Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  Beyond the crossing was a stretch of timber that had scarcely a mature tree still with sap in it. Here the fires of other years had destroyed almost all standing growth, leaving a debris of windfalls behind them. There had been no recent travel over the track, at least not since the previous March when cattle and sleighs had moved out from the hay meadows. Then, two or more feet of packed snow covered the blowdowns, and cattle and sleighs were able to get over them, hardly knowing they were there. But now every one had to be axed out before the wagon could get through, so building a smudge alongside the wagon, I unhitched the horses, leaving Lillian there to replenish the smudge from time to time while I hacked a right-of-way through the windfalls.

  Their wood was dry and hard; a stifling noonday heat hung over the forest, and when I paused for wind and rest, every square inch of my exposed skin was quickly preempted by a half-dozen mosquitoes. I chopped steadily away at the windfalls, grumbling to myself about the fires that were responsible for their being there, grumbling at the mosquitoes, and almost regretting the impulse that had brought us back into this sullen, inhospitable wilderness to begin with. Yet two hours later, when I got back to the wagon, mosquitoes and windfalls were forgotten. And there was a whistle on my lips as I tossed Veasy up into the wagon box.

  It was late afternoon when I braked the wagon to a stop at the edge of the aspen- and willow-clad flat that was to be the site of our future home. At that time in the Chilcotin one could still squat on a few acres of ground, throw up a cabin, plow up a garden patch and worry about legal title to the land at some convenient future date. Even if not recognized by any government department, squatters’ rights were lawful rights in the eyes of all other residents of the country. Perched there on the wagon seat, flicking an eye over the half-dozen acres of ground before me, I now considered every square inch of it ours as if title deed were signed, sealed and delivered there in my hip pocket.

  Ours to clear of its brush, to plow and seed down its soil. Ours to build a home upon, just as quickly as logs could be cut and snaked in out of the woods. It was ours from the moment the wheels of the wagon ceased turning, to have and to hold, today and tomorrow, down through the years, forever and ever, amen.

  The Colliers’ old wagon and the ten-by-twelve-foot tent that was their home until they finished building their cabin.

  I jumped down from the wagon seat, fighting mosquitoes with one hand, trying to unhitch the stomping team with the other. “We’re not getting much of a welcome, are we?” I said tartly to Lillian.

  But she was far too busy to pay any attention to complaints from me. She was scurrying around like some busy squirrel, gathering punky chunks of wood for the smudge that was now a dire necessity.

  Now when Lillian sits down at the kitchen table each spring to make out the list of groceries and other items needed to run us another year, the list always includes insect repellents of almost every brand and description. But at that moment when we perhaps needed them most, when we lacked even window or door to shut in self-defence, we had nothing. The only agent at hand with which we could battle the mosquitoes was the choking, eye-watering clouds of smoke that spewed up from the smudge. It is a debatable matter which was the lesser of the two evils, the mosquitoes or the smoke.

  The third member of the family had his own answer to that question. Though Lillian might plump Veasy down on the windward side of the smudge, keeping him there was another matter altogether. As soon as her back was turned, he crawled away from the smudge into the hum of the mosquitoes. Since Lillian had to help with the unpacking of the wagon, give a hand with the stretching of the tent and begin getting supper, all at the same time, she sensibly decided that, in this moment anyway, the boy was master of his own destiny. If he preferred the mosquitoes to the smoke, that was the way he could have it.

  Usually in interior British Columbia there is a brief period in the night when the mosquitoes retire into the moss and grasses, perhaps to rest and conserve their strength for renewed attacks at dawn. But every rule has its exception, as was the case now. Long after the campfire was a skeleton of graying coals, and we had retired to the tent and tied down its flaps in the foolish hope that somehow the tent would keep the enemy without, we lay wide awake, listening to the drone of their wings as they beat against the canvas. The hum of mosquitoes is almost as bad as their bite, and anyway, enough did manage to get inside that, despite the stickiness of the night, we were compelled to cover our heads and hands with blankets.

