Louie Paul had two claims to special distinction. First, he was a very expert and successful bear hunter; and, second, he was the husband of the star pupil of Mrs. McFarland's Home for Girls,—Tilly, the handsomest and brightest of the girls whom we had rescued from the vileness, squalor and sin of heathen life, and were training to be examples and teachers of Christian civilization to their tribe.
I had taken Louie and Tilly the preceding fall and established them at Tongas, one hundred miles south of Wrangell, outfitting Tilly with school books, Bibles, Sunday-school supplies, etc., and paying her a salary as teacher to that wild tribe. Louie's task was to keep up the fires for the school, and to cook for his wife and supply her needs. He had stayed at home faithfully during the winter, procuring the venison, ducks, geese, fish, clams, crabs, and other articles of food they needed, and making himself useful around the branch mission, even occasionally leading in prayer, and exhorting the people. But the trapper's "call of the wild" sounded in the early spring—a call he could not resist. So here he was, having left Tilly to cook her own meals and make her own fires, while he explored the streams, bayous and lakes in his small canoe, pursuing the elusive plantigrades.
The natives of Alaska at that time were handicapped in their hunting by an order of the Government which forbade the Indians to own or use breech-loading guns. This order was enforced among our peaceful Alaska natives, who had never had a serious trouble with the whites, while the Sioux, Apaches and Nez Perces, who were often on the war-path, had all the Winchester, Henry and Enfield rifles they wanted.
The natives of Alaska at that time—the early eighties—had only breech-loading, smooth-bore Hudson Bay muskets; and their round bullets had not much penetrating power. They were all right for deer, but you might fill a hootz full of those big, round balls and he would still have strength to tear you to pieces.
"The more you pester them big bear with them old-fashioned smooth-bores," said one of the old white hunters at Fort Wrangell, "the madder he gits."
Louie Paul looked so much more like a white man than like an Indian, and talked English so fluently, that I had persuaded the collector of customs—the only civil officer we had in that region—to permit me to lend Louie my new 45-75 Winchester repeating rifle. The repeater was a hard-shooting, accurate gun, chambering twelve cartridges in the magazine—the most efficient rifle made at that time. Louie was a fine shot, and the possession of this rifle gave him a great superiority over all the other Indian bear-hunters. He made more money in his three or four weeks of hunting in the spring than Tilly earned by her winter's teaching.
"I should think you would not be afraid of a brown bear when you have my Winchester," I urged. "You could put half a dozen balls clean through him before he could get to you."
Louie shook his curly head doubtfully. "Mebby so; mebby not."
Then his face lit up with a broad grin. "Mebby so I be lak Buck. You hear about Buck an' Kokaekish?"
"No," I replied, scenting a story. "What about them?"