CHAPTER VI
The day after our arrival was Sunday, a fine, calm day with bright sunshine, of which we took advantage to wash our scanty stock of clothing and generally pull ourselves together. Cleanliness of the body is not looked upon with much favour by the half-breeds, but Sunday morning was always celebrated in the lodge by the washing of faces and a plentiful application of grease to the hair. After this operation was over we held a consultation as to the best way of carrying on our hunt of the musk-ox, which had so far not proved successful. The same old wrangling and abuse of each other ensued, and finally the following decision was arrived at. Paul and François were to go back to Fond du Lac, so soon as their feet were in a fit condition to travel; they were to occupy themselves in getting ready the dog-sleighs, and to return on the first deep snow to the spot where we had killed the caribou on the day that we reached the lodge. If any of the Indians, of whom I had seen absolutely nothing so far, were going to the musk-ox, arrangements should be made with them to come all together, so that we might have the benefit of as many sleighs as possible to haul wood. All our dried meat was to be put in cache at Lake Camsell, and the camp moved to a clump of pines that we had noticed the day before. King and myself were to remain with the women, to kill meat enough to enable us to start well supplied for the musk-ox country.
We built a rough scaffold with the longest poles obtainable, and stowed all the meat as high above the ground as possible. Then we pulled down the lodge, and, after a couple of days' walk with heavy loads, camped on the south side of a ridge, from the summit of which we had a commanding view of Lake Mackay and the surrounding country. There was little chance of many caribou passing without being observed, as there were usually several pairs of sharp eyes on the look-out.
As this was to be our home for a month or so, we took care to pick out a good spot and set up the lodge in the most approved fashion, taking advantage of the little shelter that the stunted pines could afford.
A mile or two to the east lay the northern end of a large sheet of water, running about forty miles in a southerly direction, known to the Indians as "The Lake of the Enemy," and formerly the home of that terrible Evil Spirit supposed to haunt the Barren Ground. It is hard to get a full description of the Enemy, as, although many people have seen it, they are at once afflicted with insanity, and are incapable of giving an accurate account of their experience; but one must not dare to express unbelief in the existence of the Enemy any more than in that of the Giant Musk-Ox, fully ten times the size of the biggest bull ever seen, whose track many Indians say they have come across far out in the Barren Ground.
King and myself spent most of our time prowling about in search of caribou, but for the first fortnight few came and we were only just able to keep ourselves in fresh meat, although there was soon plenty of dried meat from the animals we had cached at this spot a week before. I now saw what an advantage it is to take women on a hunting-trip of this kind, and certainly King's wife and daughter were both well up in the household duties of the country. If we killed anything, we only had to cut up and cache the meat, and the women and small boys would carry it in. On returning to camp we could throw ourselves down on a pile of caribou skins and smoke our pipes in comfort, but the women's work was never finished. The rib bones have all to be picked out, and the plat côte hung up in the smoke to dry; the meat of haunches and shoulders must be cut up in thin strips for the same purpose, and the bones have to be collected, pounded down, and boiled for the grease which is in such demand during the cold weather about to commence. But the greatest labour of all lies in dressing the skins, cutting off the hair, scraping away every particle of flesh and fat, and afterwards tanning them into soft leather for moccasins, which are themselves no easy task to make. Many skins, too, have to be made into parchment or carefully cut into babiche for the lacing of snow-shoes, and again, there are hair-coats to be made for each member of the party. In an ordinary Indian lodge the women have to put up with ill-usage as well as hard work; but most of the half-breeds know enough to treat them fairly; and King, except in his moments of passion, when he did not stop at any cruelty, treated his womenkind very well.
One of our first expeditions was to hunt birch for making the frames of snow-shoes, which might be needed at any time, and King soon had a pair ready for lacing; he was very clever with the crooked knife, the universal tool of the North, but the stunted birch is hard to bend to the proper shape, and requires constant watching during the process of warping.
The evenings were generally spent in long discussions over our pipes, for tobacco was still holding out, and the old man was keen to hear about the doings of the white man in the Grand Pays, as the half-breeds indefinitely term the whole of the outside world. The ignorance existing among these people is extraordinary, considering how much time they spend at the forts, and how many officers of the Hudson's Bay Company they have a chance to talk to, besides the missionaries of both faiths. It is a different matter with the Indians, as they seldom come to the fort, and cannot hold much conversation with the Whites without an interpreter. It was difficult, for instance, to persuade King that the Hudson's Bay Company does not rule the whole world, or that there are countries that have no fur-bearing animals, which in the North furnish the only means of making a living for the poor man. He was much interested in stories of the Queen, although he could never believe that Her Majesty held such a high rank as the Governor of the Company, and quite refused to acknowledge her as his sovereign. "No," he said; "she may be your Queen, as she gives you everything you want, good rifles and plenty of ammunition, and you say that you eat flour at every meal in your own country. If she were my Queen, surely she would send me sometimes half a sack of flour, a little tea, or perhaps a little sugar, and then I should say she was indeed my Queen. As it is I would rather believe Mr. Reid of Fort Province, who told me once that the earth went round and the sun stood still; but I myself have seen the sun rise in the morning and set at night for many years. It is wrong of you White Men, who know how to read and write, to tell lies to poor men who live by the muzzle of their guns."
Another matter over which his mind was greatly exercised was the last North-West Rebellion under Louis Riel. He was convinced that during this rising the half-breeds and Indians had declared war upon the Hudson's Bay Company, and gained a decisive victory besides much glorious plunder; and he asked why such an outbreak should not succeed on the Great Slave Lake, where there was only one man in charge of a fort. He had many questions too to ask about the various good things that we eat and drink in England, and criticised severely the habit of eating three regular meals a day, which he described as eating by the clock instead of by the stomach, a much more greedy habit than that of gorging when meat is plentiful and starving at other times. On several occasions during our travels together I had reason to expostulate with him on the carelessness he displayed with provisions, but without making the least impression. "What is this improvidence?" he would say. "I do not like that word. When we have meat why should we not eat plein ventre to make up for the time when we are sure to starve again?" He could never realise that starvation might be partially avoided by a little care.