Little Se-li-nah, the sturdiest of travelling companions through months of wandering over portage and up river, has won our unbounded respect and created for herself a warm place in every heart. Se-li-nah, though, makes it impossible for us to pose as brave endurers of hardships. Each night and morning she carries her little pack on and off shore, takes her share of pot-luck at meat-su, and is never cross. Bless the kiddie! If ablutions seem to her a work of supererogation and our daily play of toothbrush furnishes all the fascination of the unknown, still hers is the right stuff for pioneer lands and she has lessons to teach us in pluck and endurance.
The first night out from Vermilion we made camp after dark and, on waking, found that in our blankets we had lain directly across four new bear-tracks. Moose-tracks are plentiful at every stopping-place, so we see to it that both guns and camera are primed. At eight next morning we pass Not-in-a-gu Seepee. Some Indians hail us, asking for tea, and from these we learn that ten families who made this their winter camp last season bagged eighty moose among them.
At half-past two our chance came. To get away from the noise of the engine, the Kid and I had moved our work directly after breakfast to a flour-laden scow that we had in tow, and I was dictating this story to the machine when the sharp eyes of Showan in the distance spied a moose. He was on the shore cropping willows. It had been generously agreed that if opportunity offered at a moose the shot was to be mine, so in excited whispers the news is telegraphed to our end of the scow and my rifle is handed up. The fireman slows up on the engine, but still its throbbing sounds distressingly loud as we creep up on the feeding moose and scan the lay of the land, calculating his chances of escape. The banks are high,—perhaps one hundred and fifty feet—and sheer, but there are two gullies which afford runway to the bench above. What an ungainly creature he looks as we draw in nearer, all legs and clumsy head,—a regular grasshopper on stilts! He reminds me of nothing so much as those animals we make for the baby by sticking four matches into a sweet biscuit. And now at last he sees us. I fire, and the shot just grazes his spine. Will he take to a gully? No, he plunges into the river instead and we follow him up in the little tug. One more shot is effective, and I have killed my premier moose. "Cruel!" you say. Well, just you live from mid-May to mid-September without fresh meat, as, with the exception of Vermilion's flesh-pots, we have done, and then find out if you would fly in the face of Providence when the Red Gods send you a young moose! To illuminate the problem I transcribe the menu of one sample week of the summer.
My Premier Moose
This is the literal "dope sheet" of the camp cook:
Monday:—Dried caribou and rice.
Tuesday:—Salt fish and prunes.
Wednesday:—Mess-pork and dried peaches.