"I is been top of dose hills," he said. "Bime by I mak' heem go to dose lak' beyon'."
He told us that some day he hoped to go out with the fur traders. In his vocabulary "I wish" occurred with such wistful frequency that finally I inquired curiously what use he would make of the Fairy Gift.
"If you could have just one wish come true, Pierre," I asked, "what would you desire?"
His answer came without a moment's hesitation.
"I is lak' be one giant," said he.
"Why?" I demanded.
"So I can mak' heem de walk far," he replied simply.
I was tempted to point out to him the fact that big men do not outlast the little men, and that vast strength rarely endures, but then a better feeling persuaded me to leave him his illusions. The power, even in fancy, of striding on seven-league boots across the fascinations spread out below his kindling vision from "dose hills" was too precious a possession lightly to be taken away.
Strangely enough, though his woodcraft naturally was not inconsiderable, it did not hold his paramount interest. He knew something about animals and their ways and their methods of capture, but the chase did not appeal strongly to him, nor apparently did he possess much skill along that line. He liked the actual physical labour, the walking, the paddling, the tump-line, the camp-making, the new country, the companionship of the wild life, the wilderness as a whole rather than in any one of its single aspects as Fish Pond, Game Preserve, Picture Gallery. In this he showed the true spirit of the voyageur. I should confidently look to meet him in another ten years--if threats of railroads spare the Far North so long--girdled with the red sash, shod in silent moccasins, bending beneath the portage load, trolling Isabeau to the silent land somewhere under the Arctic Circle. The French of the North have never been great fighters nor great hunters, in the terms of the Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen, but they have laughed in farther places.