  It was a night of little sleep. While Lillian lay awake trying to keep the covers over Veasy, I was wide awake with another serious problem. I could hear the harsh nervous jangling of horses’ bells.

  “The horses,” I suddenly rapped out, sitting bolt upright. “The mosquitoes are driving them crazy.”

  I had hobbled all five of the horses and turned them loose to graze, not bothering to keep a wrangle horse on picket rope. Now I could hear the ring of their bells from somewhere off in the timber, and it wasn’t the measured tingling that comes from the bells of horses contentedly grazing, but a brazen jarring ring that tells of horses steadily on the move.

  “If they ever get started back on the wagon tracks ...” I muttered uneasily, turning on the flashlight and looking at Lillian. And she knew enough about horses to understand what was pricking me. Once they lined out on those wagon tracks, by daylight they’d be miles away, and it might take two days or more to track them down and bring them back.

  That thought brought me out of the blankets. “I’d better go after them before it’s too late and tie them up until it gets light.”

  Lillian was up too. “I might as well be outside too, building a smudge, as here trying to sleep.” And she began dressing.

  I shook my head. “Leave the smudge to me. They’ll eat you alive out there.” And I untied the flaps of the tent.

  It still lacked a couple of hours of dawn and the tailing night was humid and pitch-black. At the opening of the flaps the drone of mosquitoes became a mounting ceaseless buzz.

  The horse bells were fainter now. Ten or fifteen minutes ago they’d sounded from off in the west, but now they were only a tinkle, coming out of the south. “They’ve hit the wagon tracks!” I exclaimed.

  Any horse accustomed to hobbles, as were ours, can clip along at a steady four miles an hour if determined to keep travelling. I judged from the sound of the bells that ours were already two miles south of camp.

  Lillian picked up the flashlight. “You’d better take this and go after them, and I’ll build the smudge.”

  I said, “I don’t need the light. Not as badly as you’ll need it hunting up stuff for the smudge.” And taking the halters from the wagon, I slipped off into the darkness.

  A horned owl hooted from the spruces across the creek. Seconds later, and from the same quarter, a snowshoe rabbit screamed. The drama being played there among the spruces was one without end, one that had gone on and on in the wilderness ever since there was a wilderness. At times, perhaps between sunup and sundown, there might be a truce of sorts, but it was one forever broken. Whoo-hoo-whoo-hoo! Not from the spruces this time, but from the jack pines back of the tent. Out of the nigrous overhead came the rustle of wings moving toward the creek. I paused a moment, listening to the screeching of two owls squabbling over a single kill. Then I quickly forgot about the owls and the fate of the snowshoe rabbit and thought of my own problems.

  The east was graying when I got back with the horses. I hitched them to cottonwoods on the windward side of the smudge, then squatted on a log beside Lillian. Side by side we sat there in the smoke, with not a thing to say to each other, just watching the gray give way to a delicate rosebud pink. Pink became gold and sunlight suddenly flooded the treetops. The air became very still and the smoke plumed straight up. Now the mosquitoes were able to press home their attacks.

  Then, with a faint trace of bitterness and half seriously, I broke the silence. “You know, Lillian, I have a strange feeling that maybe God doesn’t
want us here.”

  Lillian turned on the log. She looked steadily at me, and with all the depth that this wife of mine has, and meaning every word, said quietly, “Maybe He’s just testing us, and seeing if we’re worthy enough to stay.”

  But we weathered that first night of the mosquitoes as we have since weathered so many tribulations that have worried away at us while we tried to earn ourselves some sort of a living on the hundred and fifty thousand acres of wilderness that has been home to us for so long. Looking back, we are both in full agreement that there were moments during those tormenting hours of that very first night when we lay wide awake, silently debating a common thought: surely there were easier ways of making a living than by attempting this. But with the campfire blazing, and the gold of the hoisting sun swabbing the forest with colour, we both took a deep breath. Here we were and here we would stay. And here, if sweat and toil could do it, we’d give back to the land some of the wildlife and other natural wealth that it had when Lala was a child.

