by Farley Mowat
Lazily the boys relaxed on the soft moss beside the river and enjoyed the warmth of the sun. Below them on the rapids, hundreds of fish fought their way upstream, splashing and struggling to climb the waterfall.
“Even the fish are going south,” Jamie said a little sadly.
“But not for long,” Awasin answered cheerfully. “They only go upstream to spawn. In a few weeks they’ll head north again to the Great Frozen Lake to spend the winter deep down under the ice. And if fish can spend the winter out here—we can too. Come on, let’s see what we’ve caught.”
Jamie ran around and untied his end, then he rejoined Awasin. Together the boys pulled the net into the shallows, and their excitement rose to fever pitch as they caught glimpses of great silvery shapes twisting and fighting in the net. The surge of the struggling fish yanked the net sideways and it took their full strength to drag it in.
“Look at that one!” Jamie yelled in wild excitement. “Looks like a whale!”
The first fish to lie flapping and leaping in the shallows was a monster, a lake trout almost five feet long. Its great mouth gaped and shut with a ferocious click and its rows of needlelike teeth sheared through the net as if it had been a spider web. Expertly Awasin leaped into the shallows and killed the giant with one blow on its head.
When the net was finally pulled out it held so many fish that it took an hour to untangle them all. Laid out on the moss, they made an imposing sight. There were fifteen lake trout, ranging from two to five feet in length. There were two dozen grayling—a kind of arctic trout—each about three or four pounds in weight. Most important of all, there were thirty-seven plump whitefish, the king of all arctic fish when it comes to filling human stomachs.
Jamie’s mouth watered with anticipation as he and Awasin cleaned and cut up their catch. Then, having piled rocks over what they could not carry, they shouldered a full load and set out for home.
As the crisp night air fell over the camp, it carried away with it the rich smell of frying whitefish. Beside the fire the two boys lay in complete contentment. Jamie sighed and said, “The way I feel right now I could live out here forever, and love it too!”
Awasin smiled. “The Crees used to say: Courage comes not from a strong heart, but from a full stomach! So we should be pretty brave!” He was silent for a moment. “We’ll need all the courage we can find,” he added. Awasin was staring out over the darkening plains, and he was no longer smiling.
CHAPTER 15
The Hidden Valley
ONE MORNING WHEN THE BOYS crawled out of their little stone igloo they found a faint powdering of snow upon the ground. The snow brought home the problem they had been trying not to think about. Winter was nearly here—and the question of fuel had yet to be answered. They had been able to gather only enough willow twigs for each day’s needs, and they knew that soon the low places where the willows grew would be filled with hard-packed drifts of snow.
Because they had been unable to solve the difficulty, they had tried to put it out of mind and had concentrated instead on the food supply. The net had yielded them a good quantity of fish and these had been prepared for winter use. Most of the whitefish and the smaller trout had been cleaned, split, and hung to dry over smoky fires of moss and green willow. But Jamie had hit upon a different plan to preserve the bigger fish. One day when he was digging out moss in a thick sphagnum bog not far from camp, he had come suddenly on solid ice. When he had cleared the moss away he discovered that there was a broad vein of pure ice—like a frozen stream—a few feet below ground level. This was in fact a frozen river. In very ancient times a stream had flowed through this bog and—perhaps during the time of the glaciers—had frozen solidly. It never had a chance to thaw. As the glaciers retreated, new moss grew across the top of the river, died, and was replaced with still newer growth. In time the frozen stream was buried under two feet of sphagnum moss, which is one of the best insulators in the world. No summer heat could reach the dead river, doomed to lie hidden and still forever.
Jamie was quick to see a use for the ice sheet. Together he and Awasin chopped a trench deep into the ice with the little hatchet. Into this trench they piled the cleaned bodies of the bigger trout, then covered them with moss. Within a day the fish were frozen solidly, so that it was almost as if the boys had a freezing machine right at the camp.
