The man who had been my servant from the Saskatchewan was a French half-breed; strong, active, and handsome, he was still a sulky, good-for-nothing fellow. One might as well have tried to make friends with a fish to which one cast a worm, as with this good-looking, good-for-nothing man. He had depth sufficient to tell a lie which might wear the semblance of truth for a day; and cunning enough to cheat without being caught in the actual fact. I think he was the most impudent liar I have ever met. The motive which had induced him to accept service in this long journey was, I believe, a domestic one. He had run away with a young English half-breed girl, and then ran away from her. If she had only known the object of her affections as well as I did, she would have regarded the last feat of activity as a far less serious evil than the first.
The third man was a Swampy Indian of the class one frequently meets in the English-speaking settlement on Red River. Taken by himself, he was negatively good; but placed with others worse than himself, he was positively bad. He was, however, a fair traveller, and used his dogs with a degree of care and attention seldom seen amongst the half-breeds.
Small wonder, then, that with these three worthies who, though strangers, now met upon a base of common rascality, that I should feel myself more completely alone than if nothing but the waste had spread around me. Full thirty days of travel must elapse ere the mountains, that great break to which I looked so long, should raise their snowy peaks across my pathway.
The lameness of the last day’s travel already gave ominous symptoms of its presence. The snow was deeper than I had yet seen it; heretofore, at the longest, the forts lay within five days’ journey of each other; now there was one gap in which, from one post to the next, must, at the shortest, be a twelve days’ journey.
At dawn, on the 13th of March, we quitted our burrow in the deep drift of the willow bushes, and held our way across what was seemingly a shoreless sea.
The last sand ridge or island top of Lake Athabasca had sunk beneath the horizon, and as the sun came up, flashing coldly upon the level desert of snow, there lay around us nought but the dazzling surface of the frozen lake.
Lac Clair, the scene of our present day’s journey, is in reality an arm of the Athabasca. Nothing but a formation of mud and drift, submerged at high summer water, separated it from the larger lake; but its shores vary much from those of its neighbour, being everywhere low and marshy, lined with scant willows and destitute of larger timber. Of its south-western termination but little is known, but it is said to extend in that direction from the Athabasca for fully seventy miles into the Birch Hills. Its breadth from north to south would be about half that distance. It is subject to violent winter storms, accompanied by dense drift; and from the scarcity of wood along its shores, and the absence of distinguishing landmarks, it is much dreaded by the winter voyageur.
The prevailing north-east wind of the Lake Athabasca has in fact the full sweep of 250 miles across Lac Clair. To lose one’s way upon it would appear to be the first rule of travel amongst the trip-men of Fort Chipewyan. The last adventure of this kind which had taken place on its dim expanse had nearly a tragic end.
On the southern shore of the lake three moose had been killed. When the tidings reached the fort, two men and two sleds of dogs set off for the “cache;” it was safely found, the meat packed upon the sleds, and all made ready for the return. Then came the usual storm: dense and dark the fine snow (dry as dust under the biting cold) swept the surface of the lake. The sun, which on one of these “poudre” days in the North seems to exert as much influence upon the war of cold and storm as some good bishop in the Middle Ages was wont to exercise over the belligerents at Cressy or Poictiers, when, as it is stated, “He withdrew to a neighbouring eminence, and there remained during the combat;”—the sun, I say, for a time, seemed to protest, by his presence, against the whole thing, but then finding all protests equally disregarded by the wind and cold, he muffled himself up in the nearest cloud and went fast asleep until the fight was over.
For a time the men held their way across the lake; then the dogs became bewildered; the leading driver turned to his companion, and telling him to drive both trains, he strode on in front of his dogs to give a “lead” in the storm.