by John Buchan
Then West Wind spoke. He was listened to, for he was the son of his mother, and the heart of the tribe had gone out to him since that day he had lost Grey Wolflet, his blood brother.
“The Big Dogs are a deadly peril,” he said. “I have seen them and I fear them. Some day the Snakes will come with many hundreds of them, and then the Piegan people will perish from the earth. It is also true what my fathers say, that our arrows, though sped from stout bows by strong arms, will not halt their charge in time. That much is agreed. But it is wrong to speak of making truce with the Snakes and sharing our hunting-grounds, for the Snakes are a greedy folk and will not be content until they have eaten us up.”
He stopped for a moment and all eyes were turned on him.
“I put to you another plan,” he said. “It is rumoured that our cousins, the Assiniboine people, have got a new weapon, a stick which speaks loud and kills from far off. I have spoken with those who have seen it. They got it from the Crees of the Plains who live in the north by this river of ours, and the Crees in turn got it from the white men with hair on their chins, of whom we have heard. Now hearken to my plan. Our cousins the Assiniboines will not give us the sticks, for they have few. The white hairy men, who have many, live far off, we know not where. But let us go to the Crees of the Plains, who have more than the Assiniboines, and who, it appears, will sell.”
“How will you pay?” he was asked.
“Not with skins and wampum,” was the answer, “but with a medicine bundle, for this is strong magic.”
“And who will bargain?”
“If it is permitted, I will go myself,” said West Wind.
He took his mother’s medicine bundle, the gift of the tribe at the Sun Dance, for it contained treasures which all Indian peoples prized. There were pipes made of stone from the Sacred Quarry in Minnesota; there was a black beaver skin; there was an antelope’s prong-horns curiously bound together; and the skins of bright-coloured birds from the south; and queer nuts from the mountains which were the provender for the dead on their journey to the Country of Souls. Most precious of all there was a fragment of thunder-stone which all the world knew made its owner the special charge of the Great Spirit.
With the medicine bundle slung on his back beside his bow, and his quiver and tomahawk at his belt, West Wind set out on his journey. He went north by east, following the great river, and Donald could trace every stage. Each night his tiny fire crackled in a nook of hill where he roasted duck or goose or hare. Each day his long loping stride carried him farther out of the Blackfoot land into the tree country. First there were bluffs of poplar and maple and willow by the streams; then bigger woods in what is now called the park country, and then, when his river had become a mighty flood, there came forests of pointed trees which thickened into a dark cloud in the north.
There he met the first Cree bands and smoked a pipe with them, A hey received him well, for the war paint was gone from his face, save for the yellow rings on his cheeks which betokened a messenger, and in any case his mien was friendly and his address both dignified and gracious. He was led to the principal camp of the nation by the side of a lake so big that the eye, looking across it, could see no land. There, after he had eaten, he spoke with shamans and sachems in the centre of the ring of warriors.
He told the story of the Snakes and the Big Dogs, and he told it so that he was believed.
“What have you come here for?” the Cree chief asked. “To seek an alliance?”
“Not so,” said West Wind. “The Cree people and the Piegan people live too far apart 12 to be allies though they may well be friends. I come to exchange medicine bags.”
Then followed a long chaffering. Each article in West Wind’s bag had attached to it some special incantation, for ritual things are of no use unless the spirit be attuned to them. Such incantations est Wind had to expound. The bag was strong magic and the Crees coveted it for their tribe.
“What is the price?” they asked.
“Another medicine bag,” was the answer. “And in it must be some of the sticks which the white men have given you and which you sold to our cousins the Assiniboines.”
He asked for eight muskets, and after a long argument he was given six with the requisite powder and shot.
* * * *
West Wind had scarcely rejoined his tribe with his new medicine bag when the Snakes struck again. They did not wait for the Piegans to drive them out of their hunting-grounds, but swept eastward into lands which had been Piegan since time immemorial. It was a raid and not a fight and it fell at night in the third quarter of the moon. A band of twenty mounted men dashed upon the sleeping camp, slaughtered and scalped, and disappeared like a morning mist.
