He drew a stout buckskin thong from his pocket, and at intervals of about two inches made five slip nooses. Through each of these he passed the legs of a bird, and drawing tight the ends of the thong, made them secure. Tying the thong firmly around his waist, his game thus carried made no burden, and left his hands free.
“Now,” said he, “I’ll see what Seal Lake looks like.”
A little to the right of where Andy had killed the partridges rose a naked, rocky hill, and turning toward it he quickly began ascending. A hundred feet up its side he passed the last scrubby spruce tree. On the central plateau of Labrador the tree line seldom rises far above the base of the hills. It was a steep, rocky climb, but Andy was accustomed to scrambling over rocks, and in a few minutes he had gained the summit.
Turning toward the lake he discovered its far-reaching waters extending a full half-hundred miles to the westward. Its extreme end was hidden in the boundless forest which, punctured by rocky, snow-clad hills, rolled away as far as his eye could reach. For a considerable distance to the northward he could trace, like a silver thread, the sparkling waters of the Nascaupee. To the southeast lay piled in massive grandeur an array of great white mountains. On the sides of some of them high mica cliffs reflected the sun like disks of burnished silver.
Near by, to the south, a curl of smoke rose above the forest green, and this he knew to be the tilt. Eastward from the tilt splotches of water could be discerned, where the little river ran down to join Seal Lake.
Andy was used to wild nature, but this provided an element of romance new to him. Here at his feet, in all its silent and magnificent grandeur, stretched the great primordial wilderness which had been the scene of his father’s exploits. This, too, was the scene of strange, weird tales of stirring adventures to which he had listened so often. Here men had fought wild beasts. Here men had starved, and here had been enacted heroic deeds, the narrative of which never failed to thrill him. Was he destined to take part in like adventures, and like deeds of heroism?
He was awed by the immensity of the solitudes. A lump came into his throat and tears into his eyes, as he looked away over the vast silence to the horizon. This was God’s land, just as God had made it. No man lived here, or had ever lived here. There was no human habitation within the limitless boundaries of these rolling miles of forest and mountain, save the little tilt from which the curl of smoke was rising, and no other human beings than himself and David and Indian Jake.
Then there came upon Andy a realization of his own smallness and insignificance, and a wave of fear swept over his heart. Here in this boundless wilderness he was to face the rigors of a long, sub-arctic winter, with all its privations and hardships, cut off from all communication with the greater world outside. For many, many months he would have no word from his father or Margaret or Jamie or Doctor Joe, or know how they fared, or whether the mist in Jamie’s eyes was thickening or no. It was not strange then if Andy experienced a sudden longing for home and a touch of homesickness.
But Andy was brave and full of courage, and presently throwing back his head, he laughed, to drive away the fear and the loneliness.
“Huh!” he said, “there’s nothin’ to be scared of. Pop says th’ Lard’ll take care of us, and we does our best t’ take care of ourselves. There’s fur here, and Davy and I must get un, t’ cure Jamie’s eyes, and we will get un, whatever. I’ll have plenty o’ grit, and a stout heart like a man’s, and ’twon’t be so long when we goes home again.”