By crawling around the pond, the Indian could easily have come within shot, but he returned at once to his wigwam, where he exchanged his gun for the weapons of his fathers, a bow and arrows, and a long fish-line. A short, quick stalk, and the muskrat, still eating a flagroot, was within thirty feet. The fish-line was coiled on the ground and then attached to an arrow, the bow bent—zip—the arrow picked up the line, coil after coil, and trans-fixed the muskrat. Splash! and the animal was gone under the ice.
But the cord was in the hands of the hunter; a little gentle pulling and the rat came to view, to be despatched with a stick and secured. Had he shot it with a gun, it had surely been lost.
He returned to his camp, ate his frugal breakfast, and fed a small, wolfish-looking yellow dog that was tied in the lodge.
He skinned the muskrat carefully, first cutting a slit across the rear and then turning the skin back like a glove, till it was off to the snout; a bent stick thrust into this held it stretched, till in a day, it was dry and ready for market. The body, carefully cleaned, he hung in the shade to furnish another meal.
As he worked, there were sounds of trampling in the woods, and presently a tall, rough-looking man, with a red nose and a curling white moustache, came striding through brush and leaves. He stopped when he saw the Indian, stared contemptuously at the quarry of the morning chase, made a scornful remark about “rat-eater,” and went on toward the wigwam, probably to peer in, but the Indian's slow, clear, “keep away!” changed his plan. He grumbled something about “copper-coloured tramp,” and started away in the direction of the nearest farmhouse.
Chapter 2. Rolf Kittering and the Soldier Uncle
A feller that chatters all the time is bound to talk a
certain amount of drivel.—The Sayings of Si Sylvanne
This was the Crow Moon, the white man's March. The Grass Moon was at hand, and already the arrow bands of black-necked honkers were passing northward from the coast, sending down as they flew the glad tidings that the Hunger Moon was gone, that spring was come, yea, even now was in the land. And the flicker clucked from a high, dry bough, the spotted woodwale drummed on his chosen branch, the partridge drummed in the pine woods, and in the sky the wild ducks, winging, drummed their way. What wonder that the soul of the Indian should seek expression in the drum and the drum song of his race?
Presently, as though remembering something, he went quietly to the southward under the ridge, just where it breaks to let the brook go by, along the edge of Strickland's Plain, and on that hill of sliding stone he found, as he always had, the blue-eyed liver-leaf smiling, the first sweet flower of spring! He did not gather it, he only sat down and looked at it. He did not smile, or sing, or utter words, or give it a name, but he sat beside it and looked hard at it, and, in the first place, he went there knowingly to find it. Who shall say that its beauty did not reach his soul?