Four days later the Piegans marched westward to the battle which would decide for good and all the fate of their nation. West Wind was by the side of the War Chief, and with him were six young men, their faces curiously painted in brown with splashes of black around and above the eyes. These were the lords of the muskets. There was no ammunition to spare, so they could not practise shooting, but West Wind had been told the way of it by the Plains Crees, and he laboured to instruct his men. The sticks must be held stiff, and when the triggers were pulled there must not be the throw forward of the bow. If it were possible, a man should shoot lying prone, with the stick resting on a stone or tuft, but at all costs the eye must run straight along the stick to the point which was the enemy’s breast.
“We are new to this task,” he told the War Chief. “We must draw close to the Snakes, risking their arrows until we are not fifty yards apart. Then each stick will speak with certainty.
My counsel is that after they have spoken twice the whole Piegan line should charge, for the Snakes will have the fear of the sticks in their heart and will assuredly run.”
It came about as West Wind foresaw. The enemy were discovered in a bend of the Saskatchewan, full fed, for they had just made a great slaughter of buffaloes. The Piegans had the good luck to find a position where their flanks were protected by the river and a knob of hill, so that the horsemen could not get at their rear except by a long circuit.
The Piegan braves advanced steadily till they were well within arrow range without firing a shot, and the Snake bowmen took heavy toll of them. Two of West Wind’s musketeers were crippled and their places were taken by others from the reserve. Then at fifty paces the Snakes, about to be unleashed in a final charge, had a staggering experience. Six of the first-rank Piegans dropped on their knees or on their bellies, there was a noise like little thunder-claps, and something spat out into their midst. Men fell dead with no projecting spear or arrow to show how death had found them.
The Snake ranks wavered. Three bold youths sprang forward, and again came the spitting. And then the Piegans raised their war shout and dashed upon the wonderstruck and terrified Snakes. The spitting death came again, and also a flight of arrows, and soon the Snake people were fleeing through the river shallows, reddening the water with their blood. The horsemen led the flight, all save one whose mount was killed under him, and he was trampled to death in the press.
That night there was a great feasting. West Wind had his forehead painted with the mystic mark of the Piegans, the loop and the crossed arrows, in bright orange on a red ochre background. Word came that one of the Big Dogs had been killed, and the Piegan braves went down to look at it.
“No dog,” said West Wind. “It is a deer without horns.”
But as he gazed at it and noted the small clean head, the lean powerful flanks and shoulders, the delicate feet, a new feeling woke in him. This beast was a portent and a marvel, but it might also be a delight.... Some day, he thought, when there was peace between the peoples, he would take a trip to the south and visit the Snake folk. He would take a medicine bag with him and it should contain one at least of the new speaking sticks. With it he might acquire a Big Dog.
Donald rubbed his eyes, turned back to where Negog and Jimmy were talking by a bank of driftwood. Some
thing about Jimmy’s appearance struck him as unfamiliar. Surely when he last looked at him he had had a yellow splash on his forehead, got no doubt from the newly painted door of Celestin Martel’s barn.
HORSE OR GUN?
WHICH shall I choose of two excellent things,
Big Dog — or the Stick-that-sings?
On Big Dog’s back I can eat up the ground,
Faster than antelope, stealthy as hound.
Two-Suns thinks that I hunt remote,
When my knife is a yard from Two-Suns’ throat.
The buffalo dream that the plain is clear —
In an hour my bow will twang in their ear.
Who owns Big Dog is a mighty brave,
For the earth is his squaw, and the wind his slave.
With the Stick-that-sings all soft and still
I pick my lair and I make my kill.
Shield nor sentry can cramp the wings
Of the death that flies from the Stick-that-sings.
