It was late in the day when we got away, but both men and dogs were fresh, so we made good time and camped for the night some twenty-five miles from the Fort. Climbing the first bank, we pulled into a clump of spruce, and soon the waning light of day gave place to the bright glare of our large camp-fire. Frozen ground and a few spruce boughs were beneath us and the twinkling stars overhead.
There being at this time no snow, our home for the night is soon ready, the kettles boiled, the tea made and pemmican chopped loose, and though we are entirely without bread or fruit or vegetables, yet we drink our tea, gnaw our pemmican and enjoy ourselves. The twenty-five-mile run and the intense cold have made us very hungry. Most of our company are old pioneers, full of incident and story of life in the far north, or out on the "Big Plains" to the south. We feed our dogs, we tell our stories, we pile the long logs of wood on our big fire, and alternately change our position, back then front to the fire. We who have been running hard, and whose clothes are wet with perspiration, now become ourselves the clothes-horses whereon to dry these things before we attempt to sleep. Then we sing a hymn, have a word of prayer, and turn in.
The great fire burns down, the stars glitter through the crisp, frosty air, the aurora dances over our heads and flashes in brilliant colors about our camp, the trees and the ice crack with the intense cold, but we sleep on until between one and two, when we are again astir. Our huge fire once more flings its glare away out through the surrounding trees and into the cold night. A hot cup of tea, a small chunk of pemmican, a short prayer, and hitching up our dogs, tying up our sled loads and wrapping up our passengers, we are away once more on the ice of this great inland river. The yelp of a dog as the sharp whip touches him is answered from either forest-clad bank by numbers of coyotes and wolves; but regardless of these, "Marse!" is the word, and on we run, making fast time.
On our way up I had found a buck deer frozen into the ice, and had chopped the antlers from his head and "cached" them in a tree to take home with me; but when I told my new companions of my find, they were eager for the meat, which they said would be good. I had not yet eaten drowned meat, but when I came to think of it I saw there was reason in what they said, and so promised to do my best to find the spot where the buck was frozen in. As it was night—perhaps three o'clock—when we came to the place, I was a little dubious as to finding the deer. However, I was born with a large "bump of locality" and a good average memory, and presently we were chopping the drowned deer out of the ready-to-hand refrigerator. This done we drove on, and stopped for our second breakfast near the Vermilion. We were through and away from this before daylight, and hurrying on reached our turning-off point early in the afternoon, where we bade our friends good-bye, and, clambering up the north bank of the Saskatchewan, disappeared into the forest.
Taking our course straight for Smoking Lake, the whole length of which we travelled on the ice, we climbed the gently-sloping hill for two miles and were home again, having made the 120 miles in less than two days.
When I jumped out of bed next morning my feet felt as if I were foundered, because of the steady run on the frozen ground and harder ice; but this soon passed away. Mr. O. B., whom we had left at home, was greatly rejoiced at our return. He had been very lonely. I described to him our visit, and told him of the nice fat, tender beef on which the Chief Factor had regaled us on Christmas and New Year's day; and surely it was not my fault that, when the portion of the meat of the drowned deer which had been brought home was cooked, he thought it was Edmonton beef, and pronounced it "delicious," and partook largely of it, and later on was terribly put out to learn it was a bit of a drowned animal we had found in the river.
Holidays past, we faced our work, which was varied and large: fish to be hauled home; provisions to be sought for, and, when found, traded from the Indians; timber to be got out and hauled some distance; lumber to be "whipped,"—that is, cut by the whip-saw; freight to be hauled for Mr. Woolsey, who had some in store or as a loan at Whitefish Lake—all this gave us no time for loitering. Men, horses, dogs, all had to move. Moreover, we had to make our own dog and horse sleds, and sew the harness for both dogs and horses. That for the dogs we made out of tanned moose skins; that for the horses and oxen, out of partly tanned buffalo hide, known as "power flesh," the significance of which I could never comprehend, unless the sewing of them, which was powerfully tedious, was what was meant. Turn which way you would there was plenty to do, and, from the present day standpoint, very little to do it with.
Mr. Woolsey and Mr. O. B. kept down the shack, and the rest of us—that is, Williston, William, Neils and myself—went at the rest of the work. First we hauled the balance of our fish home, then we made a trip to Whitefish Lake and brought the freight which had been left there. Mr. Steinhauer and two of his daughters accompanied us back to Smoking Lake, the former to confer with his brother missionary, and the girls to become the pupils of Mr. Woolsey. The opportunity of being taught even the rudiments was exceedingly rare in those days in the North-West, and Mr. Steinhauer was only too glad to take the offer of his brother missionary to help in this way. The snow was now from a foot to twenty inches deep. The cold was keen. To make trails through dense forests and across trackless plains, to camp where night caught us, without tent or any other dwelling, and with only the blue sky above us and the crisp snow and frozen ground beneath, were now our every-day experience.