The frozen fish were later put in deep holes in the moss and covered over to keep until they were needed. Jamie thought the moss alone would be enough protection, but Awasin explained that there would be many other hungry stomachs in the plains that winter—many robbers who would soon scent the fish cache and try to get at it. “Omeenachee—the wolverine—will be our worst enemy when winter comes,” Awasin explained. “Trappers call him the Glutton and he’s a clever thief. If he gets into our food caches he’ll eat, or ruin, everything, then we’ll be the ones to starve. Pile lots of rocks over those fish if you don’t want to go hungry later on.”
So they built massive rock cairns over the buried fish, and over the supplies of dry caribou meat as well. On top of each cairn Awasin placed a caribou skull with the antlers pointing skyward. “That’s our marker,” he explained. “When the snows get deep we’d never find the caches without something sticking up to guide us.”
Fish and meat were not the only foods the boys gathered. Out on the plains the dwarf scrub had turned to flaming orange under the touch of the frosts, and in the muskegs there were carpets of low plants whose leaves were turning a brilliant yellow. These did not look as if they could be much use, but Awasin carefully gathered from these plants a pile of leaves that had not yet been frostbitten. He dried the leaves in the frying pan, and packed away about fifteen pounds in a deerskin bag. The Indians of the north have many names for this herb, but white men call it Labrador tea. When it is steeped in boiling water it makes a fair substitute for tea, and it was to be the only drink—except cold water—that the boys would have that winter.
The scanty arctic plants provided another and even more welcome addition to the food supplies. Crowberries and bearberries were to be found in the low muskegs, almost hidden in the moss. The boys spent two full days searching them out, and finally collected almost fifty pounds of the wizened little berries, which were already partly dried. The drying process was completed over the fire so the berries would not ferment later on. Then Awasin took half of them and mixed them with ground-up dry deermeat (that they had pulverized between two stones) and with boiling-hot deer fat. This rather sickening-looking mixture was then poured out to cool in slabs, and the slabs carefully wrapped in deerskin and put away. This was pemmican, and as Awasin said, it would be vitally important trail food when they began the long winter trek southward to the forests.
When they were searching for berries they met many competitors. The frosts had brought a wave of ptarmigan down from the north, and these arctic partridges were already turning white in preparation for the winter. They fed on the berries in such huge flocks that they looked like blankets of new snow upon the ground. They looked fat and tasty, and the two boys eyed them hungrily. But they did not dare waste precious ammunition on such small game, so there were no chicken dinners. Awasin would not use a shell even on the many Canada geese that lingered on the tundra ponds.
The herds of doe caribou had dwindled away until hardly any deer were to be seen at the deer fence. This worried Jamie considerably, though Awasin stoutly insisted that the bucks would soon be along.
Once or twice Jamie eyed the pet fawn speculatively, for if it was a case of eat or die, the fawn was, after all, a caribou. The fawn seemed to understand these glances and to outdo itself in being friendly. It romped about the camp like a dog and followed them everywhere. Sometimes it was a nuisance, for it would bury its muzzle in the skin bags of berries and in a few seconds gulp down the work of hours. But taken all round, the boys had become so attached to the little beast that they could forgive it almost any trick. It helped to make the world a less lonely place—and in the
broad plains, loneliness was something to fear.
On the day of the first real snow the fawn crawled out of the igloo first, and when the boys appeared the little beast was snorting at the queer white stuff that lay all about. It tasted the snow and spat it out hurriedly, leaping high into the air with disgust. The boys stood by laughing until the significance of the snowfall struck Jamie.
“Listen, Awasin,” he said abruptly. “We’ve got to do something about fuell All the food in the world won’t help us if we’re going to freeze to death.”
Now at last the problem was out in the open. They ate a gloomy breakfast. When the meal was over, Awasin was restless, anxious to do something about the wood supply.
“Let’s make a trip up into the hills to the west,” he said. “Maybe we can find something that will burn.”
Willingly Jamie agreed, and after packing food, ammunition and the rifle they set off, closely followed by the fawn.
