirit of the hare had told him that his voyage would be unsuccessful.
Now, with a few deft and decided motions, Good-ground cleaned out his pipe, replaced several articles which he had removed from his bag, adjusted his snowshoes by kicking his feet into the stiffened loops, and squared about toward the south, pulling the sled around on its runners till it, too, pointed backwards along the trail over which he had, thirty minutes ago, tramped down the snow to make a path for his dogs. The animals needed no human urging to tighten their traces and drag the sled forward in a trail, which even now was being blown over with drifting snow coming slant-wise through the forest on a furious wind. Kiwedin, the north wind, was now going to rule the world of the people of the north. Whatever thought Good-ground had a while ago as to what the tenth trap might have yielded him had he gone to it, faded from his mind with the satisfaction that he was obeying his dream animal, and that probably he would reach his home camp in time to escape the suffering which he knew he would have met had he gone on to learn what trap number ten contained. His forebodings were not without ground. It was with difficulty that he reached his little camp station that night, helped along by the wind at his back. His ou............