“Wish you let me go with you. Short grub, maybe. I hunt. Much danger; don’t care, me. Don’t care what danger. Don’t care if grub short. Maybe you don’t find portage. Maybe not find river. That bad. I find him. I take you through. I bring you back safe to your sisters. Then I speak to them and they say I do right.”
It was hard to withstand Pete’s pleadings, but my duty was plain, and I said:
“No, Pete. I’d like to take you through, but I’ve got to send you back to see the others safely out. Tell my sisters I’m safe. Tell everybody we’re safe. I’m sure we’ll get through all right. We’ll do our best, and trust to God for the rest, so don’t worry. We’ll be all right.”
“I never think you do this,” said he. “I don’t think you leave me this way.” After a pause he continued, “If grub short, come back. Don’t wait too long. If you find Indian, then you all right. He help you. You short grub, don’t find Indian, that bad. Don’t wait till grub all gone. Come back.”
Pete did not sing that day, and he did not smoke. He was very sad and quiet.
We spent the day in assorting and dividing the outfit, the men making a cache of everything that they would not need until their return, that we might not be impeded in our progress to Michikamau. They would get their things on their way back. Eight days, Pete said, would see them from this point to the cache we had made on the Nascaupee, and only eight days’ rations would they accept for the journey. They were more than liberal. Richards insisted that I take a new Pontiac shirt that he had reserved for the cold weather, and Pete gave me a new pair of larigans. They deprived themselves that we might be comfortable. Easton and I were to have the tent, the others would use the tarpaulin for a wigwam shelter; each party would have two axes, and the other things were divided as best we could. Richards presented us with a package that we were not to open until the sixteenth of September—his birthday. It was a special treat of some kind.
Some whitefish, suckers and one big pike were taken out of the net, which was also left for them to pick up upon their return. A school of large pike had torn great holes in it, but it was still useful.
We were a sorrowful group that gathered around the fire that night. The evening was raw. A cold north wind soughed wearily through the fir tops. Black patches of clouds cast a gloom over everything, and there was a vast indefiniteness to the dark spruce forest around us. I took a flashlight picture of the men around the fire. Then we sat awhile and talked, and finally went to our blankets in the chilly tent.