The sun came bleakly over the hills and its weakened rays began to melt the snow—but the threat of winter still remained.
The hills rose some five hundred feet above the valley floor, and though their lower slopes were carpeted with moss and lichens, their upper slopes and crests were bare. Built by the glaciers, the hills were really no more than gigantic rock piles. They looked harsh and forbidding.
Halfway up the mile-long slope Jamie’s interest was aroused by a broad band of gravel running along below the crest of the hills. “That’s a queer-looking thing,” he said. “I wonder what it is and how it got there?”
When they reached the gravel streak the boys examined it curiously. It was about twenty feet wide and perfectly level. It ran south and north along the face of the hills as far as the eye could see. Above and below it were huge, angular chunks of rock, but the strip itself was composed of small rounded stones.
“It looks like a beach along a lake shore,” Jamie said. “The rocks are rounded just as if they had been rubbed against each other by the waves.” He dropped to his knees and began to dig among the stones. Then he scrambled to his feet holding a tiny object in his hand. “It must have been a lake shore,” he said. “Look at this, Awasin.”
In his hand he held a tiny sea shell, so old that when Awasin took it, it crumbled into dust between his fingers.
Jamie looked out over the broad valley to the dim blue line of the hills to the east. He spoke with awe. “Thousands, maybe a million years ago, this must have been one huge ocean,” he said. “And these hills were just little islands in it.”
Awasin was not as surprised as Jamie expected him to be. “There’s a Cree legend about that,” he replied. “It tells of a time when the whole northern plains were all water and the water was filled with strange monsters.”
Jamie nodded. “This seems to prove that story,” he said. “But if the water was up this high then it must have covered everything as far as Reindeer Lake. I guess when it dried up it left Reindeer Lake as one of its little puddles.”
Awasin laughed at the idea of mighty Reindeer being a puddle. “Well, let’s get on,” he said. “We can’t burn these pebbles.”
Now they were forced to jump from one sharp-edged boulder to the next. The whole face of the hill was a tortured chaos of fragmented stone, split to knife edges by the winter frosts.
Near the crest they stopped in awe at what they saw ahead. Stretching to the horizon was a series of mounded hills rising steadily upward. These hills were like the one they stood upon—great piles of shattered rock. The wind howled over the grim slopes, and racing gray clouds hung low above the dismal peaks. Not a living thing broke the dreary monotony of the scene—not even a soaring raven.
“It looks like the end of the world,” Jamie said. “Or maybe like the moon. Let’s have a quick look at the other side.”
Rather unwillingly Awasin followed Jamie.
What they saw at the crest left them speechless. Far below ran a narrow valley whose walls were slopes of broken boulders like the hills, but the valley floor was a paradise. A dozen tiny lakes lay along it in a chain and they shone like green mirrors. Around them were green swales and, most unbelievable of all, by the lake shores were stands of trees! They were real trees. White spruces and tamaracks towered fifty feet in the still air. It was a sight so unexpected that they could hardly believe it.
“If those are trees, then they will burn!” Awasin said in a hushed voice.
They were trees—no doubt of that. Jamie and Awasin had stumbled on one of the most amazing secrets of the arctic plains. Here and there, hidden deep in almost impenetrable ranges of rock hills, are a few protected valleys where the bitter blast of the arctic winds cannot reach. In these valleys trees gain a foothold, grasses and flowers follow as their seeds are carried by the birds, and so hidden sanctuaries from the bleakness of the Barrens are formed.
The boys stared in wonder at the sight below, but the little fawn was not so awed. With a pleased grunt it jumped over the edge and began slithering down the long and broken slope.
The spell was broken. “Hey!” Jamie yelled. “Come back here, you!” But the fawn kept happily on its way. Recklessly they followed, leaping from rock to rock like a pair of mountain goats. At last they reached the floor of the valley, and the trees loomed above them.