  Chapter 4

  “Timber!” Lillian yelled, but the stubborn tree wouldn’t fall.

  One had to be sort of careful about how he felled the trees. If you dropped them across a shallow gully, they broke in two, and that was one you lost. And we couldn’t afford to lose any. Or if you didn’t undercut them just so, they went back on you and then the saw pinched and you couldn’t get it out. Or if there was no sign of a lean to them, and they were straight up and down like a plumb bob, you could saw clean through them and still they wouldn’t go down.

  As was the case now with the one we’d been working on. Back cut had met undercut but still the tree was upright. And Lillian stood off a few feet from the stump, puffing a little and gawking up at its top, wondering how it still stood there. And Veasy was several such tree lengths away, well clear of danger, also gawking at the tree that wouldn’t go down. I had a ten-foot pry pole braced against the tree and was heaving and grunting, all the time watching the back cut, hoping it would open up a little so I could get the saw free.

  The pry pole slipped off the bark, and I almost went flat on my face. Recovering, I got the end of the pole under a limb higher up the tree, and taking a deep breath I pushed with all that was in me.

  “Timber!” Lillian yelled again. And I saw that at last the cut was opening, and I jerked the saw out and watched the tree crash to earth right where we wanted it to be.

  Lillian came over and squatted down on the tree, and rubbing a pitchy hand across her forehead asked, “How many more do we need?”

  I laid the six-foot crosscut saw on the ground and sat down beside her. “According to my count, that one makes us forty-five.” Then I scratched my head and went on, “Figuring on twelve for each wall, and the two ridge logs, fifty should do the trick. They’re good logs too, straight as an arrow, sound as a silver dollar, and hold their size, and don’t taper off at the tops as do the logs in some cabins I’ve seen.”

  “My, but I’ll be glad when the last one is felled,” breathed Lillian.

  “So will I,” I grinned. “Then maybe you’ll throw those old overalls away and get into a skirt again. Overalls were made for men, not women. Didn’t you know that?”

  She pouted. “Not until the logs are up, and a roof above them, and at least one window in, will I discard the overalls and think about skirt and blouse again.” Then she laughed outright. “I sure must look a sight!”

  “Apart from that pitch all over your forehead and the smears on your cheeks and chin where you squashed a mosquito, you don’t look too bad at all. In fact,” I assured her, “pitch or no pitch, mosquito or no mosquito, you look okay to me.”

  “Pitch!” Lillian grimaced. “I sure don’t like that pitch. It’s all over the saw and axe handle too. You can’t squat down on a log a minute to rest without getting that pitch all over yourself.” She suddenly jumped up, glanced around and cried, “Veasy! Now where’s that boy hidden himself?”

  “He’s all right.” I’d been keeping an eye on Veasy. “He’s over there behind that rotten windfall. Chased a squirrel down its hole and is trying to make the hole big enough to crawl down after it. That should keep him out of mischief for a while.”

  If I’d had my way about things, the logs for the cabin would have been felled with the axe, not the heavy crosscut saw. The saw was a two-man affair, at least where felling trees with it was concerned. Its makers never intended that it would be used unless there were two men pulling and pushing on its handles. Certainly no woman, and especially one that weighed only around a hundred and fifteen pounds fully clothed, was expected to have any part in its use. But where Lillian was concerned I didn’t always have my own way about things, and she very often had hers.

  We weren’t lacking in material for the building of a home, for the forest held almost everything that was needed. It was simply a case of going into it and helping ourselves to what was there. I judged that I could make far better time chopping the trees down with the axe than by cutting them alone with the crosscut. But Lillian said, “Use the saw, and I’m going to help too. It will be quicker for the two of us to saw them down together,” was the stubborn logic she used.

  “Of course it would,” I agreed. “But helping to fell trees with a six-foot crosscut is no job for a woman.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Well, pulling on the saw handles wouldn’t do your back any good, would it?”

