Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

"Shoot!" said Tom, "Shoot!" Jack fired two shots at the nearest goat and kid, and both of them fell off the rock they had been standing on and began to roll down the hillside.

Tom gave a wild whoop of joy and shouted, "Good shoot! Good shoot!" and then asked Jack if he wanted to kill the other, but Jack said "No," these two were enough, and they started down the hill to get the game. The animals had rolled a long way, but at length they found them, took off the skins, and took what meat they needed. Tom went down the stream, and cutting some long shoots of a tough shrub, he worked them back and forth, partly splintering them, and made from them two rather stiff ropes which he tied together with a knot. With these he made up a pack of the skins and meat, put the load on his back, and they started for the camp. When they reached the trail down the valley they sat down for some time and waited for Hugh and Baptiste; but, as they did not come, after some hours' waiting, Tom took his pack on his back and they went on to the camp. While they were waiting, Jack inquired of Tom as to the names of the sheep and goats, and Tom said, as nearly as Jack could make out, that in the Smilkameen tongue, the male mountain sheep was called "shwillops," while the ewe was called "yehhahlahkin." The goat in Smilkameen was called "shogkhlit," while the Port Hope Indians called goat "p'kalakal."

Tom said that farther on, in the country to which they were going, there were many sheep.

An hour after Jack and Tom had reached camp, Hugh and Baptiste returned, bearing the skin of a two-year-old male goat, which had been killed on the other side of the mountain they had climbed. It had been a hard tramp and a long stalk.

That night as they talked about game and hunting, Baptiste said that at the head of the Okanagan Lake caribou were very plenty. The distance from where they were would be about eighty or ninety miles.

The next morning while Jack was preparing the goat skins for packing up, he was much surprised to find the ears of the goats full of wood ticks. In one of the ears he counted no less than twenty ticks, and some of them were so deep down in the ear that when he was skinning the head he saw the ticks as he cut off the ears. He wondered whether this might not account in some part at least for the apparent inattention of goats to sounds. He asked Baptiste about this, but got no particularly satisfactory answer to his question; and he thought perhaps the Indian did not understand him, but Baptiste did say distinctly that sometimes ticks got into ears of human beings and made them deaf.

While Jack was attending to his goat skins, Hugh and Tom went off to another mountain to look for sheep. A little bunch of seven were found lying down in an excellent position. There was no wind and a careful stalk was made; but just as the two got up to within shooting distance a light breeze began to blow from them to the sheep, and at the very instant that Hugh was pulling his trigger at a ram that was lying down, the bunch smelt them and sprang to their feet. It was too late for Hugh to hold his fire, and instead of killing the ram he cut a little tuft of hair from the brisket. In an instant the whole bunch of sheep were out of sight. Hugh came into camp much depressed and related his adventure to Jack.

"I expect, son," he said, "that that Indian thinks you can shoot all around me. All the way coming home, after I missed that sheep, he kept telling me what a good and careful shot you were. He said he had taken out many white men to hunt, but he never saw anybody that shot as straight and as carefully as you."

Jack laughed and said: "He little knows the difference between you and me, Hugh, in matters of shooting. Anybody could have hit those goats, for they gave me all the time there was, and they weren't more than forty yards away. It was like shooting at the side of a barn."

"Well," said Hugh, "of course if I had known that those sheep were going to jump up, I could easily have fired quicker but I thought I had all the time there was and I intended to shoot so that that ram would never get up; but I never could explain it to that Indian, you bet."