CHAPTER 16
The Coming of the Bucks
TOGETHER THEY HURRIED TO THE shore of the nearest lake and looked down into the clear green water. They could see the lazy forms of trout ten feet below the surface. A flock of late ducks rose and wheeled overhead. Out on the lake a pair of loons cried their idiot laughter.
Then they walked to the nearest stand of trees. Jamie looked up to the swaying tops of the spruces with a speculative eye. “A good spot to build a cabin,” he said.
Before Awasin could answer there was a diversion. The little fawn suddenly went tearing off through the trees. Awasin caught a glimpse of distant movement and unslung the rifle. Then he and Jamie ran to the edge of the woods for a better view.
They were in time to see a herd of about fifty buck caribou come leisurely out from among the trees and begin grazing on a patch of sedge.
Awasin’s face was alive with excitement. “Those bucks must have been here all summer long,” he said. “And I’ll bet they stay all winter too! If they do, we can have fresh meat whenever we need it!”
Quietly they retreated so as not to disturb the herd. Jamie noticed that the fawn was still missing. “I guess we’ve lost our pet,” he said.
“Never mind him now,” Awasin replied. “Let’s explore the rest of this valley.”
For the next two hours they examined the new world they had found. The valley was not large—perhaps four miles long, and not more than half a mile wide at any point. Each little lake had its own stand of tamaracks, and spruces huddled under the northern wall of the valley.
Because it offered easy walking, the boys climbed a queer sand ridge that ran down the center of the valley. It was about forty feet high and three feet wide at the top. The sides were so steep that the boys were winded when they reached the crest. A well-marked game trail, packed down by the feet of wolves and deer, was hollowed into the narrow top of the sand ridge. The ridge itself ran the full length of the valley and it was so regular in shape that Jamie, in astonishment, suggested that it looked like an old highway embankment. “Looks more like a riverbed upside down,” Awasin said. And he was closer to the truth.
The sand ridge was an esker—and eskers are among the most curious formations on earth. They were produced by the great glaciers that once covered the Barrens plains to a depth of several thousand feet with solid ice.
When at last the glaciers began to melt, they formed rivers on their surfaces. Gradually these rivers cut down through the ice until they were running through vast tunnels. Often they cut through pockets of gravel and sand that had been scooped up by the moving ice sheet, and before long the rivers were building beds for themselves in the center of the icecap.
After many
more thousands of years the glaciers disappeared, and their rivers vanished with them. But the glacier riverbeds remained. They were dropped down by the melting ice onto the solid land beneath—the beds of rivers, turned upside down, just as Awasin had suggested.
Now they run across hills, valleys, plains and lakes without regard for the present shapes and slopes of the land. Some are hundreds of miles long and they may even cross mountain ranges in the same way that the Great Wall of China snakes its way up and down mountains. In places the eskers drive straight across big lakes like causeways. They are the natural highways of the arctic plains.
Awasin and Jamie used their esker as a road, for from its smooth and level crest they could look down on the valley as they walked easily along. They followed it to the west end of the valley where the sand ridge climbed up the steep rock slopes into the hills. They turned back then, and by late afternoon had reached the valley’s eastern end. Here the esker descended through a steep cleft downward out of the green valley. The boys followed, and after two miles suddenly emerged through a gully into the broad and barren valley of the River of the Frozen Lake! Below them, and a few miles south, they could faintly see the line of the deer fence and they could even pick out the tiny dot that was their stone igloo.
It was the final stroke of luck in a very lucky day. If they had been forced to carry supplies up over the rocky hills, and down again into the hidden valley, it would have been a backbreaking job. But now they had a ready-made highway over which they could come and go with ease.
The sun was setting as they stood looking down into the plains. “My people would say that Manitou was with us,” Awasin said quietly. It was a solemn moment—but it did not stay solemn for long.
A tired grunt from behind made the boys turn around. There, making its way wearily down the esker, was the missing fawn. Its sleek coat was rumpled and it looked as if it had spent the afternoon in a football scrimmage. Meekly it came up to them, nuzzled Jamie’s hand, and flopped down at their feet.