Man and beast I smite from afar,
And they know not their foe in that secret war.
Big dog is a marvel beyond dispraise,
But he dies at the breath of the Stick-that-slays.
Wherefore, though both are marvellous things,
My voice shall be for the Stick-that-sings.
CHAPTER VII. White Water
DONALD had spent two blissful days. There was not much skin left on the palms of his hands, his brow was puffy from the attention of black flies, and nearly every bone in his body ached with weariness. But he had behind him thirty-six hours of delectable memories.
The day before he had started out at dawn with Celestin and Aristide Martel for the Petit Manitou, where the last log drive of the season was concluding. Celestin had a contract with a lumber camp to supply pork and bacon in the coming winter, for his pigs were famous, and there were certain details which he wished to settle. It meant a jog of some twelve miles over a precarious forest road, and Donald’s teeth were almost shaken out of his head.
They had breakfast at the lumber camp, that night they slept in the bunk-house, and for the better part of two days Donald and Aristide were left to their own devices.
Now the Petit Manitou is very different from the Grand Manitou. It flows in a shallow vale among woods of birch and spruce, and, while it has no big waterfall like the other stream, it has a long succession of riffles and pot-holes. Its water is not gin clear, but tinged with peat, and in the pools its hue is dark umber, and in the shallows amber and pale topaz. Its boulder-strewn bed and its endless loops and bends and eddies catch up and becalm the logs, so that at the end of the season it is the job of the lumberjacks with their peevies and pike-poles to set them floating again.
The dam up-stream had released a fair head of water, and for two days the drive moved briskly. Sometimes the lumber-jacks were in canoes, but mostly they were jumping from boulder to boulder and from log to log with wonderful precision, their caulked boots giving them purchase on the slippery surface. There were no dangerous places in the drive, and though the two boys waited eagerly for a slip they were disappointed. Even when a foothold gave way the man would leap deftly into the air and come down safely on the other side of the rolling log.
It looked simple, but when Donald and Aristide tried the game in a backwater they found it beyond their powers. Their bare feet and prehensile toes could find no grip on the slimy log when it chose to roll, and all day they were as much in the water as out of it. But it was tremendous fun, and when in the evening they turned up at the camp they were forced into dry clothes — shirts and trousers which engulfed them — and Cooky provided a supper which was to remain with both a hallowed memory. There was strong black tea with many spoonfuls of sugar, and smoking bacon and beans, and a choice of many kinds of pie — apple, blueberry, mince, lemon, and custard.
Afterwards in the bunk-house, when the pipes were lit, they heard talk which thrilled them. Old lumber-jacks spoke of White Water. It is the great peril of their lives, but they have no fear of it; they have, so to speak, domesticated it and turned it from an adventure into an art.
Most of the men were from Gaspé, where the habit of the streams is mild, but one or two were from the North Shore, where strong currents flow headlong to the sea from untravelled northern wastes, forcing their way through the rock screens in gigantic cataracts. One man had spent two seasons on the wild Peribonka. But the best tales came from two brothers who had been miners and lumbermen in the Rockies and the Selkirks, and who, more than the others, had the story-telling gift. They drew a picture which caught Donald’s imagination — of hundred-mile canyons filled with foaming water, where a man’s nerve and strength must last the whole course or death was certain. Once a canoe or a raft was whirled into such a current there was no escape except by completing the job.
The picture filled Donald’s thoughts as he journeyed homeward. The next afternoon, when he had tea with the Martels, he was unusually silent, so that Father Laflamme, who had also dropped in, remarked on it.
In answer to his question Donald told him about his doings.
“The Company has five hundred men on its payroll,” he said, and his voice was solemn with respect.
“Solomon beat it then. He had 80,000 loggers cutting the cedars of Lebanon, and how he got the logs down to the Temple at Jerusalem is what no man knows.”