  She said flatly, “I want a roof over my head and the quicker the better.”

  So together we felled the trees, and sawed them into the proper lengths. And after I had snaked them out of the woods with the team and piled them on the flat, we shucked them of their bark.

  Veasy—the name is a family one on my side—was determined that he too should assist in the peeling of the logs, so we outfitted him with a dull butcher knife that would hardly cut grease and told him go to it. He scraped and peeled away with vigour and ambition for a minute or two, then, wearying of it all, walked over to an anthill and began worrying its occupants with a stick.

  Indifferent to all else but getting the cabin up as quickly as possible, our only clock was the sun. We began work shortly after it rose and didn’t lay our tools down again until after it was gone. We heaved and we panted and sweated, and laid the heavy green timbers on top of each other, notching each snugly into place so that it rested tightly against the one below it.

  That first cabin was perhaps a crude sort of a dwelling as some modern homes go, but after the dust and the smoke of the tent, and everlasting insults from the mosquitoes, it was good enough for us. Six days after we began cutting the logs, its four walls stood white and pitchy to the sun. Now came the laying of the ridge logs and roofing. That done, I hauled dirt in the wagon and spread an eight-inch layer of it over the split timbers of the roof, thus ensuring the cabin a maximum of coolness in summer, plus equal warmth in winter. While Lillian cut and peeled slim straight pine poles, I nailed them between the logs. Together we sawed out the gaps for two windows and a door, fitted these in, cemented the cracks with mud and stepped back, surveying our creation with pride. All of ten days had gone by since the first night of the mosquitoes, and now we had a home to live in. It was eighteen feet wide by twenty-four long, and even though its floor was the packed earth, now, when we closed the door and windows, we were shut away from the attention of the insects. No matter how sharp might be the lash of the winter storm outside, within these four stout walls all would be protected and warm.

  “Someday,” I promised, “when there’s a bit more money in the kitty, I’ll haul lumber in from Riske Creek and put down a proper floor.” But “someday” was a few miles off yet.

  The cabin built and moved into, another necessary chore stared us in the eye before we could enjoy any real peace of mind; we had to build some sort of fence where we could hold the horses and stop them from wandering off. The horses had been a problem since the very first day. They were born and bred to the open range country to the south, and seeme
d to have little liking for this timbered country with its mosquitoes, deer flies and, far greater torment, the black bulldog flies, almost as big as hornets and which, according to competent authority on the subject, got away with two ounces of flesh every time one settled on the skin.

  Since their first attempt at a getaway, the horses had tried to quit the country on two other occasions. At their second attempt, I finally hauled up to them seven miles south of the cabin, but then they had followed the track out to Riske Creek, and I didn’t have too much trouble in locating them. But at their last bid for desertion they got nigh clean out of the country before, almost bankrupt of wind and limb myself, I finally ran them to earth.

  That morning at daybreak, there wasn’t a sound from the bells. It had become ritual with me, even before starting a fire, to step out of the cabin at daybreak and locate the whereabouts of the horses from the bells. But this morning I could hear nothing but the pert chatter of squirrels, or the less frequent cry of an osprey circling high above Meldrum Lake, a telescopic eye wide awake and watching for movement of squawfish in the water below.

  Going back into the cabin, I kindled a fire, put the coffeepot on the stove and told Lillian, who was just rubbing the sleep from her eyes, “They’ve hit the trail again. But they can’t have gone very far. I’ll light out now and maybe be back with them by the time coffee is brewed.”

  I followed the wagon track southward, first at a fast walk, then at a faster jogtrot. Three halters were wound around my waist, and my eyes were glued to the ground, looking for a horse track. Three miles from the cabin it slowly and uncomfortably dawned on me that this time they hadn’t headed back down the track, but instead must have started out in another direction altogether. “But what direction?” A chipmunk, tailed back on a rock three feet away, cheeks cupped meditatively in its paws, glanced quickly toward me, but had nothing to say at all.