The next day our carts were creaking and squealing with their heavy loads on the home stretch. In the meantime winter was steadily creeping on. The ground was frozen, the ice on the lakes becoming thick and strong, and the nights were cold. If you were on guard, you felt the necessity of quick action to keep warm. If you were asleep under the carts, you very reluctantly turned out at four o'clock a.m. to gather up bedding, etc., hitch up your share of the brigade, and trudge on through the cold until near daylight, when you stopped for breakfast; but, as this was the regular thing, you soon came to the conclusion that the chicken-hearted and weak-willed had no place in this keenly new land—so new that the polish of nature was still bright and thick all over it. In a little more than two weeks from our start on the hunt, we are again letting our loads down the steep southern bank of the Saskatchewan, and yonder the smoke from the mission house chimneys and the ear-flaps of a few buffalo skin lodges meets our eyes, curling heavenward. I say "curling heavenward" because I have been bred to do so, but who knows where heaven is, especially when one thinks that what was up a little while ago, is down now? This time we ford our stock through a ripple, about half a mile below the mission, which is infinitely better than swimming them through the floating ice-cakes which are being hurried eastward by the rapid current. Then comes the hard and cold work of crossing carts and loads in the skiff; but finally the whole thing is done, and the product of our fall hunt is on the stage, and will become a prominent factor in the working of the mission for the next two months, unless an extra lot of starving people come upon us.
CHAPTER XXI.
Father and I visit Fort Edmonton—Peter takes to himself a wife—Mr. Connor becomes school teacher—First school in that part of the country—Culinary operations—Father decides to open a mission at Pigeon Lake—I go prospecting—Engage a Roman Catholic guide—Our guide's sudden "illness"—Through new scenes—Reach Pigeon Lake—Getting out timber for building—Incidents of return trip.
Shortly after this I accompanied father and Peter to Edmonton. We left Friday morning and reached Edmonton the evening of the next day; spent Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday there, and were back at Victoria Wednesday night. The distance to and from Edmonton by the bridle-trail (for there was, as yet, no cart or waggon road on the north side of the river) was one hundred and eighty miles. Edmonton was then without a single settler, and unless you met or overtook some traveller or wandering Indian, you and your party, large or small, were entirely alone. Father was practically chaplain of the Fort, as his predecessors had been, but these visits meant more than this, for Edmonton was a centre, and ever and anon messengers from the camps came in there, and thus the missionary could send messages and counsel and keep in touch with a people scattered over a large area.
Back once more at home we found plenty to do in making ready for winter. There were cattle to provide for and look after, horses to keep track of, dogs to feed, wood to cut, haul, and again split up at the door, timber to take out, and lumber to saw, dry, plane, groove and tongue. In the meantime Peter married a Whitefish Lake woman and brought her to the mission. She was a fine-looking Christian woman, and we all felt like congratulating our friend on his good fortune.
Mr. Connor, who came up with me from the Red River in the summer, and whom I left some time since building a shack for the winter, took the work of harvesting and threshing our small field of barley on shares, and now has engaged to teach school for the winter months. Our shanty is to be the school-room, and Mr. Steinhauer's children, from Whitefish Lake, our family, and a few orphan Indian children, are to be the scholars. This will be the first institution of the kind in this part of the North-West. Our house is full and our larder precarious, but father and mother do not hesitate for a moment, but freely open their house to the children of a brother missionary, who otherwise would be without any such means of education. Moreover, father has accepted the little daughter of "Chief Child," who in dying besought him to take his much loved child, and train her in a Christian home. Thus our home will send nine scholars to the new school, and for the winter mother's responsibility will have increased greatly, while we who have to provide food for such an household will of necessity need to keep on the move.
Our garden this year had given us a nice quantity of potatoes, and we have some barley, but meat will be our chief food. As we have no mill, the only way we can prepare barley is to soak it, and then, when partially dry, pound it in a wooden mortar to loosen the chaff and husks, and then winnow this. We boil the barley in soup, or else parch it and then grind it in our small coffee-mill, and make cake of the meal obtained, all of which is slow and tedious work. So long as we can get buffalo within three hundred miles we would prefer buffalo-steaks to barley-meal.
The winter of 1864-5 came in bright and fine; clear, cold weather, but no snow or storm. In my spare time I broke in a train of young dogs. When I left Norway House, in 1862, I left at home a fine train of dogs. One of these, a handsome animal, my sisters had named "Maple." She had just enough of the "husky" strain of blood to make her hardy and strong. When father moved up in 1863 he brought Maple along, and that same autumn she made a den in the bank in front of the shanty and brought forth a fine litter of pups. Mother and the girls had taken good care of these, and they grew into strong, handsome dogs. They were now one year old, and I took pleasure in breaking them for the sled. Many a long run we had on the bare, frozen ground. My plan was to hitch the pups to a toboggan, and attached to this I had a long line, the end of which I kept in my hand, and as I ran behind I could, when I said "Whoa," stop the dogs. Soon they learned all the words of command, which, by the way, are but four. Then by holding the line I could regulate their step, and soon I had them trained down to trot a mile in a very short time. As I urged them forward, if any should break trot I would hold back on the line and pull the whole train into a regular step. My, how those pups did trot! Their legs would go like drumsticks, and I was proud of my success. By using them carefully this their first winter, if they lived they would make flyers. This was the opinion of experts. Father, mother, the girls, everybody in the settlement, all took a great interest in those pups. At last I got them down so that they could trot as fast as I could run, and that was making good time.
About the first of December snow came, and father put into execution a project he had been thinking about for some time, and that was to begin a mission west of Edmonton, between that post and the mountains. He had about decided on Pigeon Lake as a suitable spot, so he told me he wanted me to look up the place, and, if feasible, take out some timber for a house, as he proposed to do something in the coming spring in the way of permanent occupancy. The Mountain and Wood Stoneys, and some Wood Crees, who frequented that country, were without a missionary. Accordingly, early in December, I took Oliver with me and started with two trains of dogs, carrying loads of dried provisions. In two days we reached Edmonton, where I hoped to secure a guide who could take me straight to Pigeon Lake; but there were very few Indians or half-breeds around the Fort, and only one who had ever been at Pigeon Lake. I hired this fellow at once, and we were to start as soon as the Fort gates were open the next morning.