We lay back in the shadows, smoking, speaking a few words now and then, till the moon came peeping up from below the horizon, shedding its pale light on the strange, red sweep of the Blood Flats. Then we saddled and packed and bore away from the lone butte, holding a course slightly west of the North Star.
[CHAPTER XI—A TRICK OF THE “TRADE.”]
A certain consecutive number of days—weeks, to be more exact—ensued, of which there is little to relate, save that we travelled steadily northward, seeing no human except from afar. Once or twice we came in sight of Hudson’s Bay posts, but these Barreau was careful to avoid. It was not the season when Indians were abroad in the forests, he told me when I wondered that in all that vast land not a single lodge appeared. They were gathered in summer villages by the trading posts. Hence we crossed few fresh trails, and bespoke no man, white or red, in the four weeks of our journey.
Before the end of it I was hardened to the saddle; and to many other things. Twice we swam great rivers, the North Saskatchewan, and farther on the Peace—to say nothing of lesser streams that were both deep and swift. Our food supply dwindled to flour and tea. But with game on every hand we suffered no hardship in that respect. The getting of meat Barreau left to me. Strangely enough, after one or two virulent attacks of “buck fever,” when the rifle barrel wabbled in a most unseemly manner and the bullet therefrom flew disgracefully wide of the mark, I got into the way of bringing down whatever I shot at. Between my eye and the rifle sights and the shoulder of a deer some mysterious, rapid process of alignment seemed invariably to take place.
“Why not?” Barreau contended, when I remarked upon this sudden attaining to marksmanship. “There are the sights. Your eyes are clear and your arm steady as a rock. That’s all there is to good shooting; that and a little experience in judging distance. Some men handle guns all their lives, and never make a decent shot other than by accident. Whenever you run across such an individual you can be sure there is some defect in his vision, or he lacks muscular control over his weapon.”
That trip taught me many things besides holding a rifle true; how to build a campfire in wet weather and dry; little labor-saving tricks of the axe; the name and nature of this timber and that; the cooking of plain food; a subtle sense of direction—fundamental trail-wisdom that I was wholly ignorant of, but which a man must know if he would cope with the wilderness of wood and plain. I profited as much by noting how he did these things, as by direct instruction. Nor does a man forget easily the lessons he is taught in the school of necessity.
With Peace River behind us we edged nearer to the base of the mountains, passing through a stretch of country alive with caribou and deer. Bear—monsters, by the track they left—frightened our picketed horses of a night. The moist earth bordering every pond and spring was marked with hoof and claw. The shyer fur-bearing animals, Barreau told me, surrounded us unseen. Barring a thickly wooded plateau south of the Peace we passed through no forest oppressively dense. Our way led over ridges and swales, timbered, to be sure, but opening out here and there into pleasant grassy parks. Once or twice forbidding areas of dead and down trees turned us aside. Again, a vast swamp enforced a detour. But I cannot recall any feature of marked unpleasantness—except the one thing that no man who crosses the North Saskatchewan can escape—the flies.
Mosquitoes of all sizes, equipped with the keenest tools for their nefarious business, green-headed bulldog flies that plagued our horses beyond endurance, black gnats, flying ants, and other winged pests assailed us day and night in hungry swarms. Some day that particular portion of the Northwest will be a rich field for entomologists and manufacturers of mosquito netting.
We held our own with the buzzing hosts, however, and when our flour sack had nearly reached a stage of ultimate limpness, and our tea was reduced to a tiny package in one corner of the shrunken pack, we rode out of a long belt of quivering poplars and drew up on the brow of a sharp pitch that fell away to the Sicannie River.
“What in the name of the devil has been to the fore here?” Barreau exclaimed. He slid over in his saddle, staring at the scene below.