“Did you ever see white water?” Donald asked. “Real white water, I mean. Not like the Manitou, which is either a big waterfall or rapids that anyone can run, but a river which can just be managed if you keep your head and know the game.”
“I am lame because of white water,” was the answer. “In my time I have seen much white water, and know a little of the art of it. For a man to know it fully he must have been at it all his days.”
“There was a fellow at the camp who had been in the West. He said that if you started on the mountain rivers you had to keep going for fifty miles or perish, for there was no place to stop at.”
“That I have not seen. My white water lasted at the most for a mile or two. But the art of it is the same everywhere. That must be learned. And also stoutness of heart.”
“I think they must be the bravest people in the world,” said Donald.
“I will make a confession to you,” said Father Laflamme. “Every man has his own particular fear. I was chiefly afraid of being drowned, and since I had to conquer that fear I became expert in avoiding the danger. The best white-water man I have ever known was a Scots half-breed, and he began by being terrified at the gentlest ripple. I think that God has so made us that we can most easily conquer what we are most afraid of — if we have the heart to face up to it.”
Father Laflamme accompanied Donald to the water side, where Negog was busy as usual, this time caulking and varnishing one of his salmon cobles. The smell of the varnish seemed to the boy like the smell of the lumber camp, and as he trotted by the priest’s side his head was still full of his recent experiences. “White water” had caught his imagination.
He babbled as he twisted from one side of his companion to the other, for Donald moved at a trot, like the caribou, and Father Laflamme’s lameness made him slow.
“I can paddle all right,” he said, “but I’ve never tried poling. Which is most difficult?
I want to be a river man — a white water man. How can I learn?”
“Only by experience and taking risks. That is how everything worth while is learned.”
“There was a man at the camp who said Aristide and I would train on well. He said we were like Newfoundland dogs, not afraid of the water. That’s good for a start, isn’t it?”
“I’m not so sure. If you are afraid of a thing you respect it, and if you conquer your fear and keep your respect you will learn how to manage it. There are three things you must not trifle with, you know — that is what the Crees say — first, a bear with cubs, second the sun-glare in your eyes in March, and the third is white water.” Negog heard the last wor
ds and laid down his brush.
“The sea trout run to-night,” he said, and nodded towards the river.
Donald, much excited, charged down to the nearest pool, but he saw no sea trout....
Instead, he saw a boy standing beside a boat on the grey shingle of a northern island. He looked about sixteen years of age; his freckled face was surmounted by a thatch of hair, bleached almost white by sun and wind; he was tall for his years and had a great breadth of shoulder and length of arm. He wore a fisherman’s long knee boots and a ragged blue jersey. His companion was an elderly man who had lost an arm and, from his features, must have been a kinsman.
“That’s the end of it,” said the boy, “and thank God for that.”
“It’s maybe not the end, Magnus,” said the other. “Man, it’s a queer thing that you should have taken this scunner to the sea when your folk for generations have been fishers and never out of boats. It’s not as if you were feared o’ other things, for you’re a fair deevil to fight. I wonder what gave you this grue of salt water?”
“It’s any kind of water,” said the boy sullenly. “Ay, I’m feared, and that’s the plain truth. That’s why I’m for Canada, where I’ll be a thousand miles from a shore.”
“But there’s water other places than the ocean,” said the older man. “I’ve heard tell of muckle lakes in Canada and rivers as wide as the Pentland Firth. There was Neil Wabster, I mind, him that went from Kittle Bay, and they were saying he was drowned in some river called by a Hieland name. It seems they go about in wee cockles o’ boats, and that there’s some awfu’ rough water.” The boy shook his head. “There may be water there, but there’s plenty land too, and I’m going to bide on the land. I’m off next week. I wish I was across that weariful Atlantic.”
The old man shook his head. “Then Orkney will not be seeing you again. Unless,” he added with a grin, “God Almighty dried up the Atlantic as he dried up the Red Sea for Moses, and that’s not very likely....”
